Tips-Tools

Technical tips and utilties that I found useful.

GPO disabling a Windows service

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Recently I had a virtual machine that would not obtain an IP from DHCP. I noticed the DHCP client service was disabled in windows services. I would enable it, start it and it would start just fine. I would then reboot the VM. The DHCP client service would be disabled again. I had a feeling … Read more

Show hidden devices in Windows

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Have you ever had devices that where stuck on your system and you needed to remove them. For example someone removed a physical network card from the system without uninstalling it first from the OS. This can be a problem if that network card had a static IP assigned to it. Once you add a new network card using the same static IP that was assigned to the previous network card it will give you an error.

If this were to happen normally you would go to device manager and simply uninstall the device. Well what if they don’t display? That means they are hidden. It is a good thing there is a way to un-hide them so you can uninstall them.

I have created a batch file that contains this:

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Analyze a Trend Micro HijackThis log

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Trend Micro HijackThis is a free utility that generates an in depth report of registry and file settings from your computer. This tool can help you detect spyware and viruses. Do not use this tool alone. Use this tool along with other spyware and virus removal tools.

Download it here:Trend Micro Hijackthis tool 

So now you have generated a log file using Trend Micro HijackThis. Here is a website that you can upload the log file on to Analyze it.

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App crashes on Vista/Server 08

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So I have had certain software crash under Vista or 2008 Server while other applications on the same machine work just fine. Here is one of the errors I see:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BEX
Application Name: EXECUTABLE.exe
Application Version: 1.7.1.0
Application Timestamp: 4896b682
Fault Module Name: StackHash_3884
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Offset: 002ca978
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Data: 00000008
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.16.7
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 3884
Additional Information 2: b68e6d6fa0c9967afbd16b6d0b9e4ef4
Additional Information 3: 6276
Additional Information 4: a9fd8ecff73ec5510247cf946efdd405

This could be caused by copy protection. Here is how I resolved it:

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How to save credentials for a maped drive

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Have you ever mapped a drive and chose to have it Reconnect at logon but it did not save the credentials? This has happened to me. The end user has to call you again and again to re-enter the credentials in for them. There are two ways to fix this.

 

You can use “savecred“. Savecred will save the credentials permanently. The other option is to use “manage passwords” that come with XP in control panel.  Manage passwords will only save the password for the current session once the user has typed the password in after being prompted for it. Here are the work arounds:

OPTION 1: “Manage Passwords”

Map your drive:

  • Go to My computer/Computer
    Click on tools then select map drive
  • Type in the UNC (\\server\share) that you want to map
  • Check the box that says reconnect at logon
  • Then click on the connect using a different user name
  • It will prompt you for the credentials. Type these in and click ok
  • Now click finish and the drive will be mapped using a set of different credentials then the user you are logged in with

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Outlook 2003 Auto-Complete Cache (History List)

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One of the most frustrating issues to deal with in Outlook is having an email history file that is either too large, or full of incomplete/incorrect email addresses (specially with lifetouch employees). When you begin to type an email address in the TO: field, Outlook looks into the history cache and creates a dropdown list of email addresses, contacts or exchange names to match. It holds the last 1000 used addresses. New names are not added until the current outlook session ends and outlook is restarted.

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