http://www.clubrunner.ca/Portal/Home.aspx?accountid=3145

This is a good reason why you should have your Windows Server Update Services in an environment where you are tied to a particular version of Internet Explorer for compatibility reasons!

For more information on the update, go to: http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=12114

Written/Submitted by: “CO” @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA

The first thing I check on a slow computer is the number of programs that are running. You can determine what is running by looking at the icons in the bottom right corner of your desktop next to the time. Most of the programs are set to automatically start up when the computer is booted, but there is a way to prevent this. Click on “start” then go to “run”. A dialog box will appear then, and you will type “msconfig” in the field thats prompting you. This will then bring up the System Configuration Utility. Look for the tab that says “startup”. Under that tab you will see a list of programs. The ones with a check mark to the left are the programs that are set to load when the computer is booted up. Simply scan through this list and find programs that you do not use every day, or do not want loaded at startup, and uncheck them. Some examples may be iTunes, Windows Messenger, or web browser task bars. Be very careful that you do not choose important Windows executables that are needed to load the operating system. You probably want to double check before you decide on these. Your computer will need to be rebooted in order for the changes to take effect.

Next you will want to find programs that you have forgotten about or simply do not use any longer. These can take up valuable disk space on your hard drive and prevent your computer from performing well. Click on “start” and go to the “control panel”. In the control panel, you will see an “add or remove programs” option. Click it to bring up a list of all programs installed on your hard drive. Find anything that you have not used for a while or don’t need anymore. You must also be very careful here, because you may not be able to get any of these back in the future. You may want to reboot your computer again when this is completed.

Lastly the disk defragmenter is a useful tool used for ensuring top performance in your hard drive. Over time your computer slows down due to files being scattered in pieces on your hard drive. This tool gathers those pieces and arranges them in “chunks”. To do this click on “start”, go to “all programs” and then find “accessories” and click “system tools”. There you will find the disk defragmenter. First you will have to select which drive and click analyze. When that is finished analyzing, you click “defragment”. This can take a while so it may be a good idea to run it at night. It is possible to have the defragmenter run automatically once a week at a pre-determined time as well if you so choose. This way you won’t have to worry about it in the future.

Completing all of the above is a great way to jumpstart your computer to work more efficiently, but the best way to improve your computer’s performance is to buy additional sticks of RAM. Memory (ie: RAM) is very inexpensive now and will really be a good long term investment. The installation process is simple, and can make all the difference in the speed of your computer!

Written By: “Clang” @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA

Malware, which is short for “malicious software”, refers to software programs designed to damage or do other unwanted actions on a computer system. Common examples of malware include viruses, worms, trojan horses, and spyware. Viruses for example, can cause havoc on a computer’s hard drive by deleting files or directory information. Spyware can gather data from a user’s system without the user knowing it. This can include anything from the web pages a user visits, to personal information such as credit card numbers.

It doesn’t take much for an unprotected computer (a computer with no virus scanner) to get malware. It’s as simple as visiting a website and before you know it you’re infected. Even with the common antivirus software it is still possible to get infected with certain types of Malware. While there is no single comprehensive software package that will protect you from all Malware threats, the axiom “the best defense is a good offence” applies perfectly.

To help protect your computer, and other computers from Malware infections consider the steps below. I have used these for years without a single infection:

1.  Ensure you have an antivirus scanner and that it is kept up to date!

There are so many antivirus scanners available on the market today. Most of them update automatically several times a day. Take a moment and make sure yours is up to date and running.

2.  Download and install your operating system and application updates!

No matter how much the programmers test, there are always unintended security holes in software programs. There are programmers in the world that are dedicated to finding these holes and either reporting them to the manufactures to fix them, or exploit them for nefarious gains. One of the most commonly exploited applications is Adobe Reader. Even with up to date antivirus you can still get infected through an unpatched Adobe Reader application by visiting a legitimate website. Not necessarily from the content on the website, rather within the ads it displays. Companies don’t always verify the content of the ads since they contract that piece out to a third party vendor. Take a few minutes a month and update those applications.

3.  Don’t open emails or attachments from senders you do not know, or from those whom you were not expecting email from!

Believe it or not this still happens. Email spammers are very crafty and can make their email look like it came from your boss or even your mom. The best advice is to know your own email flow and what type of messages you normally receive. If it looks suspicious it probably is. So in that case, delete it! If it was legitimate then you will probably hear from the sender again. Or instead of deleting contact the sender and verify it came from them.

4.  Stay away from questionable websites!

It’s your computer and you can go where you like, but be aware that the Internet is not controlled or managed by any one organization. It’s like the Wild West where anything goes! If you choose to visit such sites then expect to eventually get infected.

Applying the methods above can greatly reduce your risk of getting infected with Malware. However, if you do happen to get infected we can fix that!

Written By: ‘Computer Dude’ @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA

I have an external user sending an email with an 18 MB attachment to a user on my domain. The send/receive connectors are set at 25 MB. The mailbox has no delivery restriction on it so it should be defaulting to 25 MB. The external user sent the attachment to my gmail account just fine. Global settings are set to 25 MB as well. At this point I have no idea why this attachment isn’t getting delivered. It is clearly smaller than the set limits on the server.

The environment: Cloud based spam filter with message size limit of 50 MB. Windows Server 2008 R2 x64. Microsoft Exchange 2010 Standard.

(Link to the question: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Server_Software/Email_Servers/Exchange/Q_27458919.html)

We have the answer!

After spending the afternoon troubleshooting message size issues for a client of ours, I have increased the message size restrictions to 25 MB on all send and receive connectors as well as the global transport rules. Exchange 2010 also has a background feature called “transport dumpster.” The default size setting for this feature is 18 MB. In the event that the message exceeds 18 MB, it will fill up the dumpster and then get rejected regardless of the size limitations in place. The best practice for this feature is to set it at 1.5 times the message size maximum. In this case, I have set it to 40 MB. This setting is configurable through either EMS or EMC.

EMS command: Set-TransportConfig –MaxDumpsterSizePerDatabase “40 MB”

In EMC it can be modified under: Organization Configuration -> Hub Transport -> Global Settings -> Transport Settings -> Properties.

Answer written By: ‘Mog’ @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA

Option 1:

Jump on another server and open the Terminal Services Manager (start > administrative tools > terminal services manager) and connect from it to the machine you wish to access. From there you can see what sessions exist and then disconnect idle users.

Option 2:

You can use the “console” session. This is a somewhat hidden feature in the Remote Desktop Services. You have to call it from the command line with the “/console” or “/admin” option, depending on the age of the server (2008 servers use /admin). So, as an example you would go to: Start > Run > then type in “mstsc /v:server01 /admin” (without the quotes of course). This would open up to an RDP session to server01’s console, and the console connection attempts are never refused!

Written By: “Splashypants” @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA

I have recently migrated one of my clients from Blackberry Internet Services to Blackberry Enterprise Server Express for Exchange v5.0.  We are running Exchange 2007.  Since the migration, all users have reported that sound notifications for incoming emails have stopped working.  If the user changes the setting on the device, it still doesn’t work.  I am using the default IT policy on the server.  I see no restrictions in the IT policy to cause this issue.

Any suggestions?

We have the answer!

So, I read through the IT policy guide and found nothing to impact the settings. I then went through the deployed policy and again came up with no answer. So I did more web research and found a similar issue with a user who restored an old blackberry backup to a new device. The old IT policy in the post seemed to be the cause of the issue. Since the device must have a policy assigned, I created a new empty policy. I worked with one user and manually pushed this policy and the service books to him. I then had him reset his sound settings and we tested the email flow. He started getting notifications. So I found another test user and pushed the policy to him as well. By doing this we resolved his issue. I then added all users to one group and pushed the policy out to the entire group. This ended up resolving the issue for all Blackberry users!

Answer written By: ‘Mog’ @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA

FOG is a free open source web based GUI. It’s so easy to use that even a basic user can kick things off quickly! There is no need to even be physically at the workstation with the WOL (Wake on LAN) utility, and with PXE enabled the computer will look for the FOG server and the rest is straightforward from there. The user will be prompted for the operating system desired, along with the image needed. Then, whether or not there are multiple uploads within FOG, after a few simple questions the image process will begin. Simple! This process cuts down the turnaround time to image a computer by half, if not more! Plus there are no CD’s or operating system discs that are required. To upload an image from the desired computer is just as effortless! To learn more, check out the FOG wiki: http://www.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Knowledge_Base

Written By: “JFlan” @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA

That being said I think the Bionic Droid is a really nice phone! It comes equipped with multi-processors in it which makes multitasking on a phone work the way it was meant to. The Bionic camera technically comes equipped to take pictures with more pixels, but I feel like my iPhone pictures just look better. The new voice command is also much better in the Bionic than the iPhone 4. It still misses a few words, but it’s cool to voice command your texts riding down the road. (Is that still technically texting while driving? I guess only time will tell on that one!) I also think that the live wallpaper and widgets that come on the Droid have a big coolness factor to them, and some of the widgets can even help the speed. I love having the Evernote and calendar widgets on my home screen for really quick access into apps that I use a lot. I have noticed a few Droid drawbacks though. When I’m in 4g data territory I love the speed, yet if im in Verizon’s 3g area it is a lot slower than AT&T’s 3g speed! There also seems to be an inherit Wi-Fi bug with Droid where you lose all data connectivity if you leave your house (or wherever you’re connected via Wi-Fi) and the only resolution is to reboot the phone. Im told there should be a fix for this in November though, according to droid forums, so im staying hopeful!

In the end, it’s a toss-up to decide which phone to go with because it really depends on what you want out of it. If you want a sleek, easy to use phone with the ability to take great pictures with, then my vote is the iPhone. However if you’re looking for a reliable service with really fast speed and more dependability, then my vote goes to the Droid.

Written By: “Burrfoote” @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA

Sometimes solving issues at a client site takes some creative thinking. That being said, I was recently presented with a problem at a client site that needed a creative solution. A programmer would write programs for a laser cutter and periodically the night operators would accidentally delete the programs, thereby requiring the programmer to spend the next morning re-writing old programs. This would easily burn the first two hours of his day.

To save the day, I created a new network share and re-mapped the programmer to use this share. I then set up a Robocopy script (Robocopy is basically a command line tool that’s used to backup files) and used Task Scheduler (which is a program that allows you to choose a program you want to launch at a specific time and frequency) to run it every 5 minutes. Now if a machine operator makes a mistake, 5 minutes later the problem corrects itself!

Gotta love technology!

Written By: ‘Mog’ @ Halski Systems in Gainesville, GA