nDarkness

Archive for November, 2009

Windows XP Roaming Profile Synchronization Issues

by on Nov.09, 2009, under Windows

Roaming profiles allow us to access files that we often use on any computer joined to the network, easily replace old computers, and provide greater network security. There are on occasion, special circumstances that cause the log-on/log-off synchronization process of these profiles to fail. Generally when this happens the icon pictured fourth from the left below will appear in the task bar.

Taskbar Image

This causes your roaming profile to refuse to load or breaks NetBIOS connections even after a reboot of the system. You are still able to connect to network shares if you use the ip address of the network computer(s). To correct this problem, go to My Computer=>Tools=>Folder Options=>Offline Files. This will open the screen pictured below.

Offline Files Dialog

Now what you need to do is hold down Ctrl+Shift and click on Delete Files. Answer yes to the confirmation prompt, click ok and then restart your computer. After the restart, you will find that your profile loads normally and there are no more connection issues involving NetBIOS names.

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Windows XP – Reclaim Lost Hard Drive Space

by on Nov.07, 2009, under Windows

The network I administer at work has an even mix of new and old computers. The problem with the older computers are the small hard drives and low amount of memory. I constantly have employees telling me that their computers are running slower than normal and that they are getting low resources error messages.

Below are the steps I use to free up space on these machines:

  1. Click Start => My Computer
  2. Now we want to right click on the drive that Windows is installed on and click on Properties.
  3. Once the properties dialog opens, click on Disk Cleanup. (This will take a few seconds to minutes to load)

The next steps require a little more explanation.

Before we use Disk Cleanup to get rid of any files, let’s click on the more options tab. This tab allows us to remove components, installed programs that we don’t use and old system restore points. Assuming you have system restore enabled, which by default it is, you will be able to regain a considerable amount of space by selecting this option.

Look at the amount of free space you have and remember the number. Now click on the Clean Up button for System Restore and answer yes to the prompt. You will not see any progress bar or get confirmation that this operation has completed. Wait about 10 seconds and view your free space again. Did the number change? When I did this on my computer I regained a little over 3 gigs!

Now click back on the Disk Cleanup tab. This tab gives us a list of file types with the amount of space they take up plus their descriptions down below. Click on each one to find out what they do to help you decide if you should delete them or not. I typically delete everything except for Office setup files and I don’t compress old files. Once you have the files you want to remove selected click on ok and answer yes to the prompt.

That’s pretty much sums up the process I use to reclaim drive space on Windows XP machines.

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Linux System Update Script

by on Nov.06, 2009, under Linux, Utilities

In my experience with Linux distributions, Slackware and Ubuntu/Kubuntu, there are a couple of different methods used to update the system. Of course we can always use a gui to do the updates but what fun is that?

The two commands used to update a Debian based system are:

safety@nDarkness:~/bin$ sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade

Now while this doesn’t require a great deal of typing, let’s see if we can shorten it to suit our needs.

If you do not already have somewhere to store your personal scripts, the following command will do this for you and allow you to enter the code we will use:

safety@nDarkness:~$ mkdir bin; cd bin; vi apt-auto

Press i for insert and create the following script:

#!/bin/bash

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade

This is all we need to type for our script to produce the results we are looking for. Now let’s save our script by pressing Esc => :wq => .

To run our script we can type:

safety@nDarkness:~/bin$ bash ./apt-auto

You should see the output from the two commands used in the script printed to the screen. Now let’s make our script executable so we don’t have to type bash to make it run.

The following command will accomplish what we are looking for:

safety@nDarkness:~/bin$ chmod +x apt-auto

Now to run our command we simply need to type:

safety@nDarkness:~/bin$ ./apt-auto

We now have a working script to do our update process and it is significantly shorter than the first option we used. As always all comments are welcomed.

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Microsoft Exchange Recovery Mode and How to Fix it

by on Nov.06, 2009, under Windows

I had a user this week that was experiencing trouble with Outlook. Every time they opened the program they received a prompt similar to the one below.

    Exchange is currently in recovery mode. You can either connect to your Exchange server using the network, work offline, or cancel this logon.

Not only was the prompt annoying, the shared calendar and contacts crashed the program whenever you tried to access them.

After doing some digging I found a solution that fixed the problem.

  1. Start Outlook and select Connect.
  2. On the Tools menu, click E-mail Accounts.
  3. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
  4. Click the Microsoft Exchange Server account, and then click Change.
  5. Click More Settings, and then click Advanced.
  6. Clear the Use Cached Exchange Mode check box, and then click Apply.
  7. Instead of exiting Outlook at this point click Offline Folder File Settings, and then click Disable Offline Use.
  8. Click Yes to the prompt, OK, Next, and Finish
  9. Close Outlook and start it again.
  10. Repeat steps 1-5
  11. Now reselect the Use Cached Exchange Mode check box, exit, and then restart Outlook.

That’s it now Outlook will no longer give the prompt and everything will be back to normal.

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