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It is possible to boot a Cisco router off of a USB flash drive.  This can come in real handy if you are on-site and the compact flash of the router is bad.  Here are the steps to do it: [more]

  1. Format your USB flash drive with a FAT file system.  This needs to be FAT and not FAT32.
  2. Copy the system IOS image to the USB flash drive.
  3. While the router is powered off, plug in the USB flash drive to the USB port on the router.
  4. Power on the router and when it starts to boot up press the Break key to enter ROMMON mode.
  5. Once in ROMMON mode enter the following command to boot to USB:
    • boot usbflash0:<system image file name>    (e.g. boot usbflash0:1841-advsecurityk9-mz.124-23.bin)

The following link has some more information about what is supported: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/modules/ps6247/prod_qas0900aecd80232483.html

 


 

During this last maintenance window for a customer, I needed to update and recompose their linked clones and then log in and test the various applications to make sure everything was working properly. After the recompose had completed, I fired up the View client only to be greeted with an error message that said “The View Connection Server connection failed (null).” This was obviously a problem. After some quick searches on the VMware KB, I found an article which states “View Client 4.5.0 or earlier fails to connect to View Connection Server if Internet Explorer 9 Beta or Windows 7 SP1 Beta is installed on the same client system.”

I had IE9 Beta installed. After removing it (and rebooting), the client connected up just fine and all was good again.


 

When performing searches on Google I often find it helpful to narrow the results based on when the pages were indexed by Google.  This is helpful in situations where the results for your keywords are returning a lot of old pages with dated information, but you’re looking for new information pertaining to the subject.  Google provides the options to search for recent pages through their advanced search options.  To see the options available you can click the “Advanced search” link beside the search box, click the “Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more” link, and change the “Date” option.  The options currently available are past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year.

Using the advanced search works, but it takes a few clicks to get to and doesn’t have many options for the date range.   I’ve found it’s quicker and more flexible to just add a query string parameter to the end of the URL after you search for your keywords.  [more]

ValueResult
&tbs=rltm:1 real time results
&tbs=qdr:s past second
&tbs=qdr:n past minute
&tbs=qdr:h past hour
&tbs=qdr:d past day (24 hours)
&tbs=qdr:w past week
&tbs=qdr:m past month
&tbs=qdr:y past year

In addition to those basic parameters you can also add an integer after the “qdr” unit values to specify a specific number.  For example “&tbs=qdr:w2” will only return pages discovered by Google within the last 2 weeks.  Here is what your URL would look like in that case: http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=conetrix&tbs=qdr:w2


 

I needed to make an audio recording using my laptop.   Previously I had good success using an USB Plantronics headset which has a microphone (DSP 400).

This was my first recording with my new laptop (ThinkPad T410, Windows7).   The T410 uses the Conexant 2085 SmartAudio HD sound adapter.

I downloaded the open source software “Audacity.”  It is great software with many advanced features I have never tapped.  It is simple enough I can use the basics and be up and running as soon as it is installed.

When I plugged in the Plantronics headset, it was recognized right away, but there were a couple of problems to address before being able to record.  [more]

First the internal microphone on the laptop was not deactivated when the headset was plugged in.  This meant extra noise and sounds were being captured. 

I looked through the sound control panel “Recording” tab and could not find any means to the mute the microphone.  (A co-worker later showed me the control panel microphone mute button.  It has the same icon as the speaker mute button, so I overlooked it.)  What I did discover was the volume slider did not appear to effect the internal microphone as the recording level meter continued to register sounds even when the slider was all the way down.  For my first recording I resorted to disabling the internal microphone in order to limit recording to the headset microphone.

Second, when I did a test recording with Audacity, there as a stream of white noise which was as loud as my voice.  Back in the Sound control panel I remembered seeing some Windows settings to automatically adjust sound volumes when the PC is used to place or receive phone calls (Skype-like calls I assume).  I went to the Communications tab in the Sound control panel.  By default the setting was set to “Reduce the volume of other sounds by 80%.”  I changed the setting to “Do Nothing.”  I made another test recording and the white noise was gone.

After I completed the recording project, I attempted to enable the internal microphone.  It was gone from the Sound control panel.  With the headset unplugged there were no recording devices listed. 

The only way I could get the internal microphone to reappear was to uninstall Conexant in the device manager and restart the laptop.  When the laptop restarted it reinstalled the Conexant adapter and the internal microphone was available again in the Sound control panel under Recording.

Preparing to write this post, I was able to take the time to look further for a way to mute the internal microphone.  And, the Gotcha took on new dimensions.  There is a “Mute Microphone” button at the top of the keyboard.  My old laptop didn’t have this button and so I never thought about having a dedicated mute button.  No need to disable and ultimately reinstall, just press the button.

UPDATE:  People have commented that the mute microphone button did not fix the problem for them, but turning off the microphone boost did.


 

I was recently helping a friend who was having trouble getting online with her Mac laptop.  After over an hour of talking to Apple they told her that her computer was self assigning the IP address, but did not tell her how to fix it. 

A little bit of forum scouring provided me with more than a few people who are having the same issues and a few ideas of how to fix this issue.  The idea that seems to have fixed the problem was resetting the PRAM.  Parameter RAM, or PRAM, is a small amount of RAM that stores the basic setup information about the computer.  This includes settings for the mouse, keyboard, startup, etc.  Warning, you may lose some of your customized settings.  However, you can use the Control Panels to restore them.  Here are the steps to reset your PRAM:  [more]

  1. Shut down the computer.
  2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
  3. Turn on the computer.
  4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
  5. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
  6. Release the keys.

 

The Internet Explorer 9 Beta is out and already I can see several new features and improvements over previous versions. While it still isn’t enough to get me to switch from Chrome, they are making serious improvements in the UI and how it handles certain websites. One new feature, however, I find quite interesting. They’re called jump lists and basically, it’s a bookmark on steroids.

Windows 7 has allowed you to pin applications to the taskbar for easy access. IE also provided the ability to switch tabs via the pinned application on the taskbar. Now, they have taken it to the next level. You can pin a specific site to the taskbar and open to it as if you were starting a new application. Currently, this is an IE only feature, but Microsoft hopes to turn it into a standard for other browsers to follow suit. [more]

Let’s say, you browse to http://arstechnica.com and you want to pin their site to your taskbar. Click/drag the tab to your taskbar and it will automatically pin. Notice that the icon has changed.

Then when you click on it, it opens up a “special” version of IE with its own special colors and icons.

This information is grabbed from the favicon.

Finally, the jump list. Right-click on the pinned application:

Notice that there are new “tasks”. When you click on one of these, it opens that specific page. The code to add this information is really simple.

<!-- C-razy IE9 stuff --><meta name="application-name" content="Ars Technica"/>
<meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="http://arstechnica.com/"/>
<meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="Ars Technica: Serving the technologist for 1.2 decades"/>
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=News;action-uri=http://arstechnica.com/;icon-uri=http://arstechnica.com/favicon.ico"/>
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Features;action-uri=http://arstechnica.com/features/;icon-uri=http://static.arstechnica.net/ie-jump-menu/jump-features.ico"/>
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=OpenForum;action-uri=http://arstechnica.com/civis/;icon-uri=http://static.arstechnica.net/ie-jump-menu/jump-forum.ico"/>
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=One Microsoft Way;action-uri=http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/;icon-uri=http://static.arstechnica.net/ie-jump-menu/jump-omw.ico"/>
<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Subscribe;action-uri=http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/;icon-uri=http://static.arstechnica.net/ie-jump-menu/jump-subscribe.ico"/>

I’ve added this to one of my sites within minutes and all works as intended. Now because the jump list is actually pinned to the taskbar, the Windows team had to modify the structure of their code to allow IE to do this. This is why it still requires a reboot to install IE9. They’re modifying the kernel to allow for jump lists. Pretty neat stuff.

 

If you have more than one domain controller and are trying to examine why an account keeps locking out (for example, after a password change), you can download a tool from Microsoft called LockoutStatus.exe.  This tool will help you analyze which Domain Controller the lockout happened against if there is more than one DC.  It will also list the time it happened so it can help speed up the process of examining the Security logs in the correct DC’s event logs. 

The tool can also be used to unlock accounts easily.  You must specify the name of the domain account that you are searching for.  [more]

Further information can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738772%28WS.10%29.aspx


 

In a prior post I outlined a method to set the time zone from the command line using a control panel applet.  I needed to do this to fix a problem with the Mac RDP client which doesn't work correctly with time zone redirection.  Using the control panel applet works great on XP and 2003 Server, but only launches the Date and Time applet on 2008 and Windows 7.  After a little bit of research, I found a utility called tzutil that's included with Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.  This is the same utility Microsoft used to change time zones during the last daylight savings time calendar change. [more]

Syntax:   tzutil /s "Central Standard Time"


 

I had an issue where wsus on a Windows SBS 2008 system was saying it was synchronizing successfully, but it wasn't downloading updates. All you would get was a message in the event logs from Windows Server Update Services (event id 10032) saying that "The server is failing to download some updates". Clients would show that they needed updates through the WSUS console and via the SBS Console, but the updates would never show up on the server for installation. In the local client WindowsUpdate.log file you would see something similar to the following [more]

2010-10-12  10:39:45:574  784  1a20 PT       +++++++++++  PT: Synchronizing server updates  +++++++++++
2010-10-12  10:39:45:574  784  1a20 PT       + ServiceId = {3DA21691-E39D-4DA6-8A4B-B43877BCB1B7}, Server URL = http://...
2010-10-12  10:39:49:011  784  1a20 PT       +++++++++++  PT: Synchronizing extended update info  +++++++++++
2010-10-12  10:39:49:011  784  1a20 PT       + ServiceId = {3DA21691-E39D-4DA6-8A4B-B43877BCB1B7}, Server URL = http://...
2010-10-12  10:39:52:433  784  1a20 Agent  * Found 0 updates and 57 categories in search; evaluated appl. rules of 643 out of 1075 deployed entities

So why would the WSUS server recognize the server needed updates and the client not recognize and download them? Further investigation uncovered the fact that the WSUS Content Repository was nearly empty. Total size of the repository was less than 100 MB. Obviously, none of the patch data had been downloaded.

So why was the sync successful? Moving on, after more investigation, I discovered that the ISA server was blocking what appeared to be anonymous web traffic from the SBS server even though there was a access rule set to allow all http, https, and ftp traffic from the SBS server. So, skipping to the solution. First, ISA 2004 has a problem with BITS 7.0 that is used in Windows 2008 and Windows 7. Because the initial synchronization from WSUS ONLY downloads metadata, ISA was letting that out and it would show success in the consoles. Then WSUS turns over processing and downloading of the actual patch files (.cabs, etc.) to BITS. ISA was blocking BITS background download processing so what we had was metadata for the updates, but no updates. WSUS knew the servers needed the updates, but the servers had nothing to download because the actual content for the updates wasn’t there. The fix is to change the processing of update downloads using BITS from a background to a foreground process. ISA seems to allow that just fine.

Do it by running the following query against the WSUS database. The connection can be made via SQL Management Studio Express in most cases…you are just looking to run the query against the SUSDB database.

update tbConfigurationC set BitsDownloadPriorityForeground=1

If you are using Windows 2008 with the Microsoft Internal Database (as SBS 2008 does), this proves to be a little more challenging because you have to connect with SQ Management Studio Express using named pipes instead of TCP/IP. Connect using named pipes by using this as the server

\\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query


 

FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) is a free Firefox backup utility that functions as an add-on.  You can have it do scheduled backups, backup your whole profile or pieces and parts (including other add-ons, cookies, etc.).

This is most helpful for me since I use NoScript to limit which scripts are allowed to run as well as Permit Cookie to determine which site cookies I want to retain after I close Firefox.  Whenever I rebuild a laptop, it's handy to not have to manually install all add-ons, etc. [more]

http://softwarebychuck.com/febe/febeFAQ.html