Tag Archives: windows

I’m running a fairly standard WIMP setup at work: Win 2003, IIS, PHP4, MySQL (note, this website is LAMP). One of my users just got the dreaded CGI error: The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set … Continue reading →

I bought a 320 GB external Lacie drive specifically for the purpose of backing up my Windows box. Yesterday I tried to push a 32GB Windows backup archive onto it, and I was told that I don’t have space on … Continue reading →

I ran nmap on my home network today to see which machines are up without getting up from my desk. I noticed something strange. I own a Dell Axim X5 Pocket PC. It is an old model which did not … Continue reading →

I discovered a very nifty tool today – a mini SFTP server for windows made by Core FTP. The whole tool weighs in under 780 KB, requires no installation and gives you a bare minimum SFTP functionality. Simply run the … Continue reading →

When I came to work today, one of the desktops in the office was popping up the following message: Norton Antivirus 2006 was unable to start instant messenger scanner. It will be unable to scan instant messenger downloads for infections. … Continue reading →

Here is an interesting issue I ran into today. I have a script which creates a local copy of one of the important folders on the server using the xcopy command. To make the long story short, after several “accidents” … Continue reading →

How many different versions of Vista are there? There is a lot of confusion about this among users. How do you upgrade. Which version is the “good one”? Which one is the best for me? Fortunately, I could not care … Continue reading →

I’m totally loving this poll: source – cnn.com; click to enlarge It seems that few people are rushing to get Vista. In fact, there are more CNN readers who do don’t care about the new OS at all, than those … Continue reading →

At work we have bunch of automated scripts running on one of the servers. Most are either batch scripts or PHP scripts that are triggered at various intervals sending out automatic email notifications, or some important business stats to the … Continue reading →

One of my users suddenly started experiencing this problem on their WinXP SP2 laptop. During system startup they would get the following error message: Application failed to initialize: 0x800106ba . A problem caused Windows Defender Service to stop. To start … Continue reading →

The news about Vista release is seeping through to the collective consciousness of the unenlightened masses. Usually when the common folk hears something about new technology thing, they seek out their local techno-magi to ask them questions about it. So … Continue reading →

Yesterday I felt like crap. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately so I decided to call it a night and went to bed early. I think I fell asleep the instant my head hit the pillow. Only to be … Continue reading →

Every once in a while I have to do some manual laptop setup. I physically get to crank out the new machines out of the boxes, run the initial windows setup and then go through the motions of removing installing … Continue reading →

A relatively unknown feature of the windows shell (cmd.exe) is that it has a built in substring function. You can use the :~ operator in conjunction with any variable to obtain a substring of that variable. For example: set foo=foobar … Continue reading →

Most people know this trick in windows: PrintScreen puts a screenshot in your clipboard Alt+PrintScreen puts a screenshot of the active window in the clipboard From here you can simply paste it into Photoshop, Gimp or MS Paint, manipulate it … Continue reading →

Q: Why doesn’t windows come with a built in uptime utility? A: Because windows uptime is to short to be measured in a meaningful way. All jokes aside, why do I have to go through the trouble of typing: systeminfo … Continue reading →

I do not use FTP, and you shouldn’t use it either. Sending your password and files over the tubes in plaintext form might have been ok in the 80’s but nowadays it’s just asking for trouble. I use scp for … Continue reading →

Tell me if this has ever happened to you: you sit down at machine that you are supposed to fix/configure and you realize that you don’t even know what version of OS is it running. That is, you know that … Continue reading →

I think that [tag]HFS[/tag] is one of the more [tag]useful[/tag] and noteworthy tools I have seen in a while. It is a fully functional [tag]http server[/tag] that weighs in under 600KB and does not require any installation. You simply download … Continue reading →

My first computer was [tag]Amiga[/tag] 600. It came with the ultra speedy [tag]7.09 MHz[/tag] CPU and a whooping 1 MB of RAM. It may sound small to you now, but at the time these were really good specs. [tag]A600[/tag] was … Continue reading →

Did you know that [tag]NTFS[/tag] supports [tag]hard links[/tag]? This is an interesting tidbit about windows that not many people know about. But let me quickly explain what is a hard link to the clueless windows people. Imagine the following file … Continue reading →

Here are some of the more obscure, and yet extremely useful [tag]windows commands[/tag] every [tag]administrator[/tag] should know about. This is by no means an exhaustive list. These are simply windows utilities that I would feel naked without. Most of these … Continue reading →

This is an actual conversation I had today at work. Guy brings me his laptop which won’t boot. I turn it on and I see the infamous NTLDR Missing message. Him: I installed the new GE template, and after I … Continue reading →

The other day I was sitting at my windows box at home, and McAfee AV popped up a message prompting me to do a recommended upgrade of their software. Why not, right? After all, ever since I bought this computer … Continue reading →

In lieu of the privilege escalation hax I started to wonder what exactly do you need to do to lock down an XP Home machine. In XP pro you can use the group policies to limit what user can do … Continue reading →