Monday, December 29, 2008

Access Report Margin Problem

While using Access 2003 to create a report to print on 4" x 6" labels on my SATO GL 408e label printer, I ran across some very strange problems with margins.

I had created a custom paper size in the print driver on my print server (called custom stock in SATO lingo) and things seemed to be OK as I could see the new paper size in Access. The problems started when I tried to adjust the report margins to use as much of my label real estate as possible. The margins I set for top, left, and right would "stick" but the bottom margin kept resetting itself to 20.02 mm each time I left the page setup form. This was resulting in a large amount of unusable space at the bottom of each label.

Access 2007 was showing the exact same behaviour. Strangely, Word 2007 was not showing this behaviour and would allow me to select the custom paper size and print on the entire label. It seemed to be an issue related to Access.



After some banging of heads on walls, we stumbled across a setting in the print driver that solved the problem. On the "Printer Settings" tab the bottom section is titled "Override Application Default Settings". The field within is called "Always use drivers settings" and this needed to be set to true. I have no idea why this fixed the issue but it did and I am documenting in case this is of help to someone else!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Favicon for OWA on Exchange 2007

A minor thing but I wanted to use a favicon for our new Exchange Server 2007 Outlook Web Access site (also known as OWA or Outlook Anywhere). It was significantly harder to find the answer to this one than I expected . . . eventually, the secret was found on this developer forum posting. The (slightly modified) answer:

This is done by modifying the asp file for the logon page.

Locate the logon.aspx file. This is usually in ExchangeServer\ClientAccess\Owa\auth

Place the following under the *SECOND* <> tag:
< rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="favicon.ico">

Note1: You need to remove the space I inserted after the initial "< ". I did this as Blogger interprets the HTML and messes up this post!

Note2: You can change the text between the TITLE tags under the *second* HEAD tag to whatever name you want to call your site. I did this too. Very nice.

Sunday, December 07, 2008

bug.gd - Error Search and Collaboration

"This site helps you search for errors that other people have encountered. Someone's bound to have run into your error before, right?"

There's also a Firefox extension with this description:
Search the world's database of error solutions and the web simultaneously. Later, provide your solutions to help the next poor soul.

The goal: No human should work on an error that has already been solved.

Free Online File Conversion

Zamzar allows you to upload a file and convert it from one format to another. The list of supported file types is quite lengthy.

Free Online Storage

Sometimes it's convenient to have a web-based option to deposit large files. This can facilitate the transfer of files that are too large to e-mail, etc.

4Shared - 5 GB of space, private or shared, max. 100MB, files deleted after 30 days

DropBoks - 1 GB, simple site, no sharing yet

Openomy - 1 GB free, can share via links

Box.net - 1 GB free, can share, max. 25MB

DropBox - Installed app, sychs, 2 GB free

RapidShare - no frills, max. storage space=?, max 300MB, files deleted after 30 days

YouSendIt - max. storage space=?, max 100MB

Live Spaces / Mesh?

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Open Additional Mailboxes - Exchange 2007

An excellent blog posting describing may useful Exchange Management Shell "one-liners":
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/09/05/428833.aspx

To grant full mailbox access permission:
Add-MailboxPermission [MAILBOX] -AccessRights FullAccess -user jcross

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Bug Shooting

Bug Shooting is "a free screenshot utility that was developed for software testers who use bug tracking systems including FogBugz, Gemini, Ontime and BugTracker.NET. Screenshots can also be sent to Skype or a default E-Mail application (e.g., Outlook).

Since screenshots are frequently used to show system bugs or to reproduce the steps for a failed test, it is often very helpful to highlight, notate and/or crop areas of the screenshot. With Bug Shooting this can be done in a matter of seconds."

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Free Anti-Virus Programs

In no particular order:
Note that some are free for home use only.

Online Malware Scanning

Infected with Spyware / Malware? Try some of these online tools:

Fix Windows Update Problems

"Initialization Error 0x80040FF2"!!

You could try the Windows Update Troubleshooter (Internet Explorer only).

But you might want to try this firs: DjLizard's Dial-a-fix

"Dial-a-fix is an advanced utility for 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows written by DjLizard in Borland Delphi 7 that repairs various Windows problems, such as:
  • Windows Update errors and problems with Automatic Updates
  • SSL, HTTPS, and Cryptography service (signing/verification) issues
  • COM/ActiveX object errors and missing registry entries
  • and more.
Dial-a-fix (hereafter known as "DAF") is a collection of known fixes gleaned from Microsoft Knowledgebase articles, Microsoft MVPs, and other important support forums, that will assist you in repairing problems with your system. Although this tool is ordinarily meant for power users, technicians, and administrators, it is quite safe to use even without technical guidance (although guidance is recommended). Simply choose the solutions you wish to apply via checkmarks, and click GO. There are other buttons and tools present on the main dialog as well, such as the policy scanner. All tools and checkmarks identify their purpose when you mouse over them.

DAF's primary philosophy is to fix problems by setting various things back to their original Microsoft defaults. DAF currently does not interface with or repair any third party programs (and there are no plans to do so).

DAF works on all pertinent 32-bit versions of Windows: 98, 98SE, Me, 2000, XP, and Server 2003. Dial-a-fix dynamically disables functions that are not applicable to your version of Windows. The version of Windows with the most support and functionality is currently Windows XP."

Transfer Large Files

Free file transfer services:

Optimize Firefox for Broadband

Did you know that Firefox is by default optimized for dial-up?!? Here's how to fix that:
  1. Type into the address bar about:config
  2. Filter for network.http
  3. Set network.http.pipelining to true
  4. Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to a higher number than the default of 4. Try 15.
  5. Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to true
  6. Create a new integer value called nglayout.initialpaintdelay and set it to 0

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Storage options for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

An excellent article from Jose Barreto, a technical specialist on Microsoft's storage team.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

WinDV

WinDV is a small and easy to use Windows application for capturing videos from DV device (camcorder) into AVI-files and for recording AVI-files into DV device via FireWire (IEEE 1394) interface. Capturing is very reliable thanks to use of large buffer queue. Timestamps recorded on DV tape by camcorder can be used to automatically split captured video into multiple files. During transmitting to DV, several AVI-files can be joined together to form final video recording.

Main features
  • small & handy <100kb>
  • input / output - capturing from DV device to AVI files (both type-1 and type-2 supported) and recording vice versa
  • no dropped frames - memory buffering
  • automatic AVI splitting according to the timestamps on DV recordings - every video sequence can be saved into unique file
  • easy AVI joining - record multiple files joined to the DV device just using wildcards
  • preview of transmitted video in the window
  • free - you can download it and use it as you like at no cost

Sunday, September 07, 2008

File Shredder

"File Shredder is free desktop application for shredding (destroying) unwanted files beyond recovery."

This tool allows you to shred single files, entire folders, or all free space on a hard drive.

ISO Recorder

"ISO Recorder is a tool (power toy) for Windows XP, 2003 and now Windows Vista, that allows (depending on the Windows version) to burn CD and DVD images (DVD support is only available on Windows Vista), copy disks, make images of the existing data CDs and DVDs and create ISO images from a content of a disk folder."

ISO Recorder adds an option to the right-click context menu of ISO files. It supports 32 and 64 bit Vista and XP.

Unlock Vista Shadow Copies with ShadowExplorer

Certain versions of Microsoft Vista (Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate) offer a utility called Shadow Copy. This allows the user to right-click a file and choose to "Restore Previous Versions" - a very handy thing to be able to do when things have gone horribly wrong!

Did you know that lesser versions of Vista (Home Basic and Home Premium) also store previous versions of files but do not provide a mechanism to access them?

Thankfully, there is a free utility called ShadowExplorer that can set this data free.

FastStone Capture

"FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. You can choose to send captures to editor, file, clipboard, printer, email, Word/PowerPoint document or upload them to your website. Editing tools include annotating (texts, arrowed lines, highlights), resizing, cropping, sharpening, watermarking, applying edge effects and many more. Other features include global hotkeys, automatic filename generation, support for external editors, a color picker, a screen magnifier and a screen ruler.

FastStone Capture saves files in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF formats."

$20.00 Shareware

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Microsoft Exchange Server Public Folder DAV-based Administration Tool

Microsoft Exchange Server Public Folder DAV-based Administration Tool

"Use the Exchange Server Public Folder Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV)-based Administration tool (PFDAVAdmin) to perform various management tasks related to public folders and mailboxes. The tool checks the permissions status of each public and mailbox folder and corrects any problems found. The ability to bulk export/import the permissions and replica lists make this tool invaluable in achieving greater productivity in managing public folders. The program can also reports content information of each public folder and mailbox folder such as the number of items in each folder, size of folder and most recent modification date of any item in the folder.

Note: PFDAVAdmin is supported when running with Exchange 2000 Server, Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2007."
Propagate permissions to sub folders, etc.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

OpenWengo

"OpenWengo is a community of enthusiasts and developers, creating free software products related to communication over IP. The flagship product of the OpenWengo project is a softphone which allows you to make free PC to PC video and voice calls, and to integrate all your IM contacts in one place."

WengoPhone is a communication tool based on the SIP protocol. "It is more than just VoIP software: it is a full-fledged communications tool that lets you enjoy free calls, video conferencing, SMS, chat over many existing protocols (MSN, AIM/ICQ, Yahoo!, Jabber)"

Screenshots

Jing

Jing is "the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere."

A simple to use program to capture screen shots and video, Jing allows you to distribute via:
  • Screencast.com
  • Local folder or network share
  • Clipboard (images only)
  • FTP server
  • Flickr
It's currently free. :)

Sunday, July 27, 2008

BackupPC

"BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux and WinXX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain.

Given the ever decreasing cost of disks and raid systems, it is now practical and cost effective to backup a large number of machines onto a server's local disk or network storage. This is what BackupPC does. For some sites, this might be the complete backup solution. For other sites, additional permanent archives could be created by periodically backing up the server to tape. A variety of Open Source systems are available for doing backup to tape.

BackupPC is written in Perl and extracts backup data via SMB using Samba, tar over ssh/rsh/nfs, or rsync. It is robust, reliable, well documented and freely available as Open Source on SourceForge."

Friday, July 04, 2008

SmartDraw

Visio competitor, SmartDraw allows you to draw:
  • Flowcharts
  • Org Charts
  • Project Timelines
  • Gantt Charts
  • Marketing Charts
  • Bar Graphs & Pie Charts
  • Forms
  • Floor Plans
  • Scheduling Calendars
  • and much more
Free trial available and then approx. $300.

SQL Server 2008 Books Online

Books Online for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the primary documentation for SQL Server 2008. Books Online includes the following types of information:
  • Setup and upgrade instructions.
  • Information about new features and backward compatibility.
  • Conceptual descriptions of the technologies and features in SQL Server 2008.
  • Procedural topics describing how to use the various features in SQL Server 2008.
  • Tutorials that guide you through common tasks.
  • Reference documentation for the graphical tools, command prompt utilities, programming languages, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that are supported by SQL Server 2008.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Windows Search 4.0

From a recent TechNet Flash:
Windows Search just got better. Windows Search 4.0 is now available for download. With it you can expect better indexing performance, support for the remote query of shared index locations, per-user group policy settings, and more. To try it out, select from the following operating environments:
I HATED how search was so broken in Outlook 2007 on Vista and this upgrade has made things so much better.

Sysinternals Live

From a recent TechNet Flash:
If you’re a fan of the Sysinternals tools, check out the beta of Sysinternals Live, a service that makes it easy for you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool’s Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer, or at the command prompt as \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\, or view the entire Sysinternals Live tools directory in a browser.
http://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Info-ZIP

"Info-ZIP's purpose is to provide free, portable, high-quality versions of the Zip and UnZip compressor-archiver utilities that are compatible with the DOS-based PKZIP by PKWARE, Inc."

Tony uses zip32.dll and unzip32.dll in some of his applications - for DB backup and restore purposes.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

USB Drive Speed Testing: HD Tach

From a PCWorld Article I read recently:
Test the speed of a flash USB drive with this freebie.

The faster your flash drive, the more smoothly programs will run. When shopping for a drive, look at the specs and try to find one with a read rate of 15 Mbps (megabits per second or 1.9 MB/sec) or faster. If you already have a flash drive, you can test its speed with a free utility like HDTach.
Description:

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device possible.

The trial version of HD Tach measures the sequential read speed (at various points on the device), the random access speed, interface burst speed and CPU utilization of the drive. The registered version adds sequential write testing.

U3 LaunchPad - Remove and Replace

Some flash drives (AKA USB memory sticks, thumb drives, pen drives, etc.) come with a utility called U3 LaunchPad. Many devices from SanDisk and others come with this software. Like PortableApps, U3 allows you to use both files and applications from your portable drive.

If you decide not to use U3, try the U3 Launchpad Removal Tool - for SanDisk drives and for non-SanDisk drives.

If you change your mind, you can use this free utility from SanDisk to re-install.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Portable Apps

http://portableapps.com/

"Convenient
Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.

Open
PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.

Free
The Portable Apps Suite™ is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share."

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Suso's safe domain availability checker

http://www.saferdomainsearch.com

"A safer place to check for domain availability. A safe domain search. Please only use this website if you want to check if a domain is available. Do not use other websites unless they offer some guarantee that they do not share their domain lookup logs with 3rd parties."

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Winpooch

"Winpooch is a Windows watchdog, free and open source. Anti spyware and anti trojan, it gives a full protection against local or external attacks by scanning the activity of programs in real time. Associated with ClamWin antivirus, Winpooch keeps safe your computer against virus."

Saturday, April 26, 2008

The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP)

Media playback on Windows (and other) PDAs - works with Shift voice mail WAV files.
The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) is a software media player. Supported operating systems include Windows, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows Smartphone, Palm OS and Symbian OS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Core_Pocket_Media_Player

http://tcpmp.en.softonic.com/pocket

http://www.hpcfactor.com/downloads/tcpmp/

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Tools for quick recovery of deleted Active Directory objects

I had a bizarre incident today where one of my member servers (a terminal server) suddenly stopped allowing people to log on - giving a message indicating that the domain controller could not be contacted or there was a problem with the computer account. Turns out that the computer account for the server was no longer present in Active Directory Users and Computers.

Dennis found an article explaining the use of a tool called LDP.exe.

An excerpt from the article:

When an object is deleted in Active Directory, it is really just "tombstoned." That is, the object and its mandatory attributes are moved to the Deleted Objects folder -- a sort of death row for objects. Every 15 minutes, the Garbage Collector (or Executioner) comes along and checks to see if the object's Tombstone Lifetime has expired. The Tombstone Lifetime is the period of time the object can remain in the Deleted Objects folder before it is purged from the database. This is 60 days by default, although Microsoft now recommends 120 days. If the Tombstone Lifetime has expired, it purges the object from AD.

Worked like a charm to re-activate the tombstoned entry. Unfortunately, it was for the account I created after the problem was discovered in an attempt to get things going again. I suspect I overwrote the original AD object in the deleted objects folder! :(

So, I had all the users log out, moved the server into a workgroup and then re-joined the domain. The existing profiles survived this process as well.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

GuerrillaMail

Use the GuerrillaMail site to create and use a disposable temporary e-mail address. Addresses are valid in increments of 15 minutes and are accessible via the web site. Handy.

Top 100 Network Security Tools

http://sectools.org/

Open Source Windows

http://www.opensourcewindows.org/
Free and open-source software is good for you and for the world. This is the best Windows software that we know of. No adware, no spyware, just good software.
A great list of great software.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Bulk Rename Utility

"Bulk Rename Utility is a utility which allows you to easily rename files and directories, based upon extemely flexible criteria. Add date-stamps, replace numbers, insert strings, convert case, add auto-numbers, process folders and subfolders....plus loads more!"

Works great and doesn't even need to be installed.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

NTS File Mover

"Create Scheduled Tasks To Copy, Ftp, Encrypt, Zip, And Email Files

Automate Copy, Ftp, Encryption, Zip, And Email Tasks

Packed with features, the NTS File Mover can help you to automate all of your daily, weekly, and monthly file tasks:
  • No need to struggle with writing batch files or trying to learn complicated scripting languages.
  • Create scheduled tasks in minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
  • Upload and download files using ftp and ftp over SSL.
  • Copy, move, rename, delete, zip, unzip, and email files.
  • Encrypt and decrypt files with 128, 192 or 256 bit AES encryption.
  • Select files to be processed based on a specified date range or file mask.
  • Add a time/date stamp to file and folder names automatically.
  • Track job successes, warnings, and errors in the NT Event log.
  • Send emails to your PC, your pager or your cell phone that detail job problems or completions.
  • Runs on Windows Vista, XP, 2000, and 2003."

Saturday, March 22, 2008

The PC Decrapifier

"The PC Decrapifier will uninstall many of the common trialware and annoyances found on many of the PCs from big name OEMs. Below is the current list of software and items that the PC Decrapifier can detect and remove. You get to see the list of items it detects and then choose what will be removed automatically."

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Insecure.org

Nmap Free Security Scanner, Tools & Hacking Resources: http://insecure.org/

2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS

" . . . allows you to export and save to the PDF and XPS formats in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send as e-mail attachment in the PDF and XPS formats in a subset of these programs. Specific features vary by program."

Discussion:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/access/ha101675271033.aspx

Download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

DeltaCopy - Rsync for Windows

"In general terms, DeltaCopy is an open source, fast incremental backup program. Let's say you have to backup one file that is 500 MB every night. A normal file copy would copy the entire file even if a few bytes have changed. DeltaCopy, on the other hand, would only copy the part of file that has actually been modified. This reduces the data transfer to just a small fraction of 500 MB saving time and network bandwidth.

In technical terms, DeltaCopy is a "Windows Friendly" wrapper around the Rsync program, currently maintained by Wayne Davison. "rsync" is primarily designed for Unix/Linux/BSD systems. Although ports are available for Windows, they typically require downloading Cygwin libraries and manual configuration."

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/DeltaCopy.jsp

I initially found this program while reading an article on using FreeNAS to back up windows machines: http://www.dailycupoftech.com/windows-backup-with-rsync-and-freenas/

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

PDF-T-Maker

"You create documents in Microsoft Word, spare no effort to produce proper headings, lists of contents, links and cross references, an index, and want to pass on the document as PDF file? You want to produce rich PDF files which contain all meta information from your Word document as bookmarks, hyperlinks, comments etc.? You look for a solution that costs little or even nothing?

Your solution could be PDF-T-Maker: PDF-T-Maker is an add-in to Word. Similar to almost any PDF converter, as first step PDF-T-Maker converts your Word document into a PostScript file. You can send this PostScript file through a distiller, that generates the PDF file from it. As distiller you may use stand-alone solutions such as Adobe Distiller or GhostScript as well as pre-configured, highly automated solutions such as FreePDF XP, qvPDF, PDFCreator etc. This way, with a minimum of effort you can configure a one-click solution that does not cost a penny."

Works with PDFCreator, apparently. I found the following comment in the release notes for PDFCreator v 0.9.5:

"No hyperlinks possible (Hyperlinks for MS Word are possible with the combination of PDF-T-Maker and PDFCreator."

wxCommunicator

"wxCommunicator is a cross platform open source SIP softphone enabling users to make multiple calls, use several accounts, chat and create conferences. It is very configurable and should work with any VoIP provider. It is based on customized sipXtapi client library and wxWidgets 2.8.x GUI library and distributed under GNU GPL version 2 license."