Archive for June, 2007
Question of the day (Updated With Answers!!): Web filters and how to get around them.
Jun 24th
Mister Admin Guy,
My school administrators are fascists and block the majority of the web. I feel like we live in South Korea! Can you help me around it so I can get to your website and others – yes they blog blogger sites! Mother f&^%ers!!! I know you can use your technical ways to get me right on thorough – lickity split no problemo – right?
Censored In Brooklyn
Aight! Who can help Censored get around his web filters?? He will be back in school tomorrow morning- and we cant have him be bored in computer lab! I know some people would be like he is just trying to look at porn – why help him??
First of all dude is in COLLEGE why block him from sites? And second no one should be blocked – young kids shoud be monitored online at all times and taught right from wrong.
Nuff Said – Hit Censored up in the comments! Lets hear how you admins out there filter traffic and how you admins get around filters…
12:36 Answered:
Exactly and for the people who dont want to read through that great
article NinjaAdmin found from:http://news.com.com/2009-1041_3-6062548.html?part=rss&tag=6062548&subj=news
You can use Google translator service as a proxy to bypass
restrictions of your institution, isp or company!
This makes most web filters see your request as being contained
within google.
You just need to goto the following URL:
http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=enen&u=www.BlockedWebSite.com
(www. BlockedWebSite.com should be replaced with the URL you need
to go to…)
What you’ll get is the translation (english to english!) of the
page you want to see… your connection is directed to a google.com page so this page won’t be blocked (would be blocked if google.com is on the black list), no matter what the content is. HA! Take That!
The URL has been tweaked for our purposes with the parameter being
“langpair”(1) is set to “enen” (englishenglish) so the page is processed by Google but you can keep the original language of the page.
If you need another language you just need to tweak the parameter
langpair to “frfr” and you’ll be able to read french pages in french! Or
blocked english pages in french etc “enfr”.Thanks Google!
http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=enen&u=www.asktheadmin.com
Creating Images with Drive Image XML
Jun 23rd
I mentioned in a previous post that if you can use the Ultimate Boot CD for windows to create custom, deployable computer images similar to Symantec’s Ghost except it is 100% free. So what do I mean by images? Let’s talk about it for a minute.
Let’s say you are in a room, and you have a Polaroid camera. You spin around the room taking pictures of every wall, every corner, every ceiling etc. Now, you take all those photos and save them in a shoe box for later. A week later your boss says that they need you to build another room just like the one you took pictures of. (Now keep in mind this is just an analogy), you have two options. You can run down to the hardware store buy a ton of building supplies, drywall, paint etc, and you can spend a few weeks or months building the requested room, or you can take all of those photos and glue them all together to make an exact replica of the room, and have it done in a few hours. Sure, that wouldn’t work in real life, but that is the idea behind images.
You can take a Windows install CD, and manually install the operating system, configure it for your network, install all the programs, patches and service packs. That may take a few hours. Now multiply it by how many computers you have to setup for your network. Or you can install Windows, the programs, etc, then create a “snap shot” of the hard drive and copy that “snap shot” to other computers in a matter of minutes. That is the reality of creating deployable images.
So, here is what you do; you install Windows and all programs and get it set the way you like it. Then you take your Windows 2000 or Windows XP CD and browse to the tools folder and find deploy.cab (Or download it from Microsoft.com) and extract the contents of deploy.cab to c:\sysprep. Create a sysprep.inf file using setupmgr.exe. Once you have the sysprep.inf file, run sysprep.exe and check the box to use mini setup, and then click OK. Your computer will then shutdown or reboot depending on the option you select. I recommend before clicking OK, that you insert the Ultimate Boot CD in your disk drive. I know Drive Image XML will work on Vista, but the sysprep procedures have changed. You will have to Google how to use sysprep with Vista.
Now that Windows has been packaged, and you have booted up to your Ultimate Boot CD, enable network support. After networking is finished, open My Computer, and map a drive to a network share where you want to save the image (you can skip this if you are going to save your image to a local hard drive). You need to map this so that the Ultimate Boot CD caches your login credentials for later.
Once that is finished, open up Drive Image XML, and select the options to backing up a drive. Select your C: drive and when prompted for where to save the image file, use the UNC path to the file share you mapped earlier NOT THE DRIVE LETTER! (If you are using a local hard drive, then just select the drive letter). Now back up your drive.
Once the drive image is finished, you can boot other computers (They have to be the same make and model) using the Ultimate Boot CD. Map the network share as before, then open Drive Image XML. This time select the restore option and follow the prompts. Before restoring, there is a link to open Windows Disk management. Open it up, and delete any partitions you have on the drive you are going to image, then reformat and mark the drive as active (You will get some errors about having to reboot, these can be ignored). Close out of disk management and continue with the options for restoring the image. Once again, you will need the UNC path to the network share, and not the drive letter to restore. Depending on the bandwidth of the network, and the speed of the computer, imaging can take 10 minutes to an hour give or take. Once complete, take out the disk and reboot. The computer will go through a little mini setup, and if you configured the sysprep.inf correctly, it should all be automated. After it is all said and done, you now have two or more fully installed operating systems complete with an applications and customizations. Well done!
Keep in mind, this isn’t step by step, in fact I am writing this strictly from memory. Some things may not be so intuitive at first, but play around and figure it out. That is what I did, and that is the best way to learn.
Originally posted on Bauer-Power by El Di Pablo
Question of the Morning (With Answer): My Ipaq 6515 keeps freezing HELP!
Jun 23rd
Happy Saturday. Here is a question that comes to us from John in Denver.
Admin – how can I stop my Ipaq 6515 from freezing up? I have had it for 2 years and love it but recently it has been slow as hell. I have a few programs on it but when i have anything open and the phone rings — I cant answer it. I try but it fails to pick up and the call goes to voicemail.
The camera app almost never starts and tells me – out of memory.
HELP ME ADMIN!
Solution:
Make sure you restart the beast daily and manage your memory with the task manager!
We bought our upgrade that doubled our memory from here: http://www/PocketPCTechs.com and we are very pleased!
Some ways to speed up Outlook
Jun 22nd
I get calls all the time talking about how slow Outlook is, and Outlook is hanging, or freezing what have you. It is very common, so don’t feel you are alone. In fact, Outlook being slow is probably one of a help desk’s most frequent complaints. Very few times it is a server side issue, but sometimes it is. If someone tries to send a 50MB zip file down the pipe it will muck things up for everyone for sure. However, there are a lot of client side things that can slow you down as well, and that is where these tips can help you out a bit.
The company I work for (Yes I have a day job, and no I am not quitting it for full time blogging so don’t worry), we have a bunch of small satellite offices all around the country. The problem is we only have four exchange servers to accommodate everyone in all of the states we have offices. Those with a server in their office rarely complain about slow Outlook problems, and slow attachment opening times, because they are geographically close to the server. Those offices farthest away from the server may experience some lag time as their attachements and e-mails have to travel accross the wire hundreds or thousands of miles to open up on their computer screen. To ease some of the slowness in this situation you can configure your Outlook to use Cached exchange mode which downloads a local cache of your e-mails and attachments to your computer so that they can open up locally and not over the WAN. Opening locally will always be faster than opening across the internet.
To set cached exchange mode, in Outlook click on Tools> E-Mail Accounts. Click on View or Change existing e-mail accounts, then click next. Select the option for Microsoft Exchange Server and click the change button. under the box where it says exchange server, there should be a check box saying use cached exchange mode. Check the box and click next and finish. You will have to restart Outlook for the changes to take affect.
So what if that was already checked, or you are geographically close to the server, but Outlook is still slow? Often times it isn’t even Outlook at all, it is Word. But how can it be Word? I am not even using Word! you might be yelling right now at this post. Actually, you are using Word. Outlook by default uses Microsoft Word as it’s default e-mail editor. the problem with that is that when you open Outlook, simultaneously in the background Word is opening as well which creates added overhead for the computer. Besides the overhead though, word easily gets corrupted, and when it does it will screw Outlook up to no end. So why not turn it off? Outlook has it’s own built in e-mail editor, and we can use it without having to use Word. To turn it off, click on Tools> Option, and click on the Mail Format Tab. uncheck the option to use Microsoft Office to edit e-mail messages, click Apply then OK.
What if all of that is done, but you are still having some problems? Luckily Microsoft is aware that they make lousy products, so they have built in a detect and repair tool into their office suite.To find it click on Help > Detect and Repair. Follow the prompts, and Office will repair itself. Check the option to Discard My Personal settings and restore default settings only as a last resort because you will have to reconfigure Outlook again which can be difficult if you don’t already know your server/user settings.
If you can think of any other tips that you have found works (Besides switching over to Thunderbird {Exchange doesn’t work with it so don’t comment about it}), then please leave some comments.
Originally Posted at Bauer-Power by El Di Pablo
Question of the minute(& Answer): How do i link up a domain name with my Blog?
Jun 22nd
Hmmmm…I got an email from a buddy of mine a few days back and he was asking me how to link up his newly purchased domain name with his blogger blog.
I instructed him to go to his register account and point the domain name to his blogspot address. The old wait the proverbial 24-48 hours for DNS to propagate.
I get a phone call today and he told me
“While this is all well and good and when you type in http://www.hisdomainname.whatever/ it
goes to hisdomain.blogspot.com “(He specifically asked me not to publish his
domain name – i am not an asshole!).
The URL in the address bar changes to be the blogspot address. I know there are ways around this. I know some of you are already doing this. And I would like to make these modifications to this site as well.
So Step Up…Step Right Up…Comment Right Here.
UPDATE 11:58 PM:
So El Di Pablo gave us great documentation from blogger and a quick run
through in the comments and we are up and running on http://www.asktheadmin.com/ now after 8 hours. But
my buddy is still waiting for his dns updates to go through.Gotta get away from the computer Good Night All. I will leave you with this what using for security products – hardware and software?
..Karl..
..comments excerpt..
El Di Pablo said…
Hey guys, I did this myself with Bauer-Power.net, Blogger has directions for it here.I set my domain name to park at godaddy, then I created an A-name record for www.bauer-power.net and pointed it to Google’s servers per the instructions. I then set domain name forwarding for bauer-power.net to point to www.bauer-power.net.
5:15 PM
El Di Pablo said…
I’m sorry, I misspoke, I meant CName not Aname.
5:16 PM
El Di Pablo said…
yeah.. asktheadmin.com should be the A-Name with domain forarding to www.asktheadmin.com. the WWW CNAME should point to ghs.google.com.That’s about it. I am breathless with anticipation. :-p
Friday Morning Question: How do you back up?
Jun 22nd
I really hope your answer to this is not Back up? What Back Up?
As an Admin on a day to day basis the one thing I say more then
“Have You Restarted Your Machine Yet?”
Is:
“When was the last time you backed up?
Ohh really that’s too bad.”
So thats your question post how, when and where to you back up. Programs, scripts, straight up xcopy – We want to know. Windows Mac Linux your Brain – POST EM’ IN THE COMMENTS!
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