Windows Tip: Access The Windows Security Window In a Remote Desktop Connection (Control-Alt-Delete Doesn't Work)

I get asked all the time how the hell do I bring up the security box (control + alt + delete) in a remote desktop session and here is the answer:

To use Control + Alt + Delete in a Remote Desktop Connection terminal, use Ctrl + Alt + End instead.

I tested it and it works beautifully on two Windows XP machines, 1 2003 server but on remoting in (What I can't make up words??) to my Windows XP Pro SP2 Laptop it only brought up the task manager.

Any ideas?

And for those of you that don't know Control + Shift + Escape opens you directly to the task manager. And you can alt + tab through tabs on your remote desktop if it is opened full screen.

Got some good shortcuts for us? Tips at askTheAdmin dot com! I am off to my data center today. Should be interesting as we prepare for impending doom upcoming upgrades.

_TheShortcutingAdmiN_

Is there a way to reference cell ranges by label in Excel?

Jacob asked us if he could reference a whole cell range by label in excel. He continued on with how much easier it would make his life. Jacob today's your lucky day because it looks like you can!

You can reference a column by its header or label. This is wonderful and had more than a few of my end users jumping for joy! It works in OpenOffice as well as most Pc versions and on the Mac!

While you're writing formulas in Excel, you can refer to cell ranges not only by hard-to-read row and column numbers and letters but by label. So instead of totaling a column using =SUM(B2:B5), you can write the formula =SUM('Widgets Cranked'). After I mentioned this is a nice feature in Apple's new spreadsheet application Numbers '08, reader Dustin pointed out that it's available in Excel as well, just not turned on by default. To enable it, in the Tools>Options dialog, the Calculation tab, check off "Accept labels in formulas." Thanks, Dustin! [Via LifeHacker]

_TheExcelingAdmiN_

What are Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files? Can I delete them? Do I need them and how can i make them stop coming back?

James from Virginia wanted to know if it was safe to delete these Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files from his network. Check out our answer and step by step removal tips.

Running in a mixed Windows/Mac environment I find it annoying to deal with all the little artifacts the great OS's leave behind. All of our mixed shares and network drives are full of these frickin 'Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files.

I hate them so much.

Each folder with initiated thumbnail views (that is where they have displayed a Thumbnails or Filmstrip view in Windows Explorer) will have a Thumbs.db file.

They do nothing for me. I look at them like litter on the ground. I looked up what they do and started deleting them. But they came back...

Some times I get caught up in doing something after in enrages me enough. So I was now determined to get rid of these files from my shares here on out. I did some research on how to get rid of them permanently and how to prevent them from coming back!

Here is how you prevent Windows and OS X from creating these annoying files.

Prevent the creation of Thumbs.db in Windows:

From “My Computer” click on the “Tools” menu item

Click on “Folder Options”, and the folder options dialog will appear

Click on the “View” tab

Check the “Do not cache thumbnails” option

Prevent the creation of .DS_Store files on Network volumes in MacOS:

• Open the Terminal application from the Utilities folder which is nested in the Applications folder
• In the newly opened terminal type (all on one line) defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
• Restart the computer for the change to take effect


Now this doesn’t help you deleting the files that already may exist.

To accomplish that you may be interested in BlueHarvest to scrub your network of .DS_Store files and you can do a simple find and replace on Windows.

Find and Replace:

To delete all the existing Thumbs.db files on your computer you just:

• Begin by first clicking on the Start Button
  
• Then click on Search and then Click on the All files and folders option
  
• In the All or part of the file name: box type in Thumbs.db
  
• Quickly ensure that the Look in: pull-down menu is set to whatever network drives you want to scrub
• Now Click on the Search button to search for all Thumbs.db files on your system
• In the All or part of the file name box type in Thumbs.db
• After the Search completes, click on the word Edit contained in your top tool bar area
  This will pull down a menu for you to now click on Select All
• Now Press the Delete key on your keyboard to delete all the Thumbs.db files on your system
• Then Close the Search Results window to return back to your Windows session




For those of you who are scared to delete system files, the Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files are strictly cosmetic on network volumes and will have almost no impact on pretty much anything! Do you use them for something? Let us know in the comments.

_TheOCAdmiN_

Create Useful Shortcuts With Tooler. (Windows Download)

Have you ever wanted to create a shortcut on your desktop to disable your screensaver or eject your cd-rom?

You have seen it done and now you have some use for it?

Don't fret young Admin! No need to muss and fuss here is a light weight program that needs no installation: Tooler.

It's only 50kb and will add blanking the monitor, disabling the keyboard, setting the volume to your arsenal of quick access shortcuts.

You can read the picture yourself!

Best of all after you use it to create the shortcuts you are going to want you can throw them on a usb stick and never need the app again! A program that made itself obsolete almost immediately :). Here is the authors website and the direct link to Tooler. Now if only it could create a shortcut to make me rich...

_TheShortcutingAdmiN_

Gmail and Gmail Chat slowing down? Here are some Gmail performance tweaks that will get you back on track

Hello kiddies,

Commodore 64 here to bring you the next solution to the next most annoying thing in my work day.

At my day job, we use Gmail as a back end for all of our corporate email. So when the higher ups started noticing everyone's AIM windows popping up, they hastily banned everyone in the company (including myself, the Admin, sheesh) from using AIM.

Though I must say Aim has done nothing to shed it's kiddified skin, and intrusive flashing popups that are the default options when you install AIM. So the perfect solution for me seemed to be Gmail chat.

After using Gmail chat for a while, I was very pleased with its non invasive type of notification options, and the rudimentary look actually helps in a corporate situation. We just dont need a colorful flashy chat at work. We need something a little tamer. Gmail Chat was the clear winner.

But after a while i noticed that things were getting very slowwwww. Now I knew that Firefox had some memory management issues, but I never would have thought that IE7 had the same memory management issues. So I switched to using IE (Gasp).

For a while this proved well, but I started to see the same performance sluggishness from IE that I did in FF2. So I started messing around and found some little 'features'. Turns out these features were the culprit. They also outline the next steps in correcting the problem.

First go into the 'settings' link at the top right of the email.
You'll see that the settings are all split into tabs. The first being the 'General' tab.
Turn off the 'Personal Level Indicators' and 'Snippets' - These are both memory hogs as they are just one more thing on the page that has to update dynamically.

Those still on dial-up or actually any slow internet connection, stand to benefit from turning these off as well.

Second, go to the 'Chat' tab. Turn off emoticons and sounds as these take up memory and bandwidth as well.

And lastly, go to the 'Web Clips' tab and turn off web clips.

That should give you a noticeable performance boost. I've also been getting the feeling that the longer I've had a chat window open, and thus the more chat contained in that window, I still might begin to experience some slowdown. So this doesn't solve the problem completely, but gives you a little more leeway until the slowdown begins.

Hope this helps!
Peace
Commodore64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on)

Make Outlook your biznatch using batch files and customized rules.

I have recently fallen in love with having outlook run batch files -depending on what an email from me to me says.

They say necessity is the mother of all inventions and that is certainly true when it comes to scripting. I have been using a WM 6 device with no push email support and popping a pop3 account on the run.

I make sure to offline my outlook before leaving my office. Too Bad The Admin has a horrible short term memory - I would often forget and this would lead to missed messages and angry people in need of support cursing my name.

Now we couldn't have that, so I started looking for an app that would offline outlook for me as I locked my machine. That didn't happen... Not even close.

So I looked into a batch file to shutdown outlook also no go. so I said fuck it and used pskill in a script to terminate the process called outlook as seen here:

taskkill /F /im outlook.exe

Next I went into outlook and created a new rule from scratch. When new messages arrive from a specific account, from specific sender and with the specific subject shutdownoutlook.

Now when I send a email to myself and outlook is open it will process the message see who it is from check the subject and run my script.


Bingo. Emails flowing into my handheld again. so I can do this on the fly. since then I created scripts for restarting my PC, IIS and other apps.

What do you script? Do you automate on a day to day basis?

Anyone know how to make a script run on lock workstation?

DONT BE SHY!! Comment Young Admins!

_TheScriptin'AdmiN_

Back From AtA's Archives!

What the Heck is Filling Up My Server?

It's an Admin's worst nightmare (well one of them).

A server's system disk is quickly running out of space for no apparent reason. You know that when the system drive fills the server is going to shut down and you're going to have a lot of unhappy users. You need to find out what is taking up so much space.

There are several tools for looking around your drive and getting a visual image of what is on it. Tools like WinDirStat, Folder Size and TreeSize all do a nice job of showing you where all that space is going.


But sometimes you need a quick and dirty tool and (if you're like me) you don't want to install something on your servers unless you really need to.

That's one great thing about SequoiaView, it gives you a nice visual map of any drive or folder without installing anything. Download the zipped version, unzip it and run the executable. There's nothing to install or risk messing up your servers with. Delete the whole folder when you are done and there's no trace of it.

Of course, I am using JFFNMS to monitor my network so I was able to learn about this impending disaster early enough to do something about it. In my case - I had forgotten to reconfigure the IIS logging on my Exchange server, so the OWA logs were slowly filling up the system drive since they default to Windows\System32\LogFiles.

What do you use to monitor disk space on your servers? Do you have any horror stories to share with AtA? Well that is what the comments are for!

Can you open a command prompt during a Windows install?

I don't know how useful this actually is but I thought I would share it with you guys anyway.

You seem to like useless information... Right??

This trick threw me for a loop. I was watching a junior admin install Windows Vista from a CD and he turned to me smirked and said

"Want to see something cool?"

I shrugged my shoulders and he hit a key combination and brought up a command prompt over the gui that was installing Vista....

I said "Whaaaaat?"

We went back and forth like that for a little bit until I asked him what he uses it for. He shrugged his shoulders this time and he didn't know but he likes that it makes him look cool.

You can open a game of Pinball or Solitaire during an install. Sound appealing to anyone? That's what I call multi-tasking :) So Shift + F10 will get you to the command prompt during an install like the shot below. It works on XP as well.


It only works from the GUI portion and not the white text on blue background parts. I googled it and saw some speculation on using it to inject drivers or folders during your install. But isn't that what Nlite is for?? :) Microsoft themselves said the following:

In some cases, it may be helpful to have access to a command prompt during GUI-mode Setup for the purposes of troubleshooting, copying drivers, starting and stopping services, starting tools such as Task Manager, or other for other needs.To gain access to a command prompt during GUI-mode Setup, press SHIFT+F10.

Do you use this? Did you know about this? Why didn't you tell me? Sheeeesh!

_TheLearnsSomethingNewEverydayAdmiN_

Use a free Exchange server to sync up your calendar with one person and task list with another.

Hi boys and girls,

Do you remember when Ask The Admin covered a very interesting topic of Free Exchange services? For those who don't, you can look here, here and sometimes here.

In a nutshell, this article talked about how me and my fiance' had to plan our wedding and had tons of appointments flying in from both directions.

In order to get our two phones talking to one another and playing nicely, I used a free Exchange hosting service called www.Mail2Web.com to enable my WinMo PDA and my fiance's Blackjack to sync calendars every 10 minutes logging into the service through ActiveSync, as if they are the same phone. As a result, both phones would have the same calendar information, and keep it that way every ten minutes.

I've had this system going for some time now, and it's been working just fine. I haven't even had to login to the control panel for anything!While figuring out this howto, I noticed in my own phone that WinMo gives you 4 categories of info items to sync, (as illustrated by the image so cleverly placed on the top of this blog) - Contacts, Calendar, Email, and Tasks. I realized that my fiance's BlackJack also had the choice of 4 different points of info to sync. This meant that every WinMo device can choose which information to sync with an ActiveSync Server Source and more importantly, which information NOT to sync with an Exchange Server. So we've established that my fiance's BlackJack and my ATT 8525/Hermes were acting as if they had the same calendar - consider them synced.

So this was a real world problem solved by the fact that 2 people have phones with WinMo and Activesync, and the availability of a free exchange service @ www.Mail2Web.com.
Now onto the next real-world problem: The Admin and I have a lot of tasks involved with keeping our beloved website up and running, current and fresh. Throughout the months tasks have come and gone, but certain tasks fell through the sieve and got replaced by more current, more urgent tasks that took precedence at the time. So basically tasks were getting lost. Since neither of us used the built in Tasks application in WinMo, this presented the perfect opportunity to put my theory to the test.

I know that I already have 2 people logging into MY Mail2Web account to sync calendars. But what would be wrong with 3 people logging into that same account - except that my Fiance' will only sync Calendar information, and The Admin will only sync Tasks information (and NOBODY syncs Contact information).

So I had the The Admin log into my Mail2Web account through his ActiveSync Server Connection and sync only Tasks, and I had my own phone begin to sync Tasks with the same service it was already syncing to for Calendar information, which coincidentally my Fiance's phone was simultaneously syncing Calendar information with as well.

Problem solved:
Me and the Admin with synced Tasklist,
Me and the Fiance with synced Calendar.
Free.
Automatic.
Just the way we like it.

AskTheAdmin.com.
Free Tech Support for the Masses.

Commodore 64 (the one you used to play Bruce Lee on.)

A Tale of Two Admins.

Please follow this email chain between myself and our friend Karl AKA ATA.

---------------------------------------
ME

Here's the scenario....

Backed up info off old laptop to external HD.

During XP install I saw two identical drives...nuked the first partition and tried to install. XP said no. Nuked the 2nd one...XP allowed the install. JOY!!!

You know where this is going don't you.....

Anywho...it turns out XP is able to see external USB HD's and I nuked the MBR on the drive. Do you know of any freebie tools to recover the data on that drive? I have my bosses personal stuff on it and a lot of my own personal stuff too....and the drive states that it needs to be formatted....

HELP ME Obie-ADMIN, You're my only hope! :-D
--------------------------------------------
Karl

Sorry it took so long ive been in windows mobile hell today.

Do not let it format! Knoppix live cd wll fix you right up.

You will be able to see and copy everything even without the mbr.

Let me know how it goes and if it doesnt work i might have some other apps
---------------------------------------------
Me

I bought a tool to recover the drive....but.....I have a BKF file on
there that is corrupted now....any idea of any tools that are freebies
to be able to recover those files? I suppose I can get the bosses CC to
buy a tool to do it...but I'd rather not.....
----------------------------------------------
Karl

What OS is the BKF file from? What os are you restoring to? What is the error message?

----------------------------------------------
Me

Win2k Pro. It is saying that the BKF(windows Backup file) is not valid or something to that effect....

I am running a scandisk on it....we'll see if it goes. I downloaded a demo of a $ product and I could see the data in the file, but I cannot get at it without paying.....
----------------------------------------------
Karl

Are you restoring to w2k as well? Did you use msbackup or ntbackup to compress it?
----------------------------------------------
Me

NTBACKUP to create it. Tried restoring on Win2k server and XP.
----------------------------------------------
Karl for the win

I'd try to restore on 2k pro but if that doesn't work check this out:

Backup Exec has the ability to read .bkf files. You can download the trial
version and use it for 60 days for free.

If you go to the "Tools -> Options -> Catalog" menus, there is a check box
labeled "Use storage media - based catalogs". If you remove the check from
this checkbox and run a catalog job on the bkf file, you should be able to
recover any files that are not corrupted. The catalog operation will take
longer to complete, but you should be able to restore any valid file within
the .bkf, before and after the corruption. Its hard to know how much
corruption there is in the .bkf file, so I wish you the best of luck.

This link will give you instructions on how to import a bkf file into the
program for restore. Before performing step 6. (The catalog operation),
follow the steps above. http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/241600.htm

----------------------------------------------
Grateful Me

Dude......you rock.

We use BE and I never thought of trying it. Thanks to you I was able to restore....get this.....ALL OF IT.

Rock on Detroit....Rock on Chicago...NAPA, it's the auto parts store. (If you don't know what this is...do a Youtube/Google search on Wesley Willis)
-----------------------------------------------

So what have we learned today?

• 1. NEVER, EVER leave a USB HD attached to XP on install and NEVER, EVER nuke a drive unless you are 10000000% certain you have the right drive.
• 2. Karl rocks and has great ideas.
• 3. NAPA, It's the Auto Parts Store

--A Grateful Slothman

How to let Google do your Googling!

So you have the same repetitive searches you run every day? How about you let Google run the searches for you and hit you with any new sites that have popped up since your last search? This is great for almost anything! All the PR companies we deal with use this habitually.

Just go to http://www.Google.com/Alerts and sign up for an "Alert". this is what will be searched and returned to you via email:

As you can see by the above screen shot - we have daily updates hitting us on the hip whenever someone posts something about AskTheAdmin. Works great for watching people talk shit and such :)

This is just one of Google's many untapped resources. Check out this great article from Lifehacker on the top 10 Google Products you probably forgot about!

_TheGoogleThisAdmiN_

Vista Tip: Mount ISO (DVD, BIN, IMG,CCD, ETC.) images in Vista for free

Have you been a busy little bit-torrenter lately?

Do you have tons of ISO's laying around? Trying to mount them in Vista like you were used to in XP and not having any luck?

Our reader Tom in Wisconsin is and this sounds like a job for dum dum dum (key theme music)... AskTheAdmin!

Well it turns out the freeware utility offered from Microsoft to mount ISO Images doesn't work in Windows Vista. Thankfully there's another free utility that does work.


The utility that we will use is called Virtual Clone Drive. This utility will let you mount .ISO, .CCD, .DVD, .IMG, .UDF and .BIN files. Download the utility and start the setup process.

Select Yes or OK at the hardware prompt and continue. You might have to restart your computer. Now you should be able to mount any ISO image by just double-clicking on the file.

Note: If you are going to reinstall this utility, make sure you uninstall it first, or you'll BSOD yourself repeatedly.

Double Note: This utility does not work on Windows Vista 64 bit edition.

_TheIsoLovinAdmiN_

Can I add random quotes to my blog or website for FREE?

The title of this question here is a little misleading because you can use this little web app to serve lots of stuff besides quotes, like random ads or words of wisdom.

Get your geek on and swap out scripts and images galore!

Originally we used the free RandomQuote ASP generator to feed our geeky quotes in our sub header above. Have you seen it before?

Pretty cool stuff huh? Now what if I told you the Busted Tee Shirt Ads on the right bar were also served up by this generator?

Result: Different ad and quote ,out of our database, on every refresh!

After tweaking, pushing, prodding (our coder not the program) this proved to work very well and we have been very happy with the results. But after a while we realized that this handy little random generator, complete with a very aesthetically pleasing back-end editing system, (pictured to the bottom) would be perfect to randomly feed out anything our geeky little hearts desired.

You'll see a different quote, different ad on every page load, and all the same geeky love in front and behind it. You'll need an .ASP compatible web hosting plan at the very least to get started. Don't get scared - all this means is that you need a web hosting plan on the side but it doesn't necessarily have to point to your site. Just a server that supports ASP. This is because the files need to live somewhere on a server with Microsoft extensions. It also needs to give you a few MySQL Databases to make this easier but you can also pull it off with a connection to an Access Database, and with some basic ASP knowledge you can probably modify it to work with an Excel file as a data source as well.

The first thing you need to do is go to here and snatch this free package called RandomQ from Expirion.Net:

The directions are fairly simple. Here's the skinny:

• First copy the files/folders to your (ASP Compatible) web server.
  
• Then modify the config.asp file to point to your database and give it the correct credentials to do so. Refer to your web hosting control panel to see various details about your DB - you'll need that info to put into the config.asp file.
  
• The package comes with a convenient little script that creates all the necessary tables/columns when run against your database. Your DB will need this structure to properly communicate with the application.
  
• Now open the index.asp file in the /admin folder in your RandomQ directory to see if any errors arise. If they do arise, the problem is most likely with your config.asp file. Be sure it points to the correct place and that the credentials are correct. Next be sure the tables were created properly by browsing thru the database using the web interface usually provided by your web hosting service. If it's not provided you'll need to get into some of the graphical database management proggies, provided at MySQL.com, to connect to and be able to view your DB data.
  
• Once you get the inc_random.asp file to display properly and you can login successfully to the /admin/index.asp file, your in business. All in all, barring any technical issues, this whole process should take no more than 10 minutes.


• Now you have to get the inc_random.asp file to display on your blog, so the only way to accomplish getting information to be displayed cross-domain is with the use of an html iframe as follows (we've removed the html open and close brackets so the code won't get munched by blogger's server and you'd still be able to copy and paste the code for your own evil doing):
  

iframe src="http://www.YOURWEBHOST.com/RandomQ/inc_random.asp" vspace="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" hspace="0" frameborder="0" height="40"scrolling="no" width="100%".

Make sure you close your open Iframe tag with a /iframe

Now the fun part - put in your data by logging into the RandomQ admin console and get to steppin!

Which of our quotes do you like the best? Got any ideas?

Damn son!! Let us know in the comments! Why are you all quiet and shit?

Oh and thanks to Mike aka Commodore64 for his assistance on this article and a great find on the application as well as implementation of it.

_TheOn2HoursSleepAdmiN_

Can I disable the RESTART option after completing windows update? Is there any way to cancel a Reboot?

MJ writes to us that her machine runs updates around lunch time and she keeps getting the prompt do you want to restart now?

Not only is it annoying - sometimes she clicks yes by accident and her whole world comes crashing down. (See the fix for this at the bottom of the post - not for the faint of heart or slow typers!!!)

Not only will we show you how to disable the automatic restart option after updates via Group Policy we will show you how to quickly cancel a reboot.

1. Go to Start –> Run, type “gpedit.msc”.
2. Go to Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components –> Windows Update.
3. Look for option “No Auto Restart For Scheduled Automatic Update installation” and Enable that option.






4. This will make sure that your computer is not rebooted automatically, instead it will just notify you for a reboot. It will be users choice as to when to reboot your computer
5. If in case you want it to notify you again and again, after a specific interval of time, then look for option “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations”. Enable that option and specify the time.

Everything above is all easy, its just editing some policies which you can perform easily. [TechiesDen]

Now to cancel a reboot:

1. Start
2. Run
3. Type Shutdown -a and hit enter
   

Thats it, that will cancel your impending doom if you hit it fast enough!

_TheStopRestartingMyComputerAdmiN_

Can I Change The Inbox Font in Microsoft Outlook?

I have this user who just got upgraded to a new laptop. When he logged in for the first time and opened Outlook, he was shocked. He said the fonts were way to small (Apparently he is as blind as a bat, or just likes larger fonts). Anyway, he called me to fix it.

If you run into the same thing, here is what you do in both Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007:

Outlook 2003:

1. Click on View > Arrange By > Current View > Customize Current View
2. Click on the 'Other Settings' button
3. Click on the Column Font, Row Font and AutoPreview buttons to change your fonts
4. Click OK, then OK again, your fonts should now be changed in your inbox list.

Outlook 2007:

Note: Microsoft made this a little more intuitive in this version

1. Click on View > Current View > Customize Current View
2. Click on the 'Other Settings' button
3. Click on the Column Font, Row Font and Auto Preview buttons to change your fonts
4. Click OK, then OK again, your fonts should now be changed in your in-box list.

I hope this helps some of you out there. If this doesn't work for you there are some alternatives such as glasses, contacts or even lasik surgery. Good luck!

Written by El Di Pablo of Bauer-Power.net

Hey Cheapskate, Burn ISOs for free on any Windows Platform!

So you don't want to dole out the big bucks for some fancy smancy cd/dvd authoring suite just to burn cd's and disk images? Or how about you don't want the bloat from said suite?

No it's probably that you are just like me and a big cheapskate when it comes to buying software!

Either which way this little free solution should float your boat. Check it out!

Reader NotBurntYet wrote in:

I need to burn an ISO on Windows Vista. Long story short I uninstalled the 7gb cd burning suite that came with the machine. I have been able to burn cd's from Explorer with Windows built in capability. BUT (you knew that was coming) I can not burn ISO's! I have a older copy of Nero but it is not compatible with Vista! HELP ME! I need to burn my game and can we make it free??

NotBurntYet, Ohio

Hey NotBurntYet, we have a solution for you - real simple like and best of all FREE! It is called ISORECORDER. ISO Recorder is a Window's power tool that's installer is around 1.2 mb. It seems to work for all the newer operating systems - XP or better. After you install it you can now automagically "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" And all this from the context menu (Right Clicking). Lets check it out:

Download the appropriate package for your Operating System:

XP SP1 or No Service Pack
XP SP2, XP SP2 64 bit, and 2003
VISTA 32
VISTA 64

Next right click on the image you want to burn:


From there the steps are self explanatory - asking you where and how you want to burn from a simple little interface that looks like this:

You can also use ISORecorder as I said to make images dumb quick from cd's or dvd's in explorer as well like so:


Cool free stuff with a tiny little foot print! Add this to the how to get Windows XP running on an older machine and yourself a powerful older machine (with burner!) that does not need a huge amount of memory to run!

_TheLovesFreeStuffAdmiN_

Access your Tivo's hidden webserver! Download, strip and rip. Part One.

After figuring out I could edit Blogger blog posts from my mobile I decided to see what I could do with my TiVo while I am away. I went online and did some research. I found this tid-bit from Dave Zatz (Sling Media) and gave it a shot.

Allow me to bring you kids up to speed. Essentially, TiVos are just nicely packaged Linux boxes with TV capture cards, hard drives, and a cutesy visual operating system that everyone has grown to love. It's nice to know the open Linux spirit is in full swing at Tivo, because the developers at Tivo have happily included an already running, https, port 80 web server!

You heard me correctly, I did NOT stutter. As long as you enabled the transfer option from TiVo online you can access a web server built into your Tivo. To do this all you need to do is simply point your browser at your TiVo's local IP address using https://...

The address bar would look like this:

https://192.168.0.3/

I simply entered this address into my browser and it prompted me for a username and password. The username to use is always tivo and the password is your Media Access Key.

Your media access key can be found via your tivo interface or on your TiVo.com account.

Now how can you use this information while you are away?

Point your router to forward port 80 and 443 to your TiVo, Now by typing in your routers external IP address from any where in the world you can download your .TIVO files.

I hear you all saying:

They are encrypted and all Admin what good is that? and How does this help me?

Well these .TIVO files are just MPEG2 files with a shiny restrictive layer of prohibitive crap. But, no worries lets get that file cracked open so you can burn it to DVD or move it around at your own will. TiVo to go lets you do some of this stuff but The Admin hates being restricted to, well, anything.

Lets get you Downloading, Stripping and Ripping... (This is for your own access we are not teaching you to be nor advocating piracy...)

Tune back in for part two of our TiVo - download, strip and rip series tomorrow.

_TheTiVoHappyAdmiN_

Can I run WinIpCfg on Windows XP or 2000?

Mary Ann writes to us that she misses the graphical WinIpCfg.exe that came with Windows 98 and ME. She wants to throw it on a memory stick for quick access to IP information and a GUI for editing those numbers - you know like back in the day.

No worries Mary Ann we have got an exact replica from Microsoft's Windows 2000 Resource Kit that will have you feel like you are time traveling back to use IpConfig! Feeling Nostalgic?

That's right you too can be typing in WinIpCfg in your run bar once again!

We Do find it strange the big MS gave it the Axe in 2000. But they have done weirder things - these are the same people that gave us, Clippy the dancing paper clip, to be your virtual personal assistant.

You can grab the installer right from Microsoft here.

_TheFlashBackAdmiN_

PC power users switching to Mac? Mac's got a toolbox that's right up your alley!

Good weekend kiddies,

Comodore64 back again to shed some light for any newly ordained Mac users that are carrying over from the M$ world. Since Mac is gaining a kind of strangle hold on the industry, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of guys like myself who have a PC for certain purposes and a Mac for others. In my case, it's a Powerbook. But not just any Powerbook, this is one of the last Powerbooks made with a PowerPC processor, right before Jobs and Co. made the switch to Intel processors. In retrospect, it was one of my better purchases in life. Worth every penny, and keeps on tickin. Unfortunately, a lot of you didn't stay on the PowerPC bandwagon, and jumped over (maybe not even by choice) to the new Intel Macs. From what I've seen and heard , they are quite the problematic little buggers. But my PowerPC Powerbook has been rock solid since day 1 (gleam.)

Shortly after buying this Powerbook over 2 years ago, I was rummaging around the hard drive for whatever pre-installed goodness I can come across a folder that looks like the image above. This collection of proggies is sure to make any former M$ user feel right at home.

Here is a rundown I've found courtesy of http://www.freemacblog.com/exploring-the-utilities-folder-on-your-mac/

Activity Monitor - Activity Monitor let’s you know what is going on with your computer. It can let you know where your memory and CPU is being used most.
Airport Admin Utility - The application will let you configure your Apple Airport products.
Airport Setup Assistant - This app is used when you first set up your Airport product. It’s an easy wizard for setup.
Audio MIDI Setup - You can use Audio MIDI Setup to configure the audio input and output devices you use with your computer, such as microphones and audio playback equipment. If you need this app, you probably already know how to use it.
Bluetooth File Exchange - If you have a cell phone or PDA with bluetooth, this application makes it very easy to send files back and forth. This is a great way to take your photos off of your phone, or to add ringtones to your phone.
Colorsync Utility - This app gives you access to to Apple’s Colorsync specs. In this app you can set different profiles. There is also a nifty calculator that can convert between RGB and CMYK. This is another of those apps that isn’t useful to most people.
Console - Console gives you a “behind the scenes” look at your Mac. While you see all the pretty pictures and graphics of Mac OS X, there is a ton happening in the background. Console lets you watch that. It’s especially helpful to see error or status messages.
Digitalcolor Meter - If you are preparing your work for professional printing and you have an Apple monitor, you can use DigitalColor Meter to match the color on your screen against several industry standards.
Directory Access - Directory Access lists the different kinds of services that Mac OS X can access. The list includes directory services, which give Mac OS X access to user information and other administrative data stored in directory domains. The list also includes kinds of network services that Mac OS X can discover on the network.
You can enable or disable access to each kind of service. If you disable a kind of service in Directory Access, Mac OS X no longer accesses services of the disabled kind. The different services can be found here.
Disk Utility - There is all kinds of power in the Disk Utility. Here you can reformat a disk, check and fix permissions, and so many other things.
Grab - Grab will let you “grab” screenshots of your Mac. Of course, you can already do this with key combinations, but Grab does have one nice feature. You can do a timed grab. Start the timer and ten second later the Mac will grab a screenshot.
Grapher - Grapher lets you create 2D and 3D graphs from equations.
OS 9 came with a graphing calculator. OS X versions before Tiger had no graphing options. But, with Mac OS X Tiger, we now have Grapher.
Installer - You’ve probably used Installer a hundred times and didn’t know it. Whenever you download a new application that comes in a package or a metapackage, Installer makes it possible to install that application.
Keychain Access - Keychain Access gives you access to the keychain. Duh.
Anytime you save a password to a site or a server or anything on the Mac, it is stored in the keychain. If you forget one of those passwords and it isn’t filling in automatically, you can access keychain with this application and find your password.
Migration Assistant - This is simply one of the most amazing applications. If you’ve ever purchased a new Mac and migrated from your old one, this is the app you used. You can also use it to get a use from a different machine.
Netinfo Manager - Netinfo is the built-in Mac OS X directory system. It stores information about users and resources and makes it available to Mac OS X processes that want to use it. This application helps you manage it.
Network Utility - Since I run a fairly large network of Macs this app is great. It makes it easy to ping machines, lookup name server and DNS, do traceroutes, port scans, etc. It also is a quick way to find info on your Network interfaces. (e.g., ethernet, airport, etc)
ODBC Administrtator - This will give you access to database management systems using Open Database Connectivity standards.
Printer Setup Utility - When you get that new printer and hook it to your Mac, this app comes to the rescue. It will lead you along to get the printer working.
System Profiler - If you need information about your Mac, here is the place to come. It will tell you about your RAM and your drives and your processors and anything thing else you’d need.
Terminal - This is the gateway to the true power of Mac OS X. It is a terminal emulator that will let you use the Unix base of Mac OS X.
VoiceOver Utility - Voiceover is a Mac OS X feature that lets you interact with your Mac via voice. It will read the text of websites, email, and documents. It also allows you to control your Mac using audible commands. Voiceover Utility lets you determine how Voiceover will behave.

Well, kiddies I hope this helps you settle into your new Mac a little easier. Some of these Utilities are clutch and definitely make me feel more in control of my MAC.

Til next time,
Commodore64 (The one you used to play Bruce Lee on)