This post is a request for any assistance I can get.

It’s about a mistake or an oversight when setting up a Windows 2003 server running Active Directory (AD) and DNS. So if you know nothing about these things then please feel free to check out one of my other more regular posts – such as this one.

- o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o -

OK, on with the issue.

Please bear in mind that this used to work using a workaround despite the oversight. It stopped working when due to reasons beyond their control our hoster had to put us on another server and hence a different IP, but more on that in a moment. (more…)

Shocking isn’t it.

But let me step back a second and explain.

According to the many terms and conditions (T&Cs) I’ve agreed to down the year I, and most likely you, are indulging in alleged criminal behaviour. Let me give you an example or two.

- Have you ever bought a CD and then copied t to tape or even your MP3 player? Yes. Then you’re a criminal.

- What about your iPhone / iTouch. Have you jailbroken it? Then yes, you’ve just broken the law again.

- Ever bought a DVD? Then ripped it to place on your media player? Guess what? … You’re a criminal.

But in reality, occasions like this are highly unlikely to get you arrested, let alone face a judge or fine. These are some of the many absurd ‘restrictions’ that companies place in their T&Cs.

But, I digress.

My main reason for this is to reveal that I ‘jailbroke’ my iPhone. There are any number of reasons I’ve done it but to obtain “pay for apps” for free is not one of them.

And here’s one of those reasons: WiCarrier.

Simply put, it displays the name of the WiFi network your iPhone / iTouch is connected too. Why is this so necessary when I can drop into settings and see the same name there? It isn’t but it does make life that one step easier and adds to my security at a glance that I am actually connected to the local coffee house’s network and not some hacker hotspot.

If you want this tweak then fire up your Cydia app and search it out – install and job done.

What about you?

Are you a criminal too?

I promise I won’t hold it against you.

I love free and I like ScriptLogics stuff – however most of their stuff is not free so I tend not to visit too often.

Today though I’ve taken some time to see what their latest products are and guess what, they’ve released it as free. The latest (?) tool in their armoury is “Privilege Authority” which is sub-headed as ‘Users Need Rights Too‘ and I agree.

Privilege Authority is designed let the Windows network admin establish what aspects of Windows “users can manage without making them local admins. By defining elevation rules within Privilege Authority, user privileges are automatically elevated for specific actions that currently require administrator access”.

Sounds good to me and I can think of at least two uses for it already.

In the days of old when the O/S of choice for most day to day stuff was XP the only real challenge (for me at least) was twofold.  How to reduce the initial install size and how to automate as much of the mundane tasks as possible.

Then nlite appeared on the market and this allowed for taking an original XP install CD and integrating service packs, security patches, tweaks, etc and effectively automated the process of (re)installing XP. And as most know, this was a semi-regular event in the owner of a windows based PC.

Whilst nlite went on to release vlite for Vista this tool doesn’t work flawlessly with Windows 7 and there are only vague rumours of a proper Win7, it still leaves a gap in the market. That gap has now been, ably so it would appear, taken up by RTSe7enLite.

In their words:

You can add wallpapers, Icons, themes, integrate updates, drivers, remove components, unattended installation settings, tweaks, bootable ISO creator, etc.

I can see a usage – maybe you can too?

I like to do this occasionally and give out some stats that aren’t usually seen by others. Today’s episode is browser usage for accessing this site.

It’s not surprising that as this blog is mostly aimed at technical issues that the top 3 or even 5 browsers are those that are newer ones on the market or recognised as being used by those that are:

• clued up about security or
• nerdy or
• recognise some shortcomings in IE or
• some other reason

Whatever the reason(s) for using the browsers the above chart breaks down this way (%ages rounded up/down):

• Firefox – 40%
• IE8 – 28%
• Chrome – 13%
• Safari 4 – 9%
• iPhone – 5%
• IE6 – 2%
• IE7 – 2%
• Opera 9 – 1%

The only other thing that surprises me is that there aren’t any other browsers used – that or the analytics doesn’t recognise them as separate entities and lumps them under another category. For example, is the iPhone the only mobile browser to have accessed this site? On the face of the figures UI have to say yes but experience says it’s more likely to be a mix.

Not sure how long this has been around, but Nmap (the free and open source utility for network exploration or security auditing) has now gained a graphical frontend.

Zenmap may not look like much, but it does make life easier for those afraid of the command line. It allows for interactive creation of Nmap command lines and saving of scans historically for comparison, etc. The main benefit here is that zenmap now makes Nmap more accessible by both beginners and advanced users alike.

I recall a day, not too long ago, that there used to be a fair number of “rescue” tools out and about on the market.

My preferred go to tool of the day was FProt.

These days I didn’t know of one until AVG (yes, them of the free Anti Virus) released their latest product – the AVG Rescue CD.

But what does a ‘rescue CD’ do? In simple terms it is a stand alone, self-booting CD (or USB stick) that contains Anti Virus, Anti Malware and more besides. AVG have gone a step further though and added a few extra tools into it to make a truly versatile product.

In their words:

The AVG Rescue CD is essentially a portable version of AVG Anti-Virus supplied through Linux distribution. It can be used in the form of a bootable CD or bootable USB flash drive to recover your computer when the system cannot be loaded normally, such as after an extensive or deep-rooted virus infection. In short, the AVG Rescue CD enables you to fully remove infections from an otherwise inoperable PC and render the system bootable again.

Apart from the usual AVG functions (malware detection and removal, updates from internet or external device, etc.), the AVG Rescue CD also contains the following set of administration tools:

• Midnight Commander – a two-panel file manager
• Windows Registry Editor– simple registry editor for more experienced users
• TestDisk – powerful hard drive recovery tool
• Ping – to test the availability of network resources (servers, domains, IP addresses)
• Common Linux programs and services– vi text editor, OpenSSH daemon, ntfsprogs etc

I’ll certainly be adding it to my repertoire of tools to take when I visit friends and relations that have infected machines.

What tools do you use?

One of the most annoying aspects of Windows 7 (I find) is that lots of software doesn’t autostart or autorun properly. Let me explain with an example … do you use Piriform’s excellent ccleaner?

Do you use it the same way as I do – by right-clicking on my recycle bin?

If so, are you fed up with Windows 7 asking you for permission to run it?

This is the UAC in action.

Then the answer is that you need to run the item as an administrator and Windows 7 gives us have five options to do that – though not all would necessarily work for all situations and some will still ask you to confirm you are the admin or want to run as admin. (more…)