Tom's Blog

Find an email alias in Active Directory

2008-06-05T06:06:01Z

Ever try to add a new SMTP alias to a user account, only to be told that the alias was already in use? Finding where this alias is already in use becomes really easy by performing a custom search inside of Active Directory.

From AD Users & Computers, right click on your domain and choose Find.
From the Find: drop-down list, select Custom Search
Click on the Advanced tab
Enter the following LDAP query:

proxyaddresses=SMTP:alias@domain.com

Remember to change alias@domain.com to the email address that you are attempting to find.

iPhone and SIM cards

2008-04-04T18:14:45Z

Just found out the hard way that once you have an iPhone activated with your wireless account, any SIM you put into the device will automatically re-program itself to be the primary SIM on your account.

If you want to stop using an iPhone, you have to call AT&T and have them manually migrate you to another device. Quite a painful experience.

2 weeks with an iPhone

2008-04-04T18:06:00Z

I'm quite the Windows Mobile fanboy, but when I was presented with the opportunity to use an iPhone for a few weeks, I jumped at the chance. Sadly, this morning I have passed along the iPhone to Ted, so that he can put it through its paces. I'm sure he will have something to say about his experiences at some point in the future.

To mark my return to using my beloved Moto Q phone, I have compiled a list of the iPhone's pros and cons.

Pros:

It's a phone first and foremost. All of the phone functions of the device are very well thought out and simple to use.
The UI is dead simple. I have no doubt that I could hand the device to my parents, and they would be able to use it without any hand holding.
Safari works great. It never stopped working for, like Pocket IE does all the time. And having a PC like browser experience is great.
Bluetooth is integrated perfectly. Adding my Bluetooth headset was easier than any other phone I have used.
In two weeks of very heavy usage, I only had to reset the device once, and never had to perform any additional reboots.
The battery life is great. With heavy usage, I could regularly get 1 1/2 or 2 days on a charge.
Having the iPod function automatically fade out and pause when the phone rings is awesome.
The switch on the side of the phone to change from vibrate to ring is very handy.

Cons:

When syncing with Outlook Contacts, there is no option to exclude subfolders. So I had lots of contacts on my device that I didn't need.
No voice dialing or voice command.
No speed dialing. The "Favorites" screen is a nice option, but is too difficult to use while driving.

While I would like to compare my Moto Q to the iPhone, it would be a bit difficult because I think the goal of the two devices is quite different. I would never suggest that my Mom, Dad or wife go out and get a Moto Q because it just isn't intuitive enough for a non-technical user. While the iPhone is a very user-friendly device tha tis also trying to also be a business tool for the tech crowd.

I have no problems giving up the iPhone for my Moto Q, because I am very happy with the device. And, after two weeks of telling everyone about how great the iPhone is, the only feature that I find myself missing is the browser experience. Pocket IE is okay, but the experience you get with Safari on the iPhone is just incredible.

I am hopeful that the promised feature updates in Windows Mobile 6.1 will see the light of day sooner rather than later, because it only serves to make the platform stronger, and allow it to better compete with the iPhone. You can watch a video of these new features here: Video of Windows Mobile 6.1

Remove annoying SharePoint credential prompts in Internet Explorer

2008-02-29T23:42:00Z

Anyone using Windows and IE7 knows how annoying all of those SharePoint prompts are. Below is a list of steps that you can take to make most of the prompts go away…

From Internet Explorer, click on Tools --> Internet Options
Click on the Security tab
Highlight Local Intranet and then click on the Sites button
Uncheck the “Automatically detect intranet network” option and click on the Advanced button
Uncheck the “Require server verification (https: ) for all sites in this zone” option
Add the following sites to this zone:

Click Close
Click OK
Click OK

Unrecognized Lacie big disk

2008-01-22T06:36:31Z

Scary moment tonight when I noticed the blue light on the front of my Lacie Big Disk was blinking in a very bizarre pattern. Upon reviewing the system it was connected to, I saw that the drive was no longer being recognized, but was showing up as a TUSB6250 Boot Device. Huh?

According to this FAQ on Lacie's website, these symptoms can be the result of an "improper shutdown or un-mount."

To resolve the issue, do the following:

Disconnect all cables connected to the drive.
Connect the power cable to the drive.
Connect the USB-cable. First to the drive. Then to the computer.

Happy to say that it worked for me! Now, to perform another back to my Windows Home Server...

Unidentified network on Windows Vista

2007-12-27T04:57:18Z

For awhile now, every time I connect to a Wireless network, Vista has been telling me that I was connected to two networks:

The actual wireless network (Local and Internet)
Unidentified network (Local only)

These systems were annoying at first, but I started having problems with VPN connections and accessing remote networks. The normal web browsing and email traffic seemed to be fine, but my job requires me to use VPNs pretty extensively, so it was really painful.

Finally, after lots of troubleshooting, I found the solution tonight! There were two entries in my routing table for 0.0.0.0, the first being the IP address of my wireless router, and the second being an old static entry from when I was configuring a router weeks ago. So, just a simple "route delete 0.0.0.0" from the command line has fixed this annoying issue.

Hope this helps someone else!

Motorola Q9h customizations

2007-12-05T22:11:23Z

Last week, my beloved Samsung Blackjack bit the dust. Rather than getting a new Blackjack II, which looks like it has lots of problems compared to the original Blackjack, I decided to get the new Moto Q9h. Besides the sleek look, and small form factor, the keyboard appeared to be the best I had ever used, which was the only real reason that I decided on it.

Upon getting the Q out of the store, I noticed that there was tons of crap installed on the device by default. As if it wasn't bad enough that we have to deal with tons of crapware/bloatware installed by default on new PC's, now we have the same problem on mobile devices.

Below I have created a list of the modifications and customizations that I did on the phone immediately. Some of the items are simply icons or shortcuts that I removed, and some are registry modifications that were made to change the default behavior. When I was done, clicking on Start took me to a nice, clean UI that contained only 8 icons (two rows of 4, if using icon view) -- Messaging, Calendar, Contacts, ActiveSync, Call History, My Stuff, Applications and System Tools. I know that I could have take things even further, but I was content with this setup.

File System modifications:
(Note: You will need to use the EnableRAPI tool to get the necessary permissions to remove files from the device. You can find instructions for this, and a link to download the tool here.)

Changes to \Windows\Start Menu\

Moved Windows Media Center.lnk from ATT Music to Applications
Deleted ATT Music folder
Deleted ATT Mall folder
Deleted Cellular Video
Deleted IM & Email folder
Deleted Media Net

Changes made to \Windows\Start Menu\Applications

Deleted Get MobiTV
Deleted Get MySpace Mobile
Deleted Get TeleNav

Changes made to \Windows\Start Menu\Games

Deleted Get Games folder

Changes made to \Windows\Start Menu\Office Tools

Deleted McAfee Virus Scan
Moved all remaining shortcuts to \Windows\Start Menu\Applications
Deleted the Office Tools folder from \Windows\Start Menu

Registry Modifications:
(Note: In order to make the registry changes, you will need to install a registry editor on your device. I used PHM Registry Editor, and because it hasn't been updated for Windows Mobile 6, followed a nicely documented workaround in order to get it installed.)

Change the web browser button on the top left of the phone to launch Internet Explorer instead of Opera.

Launch the registry application on your mobile device
Go to HKEY_Current_User/Control Panel/Keybd
Find the value APP3_Path
Change the data from OperaLaunch.exe to iexplore.exe

Change the default homepage of Internet Explorer from AT&T's Mobile Net to Google.

Launch the registry application on your mobile device
Go to HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs\
Find the value home_0405
Change the data from http://device.home to http://www.google.com
Find the value home_0407
Change the data from http://device.home to http://www.google.com
Find the value home_0409
Change the data from http://device.home to http://www.google.com

How to remove files from a Windows Mobile device

2007-12-05T21:51:09Z

Anyone who has tried to delete shortcuts or files from a Windows Mobile device, knows the frustration of constant "Access Denied" or "You do not have the necessary permissions" messages. Below is a pretty simple way that I have found to get around these permissions, by using a tool called EnableRAPI.

Download EnableRAPI and extract all files from the zip archive.
Double click on EnableRAPI.bat and leave the DOS window it launches open
Open Folder Options and choose to "Show hidden files and folders" and de-select the "Hide protected operating system files" option.
On Windows XP, this would be done by launching Windows Explorer and clicking on Tools --> Folder Options and then the View tab.
On Windows Vista, this would be done by going to Folder Options from the Control Panel and then clicking on the View tab.
Connect your device to your PC using ActiveSync (Windows XP) or Windows Mobile Device Center (Windows Vista).
Browse the device's file system using the File Manager tool in ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center.
When you have finished making all of your modifications, close the EnableRAPI DOS window.

Please note that I have nothing to do with the creation or support of the EnableRAPI tool, and have included a link to download the file here simply to try and make it easier for someone else to get.

I've gone 64-bit, and can't be happier

2007-11-14T22:57:58Z

When I got my new Lenovo T60p Vista rig awhile back, I made the decision to run with the OEM installation of Vista (and all the crapware that came along with it) for as long as I could stand it. I knew this would be somewhat painful, but I often like to do this when using a brand new machine because it helps me better understand some of the end user issues that our customers face.

Now, after I could no longer take the poor performance and system stability issues any longer, I decided to rebuild from scratch. Not only that, but I installed the x64 version of Windows Vista Business. I know a lot of people who are scared of a 64-bit OS on the desktop, but since the release of Vista I have seen lots of positive things about the x64 version, especially from the hardcore ThinkPad users.

After lamenting this for a few days, I jumped in to the 64-bit world head first. Now, nearly a month later, I have to say that I am loving the performance increase I am seeing on this system running the x64 OS. Here is everything that I installed on my system:

Adobe Flash 9 x86 with IE7 x86

Lenovo ThinkVantage Power Manager

Apple Quicktime

Lenovo ThinkVantage Power Mgmt Driver

ATI Catalyst Control Center

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007

ATI Mobility FireGL V5250 v8.383.1.1000

Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007

CutePDF Writer

Microsoft Office LiveMeeting 2007

Diskeeper Professional 2008

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Designer 2007

eWallet

Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007

FileZilla Client

Microsoft Silverlight

Foxit Software PDF iFilter

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

Foxit Software PDF Reader

Mozilla Firefox

Intel Matrix Storage Manager

PuTTy

Intel ® Pro/1000 PL NIC v9.6.8.0 (Microsoft)

Sun Java SE Runtime Environment 6 Update 3 x64

Intel ® Pro/Wireless 3945ABG NIC v11.1.1.16

Trend Micro Client Security

ISO Recorder

Verizon VZAccess for KPC650

Lenovo ThinkVantage Access Connections

VMWare Workstation 6.0

Lenovo ThinkVantage Active Protection Mgr

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Lenovo ThinkVantage Bluetooth

Windows Live Writer

Lenovo ThinkVantage Fingerprint Software

WinRAR

Lenovo ThinkVantage Modem

Zune

My intentions are to update this going forward, and try to document any application issues that I find through my journey. Based on my experience thus far, I have to say that I can't see any reason to not use the x64 version of Windows if you have a CPU that will allow it.

Disappearing LAN interface on Lenovo ThinkPad T60

2007-10-26T07:11:50Z

Since rebuilding my beloved T60 (to rid myself of all the pre-installed Lenovo bloatware), I have been having some serious issues with the NIC. The device would disappear at random times, regardless of the power state, and I had many an error within the System Event Viewer talking about the device "disappearing."

I could plug a network cable, get a link light on both the switch port and on the NIC, but nothing else would happen, and the device was nowhere to be found on teh system. In order to get the device to function, I had to open Device Manager and manually run "Scan for hardware changes" command.

Thanks to a bunch of postings on the thinkpads.com forum (this one in particular), I have found a solution... disable "Deep Smart Power Down," which apparently isn't that smart. You can do this from Device Manager, go to the network card properties and review the Advanced tab.

OCS activation error

2007-08-25T06:26:00Z

Failure [0xC3EC796C] One or more errors occurred during execution of the wizard; the wizard was unable to complete successfully. Please check the log file for more information.

The above error message has been plaguing me for a few weeks now. I have been working on two separate Office Communication Server 2007 projects, one using Standard Edition and one on Enterprise Edition, and I kept running into the error during the initial server or pool deployment.

What ultimately fixed this for me was to change the service account passwords that I was using. I try and always use passphrases these days, and regularly have service accounts with anywhere from 12-30 characters. Once I changed the service accounts to have passwords that didn't include spaces, the deployment and activation wizards ran perfectly.

While I am always happy to resolve a problem, I sometimes hate the solutions that end up being so dumb... :-)

SharePoint 2007 memory errors

2007-07-20T18:37:04Z

When reviewing the Application Event Log on a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 server, I noticed that I was getting six different error messages are regular intervals.

Event ID 7076 - Attempted to read or write to protected memory
Event ID 7076 - Exception from HRESULT 0x80005006
Event ID 6482 - Attempted to read or write to protected memory
Event ID 6482 - Exception from HRESULT 0x80005006
Event ID 6398 - Attempted to read or write to protected memory
Event ID 6398 - Exception from HRESULT 0x80005006

After scratching my head for a few minutes, I found a really simple solution. There is a hotfix for .NET 2.0 which seems to resolve all of the above error messages. The hotfix is documented in Microsoft KB923028, and it does not require a restart of the server. However, please understand that it will stop IIS and all of the services associated with SharePoint.

Intel wireless drivers on Windows Vista

2007-07-10T18:04:29Z

I just began using a new Lenovo T60p that came pre-loaded with Windows Vista Business. The machine is wonderful, and is easily the best experience I have had with Windows Vista to date.

Recently I started noticing some reliability problems with the built-in Intel 3945ABG WLAN card, and this is a big deal for me because I use wireless nearly 100% of the time. The problem was sporadic, but it would happen when moving between locations and bringing the system out of Sleep or Hibernation mode. The wireless card would be in a powered off state, and the only way to get it working again was a reboot.

After some digging, I realized that Vista was installing version 10.6.0.15 of the Intel driver for the card by default. This version has some known performance and reliability issues, and Intel recommends that version 11.1.1.11 be installed. So far, simply updating the drivers has saved me from any unnecessary system reboots.

Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection driver download page

Custom search providers with Internet Explorer 7

2007-05-30T05:14:42Z

Did you know that IE7’s built-in search box can be used with just about any web site? The only site, or "search provider," that is included by default is Windows Live Search. However, if you click on the down arrow to the right of the search box, you will see an option to "Find More Providers." This will take you to a Microsoft web site that has lots of pre-defined third party search providers including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft.com and many more.

This same page includes instructions for creating your very own custom search providers. Essentially, any site that has a Search box on it can be used to create a custom search provider. So, you could search Lanlogic.net’s KB, Microsoft Support, TechNet blogs, Google Groups, Experts Exchange, or your favorite video game message board.

To get started with creating your custom search provider, following these simple instructions:

Go to the web site that you want to create a custom search provider for
Find the Search box on the site, and enter the word TEST (in all capital letters) and press Enter
Copy the URL that contains the search results for TEST
Go to the Microsoft custom search provider web site and paste the URL into the box on the right side of the screen
Specify a name for your custom search provider where prompted and click on the Install button
Click OK or Yes when prompted to install the custom search provider (you can also choose to make this your default search provider)
Go search! If you click on the down arrow to the right of the search box within IE7, you should now see your custom search provider listed

Keep in mind that this will work for most web sites. Some web sites that run database applications may not provide you with a custom URL when you execute a search query. One workaround for this would be to use the search engine of your choice to search the site. So, if you wanted to search the Lanlogic.net Knowledge Base, you could simply go to Google and type TEST site:lanlogic.net/support/docs. This would provide you with a custom URL for the necessary search string, and you could then use this URL to create a custom search provider for the Lanlogic.net Knowledge Base by using Google.

Here are some additional URLs for sites that I use:

Lanlogic.net (includes Knowledge Base, blog posts, web site content):
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=TEST+site%3Alanlogic.net

Microsoft Support:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/default.aspx?query=TEST&catalog=LCID%3D1033&spid=&qryWt=&mode=r&cus=False&x=17&y=10

Microsoft TechNet Blogs:
http://blogs.technet.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=TEST&o=Relevance

Microsoft Exchange Team blog:
http://msexchangeteam.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=TEST

Happy searching!

PDF preview handler for Outlook 2007

2007-03-26T04:44:00Z

One of the new Outlook 2007 features that I use the most is the ability to preview attachments within the email message. Of course, this assumes that the attachment is a photo or document created with Microsoft Office. Sadly, there was no preview handler for PDF's built into Outlook.

My PDF viewer of choice is FoxIt Reader, and so I was very happy to see Tim Heuer's add-on for Outlook that allows me to preview PDF files. This free app does exactly what it says, without issue, which is all I can ask for from any piece of software.

If you still use Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view PDF files, you can use Ryan Gregg's add-on that does the same thing. Please note that you will need to have at least Adobe Acrobat version 7.0 installed for this to work.