MoonPoint Support Logo

 

Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals - Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used ProductsAmazon Warehouse Deals



Advanced Search
September
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
   
     
2009
Months
Sep


Tue, Sep 29, 2009 3:23 pm

Joker Mail Forwarding

The domain registrar, Joker.com allows you to have email addressed to someone at a domain registered with them forwarded to an email account at another domain. E.g., one could forward email addressed to pamela@example.com to pamela@somewhereelse2.com. Joker.com imposes the following limits for that service:
  1. 40 mail addresses per domain
  2. 10486kB as the maximum size of a single mail
  3. 200 mails per day per address
Joker.com provides the option of filtering spam. Hopefully, email rejected as spam doesn't count towards the 200 email messages per day limit.

The service might not be suitable for someone who receives large attachments to messages, because of the 10 MB limit on the size of a message.

[/network/email/joker] permanent link

Sun, Sep 27, 2009 3:25 pm

Memory Errors Encountered During Testing on 2009-09-26

My wife's Windows XP Professional PC would boot into Windows, but whenever she logged on and tried to do anything, the system would reboot. I ran memory tests on the system with five free programs and one commercial program.
ProgramVersionFreeErrors Detected
Windows Memory Diagnostic Beta 0.4YesYes
MemScope 1.10Yes Yes
QuickTech Pro 4.11NoNo
Memtest86+ 1.70YesNo
Memtest86 3.3YesNo
DocMemory 3.1betaYesNo

More Info

[/os/windows/utilities/diagnostic/memory] permanent link

Sat, Sep 26, 2009 5:51 pm

HR Tag Within Pre Tag

When I checked a webpage for HTML errors using the W3Creg; Markup Validation Service, I saw errors such as the following reported:

Error Line 165, Column 4: document type does not allow element "HR" here; missing one of "MAP", "IFRAME", "BUTTON" start-tag

<hr>

The mentioned element is not allowed to appear in the context in which you've placed it; the other mentioned elements are the only ones that are both allowed there and can contain the element mentioned. This might mean that you need a containing element, or possibly that you've forgotten to close a previous element.

One possible cause for this message is that you have attempted to put a block-level element (such as "<p>" or "<table>") inside an inline element (such as "<a>", "<span>", or "<font>").

The problem occurred because I had placed <hr> between <pre> and </pre> tags. I had something like the following:

<pre>
This is some text
<hr>
This is some more text
</pre>

I eliminated the error by placing a end pre tag after the first block of text and a begin pre tag before the second block of text.

<pre>
This is some text
</pre>
<hr>
<pre>
This is some more text
</pre>

References:

  1. CSS - html/css validation error
    Date: 2008-02-25
    Ultrashock Forums

[/network/web/html] permanent link

Fri, Sep 25, 2009 7:09 pm

Windows XP System Not Using Primary DNS

After a user rebooted her system, email she sent to an internal POP3 email server was being rejected. When I checked the email server's log file, I found that it was rejecting the email because it saw the email coming from the outside address of the firewall. It saw the "to" address of the email message she was trying to send as one that was not destined for an account on the email server and rejected it with a "relaying denied" message. The email server was configured to allow relaying from the IP address of her PC, but since it saw the email coming through the external firewall, it rejected it.

When I tried pinging the internal email server, mail.example.com, from her system, instead of its internal address, 192.168.0.25, being used, I saw the external address for the firewall was being used. I checked her /windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts file first. I didn't see any entry for mail.example.com there. Nor did I see the address cached on her system when I entered the command ipconfig /displaydns | find /i "mail.example.com" at a command prompt. So I used a sniffer to observe the network traffic from/to her system. I saw that her system was querying the DNS server configured as the secondary name server for her system, which was an external DNS server provided by her Internet Service Provider (ISP) rather than the internal name server on her LAN.

I tried ipconfig /flushdns, but that made no difference. Her system continued to query the secondary name server and didn't seem to ever cache the address for mail.example.com. When I tried ipconfig /registerdns, the system then queried the primary DNS server again.

The /registerdns argument to the ipconfig command "refreshes all DHCP leases and re-registers DNS names." The system had a static IP address, so the "re-registers DNS names" function of the command must have fixed the problem.

When she tried sending her email message again, though, it was rejected by the internal mail server. I had her restart her email client, Microsoft Outlook, and that resolved the problem. Apparently, Outlook also maintains its own cached information for the mail server it uses. I still didn't see the internal mail server's address cached when I issued an ipconfig /displaydns command, though.

The long term solution, though, to prevent the problem recurring would be to set up another internal DNS server to use as the secondary DNS server.

References:

  1. XP not using Primary DNS
    Date: March 20, 2009
    TechTalkz.com Technology @ your fingertips
  2. Configuring IP Addressing and Name Resolution
    Microsoft TechNet: Resources for IP Professionals
  3. When does a Windows client stop using a secondary DNS server and revert back to primary
    Date: August 11, 2009
    Server Fault
  4. Renew DNS client registration using the ipconfig command
    Updated: January 21, 2005
    Microsoft TechNet: Resources for IP Professionals

[/network/dns/windows] permanent link

Tue, Sep 22, 2009 7:17 pm

Creating a CD Image with ISO Recorder

I needed the capability to create an ISO file from a CD on a Windows Vista system. I installed the 64-bit version of ISO Recorder for Vista. Once I had it installed, I was able to create the file I needed by the following steps:
  1. Click on the Start button.
  2. Select Computer.
  3. Right-click on the CD/DVD drive and select "Create image from CD/DVD".
  4. Select the location and file name for the ISO file you wish to create.
  5. Click on the Next button.
  6. Click on the Finish button to exit ISO Recorder.

ISO Recorder also then allowed me to right-click on the ISO file and choose "Copy image to CD/DVD" to create another copy of the CD.

ISO Recorder 3.1 create CD from image

[/os/windows/software/utilities/cd-dvd/ISO_Recorder] permanent link

Tue, Sep 15, 2009 12:31 pm

Calculating the Number of Days Between Two Dates in Excel

The datedif function can be used in Microsoft Excel to calculate the number of days between 2 different dates.

The syntax for the DATEDIF function is as follows:

=DATEDIF(Date1, Date2, Interval)

Where:

Date1 is the first date,
Date2 is the second date,
Interval is the interval type to return.

If Date1 is later than Date2, DATEDIF will return a #NUM! error. If either Date1 or Date2 is not a valid date, DATEDIF will return a #VALUE error.
The Interval value should be one of the following:

Interval Meaning Description
m Months Complete calendar months between the dates.
d Days Number of days between the dates.
y Years Complete calendar years between the dates.
ym Months Excluding Years Complete calendar months between the dates as if they were of the same year.
yd Days Excluding Years Complete calendar days between the dates as if they were of the same year.
md Days Excluding Years And Months Complete calendar days between the dates as if they were of the same month and same year.

If Interval is not one of the items listed in above, DATEDIF will return a #NUM error.

Examples of datedif usage

[/os/windows/office/excel] permanent link

Sun, Sep 13, 2009 5:04 pm

File System not Supported on This Device Optimized for Removal

I was unable to backup a disk drive to an external drive attached to a system via a USB connection using the NTBackup program. The backup failed once the backup file reached 4 GB in size, which is the maximum size for the FAT32 file system, which was the file system on the Western Digital My Book USB external drive when I purchased it. So I decided to change the file system to NTFS by reformatting the drive. But I received an error message when I tried to convert the file system.

C:\>format f: /fs:ntfs
NTFS file system is not supported on this device optimized for removal.
To change the way this device is optimized, select the Policies tab in
the device's property sheet.

To change the file system, I right-clicked on the drive under My Computer, then chose Properties.

My Book 640 GB drive properties

I then clicked on the Hardware tab and selected the drive.

My Book 640 GB drive hardware

I then clicked on the Properties button and then the Policies tab. I changed the setting from "Optimize for quick removal" to "Optimize for performance". The "optimize for quick removal" setting disables write caching on the disk and in Windows, so you can disconnect the device without using the Safe Removal icon. The "optimize for performance" setting enables write caching in Windows to improve disk performance. When you choose this option, to disconnect the device from the computer, you should click the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the taskbar notification area."

USB device properties - optimize for performance

I then clicked on the OK button. I clicked on a second OK button to close the window.

I was then able to reformat the drive from the FAT32 file system to the NTFS file system.

C:\>format f: /fs:ntfs
The type of the file system is FAT32.
The new file system is NTFS.
Enter current volume label for drive F: My Book

WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK
DRIVE F: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? y
Verifying 610477M
Volume label (32 characters, ENTER for none)? ACI-3
Creating file system structures.
Format complete.
 625129280 KB total disk space.
 625044456 KB are available.

[/os/windows/filesystem] permanent link

Sat, Sep 12, 2009 4:06 pm

CT6472Z40B Memory Module

Specifications for a 512 MB 184-pin DIMM DDR PC3200 memory module with part number CT6472Z40B from Crucial Technology.

[/hardware/pc/memory] permanent link

Tue, Sep 08, 2009 9:53 pm

Hello Kitty Online - Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT

A family member got an offer to become a beta tester for Hello Kitty Online today. The email message she received provided a link to download a setup program HKO_Downloader.exe. After she downloaded the file, I had her submit it to Virustotal , a site that checks files for malware with multiple antivirus programs. The Virustotal analysis of the file showed 2 of the 41 programs it used to check the file reporting a potential issue with the file. Note: someone else had uploaded a file named HKO_Island_of_Fun.exe on September 3, 2009 that Virustotal identified as being an identical file because that file had an identical hash value.

File HKO_Island_of_Fun.exe received on 2009.09.03 20:55:55 (UTC)
Current status: finished
Result: 2/41 (4.88%)

The two that identified the file as potentially being malware were as follows:

AntivirusVersionLast UpdateResult
McAfee+Artemis57302009.09.03 Suspect-29!4A5CA8AF0ECD
Sunbelt3.2.1858.22009.09.03 Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT

Information on Mcafee+Artemis is available at McAfee Artemis Technology. An evaluation of McAfee+Artemis is available at Anti-Virus Comparative Technology Preview Report McAfee Artemis.

Sunbelt's Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT Information and Removal webpage shows the following:

Threat NameTrojan.Win32.Generic!BT
Summary Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT is a downloader associated with rogue security programs (also called “scareware.”) Once downloaded, the rogues pretend to scan a victim.s computer for malware then display false warnings that the machine is infected. It tries to convince victims to purchase useless security software.
Category Trojan
Level High
AdviceRemove
Description Other names: F-Secure: Trojan-Downloader.Win32.FraudLoad.ffz Kaspersky: Trojan-Downloader.Win32.FraudLoad.ffz Microsoft: TrojanDownloader:Win32/FakeVimes
Release DateApr 7 2009
Last UpdatedAug 7 2009
File Traces- No traces available.

The HKO_Downloader.exe file downloads the actual software needed to participate in Hello Kitty Online, which is a site run by Aeria Games. I concluded that they may have licensed a downloading program that some others may use for nefarious purposes, but I didn't see sufficient reason to be concerned in this case and told her she could download the software and participate in the beta testing.

[/security/malware] permanent link

Mon, Sep 07, 2009 6:58 pm

HP Printer Processes

While checking a "Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low" warning message on a Windows XP system, I found the following HP processes running:

ProcessMemory
hpqste08.exe 9,784K
hpqste08.exe 5,128K
hpqnrs08.exe 1,324K

According to the Uniblue Process Library:

hpqste08.exe is a process installed alongside HP Imaging devices and provides additional configuration options for these devices. This program is a non-essential process, but should not be terminated unless suspected to be causing problems.

hpqste08.exe is a process installed alongside HP Imaging devices and provides additional configuration options for these devices. This program is a non-essential process, but should not be terminated unless suspected to be causing problems.

hpqnrs08.exe hpqnrs08.exe is a Network Monitor from Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. belonging to HP Digital Imaging. This is a network device rediscovery service.

[/os/windows/printers] permanent link

Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional

Privacy Policy   Contact

Blosxom logo