If you’re using Outlook 2007 and you have a mysterious “Panning hand” cursor that won’t let you select text in an email, and want to turn it off, but can’t find the option, here’s how:

1. Click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar pull down:
    
2. Choose “More Commands…”
3. In the next window, click the drop down box and choose “Commands not in the Ribbon”
    
4. Scroll down until you find “Panning Hand” and then click “Add >>”
5. Click OK.
6. The Hand will now appear in the toolbar.
    
7. Click the Hand to disable Panning Hand
8. You can now select/copy/highlight text

Did it work? Leave a comment!

I kinda figured you’d need to remove half the chassis. Makes me appreciate just how accessible the HDDs are in most Dell laptops

1. Shut down the Guest OS.
2. Open up the .vmx file.
3. Delete the following lines (that begin with…):

   ethernet0.addressType
   uuid.location =
   uuid.bios =
   ethernet0.generatedAddress =
   ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset =

    

4. Boot up the Guest OS again, and it should generate new details in the vmx file (I’d check afterwards to be doubly sure).

The most common scenario for wanting to do this is if you’ve used a “template” Guest OS and copied it to multiple PCs, but accidentally clicked “I moved this Virtual Machine” rather than “I copied this Virtual Machine” when first booting the Guest OS in something like VMware Player.

If you tell VMware that the Guest OS was copied, it automatically generates new UUID info and MAC addresses. If you tell VMware that you moved the Guest OS, all unique identifiers are left alone (including the MAC address). By performing the steps above, you can get VMware to generate you some new, unique identifiers, and stop weirdness on your network

If you’ve downloaded a .chm file, but on opening it, can’t see anything, I have a solution for you

Ta-da

• Right click on the file > Properties
• Find the “Unblock” button, and click it.
  
• Re-open the .chm and it should now display properly

It’s a problem we all encounter at some point: You’ve just re-installed Windows, and now you need to download your Mainboard drivers. But which motherboard do you have again?

Instead of opening your PC case to find the Motherboard model number, check out CPU-Z

CPU-Z is a free, stand-alone application (no installer) that very quickly lets you know your system’s vital statistics (CPU, Mobo, and RAM), so that you can head off and find the drivers you need, without having to open up the PC.

This is something I come across frequently when I’m performing OS refreshes at DisplayLink. I imagine it’s a common problem in most start-ups (are we still are start-up? haha), where PCs are bought to spec on an ad-hoc basis. Often, the only way of finding out the motherboard number is by opening the case, lifting cables, and poking around the motherboard, in an attempt to find the tiny bit of writing on the PCB that tells you its model number. Hardly ideal!

Symptoms

When trying to install a shared network printer in Windows Vista, you get an error which states:

Windows cannot connect to the printer.
The specified print monitor is unknown.

The Cause

This is a bug in Vista. If you disable the UAC, Vista is seemingly unable to add a network printer.

The Fix

To fix this, you’ll need to install a “Performance and Reliability Update”, KB938979. Bizarrely, this update is listed as Optional by Windows Update, and so you may not have installed it. I shall refrain from commenting further on the lunacy of this

1) Please go into the CMD prompt (Start/Run –> cmd.exe )

2) Then type cd /d %windir%\inf and make sure we are in that
directory.

3) Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old, it will go back to the prompt
after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)

4) Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1, it will go back to the prompt
after giving you some error (Do not worry about it)

5) Then goto start – run – type “%windir%\inf” and you will see
the files in the folder.

6) Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and take a backup of it
to desktop (by copying it to desktop) and delete the INFCACHE.1
from c:\windows\inf.

7) Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and
start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine.

This solution is dotted all around the internet, but I can’t find it’s original source. If you know the source, let me know and I’ll credit it correctly.

Vista Crashes (Blue Screens) with an error message mentioning yk60x86.sys.

Solution

We’ve got a bunch of Sony Vaio VGN-SZ5MN laptops at work and a lot of them are blue screening (BSOD) as soon as you plug in the Ethernet cable. If that’s not enough of a clue (hehe), the problem is the Marvell Yukon Ethernet Controller driver.

To fix the problem, download the updated driver from the Marvell Driver page.

Or try this direct link to the Driver Installer for Windows 2000/XP/Vista

I thought I’d write down my usual procedure for this kind of scenario. Let’s go!

Check for Virii and Malware

Virii and Malware often consume large amounts of CPU time while going about their nefarious business, so let’s check those first:

• Check Anti-virus is installed and up-to-date. Perform a manual check just in case.
• Check Anti-Malware / Anti-Spyware is installed and up-to-date. Again, perform a manual check.
• Spybot S&D, HijackThis, CWShredder, and Rootkit Revealer are tools that I find incredibly useful.
• Filehippo is a great, centralised, place to find free and open-source apps for general troubleshooting.

Check your Startup programs and Services

Some useless, and damaging, things can get into your system Startup and Services areas. For example, do you really need to have QuickTime load every time your PC boots? This is another good place to check for Malware, and weird names like “fke38282gje.exe” should immediately flag your attention.

• Check the Startup tab in the System Configuration Utility for anything suspect (Start > Run… > msconfig).
• While you’re there, check in the Services tab for anything out of place.
• Google anything you find, and you’ll usually find out if it’s malicious or not.

Defrag and RAM

There are of course, perfectly natural reasons for a system’s slow down. The two main ones being a fragmented hard drive, and a lack of sufficient RAM.

• Check Hard Drive fragmentation (Right click My Computer > Manage > Storage > Disk Defragmenter).
• Check your RAM (Right click My Computer > Properties). XP really should have at least 512MB of RAM.

Less likely causes

In addition, you may want to check a few other things which are much less likely.

As the PC was reported to be slow to boot, check the DHCP Server and also the DHCP settings on the client PC. If a system is set to grab a DHCP address it will often wait a long period of time, for a response from the DHCP server, before timing out. After that it gives itself an AUTO-IP and continues to load. Because nothing really happens for a while, this will appear as though the PC is slow to boot. A time out might occur if the DHCP server is down, or there’s a problem with your network downstream.

If the PC is reported as being generally slow, check that the Hard Drive is running in DMA Mode, and hasn’t fallen back to PIO mode. PIO is a slower, and much more CPU intensive, method of accessing Hard Drives than DMA. Often if Windows notices that data is being corrupted in DMA (CRC failures), it’ll fall back to PIO mode, resulting in a much slower system. Steps: Right click My Computer > Manage > Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers. Check both Primary and Secondary IDE Channels by right clicking, Properties, then looking in the Advanced Settings tab.

Check out this Microsoft KB article for a lot more detail on the issue.

Did this help you at all? Is there anything I should add? Let me know in the comment section below!

If you RDC into the box, and then try to connect to Windows Update, you’ll see a message like this:

Access Denied

Network policy settings prevent you from using Windows Update to download and install updates on your computer.

If you believe you have received this message in error, please check with your system administrator.

Solution

To get around this on the 715N, follow these instructions:

1. Log in as Administrator
2. Go Start > Run… > gpedit.msc
3. In the Left pane: Open User Configuration, Administrative Templates, and then click Start Menu and Taskbar
4. In the Right pane: Double-click on Disable and remove links to Windows Update
5. Choose ‘Disable’ and click OK
6. You can now get Windows Updates via the Start Menu
7. Don’t forget to Enable Automatic Updates! (Control Panel > Automatic Updates)

For any other Operating System, have a look at the Microsoft KB article

As a business you can’t use HyperTerminal Private Edition unless you pay a licence fee; and now that Microsoft has removed HyperTerminal from Windows Vista, finding an Open Source, free-for-commercial-use, replacement for HyperTerminal is invaluable for budget constrained IT departments.

Download PuTTY here

It also seems that Poderosa support Serial comms with a plugin, which I wasn’t aware of until reading this blog post.

What do you use instead of HyperTerminal? I’d love to hear about any programs I’ve missed!

Here’s the settings you’ll need for HyperTerminal:

Bits per second: 115200
Data bits: 8
Parity: None
Stop bits: 1
Flow Control: Xon / Xoff

Asterisk Key reveals saved passwords from most Windows apps and even Internet Explorer (which is probably a good reason to switch to Firefox!)

It doesn’t work on everything, but it’s worth a shot!

1. Start > Run… > services.msc
2. Find the Wireless Zero Configuration service.
3. Right click on it, and choose “Start”.

The Authentication tab will then appear on your Network connection properties.

Yes, I know. But apparently, to get 802.1x support, you need to enable a Wireless service, even though you may well be using it on a wired connection. Intuitive, eh?

Possible Symptoms

• At home, your PC sees your flash drive as drive letter E. (I’m using E as an example)
• You go to work and plug in your USB stick, but it doesn’t show up.

The likely culprit

This is probably because your PC at work already has a Drive E assigned – Windows can’t have two drives with the same drive letter, so your Flash drive can’t be used. To use it, we need to change the drive letter assigned to the flash stick.

How to fix it

1. Right click on My Computer.
2. Click ‘Manage’.
3. Click ‘Disk Management’ in the Left pane.
4. Locate your flash stick in the right pane.
5. Right click on it, and choose ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths…’.
6. Click either Change or Add, and assign the drive a new letter. (I usually pick something high up the alphabet, like ‘R’)
7. Ta-da! Your Flash drive should now appear

Did this help you at all? Any questions? Feel free to leave me a comment below!

The symptoms

1. When you try to recover your OS you get the error: “No partition selected”
2. You converted your partitions from FAT32 to NTFS (via the little short-cut Asus kindly put on your Desktop)

The cause

The software used to recover your OS only recognises FAT32 partitions. How wonderful of you PowerQuest. It’s no wonder I use Acronis for everything now…

The solution

You need to format your target partition to FAT32. There’s a nice Open-Source boot-cd that can do that. Or you can use Acronis Disk Director or something similar.

Did this help you at all? Any questions? Feel free to leave me a comment below

When AirPcap was first released, only WEP decryption was supported. However, with the release of Wireshark 0.99.5 it is possible to decrypt WPA packets with the AirPcap adapter in Windows. Here’s how:

1. Install Wireshark 0.99.5 or above
2. Run Wireshark
3. Go: View > Wireless Toolbar
4. Click on “Decryption Keys…”
5. Add a new decryption key. In my instance, because I know the Passphrase, I used WPA-PWD. If you’re doing penetration testing and, you have a 64byte string from something like AirCrack, you should use WPA-PSK.
   
6. Capture away. In the screenshots below, I’ve filtered my own Wi-Fi card to cut down on the volume of ‘junk’ and demonstrate that it is, in fact, decrypting the packets on the WLAN.
   

For a lot more information on getting this set up, check out the AirPcap Userguide.

Did this help you at all? Any questions? Feel free to leave me a comment below!

If you work or play with Wi-Fi networks and you’ve never heard of Wi-Spy, it’s worth checking out. Small, and affordable, Wi-Spy is a very capable wireless spectrum analyser. You just plug in the USB dongle, load up the Chanalyzer software and you’ll be seeing the 2.4GHz spectrum in no time. It’s fantastic for wireless troubleshooting (especially when your wireless network seems slow or keeps dropping out) – enabling you to confidently choose a Wi-Fi channel with less interference, as opposed to the old method of ‘blindy’ changing channels and hoping things improve.

You can find out more at my Wireless Analysis site.

If you already have Wi-Spy, what do you use it for?