404 Tech Support » Scripting

Prevent the Microsoft ActiveX Exploit in Internet Explorer

Jason — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:31:33 +0000

Microsoft yesterday announced a dangerous exploit for users with Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating systems and use Internet Explorer. You can read more about the exploit with this article from The Register. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, you are not susceptible to this bug.This is an odd announcement for Microsoft to make; usually, they will only announce that such bugs exist when they are releasing a fix to the problem. This prevents more malicious people from knowing about the exploits before there is a patch available. It seems in this instance and the reason for the rush announcement is that enough malicious people are actively exploiting the problem that Microsoft needed to announce the problem to make the general public aware of it as well. In this article, you can learn a number of different steps you can take to prevent the exploit from impacting you.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Prevent the Microsoft ActiveX Exploit in Internet Explorer

A Week of Google Code, Day 5: Unregistry

Jason — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:02:23 +0000

Day #5: UnregistryUnregistry is simple in principle but very helpful in practice. Messing around with the Registry gets to be a day-to-day task for some IT. There exist these horribly written programs that store too much in the Registry and in keys that standard user's don't have permission to write in. There are also just standard troubleshooting errors and permissions problems; you are not likely to be a stranger to the Registry. Unregistry helps serve one vital role with mucking around in the Registry: removing keys that were put there.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: A Week of Google Code, Day 5: Unregistry

Use the Command Prompt with UNC Paths

Jason — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:24:24 +0000

If you're running a batch script from a network share, you might see a message like this:

CMD.EXE was started with the above path as the current directory. UNC paths are not supported. Defaulting to Windows directory.

This is just a warning message and not an error but it can still cause confusion among users even if the script works perfectly. You can allow the Command Prompt to use UNC paths as the current directory by adding a value to the registry.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Use the Command Prompt with UNC Paths

Power Manage PC Power Management

Jason — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:35:36 +0000

With Green Initiatives becoming the norms these days, lots of people are looking for elaborate ways to save electricity and reign in their energy-sucking computers. Looking at the numbers, we can see that just turning off something like a CRT monitor when it's not in use can save a lot of juice. There are quite a number of elaborate schemes and utilities (both hardware and software) to try to reduce the draw of these necessary components. Windows provides Power Schemes to allow you to control the behavior of computer components when they are not in use and this article will cover a lot of the related tools that can hook into the Window provided components, but make it easier to control from a centralized location with group policies, scripting, or just a change of interface.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Power Manage PC Power Management

Prevent the latest exploit in Adobe Acrobat, Disable JavaScript

Jason — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:43:41 +0000

If you haven't heard already, there is a buffer overflow attack in the wild that exploits the fully-patched and latest versions of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader. The exploit can come in the form of opening a malicious or poisoned PDF file. You can read more about the specifics of the attack and how it works from an article at The Register. To summarize the problem, Javascript inside of a PDF can allow for code to be run on your computer. Variants of the exploit exist including one that installs a trojan virus and could allow a malicious user remote control over the computer.Adobe plans to release a patch on March 11th to address the issue. In the meantime, to prevent the exploit from getting a foothold you can disable Acrobat JavaScript from within Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Prevent the latest exploit in Adobe Acrobat, Disable JavaScript

A Smorgasbord of SysInternals Tools

Jason — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:39:38 +0000

SysInternals offers a lot of useful tools for Windows computers. These can either add more functionality, work-around different quirks, or gather more information for debugging. This article is divided into two sections. I tried to separate the utilities into General use and IT use. Those in the General use category might have a larger interested [...]

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: A Smorgasbord of SysInternals Tools

Restart Script without Admin privileges

Jason — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:25:09 +0000

If you’re trying to script a restart function for users, you’ll unfortunately find that shutdown.exe does not work for non-Administrators, nor does psshutdown. Shutdown.exe requires privileges for the shutdown process and psshutdown.exe requires privileges to add and start services. One of many ways around this problem is to create a visual basic script. This also [...]

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Restart Script without Admin privileges

Scripting Windows Firewall Exceptions

Jason — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:03:10 +0000

Windows XP SP2 and beyond use Windows Firewall to prevent from outside attack. If you have a legitimate program that needs access you can add an exception to the computer for that program. You can do this through the Control Panel on each machine, the Group Policy for multiple machines (more info from Microsoft), or [...]

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Scripting Windows Firewall Exceptions

Advanced Batch Scripting

Jason — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:55:40 +0000

I’d like to share four utilities that can improve your batch (DOS) scripting by making them more user-friendly, more versatile, and more dynamic. With these tools, you’ll gain a variety of abilities that allows you to do more with batch scripting and make your utilities more polished/enjoyable to the end users. The four utilities are: [...]

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Advanced Batch Scripting

Make Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat use "Print as Image" setting by default

Jason — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:58:19 +0000

For certain printers, certain PDF documents, and certain print setups, using the “Print as Image” setting in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader is the only way to reliably get a print job to succeed. To get to this setting, you would go File -> 1. Print -> 2. Advanced (button) -> 3. Print as Image [...]

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Make Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat use "Print as Image" setting by default