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Microsoft Desktop Player

Jason — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:42:58 +0000

Microsoft has created a one-stop shop for its TechNet resources that are useful to all IT Pros and Developers. This Silverlight-powered portal allows you to create a query from your perspective for Webcasts, Podcasts, White Papers, and Links. You can search for resources related to Microsoft .NET, Exchange Server 2010, Office, Sharepoint, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Windows 7, Windows Azure, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Security. All free and all convenient in a single web location or as a downloadable desktop interface.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Microsoft Desktop Player

How to Hold a Confidential Print Job at a Shared Printer

Jason — Thu, 13 May 2010 03:37:24 +0000

One of the low hanging fruits of Green IT recommendations is to replace the 'printer at each desk' model with the 'fewer, higher-capacity printers shared amongst an office' model. In my office, we've been trying to follow this recommendation in order to save electricity, reduce maintenance, and provide printers with increased capabilities to my users. Unfortunately, it's not always smooth sailing and we're often met with resistance because people don't want to have to walk 10 feet to pick up a print job for a variety of reasons according to some people. One of the most popular reasons I'm told is because they need to print confidential documents that their office-mates can't see. Well, here is a walk-through explaining how to have the printer hold your job until you enter a PIN to release the job.

Back in the day, a special printer hard drive was required as an accessory to allow job storage at the printer. Now, the printers are making use of their RAM and can hold the job without any accessories. Important note: Since stored print jobs are stored in the RAM, they will not persist through a power cycle.

Both of the latest models that we've been purchasing, the HP Color LaserJet 4700 and the HP LaserJet 4015, have this capability and the process is nearly identical for the two models though these steps may need minor modification for other printer brands or models.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: How to Hold a Confidential Print Job at a Shared Printer

PowerPoint Print Out Cuts Off Notes and Blanks Slides

Jason — Thu, 06 May 2010 12:08:12 +0000

I had an interesting case come across my desk earlier this week involving PowerPoint. It seemed this person wanted to print out the slides along with the notes that they had made. Actually, it gets a little more complicated than that. High-ranking administrator had originally created the PowerPoint and put notes along with each of the slides. After that, the slides were handed off to the person standing across from my desk who would be translating the presentation to Chinese. She then translated the notes in the PowerPoint slide to Chinese and added them alongside the original notes.

Now, it was just a matter of printing off the slides along with the notes, which is easy enough to do. You just go to the Office button and select Print. When you choose the final details of your print, under 'Print what:' you just choose Notes Pages and that would be exactly what my user wants.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out quite like that. The first slide was the title had no notes and printed fine. The second slide had notes in English and Chinese but also printed correctly. The third slide lost the image of the slide and let the notes continue running off the left edge of the paper without word wrap. The rest of the slides looked like the third slide and would not correctly serve their purpose.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: PowerPoint Print Out Cuts Off Notes and Blanks Slides

McAfee Nukes Windows XP Computers World-Wide

Jason — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:06:00 +0000

McAfee's definitions for today, 5958 dated April 21st, has a false positive that is detrimentally affecting computers around the world. The definitions are detecting C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe as W32/Wecorl.a virus. Svchost.exe, as you may be aware is a critical Windows files that is required for network/Internet communication to work.
More info as the story breaks and I have a second to sit down.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: McAfee Nukes Windows XP Computers World-Wide

Sounds of a Dying Hard Drive

Jason — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:48:58 +0000

I have a co-worker who is very... skilled at duplicating the sounds that a dying hard drive makes. He might leave the office to respond to a request and return with an "errrnnnt-Kssh! errrnnnt-Kssh!" sound to explain the source of the problem: a failing hard drive. This skill was honed a couple years back when we had about 300 hard drives in Dell's that all failed within 2 months of each other and then 50% of the refurbished replacement drives also failed. (Ah... the ol' IBM DeathStars) Without going through such a traumatic, time-wasting experience you can also learn the sounds of a failing hard drive for diagnostic purposes and a cue to make sure your backups are current ASAP through a website.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Sounds of a Dying Hard Drive

Ask 404TS: What’s up with “Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?” dialogs?

Jason — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:07:11 +0000

An interesting question has been posed on the 404 Tech Support forums asking about those pop-up dialogs you might receive every once in a while that start with "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?". The question also asks, "Are there any dangers related to this? Will it install malware? Is there a way to block it automatically?" These are very good questions that we should all be pondering for security reasons. Let me share with you what my experience and research can tell about these somewhat intruisive, but potentially very helpful dialog boxes.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Ask 404TS: What’s up with “Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?” dialogs?

How to File a CAN-SPAM Complaint with the FTC

Jason — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:01:01 +0000

After continuing to receive additional spam daily through the same campaign that I posted here a week ago, I decided it was time to escalate things. It became apparent that the Unsubscribe link on these e-mail messages wasn't doing anything. If the FTC enforced the CAN-SPAM Act this would be the proper venue and for now it's about the only action that we can take.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: How to File a CAN-SPAM Complaint with the FTC

XP Internet Security 2010 – An Ongoing Current Attack

Jason — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:42:00 +0000

It appears there is a malvertisement (malware being delivered through website ads) attack campaign in full force and after today I'd guess it's on the up-swing. After having a number of people in separate physical locations report the exact same malware installed on their machine, things start looking bad. I'm never one for jumping to trends and hopping to conclusions, but I know what makes for a bad day. XP Internet Security 2010 is a Fake AntiVirus that will get installed on your machine and start reporting infections and trying to get you to buy it. (It's a scam! Don't give them any money!) The worst thing, however, is that the malware tools currently aren't detecting it or able to remove the infection.

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: XP Internet Security 2010 – An Ongoing Current Attack

Post Virus Clean Up – .EXE Files Stop Working

Jason — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 05:11:57 +0000

After cleaning up a virus today for one of my users, I noticed an odd remaining side effect: No executables would successfully launch. This included Explorer.exe under the user's account that got infected, so after they would login it would just sit there at a blank screen. You could press Ctrl+Alt+Del to launch the Task Manager, but trying to run any executable would result in a message like this:Windows cannot open this file: File: notepad.exe

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: Post Virus Clean Up – .EXE Files Stop Working

From Parts to PC – A Guide to Building a Computer in 25 Easy Steps

Jason — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:18:04 +0000

After years of working with computers: taking out and replacing components, opening them up, upgrading them, and generally being comfortable inside them, I built my first PC years ago. I'm mostly self-taught on building computers, but I've got a number of from-scratch computers under my belt now and thinking about it, once you have the parts it's pretty straight forward. This list is procedural memories from my mind, so feel free to add to this list any corrections or best practices that you have.

These steps will work well once you have your parts obtained. For good hardware metrics and recommendations, I suggest you stop over at Tom's Hardware. To buy your components, I recommend NewEgg. If you have specific questions, you should refer to the documentation that comes with your components, particularly the motherboard manual. Without further interruption, here are 25 steps to building your computer:

This is an excerpt of an article from 404 Tech Support. Read the full article here: From Parts to PC – A Guide to Building a Computer in 25 Easy Steps