Advice

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Facebook email hack

My wife turned to me and told me she’d gotten a weird message from my aunt that she didn’t know what to do with. It read;

“Hi….I actually got another friend request from you which I ignored so you may want to check your account. Hold your finger on the message until the forward button appears…then hit forward and all the people you want to forward too….I had to do the people individually. PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT A NEW friendship FROM ME AT THIS TIME.”

You wern’t hacked. It never happened. Your friend didn’t send this and the message is bogus. Don’t do what it says. Don’t forward it, don’t copy and paste, just delete. And while you’re at it, don’t accept new request from people on your friends list already.

If you’re still worried though, change that FB password. Frequent changes and complex passwords are your best defense against this kind of thing!

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Fix Black Screen at boot, continual restarts, or stuck at windows logo

Problem:

Fix Black Screen at boot, continual restarts, or stuck at windows logo

Solution:

This has worked for me in a number of cases where Windows will not boot. If the file system becomes corrupt from something like a virus issue this write a new boot sector to the system partition or repair the MBR.

First you will need to boot into windows Windows recovery console
If there is an administrator password you will need this, if not it can be cleared with an offline password recovery disk. (UBCD, or there are standalone ones as well)
Once the console is loaded you have to choose the installation you wish to repair.

At the prompt type “fixboot” to rewrite a new boot sector to the drive.

After this completes type “fixmbr” to repair the MBR this may be redundant but it doesnt hurt.

Finally you can also re-add the the installations of Windows to the boot.ini file by running the command “bootcfg /rebuild” this automatically scans the drive for installs and adds them to the file.

You can then reboot and see if this fixed your issue.
If you are still having problems or if recovery console does not see the installation run “chkdsk /r”, it never hurts.

 

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

server reboot – Restart mobile mail and OWA

 

Problem:

Whenever the server reboots a process starts before the default website can start casuing mobile mail and OWA to not function.

Solution:

To restart default website in IIS right click task manager, click show processes from all users, end EdgeTransport.exe process, open “Internet Information Services (IIS)”, tree down experit-2k11sbs > sites > default website, on the right hand side where it says manage website click start, if restart and stop become highlighted, you have started the website which controls OWA and mobile mail.

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Mail error “Your organization does not allow external forwarding”

Some Microsoft 365 accounts default to block automatic email forwarding as part of their outbound spam protection. If external forwarding is disabled for your Microsoft 365 account, you will see a specific bounce message in your inbox at Microsoft 365 after attempting to set up forwarding to Help Scout. The text of the bounce will include this line:

550 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding. Please contact your administrator for further assistance. AS(7555)

 

You may choose to enable automatic forwarding for all mailboxes in your Microsoft 365 account, or enable it only for the mailboxes you’re forwarding to Help Scout. Choose the option that is best according to your organization’s security policies.

Note: The menus and options you see in your Microsoft 365 account may vary depending on several factors, including the level of service you have with Microsoft or if you purchased Microsoft 365 through a reseller. Reach out to your reseller or Microsoft support if you are unable to follow the directions here.

Enable Automatic External Forwarding for All Mailboxes

1
Log in to your Office 365 Security & Compliance portal for Microsoft 365 and choose Threat management > Anti-spam or head directly to the Anti-spam settings page here: https://protection.office.com/antispam
2
Click the down arrow next to Outbound spam filter policy ‎(always ON) and click the Edit policy button.
3
Click the down arrow next to Automatic forwarding, then choose On – Forwarding is enabled from the dropdown. Click Save.
by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

NO USB mouse or keyboard

 

Problem:

You start up and can’t log in or do anything. Many times customers will think thier PC has frozen, but in actuallity it’s just not loading the USB mouse and keyboard drivers on boot (finds new devices but fails the driver install). You can tell this if you see ascreen saver come on or new messages still popping up in the corner.

Solution:

If it’s not finding the driver, quick solution is to point the search to the WindowsInf folder (browse my computer for drivers). This should at least get you functionality.

Setup searches a predefined path on the drive, looking in .inf files to find the best match for the Plug and Play ID of the device. This path is defined in the following registry location and is set to %SystemRoot%Inf by default:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionDevicePath: REG_EXPAND_SZ:%SystemRoot%Inf

Adding an entry with the actuall path may solve the problem her. Don’t delete the current path thoguh, add a ; and then type the path
; C:windowsinf

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Modify the registry to deactivate Windows

 

Problem:

The windows activation windows keeps poping up even  though windows says it’s been activated. This is frequently caused by someone using an activation crack, or by the wpa.dbl and wpa.bak files courrupting. Sometimes also happens after a repair installation of windows.

Before we can legitimatly (re)activate windows we first must de-activate it.

Solution:

In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Expand SOFTWARE, and then expand Microsoft.
Expand Windows NT, and then expand CurrentVersion.
Under CurrentVersion, click WPAEvents.
In the right pane (topic area) of Registry Editor, right-click OOBETimer, and then click Modify.
Click to put the pointer in the Value data box. Then, modify any character that appears in the Value data box.
Click OK.

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

MTU Test

 

Problem:

How to check optimal WAN MTU settings.

Solution:

The primary reason is that in most if not all cases if you send packets at 1500 they will need to be fragmented resulting in degradation of performance. I would not reccomend changing the MTU settings without first checking the optimal settings for your environment, do not just take the word of your ISP, they are making a generalized statement that covers the masses, it is not a total optomization.

Checking is easy to do. First make sure that your MTU setting is in fact 1500 or the test is compromised and will result in a number that is too low.

The command is to see the largest packet is “ping -f -l XXXX www.XXX.com” -f -l forces the ping packet size to be what you specify, any size to lage returns a reply that the packet needed to be fragmented.

-l is a lowwercase L
XXXX is mtu speeds start at 1500 and decrease in multiples of 10 (1500, 1490, 1480 etc…) until you get a ping result, then increase in multiples of 1 until you again get the reply that the packets needed to be fragmented. The highest numbet that did not have to be fragmented is your highest optimal number. I would actually suggest decreasing it by 2. So if 1464 is the highest you could send without fragmentation set the MTU to 1462.

and XXX is a website of your choosing.

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Grime Fighter keeps windows from booting

 

Problem:

Power on windows, but Avast Grime fighter immediately loads and cause a black scren – never moves farther than that. To make matters worse, there is no entry in the BIOS for this boot option.

Solution:

If your system runs Windows 8 or 8.1, please try this:

Boot to a Windows CD. You may have to disable Secure boot or mess wit UEFI settings in the bios to do this. As lon as the CD is the first boot device, it should allow you to bypass Grimefighter.

Select “Advanced options” -> “Troubleshoot” -> “Advanced Options” -> “Command Prompt”

Login to your Windows account if it prompts you

In the command prompt type (without the quotes)  “bootrec /fixboot”  and hit ENTER

Then type “exit” and hit ENTER

Select “Turn off your PC”

Power on the PC with the power button

If the above “bootrec /fixboot” command doesn’t work for you, you can remove the Grimefighter boot entry manually by booting back to the command prompt and doing this:

run “bcdedit /enum firmware”

Scroll up and look for the Windows Boot Manager entry with a description of Avast! Grimefighter

There will be an identifier number for this entry, it will be a random string of numbers like {233a9f91-efd8-4771-a9c7-5f4ecc823458}

Hightlight the identifier, including the curly braces, this will copy the identifier, so you can paste it into the next command, to paste after highlighting, you hit the right mouse key

Scroll back down so you can run another command

To delete the Grimefighter entry run “bcdedit /delete {233a9f91-efd8-4771-a9c7-5f4ecc823458}” using the identifier you have copied for your Grimefighter entry instead of my example one, be very careful here and make sure the identifier you delete is the one for Grimefighter, double check it before hitting ENTER

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Laserjet p4015 constantly ramps up but dosen’t print

 

Problem:

When a print job is sent to the printer, the printer will display processing job on the control panel, and will continually ramp up and down attempting to print the job. After several minutes the printer will return to ready without posting any error messages. Occasionally, after several minutes the print job will print

Solution:

This usually isn’t a roller problem as the printer WILL pick up the paper, it just takes a few minuets, but it never hurts to check. Next check the firmware. If it’s older than 04.060.7, then it is causing a fault in the fuser. This is a documented problem and the fuser needs to be replaced. In addition, the firmware needs to be upgraded to version 04.060.7 or higher to prevent this error from recurring. You can download an executable firmware upgrade utility from  :

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3558884&prodTypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=3558793&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=54

Don’t forget to update the firmware to the latest version, if you haven’t already done it, to prevent the new fuser failing with the same fault.

by Matthew Skelly Matthew Skelly No Comments

Internet Explorer will not start

Problem:

Internet Explorer will not start, the hourglass goes around once and nothing happens, but in Task Manager you can see the process going

Solution:

One of two things is happening; Either you havea corrupted installation, or something is interfearing with the application.

1. Try to run IE in safe mode with add-ons disabled. If this works, you have an add-on crashing the app. Go to Internet Options, Programs, Manage add-ons and start disabling add-on programs untill you find the one causing the problem.

2. Revert IE to defaults. Internet Options, advanced, and start reseting from here. This may not fully solve the problem however. If there is an outside ap conflicting with IE, you may be able to log on once and then not again. Make sure to test repeatedly.

3.Uninstall Google Desktop. Google Desktop has know issues with IE and will sometimes cause it to not start.

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