ForensiT’s Transwiz

I just can’t use Transwiz.  I don’t know why the concept is easy enough and I love Profwiz, but Transwiz fails 50% of the time for me.  Some problem with files it tries to transfer.  Oh?  You have no idea what I’m talking about do you?  I should explain.

ForensiT’s Transwiz is suppose to compress a user’s profile so that it can be moved to a new PC.  Transwiz takes the entire Windows profile so everything looks virtually the same for the user on a new PC.  The compressing of the data seems to work fine but when I put it on the new PC Transwiz will error out 50% of the time.  Coping some profiles can take a long time if they have a lot of data and I don’t have time for it to fail 50% of the time.

I have no idea what the problem is.  It could be failing on a particular type of file.  Luckily (ingenuously) the compressed profile is just a ZIP file so I can get the data out but for me its just easier to use a simple .bat file I created and just get the important stuff.

However I can highly recommend Profwiz.  It’s designed to move one profile to a new profile within the same PC.  We used it at the day job to migrate all of the users to a domain.  Worked great.

http://www.forensit.com

Technorati Tags: Forensit, profwiz, transfer Windows profile, transwiz

Dial2Do

I may stop using Jott.  Lately I’ve been using Dial2Do and I really like the service.  Jott was/is great.  I was even happy they switched to a premium service and ad based model so they can stay in business.  I used Jott so infrequently it wasn’t too bad to go to jott.com to receive my note.

Dial2Do is a very similar service.  However I believe that Jott is using strictly humans to transcribe messages and Dial2Do uses machine and human transcription.  Which I hope translates into keeping basic features free and a cheaper premium model.

At any rate Dial2Do has integration with lots of other services including one of my favorites Sandy and Twitter.  It will even read my twitter or email messages to me using a computer voice.  Also with Twitter I can say reply while listening to a tweet and record a response.  I can go through my history at dial2do.com and listen to my recordings.  And I can see my actually note in the email Dial2Do sends me.  Sorry Jott, turns out that is more important than I originally thought.

Technorati Tags: dial2do, jott, voice to text, web 2.0

Yellow Text in Outlook

One of my users had a problem where every time she responded to certain emails her response would be in yellow. I’ve seen this a couple of times in my career and it always has to do with a Outlook Theme. In most cases it’s when using an older version of Outlook like 2000.

Anyway it’s an easy fix. First tell the person sending the mail to stop using Themes. Themes are a vile disgusting part of email that I wish never happened. Ok so they aren’t that bad and in most cases you can’t just go spouting off email etiquette. A simple change in Outlook on the receiver’s side should fix the issue.

In Outlook:

Go to Tools | Options | Mail Format tab | Fonts | select “Use my font when replying to and forwarding messages”.

Alternatively one could pick “Always use my fonts”

That should do it. Instead of using the yellow stationary font Outlook will use whatever fonts the user has set, regardless of what stationary the sender is using.

Technorati Tags: outlook, yellow text

Problems opening files in Outlook 2000.

If you are having problems opening files in Outlook make sure to delete the Outlook Secure Temporary Files.  They can be a pain to find however.  The directory that holds them in Outlook 2000 & 2003 is:

C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK”followed by numbers”

The OLK will be followed by a series of numbers.  The only problem is you might not see the OLK directory and searching for it doesn’t work.  Revealing Hidden files won’t work either.  In that case the only way to get to it is to find out what the exact OLK directory name is and type it in manually.

For instance the one I worked on today was just …\OLK5.  I found it by opening the users email and finding a file they had previously been able to open.  In this case an Excel file.  Once opened I went to File | Save as and took a look at the folder it was being saved to.  Anyone know of an easier way to do that?  See update below.

Outlook 2007 keeps the same files here:

C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\”some string of characters”

And Vista moves them to:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\

Update: There is an easier way to find out where the Outlook Secure Temp Folder is stored (\OLK*).  Run regedit, click Edit | Find, and search for:  OutlookSecureTempFolder.  The entry in that key will be the path to the OLK* folder.  Just copy it and paste it in Explorer.

Technorati Tags: olk, opening files outlook, outlook, outlook secure temp folder, OutlookSecureTempFolder

Ordering Microsoft Replacement Disks

This is just a quick note for reference.  Often I have to have client call Microsoft to get replacement disks for a variety of Microsoft software.  From Microsoft’s site:

Also, to obtain a replacement disk, telephone the Microsoft Order Desk at (800) 360-7561, and request a replacement for your damaged disk. If you are outside the United States, contact the Microsoft subsidiary for your area.

Supposedly this costs between $10 - $25 depending on what you need.  Also ownership has to be proven so make sure you register that software.

Technorati Tags: microsoft order desk, replacement disks

Proof that Microsoft works for the Devil.

I always thought that Microsoft might be secretly pursuing the Devil’s agenda.  All those conspiricy nuts are right, and I have the proof.

I was signing up for a Windows Live account and I got this.

Whew I’m glad I caught it before completing the registration.  Who knows what bad things might have befallen me.  Notice how the 666 is carefully inserted into the middle so as not to draw attention?  The middle six being lower then the rest seem very menacing as well.  Surely if they weren’t working for the Devil they would have algorithms to avoid the combination of 3 sixes in a row.

Technorati Tags: 666, bill gates, devil, microsoft

Segate’s MaxBlast

Update:  Turns out MaxBlast only works for Seagate or Maxtor drives.  So if you have one of those then get your free copy of Acronis True Image.

So Seagate offers a drive image tool called MaxBlast 5 for free.  The really great thing is it’s powered by Acronis.  Acronis has some great Drive Imagining software but you have to pay for it.  With MaxBlast I get almost everything I could ever want for individual use and it’s completely free.  I would need something more robust for Enterprise usage.

Get MaxBlast here:  http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=MaxBlast_5&vgnextoid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Technorati Tags: acronis, backup, drive backup, drive imaging, max blast, seagate

15 Online Tools

Some great stuff here for Techs.  Stuff Like:

• dll-files.com:  a library of dll files
• Router Password:  Default router password database
• IP Tools:  a bunch of network tools

http://www.emergingtechs.com/posts/15-online-tools-you-will-come-love-tech/

Technorati Tags: online tools, Software

Auto Authenticating Firefox with iPrism

The iPrism instructional videos explain how to do this but for a quick reference just follow these instructions:

1. Open Firefox.
2. Type about:config in the URL bar.
3. In the Filter box type:  uris
4. There will be three entries.
5. Double click the first entry.
6. In the pop up box, enter the hostname or IP address of the iPrism.
7. Repeat step 5 & 6 for each of the entries.

Technorati Tags: firefox, firefox settings for iprism, iprism

This is how I dual. (aka. The Way I Dual Booted to XP on a Vista machine)

Ok so I took some short cuts.  I wouldn’t say this is the best way to do this but I was desperate so I didn’t care too much.  Besides it all worked out in the end.

I wanted to dual boot to XP so I could play games.  I get about 10-15 frames per second better on Team Fortress 2 in XP than I do in Vista.  For months I tired and the problem I had was I couldn’t use the Vista disk manager to shrink the Vista partition enough.  As you can see that’s only about 1GB of space which is not enough for XP and games.

I tried a variety of defragmenters to see if that would give me more space.  I also tried deleting all my temp files and the pagefile because supposedly those are what prevent the disk manager from shrinking the partition.  None of that worked so eventually I turned to Gparted.  I was pretty sure this would break my Vista installation and I was right.  I used Gparted to shrink the Vista partition by 15GBs and the next time I booted I went into Vista’s startup recovery.

Here’s the cool thing, Vista’s Startup Recovery searched and repaired errors for about 20 minutes, found all the problems with the installation and set it back straight.  I thought for sure I was up the creek because I didn’t have an install disk.  All I did have was Vista’s repair disk.  However on the next boot it did a disk check, found no errors, rebooted and loaded up Vista minus 15GB of space.

Now I got to work installing XP.  That went just as expected.  I booted to the XP install disk, installed XP in the 15GB of unpartitioned space and it booted right up when I was done.  At this point I realized it would’ve been a good idea to get the XP drivers for my laptop ahead of time.  My network card didn’t even come up.  Luckily I knew where the Vista drivers were stored and that worked for my network card (nothing else).  So I was able to get online at dell.com and download all the other drivers I needed.

So now I have a laptop that boots into XP.  I booted to Vista Repair Disk I had and choose Startup Repair.  That reset it to boot into Vista.  Once I was in Vista again I used EasyBCD to create another boot entry.  When I was in EasyBCD I went to Add/Remove Entries choose the drive letter of the XP install, choose Windows NT/2K/XP/2k3, gave it a name, clicked Add Entry, and then save.

I got luckily that Vista’s Startup Recovery was able to piece the drive back together after using Gparted, but if you don’t have a lot on your Vista machine see if it works for you.  Just make sure you have a recovery disk or a disk image.  It’s a heck of a lot less time consuming than trying to defragment and rearrange your drive so you can use Vista partition shrink tool.  It seems counter intuitive that Microsoft would finally give a built in system for shrinking a drive just to make it hard to shrink a Vista partition because of the placement of important files.  But that’s exactly what happened (I think?).

I know I didn’t got into a lot of detail here.  There are plenty of tutorials on how to do this.  Most recommend using the Vista Disk Manager to shrink the volume.  I’m not going to list the tutorial I followed because it was the worst website I’ve every seen.  Not that it wasn’t pretty but because it took forever to load and crashed Firefox a bunch of times.  If anyone needs help or wants the tutorial I referenced then leave a comment and I’ll hook you up.  With that said use this method at your own risk and I’m not liable for any data loss or damages.  Sincerely, The Nite Tech.

Links:
Gparted:  http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
EasyBCD:  http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Technorati Tags: dual boot vista, dual boot xp, dual boot xp on vista