This applies if this is true to you:
*it is Windows XP/Windows 7
*A Version of Trend Micro OfficeScan, probably 10 or above
*Computer is offline, or not connected to network
*You don’t know the uninstall / unload password
*the computer was part of your domain, but is no longerTrend Micro makes a great product, so great in fact that’s it’s near impossible to crack uninstall the product if you forgot the uninstaller key.This is generally an easy thing to do if you access to the Trend Micro admin console. Of course, that would be too easy. My case involved a computer from a company that was bought out, had the software installed and needed our company’s AV installed.Go to the Trend Micro Office Scan Client directory; usually: C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\OfficeScan Client\Locate and open Ofcscan.ini with notepad (or any other text editor).
look for the
[INI_CLIENT_SECTION]
change the value of the Uninstall_Pwd to: !CRYPT!523F7DC2E525044E2800FCDEA7E5D78B70C0A4165387060525E3EE66D5D2D2F460EA361E712B5F871FD473C7A6C
and change the value of Unload_Pwd to: !CRYPT!523F7DC2E525044E2800FCDEA7E5D78B70C0A4165387060525E3EE66D5D2D2F460EA361E712B5F871FD473C7A6C
save and close the file.
Unload officescan by right clicking the icon on the bottom dock and choosing ‘unload’.
for the password, enter: “trendmicro” (without the quotes).
You can now uninstall the program with the same password!
If your computer is part of a Windows Domain, you will likely see this screen staring at you first thing in the morning:
Most Windows domain computers offer the basic security principles in place, such as the now famous Press CTRL +ALT+DEL screen you’re familiar with.
The screen itself is meant as a security measure to deter humans and bots alike from logging in, as the keys are strategically placed so they’re not pressed accidentally.
If you’re not part of a domain, but would like the added security that CTRL+ALT+DEL offers, you can do it with a few simple steps:
1. From the start menu, type “netplwiz”
2. Click the Advanced tab, and in the Secure Logon section, place a checkmark on “Require users to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete”
3. Hit Apply, and OK. And log off to see the changes!
This set of instructions is a bit misleading. Misleading if you have the following set of circumstances:
-Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 – 2010 to import the files into
-Windows 7, or any Windows platform
These instructions ask you export your contacts from your android phone using:
people->options->import/Export to SD Card
You get one singular .VCF file for your troubles. Once you get that .VCF file onto your computer it’s not a simple task of dragging it to your outlook. Outlook only imports one contact from that .VCF file into your contacts.
Here’s the thing: the Android phone converts all your contacts into one really big .VCF file. That one file has multiple contacts inside – Microsoft office only imports the first entry it sees.
Microsoft Outlook can only import .VCF’s, or rather only sees .VCFs as using the <STARTVCF> and <ENDVCF> headers in the file. Once it sees the first <ENDVCF> it stops importing. How incredibly novel.
Here’s the trick: you need to convert the .VCF file into a .CSV. Happily, there’s a solution online. The link will upload the file for you and output it into a .CSV file.
When you import into Outlook, choose file->import from a file. And you map the fields so it all makes sense.
There’s just some things you can’t copy from a Windows explorer pane. The other night I was trying to copy and paste the list of Windows KB updates from my computer. As is with some windows panes, it’s actually a table built from a SQL query a la Windows that has no copy/paste functionality.
A solution exists in free 3rd party software: Nirsoft, a treasure trove of Windows executable files that require no installation offers SysExporter.
As the name of the software implies, it can lift the text off any text based program you see on your screen. I happily could copy and paste the KB names of the Windows updates I wanted to manually download into an Excel sheet and was on my way.
Ever wonder what you googled a long, long time ago?
If you’ve signed up for a google account, you have that opportunity. I was curious as to what kind of dirt Google had on me, and it’s simple to check on.
From the google home page, sign in. Click on Account:
Under Services, click “Go to web history”
And lo and behold, every search you’ve ever done on Google since you created your google account.
How to keep off Google radar? Sign out of your google account before you search for whatever you’re not supposed to be searching for. And use a different browser in privacy mode: all modern browsers have that feature.
Internet Explorer has come long way since version 6, the super buggy security nightmare. Being a free browser it wasn’t considered edgy or avante garde enough for most IT geeks tastes. Most of you probably made the jump to Mozilla Firefox and never looked back.
As most IT savvy consumers, IT administrators and professionals would agree; none would be caught dead using a built in browser. Because there’s so much it can’t do compared to the free browsers out there.
So I’m here to point out a few things about Internet Explorer that most folks gloss over:
Most companies use IE because it can be customized from a GPO (Group Policy Object) at the domain level. This means custom safe zones, ability to pop in proxy servers, and control over who can install active X components. It’s no surprise that IE is the go to browser for business, it offers customization and tracking. What company doesn’t want that?
2. Most web development firms use IE as their display of choice.
Web firms and design companies also understand that most businesses use IE, which means they have to program a friendly website that’s IE compatible. Mozilla Firefox, even offers a built in “IE tab” emulator for PC’s. Some code simply will not compile nicely with other browsers, so you’re back to IE when you want to see how a website is supposed to be natively displayed.
3. There’s more security updates for IE than any other browser.
Opera, Firefox, Chrome (and derivatives) and sometimes Safari are months behind when it comes to security updates and exploits. Internet Explorer certainly isn’t bulletproof, but it offers built in updates with the Windows operating system updates; so you get to kill two birds with one stone.
4. There’s quite a bit of functionality behind IE
Internet Explorer has a nice tab feature that’s color coded: with each new tab opened under a ‘parent’ tab, the child tabs are color coded so you know which tab is related. Pretty cool? How about the ability to pin Favicons to your taskbar?
HTML5 promises to do many things; among them is replacing Adobe’s flash player. HTML5 also can do a multitude of other things such as enable DirectX video acceleration and full text rendering. Javascripting and and CSS are and will be faster than the free browsers. IE is embracing modern web standards, and is helping to make the internet a prettier place to be.
What does this mean to you? Internet Explorer was once the poor man’s choice for browsers – you want something for business with built in support for such things such as Citrix Xenapp clients, VPN Active X runtimes, Java integration and web design comfort, IE is your best bet.
If you’re in the IT industry, there’s a certain expectation of you. This expectation trickles down to all the folks of a company, and evetually the questions start to surface. At one point, I’m sure I was even guilty of these things, assuming my IT administrator knew what to do. But at the end of the day, I’m just another Joe, just like you. And I’m not a genius. But I have to act like one sometimes.
Knowing every little facet of every software product. EVER made.
This one is annoying because some client will walk up to me, start blabbering about why their real player files won’t convert properly into iTunes, then ask me to convert those files for them. Usually for free, because, “hey, this is the IT guy, he probably knows what I’m talking about”. This isn’t the case folks. I don’t use the same software as everyone, in fact I like using software that’s easy to manage, easy to understand and doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles. In other words, I don’t obfuscate matters by getting some mundane software that requires a new plugin for every file, or visualization feature. And there’s no way I could understand why or what you’re doing with whatever freeware you’ve downloaded online will do with your machine, or how it will perform with your other programs. Seriously, most reputable freeware downloads offer a Q+A section, or a forum, or a ‘How To’ portion of their website, dedicated to click-happy people. This leads back to “If you don’t know, what makes you think I do?”
Backups happen MAGICALLY
I can get my word doc’s off this, right?
Situation: you create a word document on the server at 8:00AM. You nuke it at 8:30PM because you didn’t like it. You come to me at 9:00AM asking me to restore it. This is where my frustration begins, because people can’t seem to fathom the idea that Backups and storage space is somewhat limited. There are times when backups happen, say at night when things are slow or when you’re supposedly not working. Shadow copy is an option, and for the most part I can get what you need, but c’mon. It’s not like I have my finger precariously hovering over a button marked ‘restore’.
Not understanding Scope of IT contract
Where’s the section for hookers and blow?
It’s Sunday night, you get a virus pop up onto your computer. You call your IT guy in a panic. You describe the situation in great detail, something akin to: I was innocently surfing this particular website with slave Leia costumes when BAM! You just downloaded a virus. Now you can’t go onto Ebay to check hockey ticket prices because your IE only has pop ups instead of the usual dicking around you do. After the lengthy explanation, I log into your Antivirus server and notice there’s no new infections on your work machine. I do a lengthy check, update dictionaries, run a malware scanner in the background and you’re still okay. It is around this point that you mention this is your home computer. I somehow gather the strength to bite the insides of my lips in silent rage and calmly tell you that just because you do work on your home computer, it does not mean that I am, in any way, an adminstrator of your home media machine. There is a very clear example I want to use: If your Ford car breaks down, do you take it into the Chevrolet dealership and demand they fix it for free?
Using your gray matter effectively
“Please push all buttons at once”
It’s no secret that some people are just a little more gifted than others. At one point in time I seriously thought the ‘lights out’ conversation between a support guy and a less than intelligent lady was false. Boy was I wrong. If something isn’t working properly, or isn’t starting like it usually does, do a little detective work. It certain saves the time it takes for me to respond, by coming down and turning on your fucking monitor or hitting the red button on your power bar. Just little things like that, or if your mouse isn’t working, try plugging it back in.
Expecting change to happen instantaneously
Is it hammertime yet?
Machines are built to do one thing: take instructions. But that instruction set is bogged down by many contraints: such as availability of memory and hard disk space. Clicking a thousand times in the same ‘OKAY’ box doesn’t help. When your screen doesn’t refresh and dragging a window creates a ghost image, what else do you do? You panic. If you bothered to look at your task manager and found out that itunes was chewing through all your memory, you’d realize if you stopped a few programs you’d actually be able to get some work done. Just give your computer a minute to catch up; take this moment to stare outside or refocus your eyes on something that’s not refreshing every .05 of a milisecond.
If you’re a Chrome user like me, beware of the latest Google Chrome update preceeding 16.0.912.63. This version has a problem with the way the database is sorting through web traffic. It was putting over 20 GB of data of .sst files in
SST files from my experience is like a developer’s placeholder file. Something that acts like cache and gets destroyed as soon as you’re done with it. However, in this case the file never gets destroyed and actually multiplies.
Personally I didn’t even notice until my antivirus seemed like it was stuck in the same directory for over 4 hours. It was then that I noticed the size it was chewing up on my hard drive.
Here’s what didn’t work:
1. Uninstalling – even removing the registry keys with Revo uninstaller for 64 bit machines
2. removing Google sync services and re-applying as I figured it was trying to grab my bookmarks and history
3. Moving the directory elsewhere -it’s not the size of the volume that’ the problem it’s the number of files. Each one being around 2KB, it calculated it would take close to 8 hours to move.
Here’s what did work:
1. Uninstalling Google Chrome
2. Manually deleting the files via an elevated command line (akin to del *.sst)
It does take some time, mine was little more than 4 hours on a Solid State Drive, but it did all eventually disappear. On the new Chrome releases it appears okay. So hopefully this fix saves your bacon and hard disk space.
It would so seem the writing is on the wall for the once cutting edge company. I could cite numerous times the company tried to climb out of the hole, only to fail hilariously. But I’m not. I’m here to actually say some good things about the company.
I”m certainly not a life long blackberry user. I only use one because the company I work for provides one to us at no additional cost. It’s not a terrible phone, but it’s lacking in a few areas that the ‘other’ guys are pioneering.
RIM put smart phones on the market, and at one point were the go-to guys for mobile communications for business; at a time when data on phones was more of a novelty, they took the idea and gave the power to the masses. Data for Blackberry unfortunately only meant emails and eschewed things like texting in favor of updating their Blackberry Email Server for the I.T Manager at all the small to enterprise level companies.
RIM also put Canada on the map as a tech leader – save for Nortel’s stock busting turns at technology.
Their service offering for government and legistative bodies was great (back then) as well. Offering management of devices that really no one understood was a blessing – the ability to brick a device with a keystroke was like a wand of power. RIM was paving the road for future mobile technologies.
Then Apple came around with something that changed the face of mobile tech forever. A smart, saavy phone that gave the user something Blackberry never could: an enjoyable experience. Then Blackberry tried to do something it had never done before either: Adapt to a market that was changing too quickly, that was so radically different from what their phones could do, and put more power to the user, than it did the Administrator.
Unfortunately, RIM can’t handle change all that well. So that’s where we are today; A former giant that’s making last minute plays in an attempt to save itself from a marketplace it once dominated.
If it weren’t for Apple making it’s venture into Blackberry’s territory, we’d all be having a very different conversation right now.
Digital media is difficult to manage on the best of days. Organizing it in whatever format you decide to store, be it a Windoze box, a linux distro, or even a Macintosh is all your choice.
But what I’m asking for is how you play your files? The new de-facto standard seems to be itunes. Now, itunes has become the standard for mainly one reason: ipods and iphones automatically open that particular application because they were designed to work together. And because the parent company Apple likes it when their hardware and software talk with each other.
What everyone doesn’t realize is this: itunes eats up memory. LOTS of memory. When you think it’s just playing your songs, it’s doing other stuff in the background: if you’re using a smart playlist, it’s categorizing all other songs that fit whatever particular mood music you’re listening to. It’s caching all itunes store information in the background, putting up banner ads suited for you, checking and re-checking DRM purchases. It’s doing all this even when you put it into mini-player mode.
Here’s a solution: Use Winamp. I never stopped using this thing since my University days because it was free, and my ancient PC could still run it with little to no problems. And I always like the small footprint, it could sit at the very top of my screen taking up only a few pixels, yet managed to place as much useful information as a good old fashioned CD player could – with some added bonuses when you put the playlist beside it.
And there’s some really good content on the Winamp startup wizard; the store while lacking some features we’ve all grown accustomed to has the basic packages you’re looking for: including some podcast features!
So rage against the machine, find your old music roots in Winamp and take back that extra Gig of memory and play your music with something that’s small, easy to use and has more features today than most other crappy music players.
Here’s a quick handy pro/con list for anyone that doesn’t want to read the top 6 paragraphs:
Itunes
Winamp
Ipod / Iphone support
Yes
Some versions support it
Average memory usage
1.0 GB – 1.8 GB
Less than 10 MB
Playlists
Yes
Yes
Works on mobile devices
All IOS (naturally)
*All Droid phones
Wide Range of codecs
Yes (kinda)
Check out the forums – almost unlimited
Customizable?
Kinda
You betcha – Themes ahoy!
Video playback
Yes
Yes
Size of installer
170 MB + growing each update
10MB for full features, < 5MB for most basic pack
Annoying update engine?
Yes
Yes
Still better than RealPlayer?
Yes
Yes
*too bad for us blackberry users. Then again, RIM is in trouble anyway for missing the boat on every consumer front possible.
