Resolve incorrect username on shared file lock

Locked FileRunning a 2003 file server, with files accessed by many across multiple geographical locations can come with its own challenges. One such challenge is that of file locking, especially on documents which don’t yet support true collaborative working. Such as Office 2007 documents.

Last week one of our end users suffered the same issue, documents being left locked open by a user. However, on this occasion the issue was accentuated by the server reporting the incorrect user name of the user with the read/write access. This has been a known issue for some files on our sites for sometime, however Friday I finally managed to get to the bottom of it. (more…)

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Fix: Constant credential prompts in Outlook ’07 using 365

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Today I have mostly been fighting with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and our Office 365 setup, as we are still in the early stages of deployment we have not yet implemented our ADFS servers. Which means we have are experiencing some pretty frustrating issues with Office and authentication.

One machine in particular decided to really test my patience and blankly refused to authenticate, presenting the user with a constant reoccurrence of the “Welcome back to Outlook.Office365” login box.

As it happened the machine had seemed to avoid the installation of several service packs, including Office 2007 Service Pack 3, and also what turned out to be some pretty important KB hot fixes. Leaving me scratching my head for what seemed like a lifetime… That was until today! When I finally managed to find the relevant KB hot fixes and install them manually..

OFFICE VERSION NOTES
Latest version of Office System requirements for Office 2013 and Office 365 ProPlus
Office 2010 with Service Pack 1 Automatic updates:

  • Customers who sign up for Office 365 after February 27, 2013, must apply all automatic updates that were released before December 2012.
  • Customers who signed up for Office 365 before February 27, 2013, must complete the following:
    • By July 1, 2013, apply KB2553248.
    • By April 8, 2014, apply all automatic updates for Office 2010 that were released prior to December 2012.
Office 2007 with Service Pack 3 Automatic updates:

  • Customers who sign up for Office 365 after February 27, 2013, must apply all automatic updates that were released before December 2012.
  • Customers who signed up for Office 365 before February 27, 2013, must complete the following:
    • By October 1, 2013, apply KB2596598.
    • By April 8, 2014, apply all automatic updates for Office 2010 that were released before December 2012.
Office 2003 only through POP and IMAP For more information, see Office 365 will now support POP and IMAP connections to Outlook 2003.
Office for Mac 2011 with Service Pack 3 Mac OS X 10.6 or later is required.
Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.9 Support ends April 9, 2013.

The journey to 365 has been a long and winding one… This particular highlights the importance of ensuring all machines connecting to 365 are bang up to date with Windows and Office updates and service packs… Lesson learnt.

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ComboFix to the rescue

ComboFixMore and more recently I have been given computers with
mass Rootkit infections. Each unable to connect out to the net, performing painfully slowly and most advertising the infection and attempting to spread using the instant messenger network.

Although I always treat these infections on an individual basis and work my way down my predefined tool set, I am finding 1 particular tool is rapidly making its way up my list as the first tool try. ComboFix is a free spyware remover created by sUBs 

“Combofix was designed to scan a computer for known malware, spyware (SurfSideKick, QooLogic, and Look2Me as well as any other combination of the mentioned spyware applications) and remove them.

ComboFix allows the manual removal of spyware infections . It ‘s a specialized effective cleaning tool, which is useful compared to other malware and spyware removers.

After Combofix finished,a report will be created. You can use this report to search and remove infections which are not automatically removed.”
ComboFix is really easy to use even my nana could start fixing these infected PC’s..

How to use combofix:
  • Disable or Close all anti-spyware, anti-malware antivirus real-time protection, which may affect ComboFix.
  • Download the latest version of ComboFix (2.8mb)save to you desktop
  • Close all programs of you computer
  • Double click ComboFix.exe on you desktop
  • When Combofix finished, it will create logs for you. 
Some infected PC’s I have had the pleasure of working on have prevented ComboFix from running, which is also quite easy to get around. Simply rename the ComboFix exe, I tend to use 123.exe. Then try running it again!
I am yet to come across a Rootkit infected PC requiring this and then other tools before it’s back running normally!

Obviously I would still recommend using an AntiVirus application such as McAfee and perform regular updates and scans!

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Vista Snipping Tool on Windows XP

Snipping ToolIf you have had to use Windows Vista for any length of time, you should have come across the ‘Snipping Tool’. The snipping tool is basically an extension to the print screen button. Allowing you to highlight the part of the screen you want to take a shot of.

Some of the features of the tool are:

Free-form Snip.  Draw an irregular line, such as a circle or a triangle, around an object.

Rectangular Snip.  Draw a precise line by dragging the cursor around an object to form a rectangle.

Window Snip.  Select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box, that you want to capture.

Full-screen Snip.  Capture the entire screen when you select this type of snip.

After you capture a snip, it’s automatically copied to the mark-up window, where you can annotate, save, or share the snip.

As a rule the snipping tool is only packaged with Vista, however you can have the Snipping Tool on your XP PC.

How?? I hear you cry…

Simple! Download the Snipping Tool Setup Zip file, once downloaded extract it and copy all of the DLL’s and the EXE to your system32 folder (normally c:windowssystem32). Once complete. double click on the Alky setup file ‘alky_1.1_trunk_032308-000051_xp’. Follow the prompts on screen, ensuring you enter a valid vista serial number.

Once the installation is complete, navigate to the windowssystem32 folder, right click on the snipping tool exe and select ‘Run vista executable’

This will now start the snipping tool and add it to your quick start menu on your start bar.

Handy if you are limited by spec to using XP!

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How-To: Fix STOP 0x0000007B on installations

Recently I was given a Dell to fix. The Dell wouldn’t boot into Windows with ‘Bad_Pool_Caller’. A few hours of head scratching and data backups later. I decided a reinstallation was the only option. So I blew the dust of my XP Pro CD, only to be greeted with another ‘stop’ error on installation! STOP 0x0000007B(0xF78DA63C,0x0000034,0X x0000000,0x0000000

However, this was quite an easy one to fix.

In the Bios there is an option for either RAID Auto/AHCI or RAID Auto/ATA, the setup didn’t seem to like the AHCI option and required switching to ATA before it would work!

1. On start up (Dell logo), press F2 to enter BIOS

2. Expand the “Drives” section

3. Go to “SATA Operation”

4. Change this from “RAID Auto/AHCI” to “RAID Auto/ATA”

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