How to "Repair" a Bad Sector in Windows XP

How to "Repair" a Bad Sector in Windows XP
Press the button.
Select .
Under Hard Disk Drives highlight the disk which you want to scan.
Open the menu and choose
Open the tab.
Click the button.
In earlier version of Microsoft Windows and DOS, this functionality was built into the `scandisk` and `chkdsk` utilities.

Once the bad sector or sectors have been "repaired", continue to back up your hard drive on a regular basis. Hard drives are mechanical devices and all mechanical devices will eventually fail.

Turning Off DNS Caching

Turning Off DNS Caching under Microsoft Windows
If you experience frequent issues with DNS caching under Microsoft Windows, you can disable client-side DNS caching with either of these two commands:

net stop dnscache
sc servername stop dnscache

This will disable DNS caching until the next reboot. To make the change permanent, use the Service Controller tool or the Services tool to set the DNS Client service startup type to Disabled. You can permanently disable DNS Client by following the below steps:

Goto Start and click on Run.
Type Services.msc in the Run command box.
A window listing all the services will popup. Search for a service called DNS Client.
Double click on the listed DNS Client service and click Stop. Similarly, you can restart it by clicking Start.
Tuning DNS Caching under Microsoft Windows
You can modify the behavior of the Microsoft Windows DNS caching algorithm by setting two registry entries in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters registry key.

The MaxCacheTtl represents the maximum time that the results of a DNS lookup will be cached. The default value is 86,400 seconds. If you set this value to 1, DNS entries will only be cashed for a single second.

MaxNegativeCacheTtl represents the maximim time that the results of a failed DNS lookup will be cached. The default value is 900 seconds. If you set this value to 0, failed DNS lookups will not be cached.

How to Flush DNS in Microsoft Windows
In Microsoft Windows, you can use the command ipconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS resolver cache. Open the command prompt and type the following:

C:\>ipconfig /flushdns
Windows IP Configuration
Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

The above command will completely flush the DNS, deleting any incorrect entries too. You can also use the command ipconfig /displaydns to view the DNS resolver cache.

How to Configure Change Password for OWA 2003/2007/2010 Mixed Environments

How to Configure Change Password for OWA 2003/2007/2010 Mixed Environments

The Change Password feature in OWA will break when you reconfigure the environment to use Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 CAS servers as front-end servers for Exchange 2003 mailbox servers.  This is because the the CAS server don't have the necessary ASP pages installed that OWA 2003 links to.

Logon to the Exchange 2007/2010 CAS server

• Copy the %SystemRoot%\System32\inetsrv\iisadmpwd folder and files from the OWA 2003 FE server to the CAS server's %SystemRoot%\System32\inetsrv folder
• Open IIS Manager and add a new Virtual Directory off the Default Web Site named IISADMPWD with a physical path of%SystemRoot%\System32\inetsrv\iisadmpwd
• Right-click the new IISADMPWD virtual directory and select Convert to Application
• Select the MSExchangeOWAAppPool
• Restart IIS (iisreset /noforce or select the server in IIS Manager and click Restart)

How to Determine a Computer's AD Site from the Command Line

How to Determine a Computer's AD Site from the Command Line

The following command will show you which Active Directory site the remote computer is a member of:

nltest /server: /dsgetsite

I always seem to forget this command.  :)

Prevent IE from crashing your system

Prevent IE from crashing your system

I have heard that if IE browser crash during the surfing of the net, the whole system must be rebooted. I am not sure whether it is true, but i have found an option that might help. Theoritically that is... I think this option is only found in IE 4.0 and above.

1. Goto Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Internetand click on the Advanced tab
2. Tick the checkbox next to Browse in a new process

Theoritically, this will isolate the crashing to the specific window that it crashed in so that it will not affect the other parts of the operating system. At least that's what i think it does.

Windows 7 driver / application incompatibility work around

Windows 7 driver / application incompatibility work around

Windows - Windows 7

So you have Windows 7 but you either cant find the Windows driver for your Sound Card or your trusted old Windows XP program fails to work under your new OS. If so there is a way to allow you to run a program using the compatibility mode of your previous (working) Windows version.

Steps :

1. Right click on the application (.exe) and select Properties.
2. With Properties go to the Compatibility Tab and choose your Windows Version and select Run program as administrator
3. Once done click OK and then double click to run the program as normal.

Not only can this be useful for running legacy programs but you can also use this for running driver . exe files.
In the case of my Sound Card drivers which I only could find XP drivers for I did the following :

1. Downloaded the XP drivers (.exe file)
2. Extracted the .exe file using WinRar.
3. Located the .exe file within the extracted files and choose Windows XP SP3 as the compatibility mode option.
4. Ran the .exe and installed the drivers as per normal.

Windows - What are Ports needed for Active Directory ?

Windows - What are Ports needed for Active Directory ?

In order to add a machine to the Active Directory (Domain) or to allow you machine to speak with a Domain Controller you will need to open the following ports....

• LDAP - TCP+UDP/389
• DNS - UDP/53
• SMB - UDP/138
• SMB - TCP/445
• Kerberos - UDP/88

How to clear an ASA`s configuration

How to clear an ASA`s configuration

Firewalls - Cisco - ASA

You may find that there is a time in which you havent got access via the standard ASAOS CLI to change, amend or edit your current configuration.

In this example we will show you the steps required for removing the configuation via ROMMON mode.

Here are the steps :

1. Reboot the device
2. On boot hit `escape` so that you break the normal startup process and enter ROMMON.
3. Change the current confreg so that you can bypass the current startup config sing the command:

rommon #1>confreg 0x41

4. Reset the appliance with the boot command,

rommon #2>boot

5. You will then be presented with the ScreenOS CLI and the ASA having a completey clear config. Run the commands :

ciscoasa > en [when asked for password just press enter]

ciscoasa # conf t

ciscoasa (config)# config-register 0x01

ciscoasa (config)# copy run start

ciscoasa (config)# reload

6. Your ASA will now be rebooted and the device will be booted into a blank configuration.

Get Testout working

Hi all,

This is my first post. The topic of how to get Testout working has come up frequently. This is my 2 cents and how I got it working.

1. I installed 70-640 2008 Active Directory Testout. No previous version was installed.

2. I followed the steps in this forum

1. Copy all the 5 folders into the default folder C:\Program Files\TESTOUT, (Glossary, Outlines, Questions, resources, Sims) - This will drop all the info say from the 70-640 into the testout directory

2. Create a shortcut on your desktop to the XML file in Outlines folder for say ms640cle.xml

3. Right click on the shortcut and click properties, then general tab, under what program to open with click change.

4. Link the xml file shortcut to the navigator.exe file to open it, which is in c:\program files\testout\cmi\navigator.exe

If you just have navigator open the xml and run it, it is fully functional.

It will not open the standalone navigator with all the testout products in the window, just the current xml


Ok....so this is what I did.....THE ABOVE DIDN'T WORK. Came up with some labsim username and password.....

Then I found this....and VOILA !! it worked like a charm. Videos work, simulator, everthing, no glitches
################################################
1-Install the aplication (labsim);
2-Copy the xml file from the dvd/ISO (X:\Testout\Outlines) to the legacy folder (C:\Program Files\TestOut\Orbis\Legacy); (I already did this above)
3-Open the xml file with notepad and use the "replace" feature to change the string ".." with the string "X:\Testout", where X is the letter of your virtual drive. it seemed strange but I searched for ".." and replaced it
4-Drag the xml file and drop over LegacyXEng.exe I just did a quick index search in my C:\program files\testout for wherever the file was and dragged and dropped it on the .exe - didn't think it will work but it did - the program opened immediately !
################################################
the above wasn't my own genius...I got it from some site and I can't remember the guys name. But all cudos to him.