Client reported their VPN was not functional. Troubleshooting revealed nothing wrong with the accounts.  The account in question could be logged on no problem on a local machine.  After verifying all the usual suspects (group membership, device properties, ect), we called the vendor.  The vendor could not explain the issue, and it suddenly stopped failing during the support call.Read more

In the course of email server administration, we sometimes need to perform testing against the SMTP server using only the telnet command. Traditionally, this is done with just a few lines following a successful telnet. The traditional method looks something like the following:

telnet (your email server) 25 !! This connects you to the SMTP server
helo !!This tells the server you are ready to send some commands
MAIL FROM: (your email address) !! Must be valid on the sending server, this is your FROM addressRead more

All,

MS recently released a patch that will break task scheduler on 64bit Windows Vista, 7 and Server 2008. The patch is KB2305420. It is related to a recently discovered flaw in task scheduler. The symptoms of an affected machine include errors when opening Task Scheduler. The errors reported state a system task is corrupt or has been tampered with. Built in system tasks affected include (not limited to):

AutomaticBackup
ValidationTaskDealine
BackgroundConfigSurveyor
Background Synchronization
LogonSynchronization

Plus 6 others I am too lazy to type out right now ;)Read more

Hello All,

We at Secure Vizion receive numerous panicked phone calls from people concerned that they have been infected with a virus/malware.  The complaints are typical:Read more

The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), is an API for performing certain system actions or getting information on how well your system is performing. Sometimes the WMI can get corrupted, and you will get an error like 'Windows Management Instrumentation might be corrupted.'

To find out if the the WMI is broken, from the Run... command type "wmimgmt.msc" press the OK button. This will launch the WMI console, if you get an error message when doing this, there is a good chance that your WMI is broken.Read more

Good Morning!

As a network admin, how many times have you fielded a call where the user claims to have lost all contacts only to find the real issue is a corrupt or missing names cache file in outlook?  For those who do not know, Outlook stores a cache of email addresses where you have sent messages so you can quickly add addresses to an email. This is the function that "auto-completes" the email address in the To: field.Read more

Good Morning!

We have recently begun seeing reports of suspicious settings in DNS (none from our client base...yet). Clients affected exhibit the following behaviour:

• Sudden slowdown of internet browsing
• Domain not found at logon
• "Unable to locate domain" errors in the event logs

Investigation of the matter reveals only that the DNS settings have been changed to show two addresses:

93.188.161.198 and 93.188.161.15Read more

Trend Micro Worry Free Business Security isn't completely "Worry Free".  Like all anti-virus products it has a tendency to leave behind temporary files that will eventually lead to a very bloated Program Files directory. Lucky for us Trend released a tool to do what their developers apparently cannot:  clean the bloat.  The tool is called TMDiskCleaner.exe, and can be downloaded directly from Trend Micro here.  The tool will can be runRead more

Powerchute Network Shutdown logs certain events within its Event Log. The following is a list of possible events and what they mean:

Battery: Discharged The UPS batteries are discharged. If power fails, an immediate low battery condition will exist. Sufficient runtime cannot be guaranteed. This is normal if the UPS has recently been on battery for along time. If a Battery Recharged event does not occur within four hours, your UPS may not be charging properly; contact APC Technical Support.

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