Got my 3D back on my Gateway

If you're in Ubuntu, and upgrade from Intrepid to Lucid, you might find this problem that I had: No 3D Effects with Intel 945 graphics. Apparently, that's because Lucid thoughtfully installs nvidia drivers, which, until removed, usurp 3D capabilities of other processors, such as Intel's. I removed a few things labelled nvidia and got 3d working again. Yay!

Trouble installing Java - Unable to verify the security integrity

Let's say you get this error:

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Error - Java(TM) Update
---------------------------
Unable to validate security integrity on the file. File is either corrupted or unsigned.
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OK
---------------------------

And you go to www.java.com and do the "Free Java Download" ... installing it gets this:
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Error - Java(TM) Installer
---------------------------
Downloaded File C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Sun\Java\jre1.6.0_17\jre1.6.0_17-pfrom15.msi is corrupt.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

What to do?
Go to the Manual Download section and download the Offline install (second link) (It should look similar to jre-6u17-windows-i586-s.exe)

If that doesn't work, drill down and find the jre .msi file and install that.

AVG Not running this week? Try upgrading

The weirdest thing. I installed a noisy firewall and suddenly I notice my antivirus wasn't running. Coincidence? Yes, actually, it was. AVG silently (in my case) stopped working, but opening the interface told me why: it's time to upgrade to version 9. I did and now I'm happy again. Perhaps this might help someone else.

Remove a dll attached to WinLogon

From this thread, the best answer given was essentially to remove inheritance and all permissions to the file, then reboot, then delete the file. (Mitigating factor: if it self-heals permissions).

The next best answer was to boot from an XP CD in System Recovery mode.

The third best answer (from *MY* point of view, because it *is* that simple) is to boot from a LiveCD, mount the file system as writeable and delete the file. The down side is a *possibility* of messing up NTFS file systems, but IMO that is not a huge risk.

I had to do this to fix an m.exe autorun.inf USB dropper that had a dll that stuck to winlogon notify.

Kyocera Mita or other copiers SMB connect failed because of case sensitivity

I had a problem where SMB connection failed miserably. Well, two problems concurrently.
1) Slow resolution to domain name (solution: fix dns)
2) Connection failed immediately. I knew it should have worked. KNEW it. But it was case sensitive for the path and therefore failed.

spoolsv.exe crashes instantly

Print spooler was crashing on Windows XP client. spoolsv.exe and the c:\windows\system32\spool\printers directory was empty.

mkdir c:\prtspool

Pop open regedit,
go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers
and change the DefaultSpoolDirectory to the new c:\prtspool
net start spooler
it works.
Don't ask me why or how. I don't rightly care, but then I'd probably want to run scandisk or something.

Microsoft Outlook won't connect to Exchange Server

I was troubleshooting an issue where the Outlook client wouldn't connect to Exchange Server. It wasn't a ping issue (I could ping the server) and it wasn't domain resolution. I also could view the one user's Outlook Web Access Account. It simply wouldn't connect Outlook to Exchange, either hanging on profile creation, or giving an error on connect.

To fix this, I went to c:\documents and settings\username\local settings\application data\microsoft\outlook and added a new folder "old" and moved the stuff in outlook folder to "old" and tried again. This apparently cleaned itself up.

Computer sluggish? Check your path

After decommissioning a server, it was found that certain machines were DOG slow. This apparently was because an app changed the PATH variable to point to a directory structure on the now defunct server. To fix this, the best way is to go to Windows System Properties, advanced, Environment variables, Path and remove the errant directory structure.

This may very well affect other pieces of software, such as your antivirus program on startup.

Active Desktop fix recovery

Active Desktop white screen, "restore active desktop" retrieves a script error referencing Desktop.htt

Fix:
right-click, Properties
Desktop, None
[Apply]
find c:\documents and settings\current username\application data\microsoft\internet explorer\desktop.htt and rename/delete it

Change the picture in Desktop. Active Desktop error is gone.

Here is another link with a registry adjustment (in the comments) that seems to work.

iastor.sys BSOD

I had it, and I had a bad hard drive in my SATA RAID. I turned that drive off and the RAID booted.

LVM upgrade on non-LVM system

I did a strange thing. I *wasn't* using LVM, but I think I accidentally installed it and device-mapper went all bonkers and decided to take all my drives away so I couldn't mount them:

fsck.ext3: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda1
in boot log. It appears that device-mapper usurps the /dev/sda# ... my old fstab won't work. But I'm not going to wipe it out!

What *finally* fixed it for me:
fdisk -l | grep "Disk" | grep -v "identifier"
This gives me a list of devices I *can* mount and what their sizes are. I ignored the "doesn't contain a valid partition table"
nano /etc/fstab
and changed my /dev/sda# to /dev/dm-# according to my carefully hand-written notes that compared the sda* to the dm-*. NB: the number after dm- does not necessarily map with the number after /dev/sda. My sda# skips 3 and 4. My dm-# does not skip, and also starts at 0.

This Operation Can't Be Performed Outlook Web Access

This operation can't be performed:
Can't add a calendar item in Outlook web access. For one person. He has exceeded his send/recieve quota and therefore can't add via OWA because it's an email via OWA.

Exchange 2003 Outlook Mobile Access 1801 error

OK, There is absolutely almost no answer on the web for the MSExchangeOMA 1801 error. That’s because stock users of Exchange and IIS won’t have the issue that I had.

The very short answer: WebDav defaults to checking for stuff via IIS http on port 80.

If your IIS has another HTTP (not SSL/HTTPS) port as all it’s listening on, OMA/Outlook Mobile Access will not work. Make sure port 80 is listened to by IIS.

Why I had Internet Information Server on another port:

It was a legacy issue. I had OWA/Outlook Web Access through a firewall on a non-standard port. OWA does NOT like firewall port not matching IIS port. So HTTP port on IIS was chosen to match the firewall port for IIS for NON-SSL traffic. Later, I didn’t need non-SSL traffic for OWA and didn’t bother to change the IIS port. When OMA came up with

Unable to connect to your mailbox on server Servername. Please try again later. If the problem persists contact your administrator.

It was because it was attempting to contact internally via WebDAV on WebDAV’s default connection: http://Servername:80/Exchange/mailbox

the :80 (hidden, but the default port for web) was not accessible because my default http port on IIS wasn’t listening on port 80. This caused the same error from outside my firewall all the way to trying the OMA connection at localhost on my exchange server.

Thanks to
http://www.petri.co.il/configure_oma.htm
http://www.petri.co.il/configure_ssl_on_oma.htm
http://www.petri.co.il/test_oma_in_exchange_2003.htm

for knocking me in the head about things I didn’t realize I hadn’t done.