Well... just jumped on the Mrs laptop and there's a friggen search toolbar installed. I HATE these things, they're useless, and more commonly associated with spyware. Which is why I was surprised to find out where it actually came from, this particular nuisance was actually from Facebook. Basically it comes from some facebook application called "Tattoons".. i thought facebook would've had abit more control over that it's apps where doing... but installing websearch toolbars is pretty bad.
Anyways, to get rid of it. It's pretty easy to get rid of, all you need to do in firefox is to go to Tools->Add-Ons->Externsions and uninstall it. Restart Firefox and it all should go back to normal.
el :)
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Disable Administrator UAC in Windows Vista.
Here's the situation.
Had a customer who brought in a laptop they had purchased off their work. Now the laptop was obviously part of the work network and had all its permissions set accordingly, and when he bought the lappy off his work they didn't reload it for him. So he had this laptop that he couldn't use properly, because he couldn't install/uninstall any software or make any significant changes to the OS, because every time he tried UAC would pop up and ask for the admin password, which he didn't have.
Now, I could've just did a factory restore on the notebook and all would be good. But he had some data on the lappy that needed to be backed up and stuff, plus using my method would be quicker then doing a factory restore.
So, how did I do it?
Trinity Rescue Kit.
This great little tool is awesome for resetting Vista passwords, but will also help with other little tasks like this.
Bascially the issue with this lappy was permissions. The customers user account was just a user account, and installing applications, making changes to the OS requires Administator privledges. So by booting up TRK, and typing winpass -u "User" I was able to elevate the default user account up to Administrator privledges. Job done.
Had a customer who brought in a laptop they had purchased off their work. Now the laptop was obviously part of the work network and had all its permissions set accordingly, and when he bought the lappy off his work they didn't reload it for him. So he had this laptop that he couldn't use properly, because he couldn't install/uninstall any software or make any significant changes to the OS, because every time he tried UAC would pop up and ask for the admin password, which he didn't have.
Now, I could've just did a factory restore on the notebook and all would be good. But he had some data on the lappy that needed to be backed up and stuff, plus using my method would be quicker then doing a factory restore.
So, how did I do it?
Trinity Rescue Kit.
This great little tool is awesome for resetting Vista passwords, but will also help with other little tasks like this.
Bascially the issue with this lappy was permissions. The customers user account was just a user account, and installing applications, making changes to the OS requires Administator privledges. So by booting up TRK, and typing winpass -u "User" I was able to elevate the default user account up to Administrator privledges. Job done.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Windows 7 Media Center waking up by itself in the middle of the night??? - Solution
Is your Windows 7 Media Center an insomniac?
Mine was, I'd wake up in the morning to find that it had woken from it's slumber. Concerned about why it was waking up, and the power it was consuming being awake in the middle of the night, i decided to sort out what was going on. Here's a couple of little tips you can try if you've got the same problem.
1. Find out what last woke your machine.
If you go to start -> search for "cmd" -> cmd it'll open up the command promt. Running the command powercfg -lastwake will show you what process woke up your computer.
2. Disable Media Center checking for updates.
By default, media center will wake up and check for updates at 3am every night. You can turn it off, or change the time, by doing the following:
In Media Center for to Tasks -> Settings -> Automatic Download Options
Now edit them according to how you want them.
3. Disable the Media Center screensaver.
Now the Windows 7 screensaver and the Media Center screensaver are 2 seperate things. Disabling one won't disable the other, so you should go ahead and manually disable the MCE screensaver. Do this by going to Tasks -> Settings -> Pictures -> Slideshow Screensaver and disabling the screensaver.
If you've got an insomniac Media Center, give those little tips a whirl and see how it goes.
el :)
Mine was, I'd wake up in the morning to find that it had woken from it's slumber. Concerned about why it was waking up, and the power it was consuming being awake in the middle of the night, i decided to sort out what was going on. Here's a couple of little tips you can try if you've got the same problem.
1. Find out what last woke your machine.
If you go to start -> search for "cmd" -> cmd it'll open up the command promt. Running the command powercfg -lastwake will show you what process woke up your computer.
2. Disable Media Center checking for updates.
By default, media center will wake up and check for updates at 3am every night. You can turn it off, or change the time, by doing the following:
In Media Center for to Tasks -> Settings -> Automatic Download Options
Now edit them according to how you want them.
3. Disable the Media Center screensaver.
Now the Windows 7 screensaver and the Media Center screensaver are 2 seperate things. Disabling one won't disable the other, so you should go ahead and manually disable the MCE screensaver. Do this by going to Tasks -> Settings -> Pictures -> Slideshow Screensaver and disabling the screensaver.
If you've got an insomniac Media Center, give those little tips a whirl and see how it goes.
el :)
Friday, December 11, 2009
Change your default SSH password on your iPhone 3G
With the rickroll 'virus' that went around it highlighted the fact that if you've got a jailbroken iphone, it very important you change your default SSH password. Here's how.
Install MobileTerminal from Cydia
Launch MobileTerminal, then run the following command:
su root
you'll then be asked for your password, which by default is alpine
You're now logged in as root. Now all you need to do to change the password is run the following:
passwd
you'll be asked to enter you old password(alpine), then your new password twice. Once done, your password's changed!!! don't forget your password!!!(although if you do, you'll need to restore your iphone, re-jailbreak it and it'll set back to the default alpine)
Install MobileTerminal from Cydia
Launch MobileTerminal, then run the following command:
su root
you'll then be asked for your password, which by default is alpine
You're now logged in as root. Now all you need to do to change the password is run the following:
passwd
you'll be asked to enter you old password(alpine), then your new password twice. Once done, your password's changed!!! don't forget your password!!!(although if you do, you'll need to restore your iphone, re-jailbreak it and it'll set back to the default alpine)
Mark all emails as read on the iPhone 3G
Now i've got 2 mail accounts setup on my iphone. My gmail account, which is push, and a POP mail account from my ISP. It all works as it should, except for when it comes time to either do a restore because the phone's crashed, or update the firmware. As soon as the phones restored i end up with hundreds of unread messages on my POP account, because I leave the message on the server so I can access them on a PC as well. Now the iPhone, unfortunately, has no inbuilt function to mark all messages as read. For this method you will need a jailbroken iphone though, because there's a couple of tools you need off Cydia. I got this method from www.missingbrace.com, but i've neatened it up abit because there's a couple of steps that are either missing or unclear in their guide. So here it goes:
Step 1. - Aquire the applications needed
Applications you'll need:
- SQLite3
- Mobile Terminal
These are both available from Cydia. Just do a search and install them on your phone.
Step 2 - Login as root
Now that you've got the tools required, comes the fun part. Start up Terminal which should be on your dash board now. You want to login as root, so the first command you'll put in is
su root
it'll then ask you for your password. By default this should be alpine, but if you've changed your SSH password(which you should do, check my other post on how to change your SSH password), it'll be whatever you set it as.
Step 3 - Login to the mail database.
What you want to do now is login to your mail database. The command line is sorta long and a tiny bit of a pain to type it in on the iphone keyboard, but you only have to do it once. The command line you want to run is:
sqlite3 /private/var/mobile/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index
Once that's entered, you're logged into the mail database
Step 4 - Marking your messages as read
Now that's you're logged into the database, you can go ahead and flag the messages as read. To do this you need to run 2 commands. They are:
Step 5 - Reboot your phone.
Once the commands are inputed, hit the home button. Don't worry if your mail's still showing up as unread. Reboot your iphone, by holding down the power/sleep button and sliding to power off. Wait till it powers off, then turn it back on again. Then presto, all your mail is marked as read.
el :)
Step 1. - Aquire the applications needed
Applications you'll need:
- SQLite3
- Mobile Terminal
These are both available from Cydia. Just do a search and install them on your phone.
Step 2 - Login as root
Now that you've got the tools required, comes the fun part. Start up Terminal which should be on your dash board now. You want to login as root, so the first command you'll put in is
su root
it'll then ask you for your password. By default this should be alpine, but if you've changed your SSH password(which you should do, check my other post on how to change your SSH password), it'll be whatever you set it as.
Step 3 - Login to the mail database.
What you want to do now is login to your mail database. The command line is sorta long and a tiny bit of a pain to type it in on the iphone keyboard, but you only have to do it once. The command line you want to run is:
sqlite3 /private/var/mobile/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index
Once that's entered, you're logged into the mail database
Step 4 - Marking your messages as read
Now that's you're logged into the database, you can go ahead and flag the messages as read. To do this you need to run 2 commands. They are:
- update messages set flags = flags + 1 where flags&1 = 0;
- update mailboxes set unread_count = 0;
Step 5 - Reboot your phone.
Once the commands are inputed, hit the home button. Don't worry if your mail's still showing up as unread. Reboot your iphone, by holding down the power/sleep button and sliding to power off. Wait till it powers off, then turn it back on again. Then presto, all your mail is marked as read.
el :)
It's been a while....
over a year now since my last post. Feel like getting back into it. I'm thinking about making this a more tech related blog. I come across a fair few tech problems in my day2day.. so maybe it might be a good idea to post up the solutions.
el :)
el :)
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