Managed Solutions » Howto

Windows 7 Video Tip – Adding new items to the sendto menu

Joe Hackman — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:33:28 +0000

Typical Sendto Menu

When you right click a file or folder on your Windows 7 computer there are several menus available, one of them is the “sendto” menu. This allows you to easily send that file or folder to that program or folder. One important option that is missing in this menu is the notepad program. In this video I demonstrate how to add new items to the sendto menu or specifically the notepad program in the example. You can use it for almost anything a program, network drive even an FTP server.

How to add valuable information to your Windows desktop background (Video)

Joe Hackman — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:00:13 +0000

It seems as though basic system information is often needed but not always easy to get. This video demonstrates how to use the BGinfo program by Sysinternals to display important information on the desktop background of your windows PC. The first couple of minutes show how to edit and use the program then a demonstration showing how to add it to a login script follows that for network admin types.

Here is a screenshot example of the output on one of our test machines:

Have an idea you’d like to see a video demonstration of? If it’s not already here, let us know via comments, contact form or Facebook and we’ll try to get it added to our library.

How to refresh your DNS Cache

Joe Hackman — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:02:53 +0000

You may have found yourself in this predicament – you or your ISP have changed some of your domain name server settings for your website, email or similar service and you cannot yet access the new resource when you try. Part of the process you can control and part you cannot. These changes when well planned will occur very quickly on the internet side of things but your local computer may need some help to recognize the new settings. That is the purpose of this article.

Who is it for specifically?

This information will be very useful for anyone running Windows who has recently made changes to their website or email server DNS settings. The instructions are written for Windows 7, but the commands work on NT and above.

Accessing an administrative command (cmd) prompt

There are three commands total but to access them you first need a cmd prompt running as administrator. To do that go into the start menu/all programs/accessories and find Command Prompt. Right click Command prompt and choose “run as administrator” this may require some account credentials of an administrative user on the machine or domain.

Running the commands to refresh all of your local DNS cache

Once you are in the administrative cmd window you will need to type the following three commands:

ipconfig /flushdns
net stop “dns client”
net start “dns client”

Close and re-open your browser and test

Once that is done, you can try to access the resource where the changes were being made. If it still doesn’t resolve it is not on your computer. Simply run the commands again periodically and test. This will ensure that you will get updated dns settings each time.

Questions? Comments? Leave them in the comment section below.

Outlook Tip Drag and Drop Scheduling (Video)

Joe Hackman — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:02:41 +0000

This video demonstrates drag and drop scheduling in Outlook 2010. I’ve been using the Outlook Calendar feature and stopped using tasks all together for the most part. If you’re looking to improve your scheduling efficiency check out this video.

Powerpoint Tip Slideshow in a Window (Video)

Joe Hackman — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:36:34 +0000

Ever try to record a screencast of a Powerpoint presentation? If you have you may have noticed like I did that you cannot easily run the presentation slideshow within a window small enough for a practical screencast. After doing some research I discovered that there are some not so well documented features for Powerpoint 2007/2010 that will allow you to run your presentation in a window. This would be particularly useful if you were doing some kind of mashup.

Quick Tip MrFixit for Windows Update Issues

Joe Hackman — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:44:04 +0000

Have you ever encountered errors with Windows Update or had it just stop prompting you all-together? This might be the solution to your problem. Either way it is a web page at Microsoft that will provide the right tool depending on what Operating system you are running.

To run the utility navigate to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058 and click on the Microsoft Fix It icon or link:

You will have one option that can be selected, only use this option if the first attempt without it checked was not successful:

After running the utility in either mode an additional screen will pop up with other options:

If after a restart you still experience issues, you can run the utility again to access the help links in the utility. Microsoft does provide free support for windows update issues.

Anatomy of a Phishing Email

Joe Hackman — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:23:11 +0000

I encountered a great opportunity this evening, the opportunity to share an inside look of a Phishing Email. What is Phishing?

“In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.” – Wikipedia

What I noticed was an Email purportedly from Bank of America telling me that there was an “Account Resolution Required”:

Message in Outlook Allegedly from Bank of America

I scanned over to the preview pane and noticed that it had a link that appeared to be correct, so I hovered over the link to see if the link was spoofed and to no big surprise, it was. Here is how the message looked in my preview pane, I did not download pictures because that is a popular way for spammers/crooks to confirm Email addresses of their targets/victims:

Full Phishing Email Screenshot

Let me further clarify in lay terms, the link that reads:

https://www.bankofamerica.com/home/1244618/ddjdfdkfi126.aspx?screenid=Update_Acct

is actually:

http://prostyle-esports.nl/index.php

and this is evident when I hover over, or place my mouse cursor on the “alleged” link. This is a tactic you can use to check links you are unsure of. However I should clarify that it doesn’t always work. There have been occasions where this has been spoofed effectively typically it has to do with the Email client or Browser and security patches on your computer.

Testing the Link

Using a test environment I pasted the link to see what the target site looked like:

Blocked - Forgery

I was pleased to see it had been blocked, this saved me the time of researching and Emailing the Internet Provider involved. After confirming this I used “properties” on Outlook to get the header information, there is a lot of information but plenty of clues to let me know that this message was not authentic (had everything else appeared right, which most certainly the SSL certificate warning would have popped up unless it was an unprecedented forgery!). Here are a few of the more obvious lines I parsed from the headers:

Received: from User ([82.128.0.69]) by post.strato.de (mrclete mo25) (RZmta
23.3) with ESMTP id 20016am5E507CT ; Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:43:29 +0200 (MEST)
Reply-To:
From: Bank of America

In the above examples, you can see that the message replay and from don’t match and that the mail server is post.strato.de not a likely mail server for Bank of America (perhaps for Deutsche Bank next time guys?). Also after running the IP address of the sender 82.128.0.69 on Arin.net I was able to determine that it was a European Address (which I had already figured due to the .de domain on the mail server, but it was further validation):

Output of Arin.net Whois - RIPE

There are a lot of ways to spot fraudulent/Phishing Emails. Our advice to our clients is if they are not 100% certain we recommend they forward the messages to us for analysis. Most of these kinds of messages are blocked and we don’t see them, but if something doesn’t look quite right it probably isn’t.

How to do a Manual upgrade to WordPress 3 Beta

Joe Hackman — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 15:19:41 +0000

Last night I learned about the Beta of the new Word Press Version 3 Beta 1. Being a bit adventurous I tested upgrading a couple of blog sites to the new version to check it out. I was not able to find a simple path to do it without using an ftp client so I thought it would be useful to record a screencast of the procedure. Here it is:

If you know of an easier way, please share it via comments.

Blocking Farmville on Facebook (Video)

Joe Hackman — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:40:35 +0000

We received a question on our Facebook page about blocking Farmville. Here is a short video on how to do this:

Solving the problem with large attachments (Video) Drop.io

Joe Hackman — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:34:43 +0000

Our partner Drop.io has recently created a functional beta of a plugin that allows you to share file(s) up to 100mb (for free) or greater (with paid subscription) simply via Microsoft Outlook. In this video we demonstrate where to get the plugin and how to use it. We are an affiliate of drop.io and if you would like a paid subscription you can use the featured product links in the right hand navigation menu on our website or by clicking here.