However, the system is locked so that only people on the work domain, with work email addresses (lets say, @work.com) can email it. This was intentional, so it didn’t pick up spam and so staff didn’t email it from their home email accounts and so on. If this is the setup you’d want for a user (that is, so they can only receive ”internal” email), it’s simple enough to configure:

In the Exchange Management Console, navigate to Recipient Configuration > Mailbox, and open the properties of the mailbox user you want to set up. In the Mail Flow Settings tab, choose Message Delivery Restrictions, and tick “Require that all senders are authenticated.”.

If, however, like us, this user needs to also receive email from an external email address, or domain, then you need to change something else. Make sure the above tickbox isn’t ticked, and then:

Navigate to Organisation Configuration > Hub Transport and choose the Transport Rules tab. Create a new Transport Rule here.

Work through the wizard, with these settings:

In Conditions, choose “sent to people”, and add the email address of the user you want to configure.

In Actions, choose “Delete the message without notifying anyone”. Panic not, we’ll add some exceptions in the next step.

In Exceptions, choose “Except when the message header matches text patterns”, and edit it so that “except when the FROM matches @work.com$ or @externaldomain.com$”. Change @work.com$ to your local domain, and @externaldomain.com$ to the external domain you want to accept email from. Of course, you can just specify a single address (e.g. johnsmith@externaldomain.com$) if you like, as well as add more than just these two addresses if necessary. The “$” is important, as without it, “@externaldomain.com.uk”, and similar, would also match and be allowed.

Note: You can’t use the “Except when the from address matches text patterns” for this rule, as the From Address, in local Exchange communications, doesn’t contain an email address.

That’s it! Save the rule and test it by emailing the user from both allowed and denied email addresses.

Thing is, allowing other browsers on your network is fraught with technical support issues, especially if you use other systems that insist on only working properly in IE (like some Sharepoint stuff). You can’t rely on users to always use the right browser for the right task.

We had this problem recently, as we wanted to start using the excellent Codecademy but it blows raspberries at IE users and tells them to go away. My first thought was to install Chrome, but for the reasons already given (and the fact the more-easily-locked-down Portable Apps version doesn’t work from a network share) I didn’t really want to do that.

My next suggestion was Chrome Frame. It’s an extension for Internet Explorer which you can configure to replace the IE HTML renderer with, so although the web pages open in IE, they’re actually rendered by Chrome. This means that, to the user, there’s only one browser. Of course, it needs to be configured to only trigger Chrome’s renderer for those sites you need it for, rather than all sites, otherwise you may as well just replace IE with Chrome completely.

There are two issues here then – how to deploy Chrome Frame on a network, and how to configure it centrally to only trigger when needed.

Deploying Chrome Frame

Luckily, Google provide a useful MSI package of Chrome Frame here. You can roll this out in a group policy like other MSIs, or run it on each machine either manually or with a script. Unfortunately, it tries to update itself when you do so and invariably (if you’re in an internet-restricted environment like a school) will hang for ages then probably crash. You can stop this, however.

To do this, you’ll need an MSI property editor such as the free Orca (which you can find here) and open the Chrome Frame MSI in it. In the Tables column, choose Property, and then the right-hand pane right click and choose Add Row. Enter the Property field as NOGOOGLEUPDATEPING and the value as 1. Click OK and save the MSI. Now you can deploy it!

Configuring Chrome Frame

The best way of doing this is with a new group policy. Firstly, download the Google Chrome ADM/ADMX files from here (you want the Zip file, not the Mac stuff, obviously). If you’re using the ADMX files, you’ll need to copy them to %systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions before the group policy editor will see them. ADM files can just be opened as normal with “Add/Remove templates”.

These group policy files will actually let you configure all sorts of things for Chrome as well, but some of the settings are specific to Chrome Frame. In particular, you want to look at:

User > Configuration > Policies > Admin Templates > Google > Google Chrome > Default HTML renderer for Google Chrome Frame

The first setting, Default HTML renderer, determines whether web pages are rendered by the host browser (i.e. IE) or Chrome by default. For my purposes, I wanted IE to render except on certain pages, so chose Host.

The other settings are the exception sites to the above. Since I have Host as the default, I only need to configure the Always render in Chrome Frame options. You do this by providing URL patterns to match.

For example, I want all of Codecademy to render in Chrome Frame, so chose *.codecademy.com* as my pattern. See here for more pattern examples.

Remember to assign this new group policy to your users, and once Chrome Frame has rolled out, you should find your chosen sites now render in Chrome!

You can, of course, just swap your old card for your new one, but then any pictures you’ve taken and games you’ve downloaded and “extra data” and stuff won’t be on there unless you swap cards again. And we all know that swapping SD cards is the worst of all First World Problems.

Using this method, you can transfer everything from your old card onto your new card:

1. Mount your old card on your computer.
2. Create a folder on your computer and copy EVERYTHING from the card to it.
3. While it’s doing that, put your new card in your 3DS and turn the 3DS on. It’ll initialise the card for you.
4. When both these have finished, mount the new card in your computer.
5. Open the folder you made on your computer, and copy everything to the root of the new card. If you’re asked to overwrite folders, or merge folders, say “yes”.
6. When the copying has finished, you’re almost there. Next, on the new card, open the folder called “Nintendo 3DS”. Inside there will be folder with a huge string of letters and numbers for the name – open that.
7. Inside that folder will be two folders with long random names. One of these is the folder tied to your old card, the other is the one tied to your new card. Simply copy the contents (not the folder itself) of the old one (it’ll be the one with the larger filesize) into the other one – merging and overwriting again if necessary.
8. Put the new card back in your 3DS, reboot it if necessary, and you’re away!

Easier said than done, because there’s no uninstaller.

Well, of course there is an uninstaller, but it’s not in Add/Remove Programs where you’d expect it. Even if you show updates.

Of course, many uninstallers are kept on the machine in the c:\windows\ folder, in cryptic $NTUninstallKBxxxxxx$ folders which relate to the update Knowledgebase number. Naturally, you have no idea which of these is the correct one and nothing in the many folders gives away the contents. You could search the internet for each and every number, but that’ll take forever.

Thankfully, there’s an easier way – use the registry.

Navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Updates\Windows PowerShell 1.0\, and there you’ll find some keys relating to the SP level of Powershell you have installed. In my case, it was SP2. There’ll be a key called “UninstallCommand”, the value of which is the full path to the uninstaller exe. For me, this was C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB926139-v2$\spuninst\spuninst.exe, and running that uninstalled Powershell. If you’ve SP1 or SP3 rather than SP2 then yours will be in a different location, but is still referred to in UninstallCommand.

I also had a Windows Powershell 1.0 MUI set of keys in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Updates, again with an UninstallCommand – this time pointing to C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB926141$\spuninst\spuninst.exe. I ran that just in case too.

It’s not even the first time something like this has happened with Lenovo, as they’ve been utterly useless in the past.

They included uninstalling an update I didn’t have installed, running a Microsoft “Fix It” tool, which didn’t work, and installing the System Update Readiness Tool, which also didn’t work. The latter actually threw an 8000ffff just running it!

I did manage to sort it in the end, by doing this (after a backup!):

1. In the registry, HKLM > Components, delete these keys:
   • AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving
   • PendingXmldentifier
   • NextQueueEntryIndex
2. Stop the Windows Update Service
3. Rename (or delete – I renamed to be “safe”) %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore to something else.
4. Restart the service
5. Restart the PC.

Rebooting the host server fixed it for a while, but then it happened again. It’s odd, as another VM running on the same VMWare (2.0.2) server was seemingly fine.

Anyway, it turns out the issue is due to VMWare not liking the fact the host server had two network card (each 1Gb) “teamed” in combination to the guest OS network being configured as “bridged”. For some reason, it causes the network to randomly drop out – especially if the network cards are Broadcom, team managed with with Broadcom software. Guess what we’ve got?

The solution appeared to be counter-intuitive, but somehow actually works. For each of the teamed NICs (not the team itself), you need to disable the VMWare Bridge Protocol. We didn’t even need to reboot – It Just Worked(TM).

And why did the other guest VM work fine all the time? It used Shared networking, not Bridged!

As is usually the case, I “hit up” Google (as the kidz are wont to say, I think) and after a bit of trawling I found the solution:

1. Open Terminal and as edit the file /etc/services (as root)
2. Add a line at the bottom: secret-ssh 43539/tcp # secret SSH port
3. Edit file /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist and replace the code:

   <key>SockServiceName </key>
   <string>ssh </string>
   

   with

   <key>SockServiceName </key>
   <string>secret-ssh </string>
   

4. Change your port forwarding configuration on your firewall to route port 43539 instead
5. Open “Sharing” control panel and ensure that “Remote Login” is checked off (if not uncheck it). Then check it again to start with the new configuration.

I got this information from this page here, and, if you look in the comments there, you’ll see it’s the exact page I’d come across originally. Here lies a lesson: bookmarks!

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a folder on the network that people could just drop video files in, and then go to another folder to pick up the WMV version of the same file? Just like that? That would, undoubtedly, be the greatest creation of all time.

I’m sure a pre-made solution already exists. Indeed – Windows Media Encoder goes some way towards it by doing the conversion for you. Sadly, WME lacks support for all sorts of file types, is slow, and doesn’t seem to monitor folders. DropFolders, which works in conjunction with Handbrake, looks like it does exactly what we need, except it won’t export WMV files.

The solution? A combination of the command-line video encoding tool ffmpeg and a free utility called Watch 4 Folder.

On the server, I created two folders: “To Be Converted” and “Converted”. I put the ffmpeg exe on the root of c:\ (although anywhere in your path would work), and created this batch file:

for %%a in ("E:\Path\To Be Converted\*.*") do (
move /Y "%%a" "E:\Path\Converted\%%~na%%~xa"
C:\ffmpeg.exe -i "E:\Path\Converted\%%~na%%~xa" -b 1500kb -vcodec wmv2 -acodec wmav2 -y "E:\Path\Converted\%%~na.wmv"
del /F "E:\Path\%%~na%%~xa"
)

“E:\Path\” being the location of the To Be… and Converted folders, of course. This script basically lists all the files in the drop box folder, and one by one moves them, encodes them to WMV, then deletes the original.

If you want, you can just leave it like this, manually running the batch file on the server each time files are dropped into the To Be Converted folder. Of course, to be automated, you need to add another bit to the process…

Install Watch 4 Folder on the server, and tell it to watch the drop box folder. The “event to monitor” option you want is “File Create”, and the Action is “Execute a program or batch file” – point this at the batch file created above. Click the Start Monitoring button, and that’s it – videos go in, WMVs come out.

There are, however, obvious flaws here. Firstly, if you dump a load of big files in the folder at once, they may start converting before they’ve finished copying. Watch 4 Folder waits until the file has finished copying before triggering the batch file, but the batch file converts all the files once triggered for one. Also, files with the same name but different extensions will cause problems when converting as they’ll overwrite. In addition, things go “a bit wrong” when you put folders in the drop box These are things I can live with for now, though.

One partial solution would be to ignore Watch 4 Folder completely, and set the batch file up as a scheduled task on the server to run, say, every 20 minutes. This won’t completely get rid of the problems (and conversions won’t start almost instantly), but it may fit your needs better.

UPDATE 22/09/2010:

Seems most of the problems listed above don’t actually occur in practice. Half-copied files don’t get moved as they’re still open, so they don’t get broken during conversion. So actually, my solution is more ace than it appeared to be at first.

I also forgot to mention that you can, of course, change the file format and bitrate you convert to by passing different parameters to ffmpeg in the third line of the batch file.

64-bit 2008, by default, only installs printers with the 64-bit 2008 and (for some printers, it seems, but not others) the 32 and 64-bit Vista/Windows 7 “User Mode” drivers. The old-style 2000/XP/2003 drivers don’t get a look in. There doesn’t seem to be a way to add them on the server either.

Thankfully, someone else has already found a way of sorting it. Basically, you navigate on an XP client to the Printers and Faxes share of the 2008 server, then click File > Server Properties > Drivers > Add, and point it at the XP (and other, if necessary) drivers for the printer.

There are a few issues, particularly if the 2008 and XP drivers have different names, but these can be resolved or worked around.

Here’s the full set of instructions – read the comments there for how to fix the additional problems!

The Express version of SQL Server 2005 is nice because it’s free, but it does limit database sizes to just 4GB. This may sound huge, but for us, that’s only around 4 months worth of internet logs, and we need to clear some space every so often. I always forget how to do it, so this post is a reminder to me as much as anything.

Before you start, to make things easier, get yourself a copy of Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express. It’s free, and makes managing your SQL databases much easier. Once installed on your SQL Server machine (and connected to it), you can set about fixing WebMarshal.

Firstly, you need to purge a load of old records from the log. Chances are you don’t need to go back more than a few months anyway. If you do, you might want to backup your database, name it as a “snapshot” of today’s date, and then restore it if you need to have a look at old entries. How you purge depends on the version of WebMarshal you have, but for either 3.x or 6.x you start my clicking open the WebMarshal database from the object explorer on the left.

Now, on the pane on the right, you’ll have an empty command window. In here, you need to paste one of the following commands:

For WebMarshal 3.x:

exec dbo.PurgeLogData @NumDays = 'n'

Where n is the number of days to keep. So, if you want to get rid of anything more 60 days old, replace n with 60.

For WebMarshal 6.x:

exec dbo.PurgeLogData @PurgeDate = 'yyyymmdd', @MaxRecords = 0

Where yyyymmdd is the date from which everything older is deleted. So, if you wanted to get rid of everything from before 10th April 2010, enter yyyymmdd as 20100410.

Whichever command you use, after typing it in, click the “! Execute” button to perform the task, which may take some time.

Unfortunately, all this does is remove the data. It doesn’t shrink the data files, so your 4GB database will still be 4GB. Thankfully, there’s an easy way of doing this.

Back on the object explorer pane, right-click the WebMarshal database and choose Tasks > Shrink > Database, then click OK. Again, this may take a while. Once finished, for good measure, choose Tasks > Shrink > Files, then click OK.

Now your database should be much smaller! To check, right-click the database once more and choose Properties. In the General section, there’s an entry for Database Size. If this is way below 4GB, you’re done. If not, you might want to do a bit more purging!

However, the fact that it’s on, and some of the games are on during the working day, causes a few problems in that staff at work want to watch them. And they don’t have teevees. Me to the rescue then, with this motley crew of software and devices:

• An Elgato EyeTV 410
• A PowerMac G5
• VLC
• The VLC Plugin for EyeTV

Of course, this method should work for pretty much any supported EyeTV product and Mac. You’ll also need to know the IP address of the Mac you’re streaming from.

Firstly, you need to install the plugin. You can find this here. Once done, open EyeTV then open VLC. Make sure you can access EyeTV from VLC by choosing File > Open Capture Device and choose EyeTV from the selector. You may find you have to choose Screen then EyeTV again as it sometimes doesn’t “see” EyeTV right away. Pick a channel from the channel selector (you can change this later) and click OK. Don’t choose anything to do with streaming here.

You should now have an entry like “/eyetv-channel=3″ in your VLC playlists. Play this, and you’ll get your EyeTV channel in VLC!

Next, you need to so the streaming. Click File > Streaming/Exporting Wizard.

Choose Stream to Network, click Next, then choose the /eyetv playlist from the “Existing playlist item” list, and click Next again. For Streaming method choose HTTP, and leave Destination blank, then Next again. Leave all the Transcode options unticked, click Next, and choose “MPEG TS” for the encapsulation format. Click Next once more. In the next window, click Finish. You now have a ready-to-watch stream!

Now, on another machine on the network, open VLC. Choose File (or Media, depending which version you have) and Open Network Stream. For Protocol, choose HTTP, and in the address box type ipofmac:8080 (where “ipofmac” is the IP address of the Mac that’s providing the stream). Now Play!

All things being well, you should now be watching your TV stream across the network. If you need to change channel, you can do that on the “server” by simply flicking channel on the EyeTV controls.

First, click “Add your own background image now”, and upload this suitably sized blank image. Set that as your background, Bing and You’re Done(TM).

Phew, eh?

This task is one fraught with peril at every turn, so requires a bit of planning and testing. The first issue is that Exchange 2007 only runs on a 64-bit version of Windows Server. Naturally, we only have 32-bit 2003. So we need to upgrade the server from Windows 2003 (32-bit) to Windows 2008 (64-bit), and there’s no upgrade path. We need to build a new server, but we don’t have the hardware and the current Exchange server is easily up to the task anyway, so after the transition it would be redundant.

Virtualisation to the rescue!

The intention, then, is to virtualise the current Exchange Server, plonk the virtual machine temporarily on another server, then wipe the original to put Windows 2008 and Exchange 2007 on. After that, there’s the task of actually doing the transition.

Today I started on a trial run of the process. I’ve already got a running 2008 server with Exchange 2007 on it ready, and I’ve found a way of making a virtual machine out of a running server: disk2vhd. Once you run it (and you don’t need to take your machine down to do so), you get this:

Yeah, the server is called Rupert.

Then we wait. For a very, very long time. A day, in fact.

After that, it should be as simple as plugging the new VHD into something like Virtual PC or Virtual Box. But it seems that wasn’t the case. I hadn’t taken account of the fact that the machine with Virtual Box installed on it was a single Quad Core processor, and the Exchange Server was running on a Dual Quad Core processor. So it wouldn’t boot, as it didn’t have enough CPUs.

Looks like I’m going to have to put it all on hold for a bit then, until I get some more hardware, or find a way of reducing the CPUs

The icon I have on the menu bar just kept saying “No Airport Card installed”. I thought two things: either it’s physically fried, or my daughter’s “tinterneting” (that is, banging the keyboard) has made it pop loose. Both would require a dismantle, and it isn’t a job for the impatient.

Thankfully, there was another, less intrusive, thing to try first – zapping the PRAM.

Turn off the MacBook, then turn it back on and hold Command-Option-P-R. Keep them held down until you get three startup chimes, then let go.

As if by magic, the card “reappeared” and all is well with the world once more!

Except, of course, it can.

For this I’m going to assume you have some data in Excel. Two columns headed “Data Number” and “Letter”. The Data Number is just 1 to 10, and the Letter is a, b or c.

Now in Word, I want to merge this data in. Only I want the letter to appear formatted with a red background (if it’s the letter a) and a green background (if it’s not). We create a new Word document, and set it up as a Mail Merge letter. Point Word at the Excel file as the data.

You can insert the fields as normal with the button on the toolbar, and get this:

But how to do the formatting? You need to manually enter the field and make some changes to it. To enter a field yourself, press CTRL-F9 and you’ll get a pair of braces { }. These aren’t normal ones, as you can tell by their formatting. Inside these, you’ll need an “if” command. The format for “if” in Word is:

{ if [CONDITION] [DO THIS IF TRUE] [DO THIS IF FALSE] }

so we can do the following:

Which will show the Letter field if Letter = “a”, and the Letter field if Letter != “a”. Which doesn’t do anything we couldn’t do already. However – you can format individual bits of that command, like this:

Can you guess what this does? Try it and see! Of course, you can also change the fonts and weights for the true and false. I’ve attached a file with the data and template I’ve used. Click here to get it!

(Download the PDF here: Creating Dress-Up Mannequins)

I realise this may seem like a bit of a random thing for me to produce, but it was something I was asked to do for work. So that’s my excuse. And nothing to do with my desire to dress up dolls. Er, or something.

It was a brand new drive, already formatted as FAT, so I assumed it was faulty. Turns out, however, there’s a simple reason for it not working: you can’t format HFS+ partitions on certain external hard drives if the boot sector is set to Windows-style “Master Boot Record”. In Disk Utility, when you choose your partition setup, there’s an options button – under which there’s a setting for boot sector. If you choose GUID or Apple Partition Map, you can format without any problems!

Problem is, in a chart, the low numbers are at the top and the high numbers are at the bottom, so the graph comes out upside-down. You can’t just make the chart position numbers negative either, as the x-axis would then be on the top of the graph.

Thankfully, there’s still an option: right click the y-axis on the graph and choose “Format Axis”. Tick the boxes for “Values in reverse order” and “Maximum axis value”. While you’re here, you might want to change the Minimum value to 1 from 0, as there’s no 0 position in your average pop charts!

See:

You can also download the Excel file, if you like.

Until they brought their laptops back from the break, and we found they then can’t run various programs or access certain things when not connected to the network. This is because the laptop needs access to the Application Data folder – which is no longer on the local machine.

So you’d think the fix would be to create a new group policy for the laptops where the folder isn’t redirected, right? Well, yes, of course you would. Unfortunately, that won’t work.

You see, the Folder Redirection settings are a User based setting, not a Machine based setting. So if you assign a Machine GP to not redirect, the User GP to redirect runs anyway and takes precedence. Looking around t’tinternets, there were a few solutions – including a second (local) logon for the laptops or nasty registry hacking – but nothing that actually fixes the the problem satisfactorily.

Until I read about Loopback Processing.

Microsoft’s help pages go into great detail about the technical aspects of what this involves, but the overall effect is simple to explain: instead of the User settings “overlaying” the Machine settings and taking precedence, the reverse happens – so the Machine settings dominate.

This worked well, but had a few side-effects. Some of the User GPs we’d set up didn’t “trigger” any more on the laptops. After some tracking, it seems that the “overlaid” Machine settings were wiping them out. Adding the same User GPs to the laptop OU fixed that. Phew!

Oh, and just one last thing – we also had to delete the user folder in c:\documents and settings on the laptops, before getting users to log in twice (once on the network, once off) to ensure all the group policies and everything were applying and being set up correctly.