Monthly Archives: September 2010

What is Microsoft Direct Push?

Computer Aid Posted on by

I have a HTC Touch 3G phone, and to increase battery life, I often go to the Communications Settings and enable/disable WiFi… depending on the presence of any nearby WiFi hotspost.

Communications settings has some useful switches for bluetooth, Airplane mode, etc…

But it has a setting that has puzzled me for a while: Microsoft Direct Push.

Since my phone is based on Windows Mobile 6.1, its not surprising that it has some Microsoft aspects.

So, my curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I decided to find out what is Microsoft Direct Push (MDP), and if it would be of any use to me.

It turns out that MDP is a method for getting notified about emails in about 15 minutes of them arriving, and allowing the new email to be downloaded… all very good in theory.

However, I find the biggest flaw, is that MDP is specifically tied to Microsoft Exchange Server.

Its good if you need to keep your Microsoft outlook synchronised between the mobile and office.

But in this day and age, I see an ever-decreasing use of microsoft server products… in favour of more common (and free) technologies that offer similar performance, and are more flexible due to not being tied to propriety standards like MDP.

In my case, I use Gmail (with the IMAP option enabled), and Google calendar (also synced to my phone), and a synced google contacts… all easy and all free, and can be used by anyone with a smartphone.

I suspect my solution will also work with iphone, and android-based phones.

So I now find there is no longer the need to go down the expensive Microsoft path, for mobile office solutions.

connection to SMTP server was lost in the middle of the transaction

Computer Aid Posted on by

This laptop seemed to have a problem sending emails via Mozilla Thunderbird.

Since the customer knew very little about computers, she had many “helping hands” try to fix her problem (and one who probably caused the problem in the first place!).

Anyway, its easy to assume that most settings are correct, since receiving emails works.

After some research, and checking the settings, I find that to access the hotmail account, I need to setup the outgoing server like so:

server: smtp.live.com

port: 587

SSL/TLS encryption

Authentication: normal password (ie don’t encrypt the password)

I try sending emails again, but I keep getting:

The connection to SMTP server smtp.live.com was lost in the middle of the transaction.

So, I’m starting to wonder whats wrong with Thunderbird, or whats wrong with live.com…

But I soon find that its actually a problem with Thunderbird remembering saved passwords.

Although I wasn’t told, it seems that the customer had changed her email password (or someone had changed it for her).

But thunderbird kept using the old password.

So how do you change thunderbirds saved passwords?

Simple, from the main thunderbird window:

tools -> options -> security -> passwords -> saved passwords -> show passwords -> yes -> highlight the smtp entry with the old password -> remove -> close and get out of the options screen -> restart thunderbird

Now, when you try to send an email, you will be prompted to enter the password… and you can once again tell thunderbird to remember it…

search multiple PDF documents

Computer Aid Posted on by

I needed to search for something amongst many PDF documents.

As usual, Microsofts XP search was totally useless… why have a search facility that deliberately ignores certain files and folders… its just wrong.

Anyway, not wanting to dig up and re-learn a trusty unix “find” and “grep”, I started looking for a pdf search utility.

It turns out I didn’t need to do any searching at all.

Adobe Reader actually has a built-in search utility (press Crtl-Shift-F), and then just select which folder to search in, and it will scan all pdf documents in that folder, looking for the your string.

Poor knowledge in a large PC repair company

Computer Aid Posted on by

Customer calls, saying she could no longer log in to her vista profile (it would give an error, then drop her out).

She could login using her husbands account, but couldn’t see the photos and music from her “main” account.

At this stage, I was thinking: easy enough, a corrupt user account, maybe the files are “hidden” from other users, so its easy enough to get everything back by changing permissions & ownership.

But then she goes on to say that she was told to delete the account, then when she re-creates the account with the same name, it will recover all her files…

Hmmm, this isn’t sounding good… depending on what she did, she might have lost all her data.

She then says she had someone else come out, to fix things, but they couldn’t find the data… but she would like a second opinion.

OK, so this could end up being a data recovery of deleted files… a fairly messy process.

Anyway, I agree to visit, and give her an evaluation of the problem… so she knows that a data recovery could end up being expensive.

When I get there, there is some confusion with user account names, as the name on the screen doesn’t match the actual username / users folder name.

Once I have that sorted, I can indeed see that the corrupt user account folder is there, but due to obvious permission problems, I cannot look into it.

Thats also an easy fix: take ownership of all files and folders under the main/corrupt user folder… something thats been around since the days of windows NT (about 15 years ago!).

While the PC is taking ownership, (it takes about 15 minutes to complete!), I look at the drives & folders, and I see the PC has a D: partition.

Under the D: partition, there is a folder called backup.

Under that folder, there are backups going back for many months, which contain all the user data.

Ah, good, if I can’t get at the data directly, via the main user account, I can at least restore from backup files.

Anyway, I can now see inside the main user folders, and I can see all the data.

The customer is very relieved, and I quickly show her how to copy the data into the “new” account.

I also tell her how I would have also been able to use the backups, if I wasn’t able to view the main account.

At that point, she tells me that the other technician couldn’t get at the original data, and once she mentioned that she always got prompted to do backups, he said “oh, I hadn’t thought of that”, and took a look, then said there was no data in the backup area…

At this point, I couldn’t help blurting out: who was he?

I couldn’t believe that someone could spend a whole hour, and not get any results!

Well, lets just say he was from “geeks to you” (a large Australian computer repair company)

Its strange, that in my line of work, I don’t get to hear much from “competitors”, so its always interesting to hear stories (both good and bad)… unfortunately, I get to hear more bad stories than good.

I get the feeling that larger computer repair companies are usually more geared for “growth”, so will sacrifice quality (and good quality technicians), in return for fast growth.

But then, this industry is totally unregulated, so there is little that can be done to stop the “not so geeky” geeks.

Strange Firefox behaviour: fixing add-on corruption.

Computer Aid Posted on by

I had Firefox suddenly start to behave strangely:

I would see strange looking tabs, and many blank pages, instead of websites… and the occasional “page not found” message.

Yet IE8 was working fine.

I disabled all the plugins, and FF would then start working normally again.

After a bit of trial and error, I eventually found that the problem was with the tab kit plus add-on.

But the add-on was working fine on another similar PC…

So I thought: maybe tab kit plus has some corrupt data, so I’ll uninstall it, restart FF, then re-install tab kit plus.

Well, it didn’t seem to have any effect.

After some research, I found that this can sometimes happen to Firefox, and the only way out, is to create a new profile.

Since creating a new profile, means you will lose all the bookmarks, plugins, etc from the old profile, I made a backup of the bookmarks:

bookmarks -> organise bookmarks -> import and backup -> backup -> select where to save the backup (and its name).

I then shutdown firefox (restart your PC if you want to be sure).

Then from a command prompt (cmd), I enter:

firefox -ProfileManager

The window that pops up allows you to create a new profile (create profile button), and I also delete the old corrupt profile (delete profile button).

I then Exit, and start firefox normally, and I get an “out of the box” firefox.

I then import the favorites, and re-install the plugins, and the problem is gone.

An interesting side effect of this is:

With the new profile, Firefox seems much faster (even with all the add-ons and bookmarks back to normal!)… I wonder if Firefox needs a “cleanup” function / add-on, to maintain its performance?

streetview blocked by flashblock add-on

Computer Aid Posted on by

A short while ago, I suddenly noticed that google streetview stopped working.

There was no error messages, and the page would just continue to show the google map.

After some searching I discovered that streetview uses flash, and a recent change by google has caused my browsers flash blocker (flashblock) to stop streetview.

Luckily, the solution is very simple:

go to firefox tools -> add-ons -> extensions -> flashblock -> options -> whitelist

just add the following to the whitelist:

http://maps.google.com/

http://maps.google.com.au/

http://maps.google.co.uk/

and any other country code that google has used to streetmap.

totalcodec.com hijacks mediaplayer

Computer Aid Posted on by

This laptop was running slow, seemed infected, and playing any media caused the totalmedia.com website to open.

I remove the totally ineffective trend, and install Microsoft security essentials. A scan with MSSE finds and removes some nasties.

But after removing the infections, I find that media files still start the totalmedia.com website.

I decide to try running fixwmp, but that didn’t fix this problem.

As a fall-back, I decide to try using a different media player.

I try Gom player, but it still doesn’t play videos, but at least it doesn’t open up the totalmedia.com website.

My next option was VLC player, and it seems to do the trick… I can watch DVDs, and play any other media file.

I’d still like to know how to get media player working correctly, but given the time constraints on this problem, this was the best I could do.

cannot defragment inbox.dbx

Computer Aid Posted on by

As part of tuning a PC, I did a defragment, only to find that one file  would not defrag.

The file was inbox.dbx… that means its the inbox file for outlook express.

inbox.dbx was about 1GB in size, and it had about 1000 fragments.

Now that will slow outlook express!

So how do I fix this if the defrag tool won’t work.

I could try the contig tool from sysinternals, but given the time I had available, I found the quickest way to achieve a similar result was:

  • Make sure outlook express is shut down (you might need to restart your PC to be sure)
  • open windows explorer (make sure you can see all hidden files (tools -> folder options -> view -> “show hidden files and folders” , “hide protected OS files”, “display the contents of system folders”)
  • navigate to: c:documents and settings{user}local settingsapplication dataidentities{long hex number}microsoftoutlook express
  • right click on inbox.dbx -> copy -> right click on the “outook express” folder ->paste. This will create a copy of inbox.dbx (called: Copy of inbox.dbx)… this part can take many minutes.
  • delete (or, to be safe: rename) inbox.dbx
  • rename “copy of inbox.dbx” to “inbox.dbx”

You will find that the “new copy” of inbox.dbx is much less fragmented than the old one.

Once you are sure everything is working correctly, you can actually delete the “renamed” inbox.dbx.

Lokitek.com.au (Jamie Russell Krisanski)

Computer Aid Posted on by

At the end of 2009, I had some problems with a company called Lokitek.com.au

I purchased some software, it wasn’t in stock, so I was asked to provide an account so I could receive a refund.

But then nothing happened.

After countless emails, I then noticed that the lokitek.com.au website was “closed for upgrades”… this is looking very suspicious!

I eventually wrote off the debt, but I decided to do some digging.

I found out that LokiTEK is a business registered in Queensland by Jamie Russell Krisanski, but the registration was cancelled from 30 Jun 2010…

This is a guess, but it looks to me like Jamie has either gone bankrupt, or has decided to just abandon the business.

Either way, it looks like many people have been left high and dry, with no way of getting a refund without a lot effort.

Maybe Jamie can comment on this and let us all know what happened to our money?