Posts by QKSTechTrainee

Hello All,

Now then - this is a nasty one.

We run a windows domain with 2003 Enterprise servers and XP Pro clients. About a year ago we removed all the floppy drives from our client machines and installed some swish new USB2.0 adaptors in their place, and started issuing USB Flash Pens to staff and students. So far so good.

It came to our attention recently that students were playing some stupid game on client machines, by running a no-install-necessary standalone .exe direct from the flash pens (we use Group Policy to prevent them from installing software or saving .exe's to their network mapped home drives).

So, discovering the name of the illicit .exe, it was simple enough to use Group Policy to prevent execution of the .exe in question, but still we have a problem - What do we do to prevent them from running .exe's the name of which we don't yet know? It seems that as we stand any of our users could run a (potentially devastating) program on a networked computer and we couldn't do a thing to prevent it. So - anyone know of any .adm's I can use to prevent execution of .exe's from removable storage?

Incidentally - does anyone else see this as a potentially fatal flaw in Microsofts security? I dread to think what could happen if some clever little bugger started compiling his own .exe's...

Hi all,

On site, we use a web proxy/cache box, which is supposed to authenticate users (via LDAP queries) against one of our Win2K3 AD servers. How would I log the receipt of and response to these LDAP queries on the server?

Basically I need to check to see that the AD server is receiving these queries, and is responding to them in a timely fashion. Can this be done?

Thanks,

QKSTechTrainee

What sort of results do your users achieve if they try to ping www.google .com from the command line?

Further useful information : concurrent with each attempted logoff, eventvwr logs the following entry in the System log:

The attempt by user MYDOMAIN\Administrator to restart/shutdown computer MYDC failed

(Source: USER32, Category: None, Event ID 1073)

does this shed some light on it?

Hi all,

Strange problem with one of our Win 2K3 servers. All seems to be working well, except that, having logged on via RDP, I cannot log off. (I prefer to log off RDP sessions rather than disconnect, because then I leave a session space free for another admin if needed.) All our other servers behave perfectly, logging off the session as normal, but this particular server insists on me disconnecting instead.

Incidentally, it does give me the option to log off, just never actually listens when I ask it to. (I have waited upwards of an hour for it to comply, just in case)

Anyone care to hazard a guess?

QKSTechTrainee

Hi all,

How's this for a bizarre problem. I have a Samsung P28 laptop with Radeon mobility 9100 graphics. Windows XP Pro - fully updated with all the latest chipset and graphics card drivers.
It has a weird intermittent fault whereby sometimes the LCD screen is corrupted although the display on an external monitor is just fine. The weirdness is thus: when the LCD display is faulty, it appears to be magnifying a portion of the desktop to mammoth size (I estimate that it is picking an area of the desktop on the taskbar about 2 or 3 pixels high and a few hundred pixels wide, and then magnifying this to fill the screen. I've checked that Windows magnifier isn't running.

In desperation we returned the laptop to the supplier, who claimed they couldn't replicate the fault, but then replaced the motherboard anyway. A clean windows install seemed to fix the fault, but then it magically re-appeared. What is most frustrating about this is that we have several identical laptops with identical OS/software configs, and none of them behave this way.

Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks

QKSTechTrainee

Onour Windows 2000 domain (XP SP2 clients), we map a network folder to a drive to provide a documents folder for all users.

Some users experience a problem where (even tho drive mapping and folder redirection is successful) the icons for their files keep disappearing, then shortly afterwards, re-appearing. Various searches in the MS knowledge base have given no answers as yet. Any ideas anyone?

For the network administrators out there:-

If you use XP clients and a windows 2000/2003 server, after applying SP2 to clients you will find that any Internet Explorer Maintenance Group Policies will fail if you also use Folder Redirection policies. Thanks for that Microsoft......

Just a brief follow up on this post - Newe DVD rom ordered and awaiting installation - I'll let everyone know if this fixes the problem.

PS - when people view the threads, how come no-one ever says - "I dunno either"?

I'm replying to my own post in case anyone else reads this and is helped - the fault is with XP SP2 machines, where Group Policy applies Internet Explorer maintenance and Folder redirection (in separate GPO's or in the same)

Read MS KB article 888254 for further info.

Just glad it wasn't us....

Bit of an odd one this.

Running Windows XP Pro on a single workstation.
My MATSHITA DVD-ROM SR-8584A was working fine the other day, but now it is convinced it is only a CD ROM. The diagnostic tools I've run also seem to insist it is a cd-rom. I haven't had any luck finding drivers for it on the net as yet, but XP is reporting the drivers as fine anyway.... Any ideas anyone?

Hi all,

running a windows 2000 domain, with 2000 adv server on DC's and XP Pro clients.

Proxy server and home page for Internet Explorer 6 sp1 is set via group policy, but it fails to apply for new users after a change to the GPO that applies it (we wrote a new GPO and deleted the old one) The policy only fails to apply on a specific OU of machines (only difference to other machines is a machine-only GPO) and only for new users or users whose roaming profile has been deleted.

Any Group Policy experts out there care to field this one?

QKSTechTrainee

Hi, just a quickie - does anyone know if my Win 2K Advanced server will require a restart after installing the Connection Manager Administration Kit? Kinda mission critical to avoid restarting this box between certain hours, but I'd really like to install CMAK today if I can.

What network are you connecting to? If you only use this computer for the internet then it looks like someone has set themselves up with remote access to your machine (which is NOT good) That weird looking entry looks very much like an un-resolved Windows2000 Active directory SID (basically a user ID for someone on a win2k Active Directory domain)

So - If you connect to a windows domain at any time (say, at work, school or college) then it is a user on that network, and if you look it up when you are connected to the network then you should see a username there instead. If you never connect to this type of network, then it looks like unauthorised access from the internet....

By the way - do you really think you want to allow "Everyone", "User" & "Guest" access to your computer?

I'm guessing either that your RAM is slower than your motherboard supports (perhaps too slow for your CPU), or that the web-site you used is just red-flagging when it shouldn't be (i.e. a bug in their code)

When you say it was fine before, do you mean you've never had any problems, or that PC-Pit-Stop said it was fine before?

Hi - this is really a revival of an old thread as it seems to have died in terms of interest.

In short - I have a dual boot Win98SE/Win2kPro system ( Win98SE was installed first)

Win98SE is now completely broken :cry: - almost impossible to repair as it suffered crashes during install/uninstall procedures (several times) and had to be hard-reset a number of times after locking up during uninstalls......

Can I re-install it without losing my (very nice and stable) Win2KPro install?

I know that Win98 will remove NTLDR and Boot.ini from the C:\ directory, but is this all I will need to put right to get win2K back, or is there a lot more to the story?:?:

PLease help.....

Sorry - maybe I should have mentioned - already tried that - and a whole bunch of other stuff into the bargain. Radeon Catalyst drivers will now no longer either uninstall or re-install due to a crash which occurred mid-uninstall. I'm having to sit through a whole bunch of "the file ######.vxd is refferred to in the registry or in system.ini but cannot be found" type messages.

When I say win98 is messed up I mean MESSED up - hence the desire to re-install it.

I am presently suffering multiple failures in...
msgserv32.exe
catawbsound.exe ???
various other programs at random
and most puzzling of all, a program which task manager refuses to name at all...

But thanks anyway catweazle....

Sounds a lot like a virus - active and running on your system - use regedit and look in
HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run for references to the file....

VMWare is the way to go - lets you try almost anything before you commit. We use this a lot at work to try out network solutions before we commit them to the live domain - very very cool.

HI all,
Oops - My win98se/2kPro dual system at home was running fine (service packed and updated to the hilt) until I installed a new graphics card (Radeon 9600 128MB) - now -
Win2k - no problem - all working
Win98Se - NOT happy.

So - anyone know if I can reinstall win98 without destroying my win 2k install?

I know I can replace the boot.ini and ntldr files after re-installing win98, but is this enough? I haven't used any third-party dual-booting software, so I know (well, believe anyway) that my MBR should be OK (am I right this just tells the BIOS what partitions exist and where?)

I've worked pretty hard getting win2k to work well, and really dont want to put it at risk.

Thanks

PS - sorry I've been absent so long - gonna try to be a lil useful round here now I know some more stuff.

PPS - Dani - love the new look site.

hello - not been on for a while

I suspect that my machine (win2k) may be contaminated with spyware and the like. could anyone recommend a good (preferably freeware) tool for scanning and/or removing this stuff? My Norton firewall etc. doesnt seem to be enough to keep me secure....

Thanks

Sam

duuuhhhhh - sorry - read the 709 processes thread below and do the work yourself.....

Apologies if this was easy to find out elsewhere.

I am trying to write a small script that can be run on our network by each user, which captures their user login name and uses this to look up in a spreadsheet of all users to provide them with info also kept in this spreadsheet.

Now - looking up info and returning data to the user - no problem - but - how do I capture their username from the DOS ENVironment variable list?

Am I looking in the wrong place?
Taking the wrong aproach?
Is there somewhere easy to find I can look this up without bothering you nice people?

QKSTechTrainee

PS - are there lots of threads posted here which are never looked at?

PPS - reply here, by email or pm(if I'm online)

Does banner printing print out an extra page at the end of each job? The network is part of a scondary school and as a result resources are severely limited. Also, as many jobs are one page only, this would mean a significant increase in printing overheads....

Sorry if it seems like I'm asking for the moon on a stick....

I kinda like the idea of scoring the brownie points by coding for it too....

also - thanks cscgal for the thread merge - is that something I can do for myself next time? (how?)

OK - I am reposting this thread as I believe I may have placed it in the wrong forum to begin with.

Is it possible to programmatically capture a print job and append additional print data to the end of it? I am thinking specifically of using either a script or an app which grabs the print job before it is spooled and add data to the end to create a little footer where relevant info can be shown. For example, user (a) on workstation (b) in suite (c) sends his MS Paint doodle to printer (d) in suite (e) - (despite repeated instructions to only send jobs to printers in the local suite) - now - if my lil prog can make sure that his printout contains all the details of who he is, where he was, and when he did it - I can finally figure out who to remove all network and email privileges from. he he he -- (evil face):evil:

anybody got any ideas? is this even possible?

please note - I dont want you to do the work or write the code for me - just need to know if it can be done (and maybe a lil idea how to start wouldnt hurt):D

Anyone know at which point during the Windows XP startup the Windows Script Host loads? having problems with a startup script which refuses to run on our network, and suspect that we may be trying to run it before WSH is in place......

You can set options to install the .NET framework with your application if you use VisualStudio to build an install package too. Means that your app should install and work on a machine regardless of whether or not the .NET framework is present.

are off topic messages allowed in the PS section of a post? - just an etiquette enquiry...

by the way - dcantrell - hobacks - any joy?

What drive letters are your cd drive(s) mapped to? do you by any chance have a dvd drive called D: and a cdrw drive called E: that might explain it......

really? I used partition magic on my home machine to create a 98SE FAT32/ 2K Pro NTFS dual boot system with no problems at all. - had to resize the NTFS partition several times before I got it right and the machine has been beautifully stable for about 18 months in this configuration. What should I look out for?

virus checking is definitely recommended - should be done whenever the computer starts doing something new without asking - its not only God who moves in mysterious ways...

P.S. - anyone else think cscgal is a honey?

Try searching your entire hard drive(s) for all sound files (.wav , .mp3 etc.) and try everyting you find tilyou locate your noise. at least then you'll be able to tell where it is on the disk and that should help us all find a way to get rid of it.......

Thanks Paladine - all help gratefully received

Thanks Paladine - that helps me with another problem I wanted to sort out, but doesnt really help with interfacing the script to DiskQuota. I want ultimately to include this script in the users login script ( over 1000 users on this network) so they can be notified on login of their personal disk space status. any ideas?

Hello - here's my problem - trying to set up a lil bit of code that checks win2k disk quota and warns user if they are approaching their disk space threshold.

here's the code - (cut down for simplicity - this version doesnt really do much but should work)

Dim vol, quotauser
Set vol = CreateObject("Microsoft.DiskQuota.1")
vol.Initialize "C:\", false
quotauser = vol.finduser("insert user name here")
if quotauser.quotaused >= quotauser.threshold then
msgbox("Warning - nearing disk space limit")
end if

ok - so - why won't this work? - on running the script (by double-clicking the .vbs icon on my desktop cos I aint running it over our net til I know it works safely) - I get the following error message from Windows Script Host

Line:4
Char:1
Error: Object doesn't support this property or method
Code: 800A01B6

weird - especially since I found the finduser method of the diskquotacontrol object right there on msdn site - so - anyone got any ideas?

Thanks

hello peeps

We are currently trying to catch the little jobbie who keeps printing swastikas form a variety of printers on the school network - anyone got any ideas how to force the network to stick the username of the printing user at the bottom of each document printed?

Ta.

whoops - what a poorly designed post - well - running win2k advanced server on a 6-server system - no dedicated print server - no special print software - that help any?