From times of Windows7 beta till today I had one big problem all owners of E-MU soundcards have – over the time sound become extremely distorted until reboot, although ASIO worked well. Here is solution: go to e-mu patchmix panel, click on “Session Settings” (button with circle next to FX button) and select 48KHz. Voila! :)
Posts Tagged: sysadmin
8
Oct 09
How to remove ZoneAlarm from Windows
We have very frequent problem at work – users with some ZoneAlarm .dll leftovers cannot open any HTTP web site. Here is the solution (taken from here). Removal of .dll in \windows\system32\ works like a charm for me.
How to remove ZoneAlarm
This is what has always worked well for me in the past:
A) Uncheck “Load Zone Alarm (Pro) at startup”
B) Shutdown Zone Alarm.
C) Disable Antivirus Software running in real time.
D) Empty Internet Log directory.
E) Empty Recycle Bin.
F) Reboot.
G) Run Uninstaller from Add/Remove Programs.DELETE:
1) C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Zone Labs
2) C:\Program Files\Zone Labs
3) C:\WINDOWS\Internet Logs (Empty Contents)
4) C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Zone Labs
5) C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\zonealarm (pro)
6) C:\WINDOWS\System32\vsdata.dll
7) C:\WINDOWS\System32\vsdatant.sys
8) C:\WINDOWS\System32\vsmonapi.dll
9) C:\WINDOWS\System32\vsnetutils.dll
10) C:\WINDOWS\System32\vspubapi.dll
11) C:\WINDOWS\System32\vsutil.dll
12) C:\WINDOWS\System32\Zone Labs
13) C:\WINDOWS\Temp (Empty Contents)Go into the registry, Find & F3 and DELETE:
14) Zone Alarm
15) ZoneAlarm
16) ZoneAlarm Pro
17) Zone Labs
18) minilog
19) InternetAlert
20) ZAMailSafe and all sub-keys.
21) zapro.exe
22) VSMON
23) VSDATANT24) Run; ‘ regedt32 ‘ give ‘Security’ permission to ‘Everyone’ and delete:
HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Enum\Root\LEGACY_VSMON
HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Enum\Root\LEGACY_VSDATANT25) AND;
HKLM\System\ControlSet002\Enum\Root\LEGACY_VSMON
HKLM\System\ControlSet002\Enum\Root\LEGACY_VSDATANT
———————————————————
Verify to ensure the above has removed all these keys from the registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Zone Labs
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs\XXXXXX
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ZoneAlarm Pro
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\vsmon
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\vsdatant
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\minilog
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Zone Labs
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\EventLabels\InternetAlert
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default\InternetAlert
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ZAMailSafe
————————
Last but not least, delete the hidden license file in C:\WINDOWS\system32 called ‘zllictbl.dat ‘
8
Oct 09
Backup quest of home user
I like to make photos and I like to shoot them in RAW and I don’t like to delete any and I have 12MP Canon XSi. And most important thing – I want to keep them safe.
The very first idea was to burn them to DVD… This idea sucks from the very beginning. My workflow assumes that I process RAW photos in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
So I start to research online backup solutions. When you’re decide to do online backup – first of all open your favorite calculator application and do some math. For example – I have 200Gb of data today that need to be backed up and I have cable with upload speed 768kbit/s (about 60kB/s) – 200*1024*1024/60 = 3495253 seconds / 86400 = 40 days of continous upload on theoretical limit of you link. Remember that to be able to browse internet with some comfort you need at least 10-20kB/s available upload bandwidth. So this will be not 40, but 60 days to make an full upload. And sh!t happens so add extra month just in case. And remember that some of your data is not static and it should be updated. I’ve tried to use online backup on cable with 768kbit/s of upload and on FiOS 5Mbit/s of upload and I can tell you for sure that for large chunks of information (like 250Gb of 12Mb RAW photos) online will work only on FiOS.
There are 3 online backup services that provide unlimited storage for almost the same price – $4.50/month – Mozy, Carbonite and Crash Plan. All of them have trial version of free version so you can download and play with it for some time. After couple of days of researching I’ve picked Mozy – $4.50/month/PC. I need to back up single computer (for other PCs in hosuehold 2Gb of free account is more than enough) and I like their software the best. It works really well (on FiOS). Last week I’ve restored about 12Gb of data without any problems. Did I mention that Mozy keeps versions? I’ve tried to restore earlier versions of my Lightroom
I’ve found plenty of negative reviews of Mozy, but all of them are old and I didn’t find any dated, for example, this year.
So if you are looking for fully automated online backup solution – I recommend Mozy.
2
May 08
Samba 2.2, Domain 2003 and big problems
This week for a some reason almost all of our Samba 2.2.7 AIX servers stopped working. We have domain with 2003R2 domain controllers and for some reason all our attempts to join these Samba servers to the domain gave us:
server:/> smbpasswd -j SCC_NT -U Administrator Passowrd: Error connecting to DC - NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED Unable to join domain DOMAIN
After couple of fights with our System Engineering department and intensive googling I’ve found a solution. Original post could be found here:
http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2003-May/066356.html
I just changed registry value on one of our domain controllers and specify it the smbpasswd command:
server:/> smbpasswd -j SCC_NT -U Administrator -r DC2 Password: Joined domain DOMAIN.
Hooray! Our engineers promised me to upgrade Samba to 3.0 there soon (this is another solution for this problem), but on AIX 5.1 for some reason Samba 3.0 doesn’t work properly.
Here is the mirror of this great knowledge from the link above :)
> So, W2K doesn’t need SMB-packets signatures and we have no problems, but we
> want it to work with Windows 2003. What’s the difference between Windows 2000
> and Windows 2003 when it comes to security signatures of SMB-packets?By default, a Windows Server 2003 requires signature of SMB packets (at least, a Windows Server 2003 DC).
> Can we disable signatures in Windows 2003 Server or do we have to make
> some changes in Red Hat/Samba? Is ther another way to get around this
> problem?Yes, you can look for the following security option
Microsoft network server: Digitally sign commnunications (always) :
and set it to Disabled, instead of Enabled.
This security option modifies the following registry value:
Key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CCS\Service\lanmanserver\parameters\
Value: RequireSecuritySignature
Content: 0 to disable, 1 to enableIf you don’t want to reboot after that change, you can stop the srv.sys driver and services that depend on it using the following command:
C:\>net stop srv
Then, you can restart it, as well as the services that depend on it (in particular, netlogon)
C:\>net start srv
Jean-Baptiste Marchand
UPDATE: It is important to remove old record about host from AD.
18
Apr 08
How to remove 1000 inactive computer records from Active Directory?
Today I got request from our MIS staff to remove about 1000 computer records from AD. Of course some script needed. Here is 5-minutes solution (use with caution!):
- Install PowerShell
- Install ActiveRoles Management Shell for Active Directory
- Put list of all computers to file. For example targets.txt
- Run powershell
- Import ActiveRoles Management Shell:
Add-PSSnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement
- Run this:
gc C:\scripts\targets.txt| % { Get-QADComputer -name $_ } | % { Remove-QADObject -force $_.DN }
And one more time – use with extreme caution. Be sure you are removing exactly what you need.