Category: Windows

IT

MS Paint: Insufficient memory

One of my users got an annoying message when starting MS Paint (mspaint.exe):

Onvoldoende geheugen of bronnen om de bewerking te voltooien. Sluit enkele programma's af en probeer het opnieuw.

Which means:

Insufficient memory to complete operation. Close some programs and try again

Other resources suggested that the file opened was too big or that we're doing something with a .tiff file. But he was just starting paint, no images involved at that point. The solution was to open regedit and remove the following key:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Paint
That reset all MS Paint settings and we could start paint again.

© GeekLabInfo MS Paint: Insufficient memory is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

Turn off Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration in Windows Server 2008

  • Start Server Manager (servermanager.msc)
  • Go to the top node named "Server Manager (SERVERNAME)"
  • On the right side, under server summary>Security information, disable IE Enhanced Security Configuration (ESC) for whoever you like.
© GeekLabInfo Turn off Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration in Windows Server 2008 is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

Windows 7 network awareness

After switching my network to a more strict proxy server recently, I found that Windows 7 machines were reporting they weren't connected to the internet anymore. While this is partly true, unauthenticated users can no longer just access http, users don't need to get this message.

The probing software is called Microsoft NCSI. What it does, is:

  1. perform a DNS lookup on www.msftncsi.com, and request http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt. This file is a plain-text file that contains only the text Microsoft NCSI.
  2. then do a DNS lookup request for dns.msftncsi.com. The answer should be an A-record resolving to 131.107.255.255. If no answer, or a wrong answer is given, NCSI assumes the internet connection is faulty.

I whitelisted www.msftncsi.com in my proxy to allow outbound http-connections from unauthenticated users to this domain.

© GeekLabInfo Windows 7 network awareness is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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IT

Minimize Google Talk at startup

Google Talk has a function to automatically start on boot. However, it cannot minimalize automatically. To run Google Talk minimized by default, you'll need to use some external software.

CMDOW

I'm using a tool named cmdow to do the hiding for me. Cmdow is an extremely useful tool for showing, hiding, minimizing, resizing and closing windows. Unfortunately, some malware uses this functionality as well. Therefore, your virusscanner may tag cmdow as malware, but it actually isn't.

Scripting

Google Talk starts 'on boot'. Just a few seconds later we need to run the cmdow command. To do this, we create a .bat file in the Startup folder.

@echo off

rem The next line hides the batch file execution

cmdow @ /hid

rem The next line delays the batch exec for 4 seconds.

ping localhost

cmdow "Google Talk" /HID

© GeekLabInfo Minimize Google Talk at startup is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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Hardware

Find the Dell Service Tag Remotely

Windows with VNC/RDP

If you can login to the computer over VNC or RDP, you can use wmic to find the service tag:
start > run > cmd
On the command line, enter:
wmic bios get serialnumber

Windows without VNC/RDP

If you cannot login to the computer over VNC or RDP, you can still use wmic to find the service tag:
start > run > cmd
On the command line, enter:
wmic /node:computer-name-here bios get serialnumber
You may need to use /user:yourusername and /password:yourpassword to get access to the remote computer. Running wmic /? gives a pretty good manual on what wmic can do.

Other uses of wmic

wmic is a very useful tool for a lot of stuff. For instance wmic csproduct can tell you exactly what model the computer is and wmic nic list shows useful information about your network.

Linux

Under Linux, you can run dmidecode -s system-serial-number to get the serial number. This can be done locally or over ssh.

© GeekLabInfo Find the Dell Service Tag Remotely is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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Networking

Firewall your Exchange 2007 server

Software that is not reachable, can't be hacked. Easy as that. So if you have an cloud-based anti-spam/anti-virus filter, you can block your smtp server for badguys.

In my situation, I'm using a Windows 2008 SBS server with Exchange 2007.

  1. Start wf.msc
  2. Go to inbound rules
  3. Find MSExchangeTransportWorker and double-click it to open the properties
  4. On the tab "scope", select "These IP addresses" and add the following IPs: 'Local subnet', 127.0.0.0/8, 192.168.0.0/16, fe80::/16
  5. Also add the IPs of your anti-spam servers as well
  6. Then click OK
  7. Don't forget to check that the changes actually work by both checking an IP that can connect and one that doesn't
© GeekLabInfo Firewall your Exchange 2007 server is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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