Archive for the 'windows' Category
It’s an Admin’s worst nightmare (well one of them).
A server’s system disk is quickly running out of space for no apparent reason. You know that when the system drive fills the server is going to shut down and you’re going to have a lot of unhappy users. You need to find out what [...]
Great open-source utility to recover lost Windows account passwords or to break into a locked machine.
In some cases, you can use special tools that reset your forgotten password (which I’ll write about in my up-coming posts..). but there are cases, where you don’t want to risk harming the system even more, or where you must [...]
I don’t know how useful this actually is but I thought I would share it with you guys anyway.
You seem to like useless information… Right??
This trick threw me for a loop. I was watching a junior admin install Windows Vista from a CD and he turned to me smirked and said
“Want to see something cool?”
I [...]
Have you ever brought up a Open dialog and thought to yourself…
Why can’t I copy the path of a file/folder directly from explorer? The Microsoft boys must have heard ya because here it is on your context menu!
It doesn’t work in XP but… now it is an option, in Windows Vista.What you need to do [...]
Hello out there in admin land!
It is I, El Di Pablo here to bring you a quick Ubuntu tip for the week. I haven’t written on aTa in a while due to my hectic schedule, but I am sure you have seen me milling about the comments quite a bit.
Anyhoo, so there I am last [...]
Please follow this email chain between myself and our friend Karl AKA ATA.
—————————————ME
Here’s the scenario….
Backed up info off old laptop to external HD.
During XP install I saw two identical drives…nuked the first partition and tried to install. XP said no. Nuked the 2nd one…XP allowed the install. JOY!!!
You know where this is going [...]
Have you been a busy little bit-torrenter lately?
Do you have tons of ISO’s laying around? Trying to mount them in Vista like you were used to in XP and not having any luck?
Our reader Tom in Wisconsin is and this sounds like a job for dum dum dum (key theme music)… AskTheAdmin!
Well it turns out [...]
If you have a hard drive of unknown origins there are times when you just can’t format it using the normal methods like an OS’s installer or Windows built in Disk Configuration Utility. NTFS’s good old security tries to do you dirty as well. It can be a real pain in the ass.
But AtA has [...]
I get asked often how to bring up the security box (control alt + delete) in remote desktop and here is the answer:
To use Control + Alt + Delete in a Remote Desktop Connection terminal, use Ctrl + Alt + End instead.
I tested it and it worked beautifully on two XP machines, 1 2003 server [...]
I was a hard core Netscape user before the days of FireFox and before that I was all about IE4 . (Sorry for the re-run but Kayla didn’t let us sleep this weekend!) So I have realized change is good and you live and you learn. So when I heard about Flock, I decided to [...]
MJ writes to us that her machine runs updates around lunch time and she keeps getting the prompt do you want to restart now?
Not only is it annoying – sometimes she clicks yes by accident and her whole world comes crashing down. (See the fix for this at the bottom of the post – not [...]
Have you ever wanted to talk to your computer? You know like “Music On” or “Kill Stupid Flanders!“
Well in Windows Vista, you can! And it is as easy as this:
Click the Start menu >> Click Control Panel >> Click Speech Recognition. >> Click Start Speech Recognition >> Now you can tell your computer what [...]
Today’s question is a very common problem that most of you have had one time or another. It is especially annoying if you are about to sit down to watch a video and you can’t… Then you have to venture out onto the world wide web to try and hunt down a solution.
Look no [...]
So you don’t want to dole out the big bucks for some fancy smancy cd/dvd authoring suite just to burn cd’s and disk images? Or how about you don’t want the bloat from said suite?
No it’s probably that you are just like me and a big cheapskate when it comes to buying software!
Either which [...]
This question made me go “huh?”
Then I thought about it a little and found a FireFox extension that does just that!
Yeah we know that you don’t have time to read ALL the Blogs that you want to! At last check my RSS reader had over 300 feeds. We found a little FireFox extension that made [...]
The guys over at Ghacks are awesome and obviously not just for Google hacks check out this gem…Today boys and girls we are going to learn how to get Vista’s Clear Type fonts for FREE! Just like AtA likes it!
As I said before the guys over at Ghacks helped me out today when I [...]
We have all been stuck between a rock and a hard place at one time or another… Stuck staring blankly at a Windows machine that just won’t boot. I have been recommending this re-branded toolkit left and right recently so here is a little more information on it for you guys:
This nifty tool allows you [...]
Mary Ann writes to us that she misses the graphical WinIpCfg.exe that came with Windows 98 and ME. She wants to throw it on a memory stick for quick access to IP information and a GUI for editing those numbers – you know like back in the day.
No worries Mary Ann we have got an [...]
A reader from Idaho was seriously freaked out after a late night at the computer and sent us a picture of their task manager in a strange state.
They asked for their identity to be with held so here is a screen-shot of a random person’s task manager in a similar mode.
Have you seen this before? [...]
No matter how big your hard drive is, it will always get to the point where you need to make some more room for something else. On today’s post I will go over a few great tools to cleanup programs and other junk files from your computer. Great M$ Alternatives for free for you [...]
So its late in the afternoon and you don’t have much work going on so you are all up on the net and then BAM!
You broke the Internet for everyone. You brought down the network. You seriously flucked something up. We all know it was something you did but what was it??? You got an [...]
Adam Pash covered this tiny app on LifeHacker a while back. This Resizeable goodness is ever so cleverly called resizeenable and it lets you resize system windows that you normally could not. You guys always seem to find what I am looking for before I’m looking for it! Thanks LifeHacker…
Some of you may wonder why [...]
From AtA’s earlier days:
Reader Elizabeth (who knew we had so many female readers!) wrote to us that she moved her Word document off the screen so she can only see the bottom half of it.
She didn’t save it and can not move or close it. We have all done this before, moving windows around willey [...]
Brought Back Up Top By Popular Demand…
Have you ever wanted to copy the path of a file located deep in your hard drive’s under belly (that you call a hard drive structure)? We are pretty sure you have one time or another, seeming that you are here at AskTheAdmin.com reading this article…
We previously covered how [...]
Commodore 64 here to report on the next big splash on the scene. First some history.
If any geeks out there remember a time when it was actually a plus for things to run in a browser – along came Macromedia with its FLASHy browser plugin that seemed to work consistently everywhere and broke the boundaries [...]
If you are like us you have more than a handful of drive letters residing on your Windows machine. Now here is a time saving tip that will let you see ALL the drives you want properties in a single property window… Wow that’s a mouth full here check out this pic.
By highlighting the drives [...]
Windows 2000 and XP produces a blue-screen of 0×7b after you transfer a Disk from one motherboard to another. The reason for it, is the difference in the IDE Disk controller.
Windows will only boot successfully using the same IDE controller of the same manufacturer (i.e. Intel, VIA etc..). It’s not that the Windows plug’n’play mechanism [...]
Before someone logs into your machine a message can be displayed. This is meant to inform you that you are being monitored or you are bound by some formal code of conduct.
You can use it to display a message in your absence to remind your buddies you are an all knowing Admin. You can do [...]
You might have seen it before on someone else’s laptop, and wondered how you can get down with the hibernation game. Why doesn’t it show up by default on your shutdown screen?? Don’t have hibernation envy!
I’m referring to seeing 4 options to choose from on your Shut Down menu of Windows XP. After this hack [...]
Jodi writes in:
I wasn’t sure who I should contact about this, so i am sending this to you. As of late, word attachments coming from my friend on a Windows XP Machine appear as “winmail.dat” files.
When I try to open these, the text runs about 150pp long, (it’s a 4page doc) and the [...]
For those of you out there still living in the dark ages, and still using Telnet on Windows because you haven’t found a more viable alternative (You know who you are) We have some good news for you!
Maybe you haven’t decided to switch to a more secure solution because you use Windows Servers and Windows [...]
At first I thought this was a joke. You know dude please show me how to be l33t. But then after a little bit of clarification our junior admin Adam in PA is troubleshooting a connectivity issue across his VPN to a single server and intermittently the network. Adam wants to do so from the [...]
You sure can! If you find yourself mouse-less You can pull up the task manager in any Windows version 2000 or better with…
Control-Shift-Escape
_TheQuickPostin’AdmiN_
Check out our RSS feed.
Need Free Tech Support? Ask The Admin a Question
So we heard about one way to get a slow computer up and running but it involved making the jump to Linux. Now lets say for arguments sake you can’t go the way of el di pablo and Push Ubuntu on your Woman?
We couldn’t get her to use that Pentium 3 with XP because [...]
One of my pet peeves is people with an antivirus that is not up to date. Seriously now, why even have antivirus if you are not keeping it up to date?
For those of you out there that don’t have your antivirus up to date because you are too cheap to renew your license, don’t fret! [...]
James from Virginia wanted to know if it was safe to delete these Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files from his network. Check out our answer and step by step removal tips.
Running in a mixed Windows/Mac environment I find it annoying to deal with all the little artifacts the great OS’s leave behind. All of our [...]
Have you ever wanted to create a shortcut on your desktop to disable your screensaver or eject your cd-rom?
You have seen it done and now you have some use for it? Don’t fret young Admin! No need to muss and fuss here is a light weight program that needs no installation: Tooler.
It’s only 50kb [...]
Johnathan from Minnesota writes in:
My IT manager uses Office XP aka 2002. His outlook pst just touched over 2gb. It happened while Outlook was opened and it closed. He couldn’t open it again. I looked up the error message on Microsoft and they said Outlook XP (and outlook 2000) can not recognize a pst larger [...]
Alex in New York hit us with this question:
How often should I defragement my Windows XP installation? While you are at it can you explain what fragmentation is? Why is it bad? How do you defrag and when should you? What about on my Mac?
Using the magic powers of The Google I came across [...]
I got a call out of the blue from a Navy buddy of mine who is stationed in Germany yesterday asking me how he can uninstall Windows Media Player from his new Windows Vista machine. Seeing as how I haven’t gone down the Vista road yet I wasn’t sure.
I thought it would be just like [...]
Happy 2008 AskTheAdmin.com readers. Isn’t it a little early for you? Shouldn’t you be hung-over somewhere? Well in case you are checking up on The Admin – here is our first post of the new year.
So Johnny command line needs to be cool and open his computer management console or maybe just his services…
Here you [...]
If you have a NTFS partition from Windows 2000, XP or Vista there are times when you can not format it using the normal methods like another OS’s installer. It can be a real pain in the ass. But AtA has been through this MANY MANY times and we know of an old school solution [...]
I Did something pretty cool the other day that I think AtA readers will appreciate.
I Had a hard drive die on a guy in the accounting department. Lets just say he does payroll for the company and I still want to get paid!
Cyclical redundancy check failed was the message. BSD on boot, all that jazz.
Yikes….Used [...]
Yes, we know you have taken a million digital photos over the last year, on your fancy shmancy new camera. And we also know the holiday season is upon us. Being the geek that you are, you could not just leave your pictures named digital_image_13456.jpg for your slide shows… We just couldn’t have that now, [...]
If you are like reader Miguel and you want to reboot your Windows XP or Vista machine from a .bat file, here is the command to do it:
shutdown -r -f -t 0
LifeHacker showed you this command here advertising it as a fast shutdown command.
shutdown -f -t 0
Be warned – it forces apps to close even [...]
Craig was a little confused last night and very agitated. He wanted to know where his Run command was on his Vista Ultimate machine.
You know it used to be on the start menu in Xp. You can still bring it up by hitting Windows-R but, you want it back where it belongs – on your [...]
We get a lot of emails from people about why their new office 2007 files end in a X. People have sent in questions asking about why their files are in the archive format or formated for Mac OS X…
Microsoft has introduced new file types in 2007 (The X Stands for XML) if all you [...]
Jacob asked us if he could reference a whole cell range by label in excel. He continued on with how much easier it would make his life. Jacob today’s your lucky day because it looks like you can!
Thanks to LifeHacker for the answer to this one. You can reference a column by its header or [...]
Have you been a busy little bit-torrenter lately?
Do you have tons of ISO’s laying around? Trying to mount them in Vista like you were used to in XP and not having any luck?
Our reader Tom in Wisconsin is and this sounds like a job for dum dum dum (key theme music)… AskTheAdmin!
Well it turns out [...]
Hey Boys and Girls,
We’ve had the honor of meeting up with the guys over at Gelaskins. Their products were one of the more popular products at the CES pre-show and Digital-Life Show, mainly because of the sexy designs they use for their Gelaskins. Really wicked stuff. But there’s more to Gelaskins than meets the eye. [...]
-
Flickr Photos
More Photos
-
Recent Comments
