AT&T - Sorry, we did not understand your response. Reply ONLY the word YES to activate the 4 channel/$6 Mobile TV plan

If you ever receive a message similar to this:

AT&T:
AT&T Free Tip: Get weather, movie or restaurant
tips from Google on your phone.
Text HELP to 466453 to get started.
To end Tips send no to 4436

Be careful. I replied by sending "No" to 4436 and got this back:

From: 4436
"Sorry, we did not understand your response. Reply ONLY the word YES to activate the 4 channel/$6 Mobile TV plan"


Did you notice anywhere in the original message anything related to a mobile TV plan?

No, because it was just a free tip from AT&T

The first message is a bait to get you in contact with some vendors and the second message is an attempt to make you subscribe to a mobile TV plan for $4

The only way to stop this annoying messages (which BTW came marked as "URGENT") is to reply with the word "Stop"

I sent Stop to 4436 and got this message back:

FROM: 4436
AT&T AUTO REPLY: You have Opted out of AT&T marketing messages. Please do not REPLY to this message.

How lame for any company to try to trick it's customers to sign in for a subscription this way.

UPDATE: After some time, the messages resumed; I ended up calling customer service and had them remove me from their marketing list. I had to call twice and tell them these messages were in violation to the CAN-SPAM act before the messages actually stopped.


THE CAN-SPAM ACT

In 2003, Congress passed the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, which makes it illegal to send unsolicited commercial e-mail messages to wireless devices, including cell phones and pagers, without first receiving the consumer's permission. The CAN-SPAM Act works together with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which created the National Do Not Call Registry.

Creating a self extracting encrypted archive with 7zip

This is a walk-through on how to create a self extracting archive that is encrypted. This is a good way to add security to a file you need to email. What does that mean?

self extracting – a file that will uncompress and unencrypt itself when you double click it

archive – a compressed file containing all the files you need to protect. Compression helps you get by the pesky limits set by gmail etc where you can only send a 20MB attachment. If you have some excel data or word docs you can usually decrease the size by 5-10X.

encrypted – this will encrypt with the AES256 algorithm. The longer the password you use, the more secure it is.

This assumes you have 7zip installed. To check, right click on any file. If 7zip is in your menu like in the screenshot below, it is installed. If you do not, click this link which will pop up a new window with a walk through video on installing 7zip.

To get started -

Put the files in a folder that you want to encrypt.
Open the folder containing the files, drag your mouse across all the files, and right click. Look at this picture:

So Right click

7zip

click Add to archive

The 7zip window should come up. You need to check the following settings:

Add a name.exe

Check Create SFX archive – the self extracting part

Enter a password, the longer the better, numbers and special characters add a lot to the security of the file. I can break into a file with 5 characters in a few minutes. 8+ characters with a letters, numbers and a special character are ideal. A sentence is even better.

Check show password if you want.

Leave encryption at AES-256 and Check encrypt file names.

Hit Ok

This will create your encrypted .exe file in the folder with your files.

Now you need to rename the file.

Now select the file. You should be able to see the extensions like .txt .docx .xlsx .exe. If you can’t click here for instructions on how to have those show up.

Right click on your .exe file and click rename. (or click the file and hit F2 for the fast nerd way to rename)

Erase the .exe part and hit enter. Te 7z icon should disappear and a blank page of paper icon should be there.

Now just open your email, attach the file and send it to the person who needs it. Don’t ever put the password in the email or you defeat the purpose of doing this. The best way is to call the person and tell them what the password is.

When the recipient of the email saves the file, they need to add .exe back to the name using this same rename process. We can’t send .exe files in email because viruses would be everywhere if you could do that.

From: http://windowsnerd.com/how-to-for-normal-people/creating-a-self-extracting-encrypted-archive-with-7zip/

Reviewing File Server Limits

Updated: March 28, 2003

As you plan your file server configuration, keep in mind file system, storage, and other limits related to file servers. Table 2.10 describes these limits.

Table 2.10 File System, Storage, and File Server Limits for Windows Server 2003

Description	Limit
Maximum size of a basic volume	2 TB
Maximum size of a dynamic volume	2 TB for simple and mirrored (RAID-1) volumes. Up to 64 TB for spanned and striped (RAID-0) volumes. (2 TB per disk with a maximum of 32 disks per volume.) Up to 62 TB for RAID-5 volumes. (2 TB per disk with a maximum of 32 disks per volume and 2 TB used for parity.)
Maximum number of dynamic volumes per disk group	1,000 A disk group is collection of dynamic disks. Windows Server 2003 supports one disk group per server.
Maximum size of an NTFS volume	232 clusters minus 1 cluster Using a 64-kilobyte (KB) cluster (the maximum NTFS cluster size), the maximum size of an NTFS volume is 256 TB minus 64 KB. Using a 4-KB cluster (the default NTFS cluster size), the maximum size of an NTFS volume is 16 TB minus 4 KB.
Maximum file size on an NTFS volume	16 TB (244 bytes) minus 64 KB
Maximum number of files on an NTFS volume	4,294,967,295 (232 minus 1 file) There is no limit to the number of files that can be stored in a folder. For recommendations on limiting the number of files stored on a volume, see " Determining Maximum Volume Size" later in this chapter.
Maximum number of clusters on an NTFS volume	4,294,967,296 (232)
Maximum volumes per server	Approximately 2,000 volumes. Up to 1,000 of these volumes can be dynamic volumes; the rest are basic volumes. Boot times increase as you increase the number of volumes. In addition, you must use mounted drives to access volumes when all drive letters on a server have been used. For more information about mounted drives, see " Using NTFS mounted drives" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.
Maximum number of shared folders on a server	Varies. The number of shares on a server affects server boot time. On a server with typical hardware and thousands of shares, boot time can be delayed by minutes. Exact delays depend on server hardware. Shared folder information is stored in the system hive of the registry. For systems with less than 800 MB of RAM, the System hive can be as large as one-quarter of the physical memory. For systems with more than 800 MB of RAM, the maximum size of the System hive is 200 MB. If the system hive exceeds this limit, the server cannot mount the registry at startup and Windows Server 2003 cannot start.

For information about optimizing NTFS performance, see the Storage Technologies Collection of the Windows Server 2003 Technical Reference (or see the Storage Technologies Collection on the Web at http://www.microsoft.com/reskit).

From: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc780559%28WS.10%29.aspx

Recovery of MS Office Files from Temp Files

Microsoft Office has extensive AutoSave and Auto Recovery options that allow you to rescue your work in the event that it is lost due to a power failure, system crash or plain human error. However many people don't know how to use these features or that they even exist.

Even if you don't have these features enabled, you can sometimes recover data from the various temporary files that are created by Office while you are working on the document.

Microsoft have changed the way AutoSave and Auto Recover works in different versions of Office. Therefore you may want to experiment before you rely on this information.

Finding the Temporary Files

When a new file is started a temporary file is created. This can be either in the windows temp directory, in "C:\ Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft". If the file is stored on a network drive then it will be temporarily created there.

This temporary file will have a few different letters after the tilde (or squiggly line “ ~”) . These are good ones to look for to find some lost info:

Word

If you are looking for files used by word, then the following file types should be searched for, where "xxxx" is a number.

• A word document file will look like ~wrdxxxx.tmp
• A temp document file will look like ~wrfxxxx.tmp
• An auto recovery file will look like ~wraxxxx.tmp
• An auto recovery file that is complete will have the extension of .wbk.

PowerPoint

The temp file for PowerPoint looks like pptxxx.tmp

Excel

The temp file for excel looks like ~dfxxxx.tmp

There are others, but these are the ones most likely to contain data that can be recovered.

Finding and using the temporary and auto save files

Word

The default auto save time for word documents is 10 minutes. You can control this time in Options under the "Save" tab. The auto save files are placed in one of the following two locations, which is where you should look to recover the data.

1. "C:\ Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft\Word".
2. "C:\ Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp"

When you have found a file that looks like it might contain data, you may want to open it in notepad instead of trying to get Word to reassemble it. The easiest way to do this is to open Notepad from the start menu then drag and drop the file in to it. The file will then be opened so that you can view the contents.

If the document was open when the system failed (power failure or crash) then you could try just opening Word again (not the document, just Word itself from the start menu). Word will then try to recover the lost document.

Excel

Excel doesn't have the AutoSave feature enabled as default, you have to add it. This is because it isn't always practical to have this functionality enabled. If you have it enabled and want to experiment with a spreadsheet, you should create a copy then open that so that the AutoSave doesn't overwrite the original.

To enable the AutoSave feature, you have to use an Add In. Go to "Tools" "Add ins" and choose "AutoSave".
With Office XP, AutoSave has been moved out from Add Ins to Options, in a similar way to Word. You will find the settings under "Save" where you can also disable the Auto Recover feature for that particular work book.

Excel automatically saves every 10 minutes to the default location of "C:\ Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp" The files are identifiable as they are saved as a number .tmp e.g. "28.tmp". This means that they look different from word or any other temporary files that are being saved there by other applications.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint Auto save feature is enabled as default and will save every 10 minutes. It will prompt you for a file name the first time the auto save runs.
If you are looking for the temp files for PowerPoint then the naming convention is pptxxx.tmp (where xxxx is a number) and they are saved by default in "C :\ Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Temp".

Other Useful Information

If you have been working on a file for hours and the document was created via copying and pasting or at one point had cut the entire page or document to paste some place and then placed something else on the clip board, the data may not have been lost. This is because when any info is copied it is sent to a temp file with the name ~wrlxxxx.tmp. Therefore you could search your system for files of this name and then use the same "Drag and Drop" technique to view the data in Notepad to recover the data.

Another interesting thing to note is that when a change is made to a document that requires a temp file to be created, when you press the save button all the temp files are merged together into one file and the file is renamed to what you called it. The original document that you created is then deleted.

Source: http://www.amset.info/tips/office-recovery.asp

Multiple copies of the Windows Installer update package (.msp) file are created when you run an Office 2000 update

This article was previously published under Q274533

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256986/EN-US/ ) Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

SYMPTOMS

When you install any Office 2000 update, you see multiple copies of the Windows...

When you install any Office 2000 update, you see multiple copies of the Windows Installer patch package file (.msp file) in the \Windows\Installer folder. One example of an Office 2000 update is the Microsoft Office 2000 Service Release 1a (SR-1a) Update.

CAUSE

You installed multiple Office 2000 products and ran the update after you instal...

You installed multiple Office 2000 products and ran the update after you installed each Office 2000 product.

WORKAROUND

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems...

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.


To work around this problem, you can manually remove each orphaned .msp file, after you search for each file in the system registry and do not find the file. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Using Windows Explorer, open the \Windows\Installer folder.
   
   NOTE: You may need to customize your folder options, so that you can view all files. Please refer to your Windows documentation for more information.
2. Make a note of all files in the folder with an .msp file extension.
3. Click Start, and then click Run.
4. In the Open box, type Regedit and then click OK.
5. In the left pane of the Registry Editor, click My Computer to select it.
6. Click Find on the Edit menu.
7. Type the first .msp file name in the Find What box, and then click Find Next.
8. If you receive the message "Finished searching through the registry", the .msp file is orphaned and can be deleted. Make a note so that it can be deleted.
   
   If the Registry Editor finds a LocalPackage name with the .msp file extension in the Data column, the .msp file is referenced and should not be deleted.
9. Repeat steps 5 through 8 for each .msp file that you noted from step 2.
10. For each .msp file that you noted for deletion, right-click the .msp file in Windows Explorer, and then click Delete on the shortcut menu. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that ar...

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

When you update your installation of Office 2000 with the SR-1/1a Update or any...

When you update your installation of Office 2000 with the SR-1/1a Update or any other Office 2000 patch, the update files (.msp) are copied to your hard disk drive. The .msp files in the \Windows\Installer folder are always used for any Windows Installer actions on your installation of Office 2000.

Each Office 2000 family product maintains its own information about its patches, including the cached .msp files. Microsoft Office only intends to keep one cached copy of a patch, no matter how many products use the patch, but Microsoft Office fails to use the existing cached .msp file when the patch is applied to a second product. At this point, the original cached .msp file is orphaned.

REFERENCES

For additional information about the .msp file, click the following article num...

For additional information about the .msp file, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256896 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256896/ ) OFF2000: Error Message: The Feature You Are Trying to Use Is on a Network Resource That Is Unavailable

---

APPLIES TO

• Microsoft Office 2000 Service Pack 1

Keywords:

kbtshoot kbsetup kbprb kbupdate KB274533

Veritas BUE 9.1 error - Directory not found. Can not backup directory \\XXXXX. The directory is invalid

After moving a directory from one volume to another, I started getting this error saying that there was an invalid directory in my BackupExec 9.1 remote selections even though when looking at the selections, there was no such directory selected. It turns out that there is a bug in ver. 9 and 10 of Backup Exec for Windows and the note below shows the steps to fix it.

Got this from http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/207001.htm

---

Exact Error Message
Directory not found. Can not backup directory <\directory> and its subdirectories.
The job failed with the following error: The directory is invalid

Details:

Job Completion Status

Completed status: Failed

Final error code: a000fe09 HEX

Final error description: The directory is invalid

Final error category: Resource Errors

This error will occur when running a scheduled job which contains a reference to one or more directories which have been removed from the target drive.

To resolve this error, do the following:

1. From the Job Definitions tab, right-click on the backup job which produced the error, and then select Properties

2. Click the Selections tab

3. Under Display options, select Text version

4. Locate and remove all references to the directory producing the error

5. In the Selection list name, select Excludes (Figure 1)

Figure 1

6. Locate any references to the directory producing the error and remove it only if it does not have the "/EXCLUDE" at the end of the statement (Figure 1)

7. Save the Job Definition

In Backup Exec (tm) 9.x and 10.0 for Windows Servers, an alert is displayed including the error message (Figure 2) which is reported in the job log:

The job failed with the following error: The directory is invalid.

Figure 2

To resolve this issue, do the following:

1. From the Job Setup tab, right-click on the backup job for which the error occurred

2. Select Properties

3. Select the Selections option

4. Under the View format option, select Text

5. Locate and delete all references to the directory which produced the error (Figure 3)

Figure 3

Diable Dell login background

Reposted from: http://www.imroot.com/2005/07/07/disable-dell-login-background/

Do you have a Dell or other OEM server that has loaded thier own custom bitmap wallpaper for the login screen. While I know everyone needs a pretty picture to look at while they are logging in, the fact of the matter is that it really bites for remote desktop connections. Especially if the server isn’t on your local network. You get the distinct pleasure of watching it draw block by time consuming little block.

Being one that doesn’t like to wait 2 minutes just to get a login box I consulted the all knowing one for an answer to my problem. Turns out it takes a registry editor and 30 seconds to solve this annoyance. Here goes change the value of:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\Wallpaper

Remove the existing value and leave the key set to nothing. Thats it…next login should be faster.