blackberry address book sync problem

Recently i have faced the problem of bb address book synchronization. Wireless sync hangs while it is synchronizing address book. From web i found some help and it suggested as below.
"Options / Advanced Options / Service Books Select the entry "Desktop [SYNC]" Push the Menu button Select Delete Answer "yes" to the "are you sure question?" Without turning off the blackberry, remove the battery Leave the battery out for a minute or so Put the battery back in After the blackberry boots up, select Options / Advanced Options / Service Books Push the Menu button Select Undelete"
Then again synchronize.
____________________________________
Another way I did is: I had earlier backup of bb into .ipd file.
I had a new (or erased) bb handset. Restored only address book from .ipd file. Then carried out wired activation.

"Out of office Assistant" in outlook gives error

When you select 'Out Of Office Assistant' from the Tools drop down menu of Outlook 2003, it gives an error message "'the command is not available. See the program documentation about how to use this extension".

To resolve the problem.

Click on help menu and then click on "About Microsoft Outlook".

Click on the Disabled Items entry. You will see a Disabled Items window open, with the following information within it:
The items below were disabled because they prevented Outlook from functioning correctly.
Please note that you may have to restart Outlook for these changes to take place.
Select the ones you wish to re-enable.
If you see "Addin: outex.dll (outex.dll)" listed, click on it to highlight it and then click on the Enable button. Then click on the Close button. Then click on the OK button to close the About Microsoft Office Outlook window.

Windows desktop not appearing after login

After initial login desktop doesn't comes up and looks like a hang state.
Due to some virus or any malicious code or some other problem if desktop doesn't comes up but at the same time you can check system is not hang by Num Lock / Caps lock.
In this case to bring desktop - Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, select Task manager.
On the applications tab click on "New Task"
In "Create New Task" box type Explorer and say Ok. This shall bring your windows desktop.

scheduled autobackup to USB hard drive for windows

Below batch file is an example of taking backup to .bkf file on a USB backup drive.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ntbackup backup k: p: /L:s /F "f:\serverback.bkf"
> f:
> ren serverback.bkfserverback-%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%-%date:~10,4%_@_%time:~0,2%h%time:~3,2%m.bkf
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Above batch file will rename serverback.bkf file with current date and time.bkf file on f: drive.
In the practical scenario lets say we have 10 GB data to be backed up on daily basis. We can use 250 GB USB HDD (2 nos.) as backup drive. Each can be used every alternate day. This will allow us to retain backup upto 25 working days.

Office Picture Manager very slow to open

My Office Picture Manager become very slow to open.
All file paths that are open are stored in this file OIScatalog.cag, so Network paths and other paths may not longer exist, this may cause a Delay when opening Picture Manager, now what to do:
Windows, Windows XP
1. Go to File OIScatalog.cag that is in your LOCAL Profile %\Documents and Settings\\LocalSettings\Application Data\Microsoft\OIS%
2. Look for "MRU PATH" and Delete all paths that your are sure no longer exist.
Windows Vista Procedures
1. Go to File OIScatalog.cag that is in your LOCAL Profile %\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OIS%
2. Look for "MRU PATH" and Delete all paths that your are sure no longer exist.

Reset to default xp zip for compression

Windows XP comes with built in support for uncompressing zip'd files. If you prefer to continue using a dedicated utility like pkzip or winzip which has more functionality, you probably need to disable the limited capability of XP to prevent interactions and problems, run the following command:
regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll
Want to re-enable the built in zip capability, run the following command:
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll

Ping to self IP address not working. Also can't PING other IPs

Recently had faced a problem where Internet access was working but ping to own IP address or any other IP/gateway IP was not working. I was not able to add the PC to domain.
Problem found with symantec firewall. Even after disabling same problem continued. Then removed symantec client security/firewall & re-installed only antivirus component.
This has solved the problem.

Print jobs not getting deleted from Print queue

Sometimes print jobs doesn't get deleted from printer queue. To solve it.
Stop spooler service.
Go to c:\windows\system32\spool\printers directory and delete *.spl & *.shd files of stuck jobs.
Start spooler service.

Outlook using old email addresses from cache

Outlook (2002 onwards) caches email addresses and store them in .NK2 file.
In some cases if this creates problem after e-mail migration. In NK2 file old email address is cached.
So while sending a new mail it fetches from cache and mail bounces.

In such case search for *.NK* files and delete them.
usually found in c:\documents and settings\profilename\application data\microsoft\outlook.
After restarting outlook it will create another .NK2 file and fresh caching starts.

--------------------------------------------------

This also happens when we re-create a user profile or move to different PC and have fresh windows profile. In that case if we create a new email profile (e.g. new ) Then after opening outlook once, close it and then go to c:\documents and settings\profilename\application data\microsoft\outlook folder. You will see 3 files as below.

new.srs, new.xml & new.NK2

Here copy the 3 old files (old.xml, old.srs & old.NK2). Rename the old with new.

Then start outlook, it will start fetching cached entries which were stored earlier.

WAN connectivity / Dial up Internet : Default route

Scenario :
Two offices ( Office1 & Office2 ) connected by leased line / WAN link.
Office2 has permananet Internet link ( DSL ). It has all the application servers and an Internet proxy server.

Office1 users access internet vias Office2 proxy server.

In case of Internet link down if office1 users uses a dial up connection to an ISP their default gateway changes to ISP. So they loose the connectivity to Office1 application servers as well.
For that office1 user has to add a route manually for Office2 network address.
Also one can use persistent option to have that route added permanently.

Windows server restarts taking long time

Slower shutdowns typically happens with a domain controller running exchange. In many cases it takes more than 10 minutes or more to shutdown. This happens because the Lsass (Active Directory related) service shuts down before the Exchange-related services shutdown. Exchange services keeps trying for contacting AD and it takes longer time to shutdown.

To make windows server restart process faster :

it is suggested to manually stop Exchange services before proceeding with shutdown or restart of a domain controller.

Also I have manually stopped few other services as well before restart and this has made server shutdown even faster. Finally I created a dos batch file to stop the services and then initiate the server restart.

Following are the command which can be included in the batch file.

net stop alerter
net stop msexchangeis /y
net stop msexchangesa /y
net stop msexchangemta /y
net stop imap4svc /y
net stop resvc /y
net stop pop3svc /y
net stop msexchangemgmt /y
net stop policyagent
net stop defwatch
net stop sens
net stop schedule
net stop plugplay
net stop spooler
net stop w3svc
net stop iisadmin
net stop messenger
net stop winvnc
net stop wsusservice
net stop termservice
net stop dhcpserver
net stop ismserv
net stop winmgmt /y
net stop wmi /y

net stop wuauserv
net stop casunivdomainsvr
net stop casjobengine
net stop casmsgengine
net stop cassvccontrolsvr
net stop castapeengine
net stop cadiscoverysvc

__________________________________

Also in the case of server startup : we can set few services start status as manual and the use net start commands batch file to start those service after server boots up.

Windows roaming profile size issue

Regarding windows roaming profile usually the size shall be 25 MB to 30 MB. Once it grows due to synchronization process, logon and logoff takes longer times.

To manage the profile size few things can be implemented.

1. By default exclude folders "Temporary Internet Files" and "Temp".
For temporary internet files one should change the path of temporary internet folder to local drive. Usually this is large.

2. Other folders like "My Documents" and "Start menu" can be excluded from synchronization.

_______________________________________

Finally if profile has synchronization issues and if one needs to recreate a romaing profile. Steps are as follows:

1. Logoff as user.
2. With Domain admin login rename the profile on local PC and server E.g. user1 rename to user1profilebak . One may need to take the ownership of user's profile folder (NTFS permissions).
3. From PC login as user and copy required data from rename profile folder to respective folders i.e. favorites, cookies, my documents.

Autobackup of mysql and then ftp to other PC from linux

push.sh : script

1: mysqldump --add-drop-table -C -l -pPASSWORD -r /home/root/dbbackup DBNAME
2: Today="`date +%d%b%y_%H%M`"
3: mv /home/root/dbbackup /home/root/dbbackup_$Today
4: cp /home/root/dbbackup* /backup/ (This creates a backup on same PC ).
5: /usr/local/bin/ncftpput -u sql -p sql123 -V 172.x.x.x (FTP server IP) . /home/root/dbbackup*
6: rm -rf /home/root/dbbackup*

Explantion : First backup of database then define variable with current date & time.
Append variable to filename and copy it to a folder. From their do ncftp to an ftp server and then finally from the local folder delete all the files.

To repeat the procedure use cron:

crontab -e
59 10 * * 1-7 /home/root/push.sh
minute hour day(0-31) month(0-12) day of week(1-7)

: /var/spool/cron/ folder will contain
59 10 * * 1-7 /home/root/push.sh

Windows XP Performance

For improving the windows XP performance one can stop some / all of the following services.

1. Fast user switching.
2. Help and Support.
3. IPSEC
4. Messenger
5. SSDP Discovery service
6. System Restore service ( Consumes more resources and also recommended to stop for preventing spreading of viruses )
7. Task scheduler.
8. Wireless Zero configuration.

__________________________________

Finally go to My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance -> settings tab.

Select Adjust for best performance.

jre on fedora core

By default, Fedora Core 6 systems come with an old Java software installed, so you need to install a newer version of Java Runtime Environment to enjoy all the Java applications available.

Download linux version of JRE and save in /opt folder.

e.g. jre-1_5_0_09- linux-i586.bin

Make this file executable : chmod +x jre-1_5_0_xx-linux-i586.bin

And now, let's run the executable file with the following command:
./jre-1_5_0_xx-linux-i586.bin
You'll be prompted with the License Agreement, hit space until you are asked if you agree or not. Type Yes and the extraction process will begin. After the extraction process is finished, just remove the binary file with the following command:
rm -rf jre-1_5_0_xx-linux-i586.bin
Now, let's put the Java plugin into your browser's plugin folder. Konqueror, Firefox and Mozilla browsers will all look into the same folder, for plugins. So type the following command:
ln -s /opt/jre1.5.0_xx/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so

To make the Java executable available for the whole system, so you can run all the Java applications you encounter. Create the following file with your preferred text editor:

vi /etc/profile.d/java.sh

export J2RE_HOME=/opt/jre-1_5_0_xx-linux-i586.bin
export PATH=$J2RE_HOME/bin:$PATH

Type the following command to make that file available:
source /etc/profile.d/java.sh
Then type this command to see if the path is correct:
which java
You will see something like this: /opt/jre1.5.0_09/bin/java


Then type these commands:
/usr/sbin/alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/jre1.5.0_xx/bin/java 2/usr/sbin/alternatives --config java

After you have entered the last command, you'll be asked to choose which Java software you want for your system. Just press 2 key and hit enter.

And finally, just type this command to see if everything looks good and your system has a new Java Environment:

/usr/sbin/alternatives --display java

And you can also type this command to see the version of your Java Runtime Environment:

java -version

It looks like this:
java version "1.5.0_09"Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_09-b01)Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_09-b01, mixed mode, sharing)

You should now be able to run most of the Java applications out there, with the commands like:
java -jar application.jar
or
javaws application.jnlp

windows non-interactive ftp

ftp -s:filename host

filename contetns:

user
password
cd /web
pwd
put d:\src\test01.htm
binary
put d:\src\xyz.zip
quit