Mac user can't login to Windows domain

Had a quick question this afternoon from someone who had setup a Mac in a Windows domain environment. After setting up and joining the domain they had no problem logging onto the Mac with their Windows username and password. However, seemingly at random they were suddenly unable to login anymore.

It turned out to be quite a simple solution to the problem; the clock on the Mac was out of sync with the Windows domain controller. The Mac was running six minutes faster than it's Windows colleagues. Once the time was corrected the user was able to login to the Mac again with their Windows login.

Outlook 2010 cannot verify licence

I was reimaging a faulty computer today with a working Ghost image I had made some time back when I encountered an error opening Word. Every time I tried to open any of the Microsoft Office 2010 applications I got this error message:

"Microsoft Office cannot verify the license for this product. You should repair the Office program by using Control Panel."

After a bit of searching I discovered the answer was quite a simple one. The problem was that I had created the image some time back and the activation grace period had expired. In order to get Office to activate properly I needed to rearm the activation period.

To do this you need to open a command prompt with elevated administrator rights and type in the following command:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform\ospprearm.exe

This resets the 30 day grace period and you are once again able to open and activate Microsoft Office.

ASUS P5 series motherboard won't shutdown with Windows 7

I had to share this little gem of a trick with everyone. I've just built a new quad core system for my wife to play The Sims on. Works perfectly except for one tiny little hitch - When you shutdown the computer Windows shuts down fully but the PC doesn't turn off; the fans carry on spinning and the lights stay on.

Many thanks have to be given to user kirk620 on the Microsoft Answers site for finding the answer to this problem. Simply go into Device Manager and find the entry for your IEEE-1394 device and under Power Management tick the box to allow Windows to turn off the device. Hey presto! The computer shuts down properly again.

Apt-get from the command line behind a proxy

I'm putting this on here more as just a reminder for myself as much as anything else. I've recently started putting more effort into developing my Linux knowledge and I've been setting up an Ubuntu server without a GUI. One of the first problems I found was that I couldn't update apt-get. It turns out that apt-get doesn't automatically see the system proxy settings but can be fixed simply with one command:

export http_proxy="http://username:Password@foo.bar:8080"

Many thanks to Cybernerd on EduGeek for this spark of genius!

Unable to Telnet localhost

I was setting up a mailserver for a client and couldn't work out why I was continually unable to send messages to our SMTP relay. I had also set up a webmail client which was having similar problems sending email to the mailserver. I'd tried everything I could think of and everything that I found online. I'd even escalated the problem up to our ISP, with no joy.

So would you believe my surprise when I came across a TechNet thread that presented the solution to my problem; something so obscure I never would have thought of it.

It turns out that McAfee's 'Client Protection' component was blocking telnet from accessing the server by IP address and hostname. Once I'd disabled the client protection component I was able to telnet to the local server, the SMTP relay server and my webmail client was able to send emails to the mailserver.

I have to give many thanks to Rich Matheisen for his informed post on TechNet.

Accessing Windows file shares from Ubuntu

I've been using Ubuntu on my home laptop for about a month now with the intention of giving it a good run as my main OS before deciding whether or not I should continue on with my previous Windows XP installation.

One of the problems I've been having is with accessing Windows file shares. It's been kind of on and off for a while whether I would be able to access files on my home server or not. I've setup my fstab configuration file to connect on startup, my Samba configuration for the correct Windows workgroup and tried various other tips and tricks. But all to no avail.

However I think I've finally fixed the problem! Many thanks to the author of the blog Boinst for this tip. The solution that worked for me was a registry edit on my Windows box. I needed to change two registry keys to setup this fix:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache

Change this key to '1'.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\Size

Change this key to '3'.

The first key tells Windows to enable enough cache memory for large file sharing and the second key tells Windows to prioritise file sharing over memory saving.

So far this has sorted my file sharing problem with Ubuntu. Hope this helps others.

Take ownership and change permissions from the Windows 7 command line

I discovered a unique 'feature' of Windows 7 offline files today; It turns out that when offline files are created they are stripped of ownership and all permissions.

This little gem of knowledge I discovered when I had a client who made edits to an offline file, during which time the offline file service was stopped in the domain the computer was part of. When the laptop was returned to the domain the offline files and syncronisation were disabled, rendering all changes lost. Or were they?

I tracked down the offline files, hidden away in %systemroot%\CSC, and copied them all to a safe location on the desktop so that they could be opened and saved to the network again. However, this is when I made my discovery! I was unable to open any of the folders or files as the user account or the administrator account. I was also unable to request permission or change permissions.

After some scrutiny I discovered that I was able to retake ownership of files and begin my trek through the maze of folders and files in a very large offline files collection. Unfortunately by using explorer I had to take control and give myself permission to open every folder in the directory tree individually. This was going to be a long process and a major headache. So I went hunting in Googleland.

During my searches I found a wonderful command line tool built into Windows 7 for taking ownership and granting permissions on a whole directory. The first command allows the logged on user to take ownership of all the files and folders:

takeown /f directory_name /r /d y

The second command allows you to grant full permissions to any user account to all of the files and folders in the directory:

icacls directory_name /grant administrators:F /t

These commands were life savers for me and I give credit to eset_boy on The Windows Club Forum for his wonderful advice.