So, the idea is that I wanted something “like” the Ultranvnc Single Click download, only for linux. The main idea being is that if someone is looking for a bit of desktop tech support on linux, we don’t need to be giving instructions for 5 different package managers, or source compilation, or anything more than MAYBE something to cut and paste. In fact, something like this…. wget http://www.mysite.com/remote-support && sh remote-support could be easily pasted into a console window (which hopefully we can give instructions on finding), or a run command in kde for instance. Then the remote-support script should do the rest. *(By the way, the script doesn’t have to be chmod’ed to executable when we use sh to invoke it…)
Category: Windows
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Remote Tech Support using VNC (Ultravnc SC and x11vnc+wrapper script)
Ok, some time back I’d done a writeup on UltraVNC SC, which is a nice customizable (windows version) VNC server that essentially let’s someone doing remote support build their own downloadable .exe that runs and automatically tries to make a direct connection to a “listening” vnc viewer. It’s good for helpdesk environments as an easy download and run, and I’ve done some trials at using it over the internet with some of my existing computer service customers. Very soon, I’ll be adding a page and information about Remote Tech support services using this same method. I have run into some problems with it though. There are multiple advantages to this approach though (the main being NO firewall config for the user needing remote support – all firewall config is done at the “support center” end. Another advantage being that it’s “hardcoded” to connect to a specific given address and if that fails it gives up and uninstalls itself. The last advantage being that it completely uninstalls after a successful session as well. (Well, technically it never “installs” to begin with.))
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Epson Perfection 1650 scanner and Windows XP Limited User account
“We tried scanning and all that happened was the lamp moved back and forth…. Nothing else happened.” That was the description I had and the request to see why the scanner was broken. It hadn’t been long since the Epson scanner had been hooked up to a new XP Pro system. The machine sees quite a bit of public use so we had thought it would be best to divide accounts into Visitor which is an unpriviliged user and another account for the ability to work with software that was not as cooperative in an unpriviliged account.
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Make an autorun cd show a web document on autoplay…
There’s a utility called Thumbs that looks like a good quick way to make a cd launch a web documented on autoplay in Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/ …Of course, autoplay under windows is fairly easy to setup. If you have a program on the disk you can just have autorun.inf in the root directory of the cd and in that you can specify WHAT program to autorun. The problem with html documents on a disk is telling the computer how to run it. (Yes you can adjust the icon as well.)
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Microsoft April Updates coming Tuesday
To change the Google theme of the afternoon…. Microsoft is due to release their April updates this coming Tuesday (April 11th.) Advance bulletin is here. Four updates affecting Windows, one affecting Office AND Windows. Highest severity is Critical (Explorer flaw probably) Reboot will be required… The Office/Windows update MAY require a reboot and is listed as Moderate.
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Several ways to launch the task manager in Windows
I was doing a remote connect to a machine today and the “send ctrl-alt-del” for some reason didn’t work to bring up the task manager, so I had to get to it another way. For those that never noticed (or don’t recall), if you right click on the taskbar, you should see an option to launch the task manager. (I was looking to kill off a program that was being uncooperative.) Another way to get it is to press ctrl-shift-esc and it will popup.
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Bellsouth mail.lig.bellsouth.net server phasing out?
I haven’t had much time to look into this, but one of the mailservers I administer is typically configured to relay through mail.lig.bellsouth.net, with mail.averyjparker.com as a fallback. Sometime overnight, mail.averyjparker.com started getting heavy use and on checking this morning was getting all of the outbound traffic. So, I did a bit of investigation mail.lig.bellsouth.net is no longer found and I’ve switched the configuration to mail.bellsouth.net and all is churning along well.
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New mass mailing virus
F-secure has information on a fairly aggressive new email virus. Their name for it is VB.bi although it’s aliases are…. W32.Blackmal.E@mm, WORM_GREW.A, W32/Nyxem-D, Email-Worm.Win32.VB.bi depending on which AV vendor you check with. It’s a worm as well, in that it tries to spread through remote shares. It attempts to disable antivirus software as well. Here are some details from their writeup:
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Outlook Express Cumultaive Security Update KB837009 will not install
I’ve run into this in the last few days too. (In spite of the fact that it’s an OLD update (April 13, 2004?) MS04-013…. I think on the last visit (and my first one to this machine) we had probably forced a visit to Windows update (which I think it may not have seen before…) Anyway, this is a Windows 98 system and the last update probably brought along Internet Explorer 6 SP1 along with Outlook Express. There was one update that would appear as being necessary on every visit to the Windows update site. The update was KB837009 and was listed as “Cumulative Security Update for Outlook Express 6 Service Pack 1″…
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AVG – Cannot Launch AVG Internet Update
Last week sometime I was doing maintenance on an OLD Windows 95 machine (yes there are some still out there….) and noticed the Antivirus had not updated in a good while. They were using Grisoft’s AVG and so I tried to force an update. I was greeted with an error message… “Cannot Launch AV internet update” Which was puzzling since we were online with no connectivity problems. On looking, this is known to be an issue with Grisoft AVG on Windows 95…..