Bauer-Power- Information is Power!

Free and Enterprise Network Monitoring Software

2008-07-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of Network Monitoring tools out there and some of them are pretty good. Other not so good. The one that seems to offer the most power and ease of use is GroundWork.

They offer Free, Pro and Enterprise levels of Network Monitoring solutions. Even the free one they'll give you a one time full support ticket and community forum support. Most other free sources either have no support or just forum support. Even the free version has an Unlimited number of monitoring Nodes. They even have a Community Edition VMWare Instance and a GroundWork Monitor Bootable ISO. It runs on a Linux environment so for a small shop you can set it up quick, easy and all Free!

The free version doesn't contain much in the way of reporting but still does great monitoring. The enterprise version also includes with it Network Traffic monitoring. Which comes out to a lot cheaper than other products that cover the same info. Also if your boss is like many others I know and support is a big issue and that's why you don't have more Linux servers no need to worry as they offer full 24/7 support for pro and enterprise versions.

Combine GroundWork with LanSweeper and Helpdesk Pilot and that's basically everything you need for a cheap setup of a Professional IT Service Center.

By: Sundance of Dot Net Trickster

Installing ASP.NET on Windows XP

2008-07-22T13:19:00.001-07:00

One would think that if they have .NET installed on their computer and they install the IIS that would be all you have to do.

Well as with many things that should be that easy it's not. But it is easy to fix.

Click Start then Run.
Type CMD and hit Ok.
Navigate to your Microsoft .NET windows directory which is usually C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727
Run the following commands aspnet_regiis -i and aspnet_regiis -c
Load up your IIS Manager and enable ASP.NET on the site you want.

By: Sundance of Dot Net Trickster

Really Awesome Free Asset Management System

2008-07-21T09:57:00.001-07:00

The other day I was perusing some of my RSS feeds, and going to some of my favorite blogs, when I was reading someone's comment about a very cool asset management/network inventory software. This was a few days ago, so I can't remember which blog it was (Otherwise I would post a link to it) but the commenter said this particular software was a lot like Spiceworks, except without the ads.

I decided to set it up at my work on VM to test it out, and you know what? It is now one of our production products. My boss was extremely happy about it, and before long he was asking me to customize reports, and change different reporting features. It was an instant hit!

This product is called Lansweeper. By adding a simple line to our network logon script, I am able to capture info about all of our workstations and servers. One of the things I found using the program today was that our Help Desk was giving local admin rights to all sorts of users in the field. I was able to squash that right away thanks to Lansweeper!

Here is a list of features from their website:

Lansweeper 3.1 is freeware and contains no ads.
Run the server application on as many servers as you like.
Use with unlimited clients (no restrictions).
Reporting : over 75 hardware, software, network & server reports included.
Software and operating system licensing reports and license cost calculation
Launch custom commands and programs from the web interface to support your clients (remote control, ping, event viewer, remote screenshot, ...)
Win32 Gui to make easy configuration changes.
Intuitive new web interface
Asset tag vendor integration
Wake on Lan support (WOL)
Automated installer

Setup was really easy, all you need is to install SQL Express 2005 (Also free) and away you go. The download comes with comprehensive instructions.

What sort of tools do you use to gather information about your network? I love testing this stuff out, especially if I can find one as useful as this.

How to Browse the Internet Anonymously using Tor!

2008-07-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to blog about Tor for a while now, but I keep pushing it off. I really wanted to write about it when I was getting into it with Ironkey a few months back. One of the things Ironkey offers, besides an encrypted USB stick, is a secure web browser for anonymous web browsing.

Well, The Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.EFF.org) has developed a free tool to protect your anonymity on the internet called Tor, which stands for The Onion Router. Tor currently works on all platforms including Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac. If you use Firefox, there is a Torbutton extension to make surfing with Tor even easier.

This is what the Tor Project has to say:

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

I found this video on Howcast from the boys over at Hak.5 explaining a little bit more about Tor:

Do you use Tor for secure web surfing? Care to chat about your experience with it in the comments?

I Hate Your Weather!!

2008-07-18T08:14:00.001-07:00

Ok, so this one isn't so technical, but it has to be said. I've worked in the IT field for a while now and most of it has been Help Desk work in one form or another.

Until now I've been able to avoid idle chat for the most part during dead air time. Usually I will just ignore the users or the users will be quiet like they should. Shut up and listen I say, don't try to do two things at once!

When its unavoidable idle chat isn't so bad but there is one thing more than anything that really bugs me, and that thing is:

"So how's the weather out there?"

When I hear those 6 works I cringe at having to reply to them. I really just want to say is:

"I live in San Diego, what do you think it's like?! It's nice weather; it's always nice weather that's why hundreds of thousands of people come here all year round!! And if you really want to know that bad look it up online!"

But being the good Help Desk agent I am I tell them politely that it's nice and has been good. Then they seem to have to follow up with how their weather sucks...

By Sundance of Dot Net Trickster

Microsoft Using Self-Signed SSL Certificates

2008-07-17T15:31:00.000-07:00

Can anyone tell me why in the free world Microsoft, a multi-billion dollar corporation, thought it would be best to use self signed SSL certificates to secure their public websites? Anyone? Hello?!?!?!

This isn't the first time I noticed this, but today I decided to go ahead and write about it. The other day I went to login to my MCP account to get some information, and I saw that their site was secured by a self signed SSL cert. Today I went to login to my company's volume license account, and once again it is "secured" by a self signed SSL cert. Now, I use self signed certs all the time for home stuff, and for internal web servers for my company, but if I was running a multi billion dollar empire, I think I could probably afford $2000 for a Verisign cert! I mean, it is a trust issue. Do I trust YOUR self signed cert? Hell no! Do I trust mine? Sure. Do I trust Microsoft's self signed certs? I don't know. How do I know someone didn't poison DNS, and redirect me to some phishing site?

Seriously! The problem with self signed certs is that ANYONE can make one, and issue it to themselves. Having a trusted public certificate authority like Verisign validate a websites identity is one of the main reasons for having an SSL certificate!

Here is a screen shot of Microsoft's Volume License website's cert info taken from Firefox:

Am I being to harsh here? Am I being too paranoid? Whats your take on this?

Recover Deleted Files Free and Easy!

2008-07-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wrote about a new defrag utility from the makers of CCleaner. Well, today I am going to write about another utility from the CCleaner folks (Piriform) that recovers deleted files, even files that have been emptied from the recycle bin.

This is handy, because we have all known someone, or perhaps been that someone, that accidentally deleted a file and now we need to get it back. This utility from Piriform does the trick.

It is called Recuva (Pronounced "recover"). I tested it out on an image my coworker, and Bauer-Power contributor Sundance sent me of some Koi fish. I sent it to my recycle bin, then emptied my recycle bin, then used Recuva to see if I could get it back. You know what? It worked! Here is a screen shot of what it found:

Of course, the file name was changed so finding the picture was sort of difficult until I started playing with it and figured out that you can filter by pictures only, and then change the view to thumbnail. Continuing to play with the program led me to some other cool features and tricks. I even found some really cool tips, hints and tricks on the Recuva forum here: (Recuva Forum)

The last cool thing I will say about this product, is that it is free for both commercial and non-commercial use, so it might be a good idea to add this utility to your standard desktop images at work incase your users accidentally delete stuff (May reduce the call volume for your help desk).

[NOTE]: If you use an erasing program like Eraser, then you won't be able to recover your files with Recuva. Like most recovery programs, this will only recover files that have not been overwritten. Secure wipe utilities like Eraser overwrite files numerous times to ensure they cannot be recovered.

What tools do you use to recover deleted files? I would love to hear about them in the comments.

Another cool defrag utility from the makers of CCleaner

2008-07-16T00:30:00.000-07:00

I learned of this via Hackosis tonight, and I thought it was pretty cool. It is from the Creators of CCleaner, which I really like because it does a fairly good job of cleaning the registry, as well as other junk that tends to accumulate on your Windows PC.

I have written about defrag tools in the past. One of them, which is hard to find the free version now is called Dirms. I personally liked Dirms because it was easily scriptable. Another one I mentioned was JKDefrag, which has a pretty neat screen saver defrag thingy going on.

For those of you that don't know what defragging is, or why it is important, I grabbed this from Wikipedia:

defragmentation is a process that reduces the amount of fragmentation in file systems. It does this by physically reorganizing the contents of the disk to store the pieces of each file close together and contiguously. It also attempts to create larger regions of free space using compaction to impede the return of fragmentation. Some defragmenters also try to keep smaller files within a single directory together, as they are often accessed in sequence.

This defrag tool from the CCleaner peeps is called Defraggler. It is really light weight, and can be run from a USB thumb drive (Did somebody say portability?) Also, it comes with a command line version for...you guessed it...SCRIPTABILITY!

If you browse to the Defraggler programs file directory from the command line you will find an executable called df.exe. If you run df.exe /? a whole list of options appears before you. For instance, the simplest command to defrag your C: drive would be:

df.exe c:

Another cool thing about Defraggler, that Dirms and (Correct me if I am wrong) JKDefrag don't offer is the ability to defrag a single file.

Here is a screen shot of Defraggler in action from the Defraggler website:

One screenshot they didn't have on the Defraggler website (Probably because it lacks pretty colors) was Defraggler running from the command line, so I took the liberty of taking that screen shot for them:

All in all, I am pretty happy with this defrag utility, and I think I might even move on from Dirms because of the scripting capabilities of Defraggler. Why don't you try it out, and let me know how you like it, or if you prefer something else.

Bouncing Breasts = Renewable Energy!

2008-07-14T10:40:00.001-07:00

I found this one on Digg, and I just had to blog about it. I mean, I am a big proponent of renewable energy...and breasts! I figured this article was a win-win on both accounts!

This Digg submission actually came via The Independant, a British newspaper. According to the article, Adrienne So came up with the idea of a "Boobie powered" electric generator bra. She wanted to harness the power of the bouncing motion of the breasts as she was jogging to power devices like the iPod.

From the article:

The idea of an energy-generating bra isn't as crazy as it might sound. The underwear company Triumph International Japan recently unveiled a solar-powered bra that supposedly will generate enough energy to power an iPod. But I live in foggy San Francisco and prefer not to walk around in my underwear in public. Could someone design an iPod-powering bra for me? What do you think out there guys?

Does this sound like the ultimate Christmas gift for your lady or what?

read more | digg story

Light Weight, Portable Alternative to MSTSC

2008-07-11T10:00:00.001-07:00

This isn't a problem any more, but when I first started to go to my current college, they were still using Windows 2000 in their computer lab. What does that mean? It means no native RDP client so I could remote into my home computer from school. When I went to San Diego State University, the library computers ran "locked down" Windows XP. They removed the run line, and only allowed access to Internet Explorer, and notepad. I would right click on the desktop, and create a new text file called rdp.rdp. Then I would double click on that, and BAM! Remote desktop bitch!

Well, that didn't work so well on the Windows 2000 workstation at my current school. True, you can download remote desktop and install it on Windows 2000, but I didn't have local admin rights. No, my only alternative was TightVNC, which isn't as secure as RDP.

That problem is over! I have found a light weight, portable alternative to Remote Desktop in a tool called Terminals. This puppy does not require installation, can be run from a thumb drive, and doesn't require local admin rights to use!

Besides that, the latest version also has support for VNC, VMRC, SSH, Telnet, RAS, and ICA Citrix. You can also save your passwords for your connections, and protect them using a master password when running the program (Though I'm not sure how secure this really is).

Of course this is too little too late, as my college finally upgraded the lab computers to Windows XP (Way to stay cutting edge Coleman! Always stay one OS behind!) and Windows XP has Remote Desktop built in. The good thing about Terminals though is that all remote administration is in one place now, which certainly makes things easier.

What do you use for remote access while on "locked down" networks? I would like to hear your experiences in the comments.

Creating Self Bootable 'Ghost' DVDs for FREE

2008-07-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that creating self-booting Ghost images isn't as straight forward as it should be. We use Ghost Cast at my work for deploying images, which works great, but there was an incident that recently happened in our Tampa Florida office involving lightning, and fried motherboards due to a surge through the network and into the computer's NICs, but I digress. Anyway, we had to rapidly deploy 16 new desktop PCs to the Tampa office. My boss wanted us to create a self booting version of our standard desktop image. The problem was that creating the self booting image can kind of be a pain in the arse using Symantec's Ghost. Also, what if you are a home user and don't want to pay for an expensive disk cloning program like Symantec's Ghost?

In this article, I will tell you how to create a self booting disk image for free, and really easy. My method involves using my new found best friend in disk cloning called PING. Without further ado, here is how you do it:

1) Download the PING CD ISO and burn it to CD using Nero, or if you're really cheap, CD Burner XP Pro.

2) Download the PING Files. You will need these to create/restore images. Extract the zip file to your external hard drive, or to your file server with plenty o' disk space and share it out. You don't have to, but I rename the extracted folder to ghost. These instructions will be using the external hard drive.

3) Now create your base Windows image, install your base software and get it looking the way you want it. Put the PING CD in the drive, then run sysprep and reboot your computer.

4) Boot up to the PING CD. At boot up, you will see the standard Linux stuff. When you get to the following screen, press enter.

5) Next you will get a GUI with the standard legal mumbo-jumbo, press enter:

6) After the legal stuff, you will be asked what you want to do after the backup is complete. I always select the "Get a Shell (Root)" option so if there is a problem I can check the log using vi.

7) After that you will be asked where you want to back your image up to. You can select a network share, or a local hard drive (Yes it supports USB). For our purposes, I will be talking about the local hard drive method.

8) Next you need to select the drive or partition you want to back up by arrowing down to it and pressing space bar. Then tab down to OK and press enter.

9) Now you will select the external hard drive where we are going to backup our image. Arrow down to it, select it with space bar, then tab down to OK and press enter.

10) Next you will be asked for the PING files we downloaded earlier. This is where renaming it to ghost comes in handy (less typing and easy to remember). Type in \ghost then press enter.

11) If you did everything right, you should now be presented with a list of options (Notice that the list of options are named the same as the folders in the PING files. Coincidence? I don't think so). You will select the Create_New_Image option.

12) Type a name for the new image and press enter. The imaging process will now begin!

13) After the backup is complete, take your removable drive. Find the directory of your new image. Download my slightly personalized package of the necessary boot files, and extract the contents into the same directory of your newly created image. (The files only, not the folder(s)).

14) Run my MAKE-ISO.cmd script to create your DVD iso. If your image is saved in c:\ghost\Your_image_Directory, then your ISO will be located in the c:\ghost directory (One level up). You can edit the script to suit your needs.

15) Once your iso is complete burn it to DVD using your favorite DVD iso burner. I like ImgBurn because it is free.

Once you have burned you image, you are done. The self booting DVD is similar to the PING CD, except you have less choices and all you have to do is select restore and it takes over from there. If your image is larger than 4.7GB, You can either buy the dual layer DVD disks, or you can split the image up to fit on multiple DVDs using the instructions here. (You will have to edit the MAKE-ISO.cmd script.)

Sounds easy enough right? The best part about it is you don't need to download the drivers for your NIC, you don't need any floppy disks to make the DVD bootable, and you don't need to fork over any extra cash to buy expensive cloning software. Everything is win/win!

DIGG THIS!

Easy How to Install Ubuntu Server 8.04 LAMP with MediaWiki

2008-07-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

I setup an Ubuntu 8.04 LAMP server with MediaWiki on it the other day and had to look up a few different web pages to get all the info I needed. So here’s a start to finish guide. To give proper credit and save space on this blog I will link to the resources I used (Just click on the titles people!).

Installation of LAMP

The only things I changed on my install was I also installed the Samba File Server at the “Software Selection” screen so I could more easily manage files from my windows box. I also didn’t change the primary network interface.

Installation of MediaWiki

Nothing to change on this one, just follow it all the way through.
After your wiki is all installed, time to do a little customization.

Open your LocalSettigns.php file from /var/lib/mediawiki and at the very end of the file add the following lines

$wgUseAjax = true;
$wgAjaxSearch = true;
$wgLogo = "FullURLPathToYourLogoImage";

MediaWiki Extensions

The ones I like the most are the IM Status and the CategoryTree

By: Sundance of Dot Net Trickster

The Website is Down!

2008-07-10T07:49:00.001-07:00

Have you seen this video yet? It is an extremely viral, and most importantly, hilarious video of a tech support guy dealing with a pretty sticky situation. I found this embeddable copy at Blip.tv, but the original is available at www.TheWebsiteIsDown.com.

According to their blog this video has already reached the one million views mark, and that most likely doesn't include the other places it can be found like Break.com, Youtube etc. If you haven't seen it yet, you're in for a treat, because here it is:

I should probably warn you that there is some naughty language, and the "desktop icons" at the end may not be appropriate for work, so make sure to view it in a secluded place.

Takin' it back to the ol' school

2008-07-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

One of my fellow Systems Administrators came up to me this morning and showed me something that I thought I would share with you. He just finished moving into a new house, and went through some of his old stuff. In his archive of old tech stuff he came across an old CD. What was the CD? It was none other than a genuine Microsoft Windows 95 Upgrade CD! That's right, not just an install CD, but an UPGRADE CD!

I thought that was kind of funny that he would have something like that after all this time. In fact, I sometimes think it is weird to find old copies of Windows 2000 laying around, or even Windows 98 (Gasp!)

Here is a picture of it in all of its glory:

Do you have any old software CD's laying around? I would love to know what you all still have out there!

Setup a simple VPN server using Windows XP on the easy!

2008-07-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I mentioned how I used OpenVPN to setup a secure VPN server to my home network. I loved that solution because the possibilities are endless, and it is extremely expandable with no limitations because it is open source.

What if you don't need anything that fancy because you only have one or two computers at home? Did you know you can setup your home Windows XP Pro box to be a simple PPTP VPN server? Sure, PPTP isn't as secure as SSL, but it is better than a sharp stick in the eye, and it is sure convenient as hell!

Well, the boys over at Hak.5 decided to do a quick spot on just how easy it is to turn your XP box into a VPN server. All you need to get it working is the following video, and enable port forwarding on your router for port 1723 (PPTP) to point to your new Windows XP VPN server. Don't believe how easy it is? Check out the video (Via 5Min.com):

Do you have something like this setup at home? Do you use something else for a VPN/remote solution? Care to share with the rest of the class in the comments?

Excel loads a blank excel file when attempting to load an existing file

2008-07-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

Does it ever happen to you when you add a new add-in or installed some new software and Excel loads a blank spreadsheet when attempting to load an existing file. For instance, you have a known good excel file, but when you double click it it doesn't open, and all you get is Excel?

In order to open the Excel file, you have to then click on file > open and browse to your file? Well I found a fix for that. That fix is:

• Open "My Computer"
• Click on Tools
• Click on Folder Options
• Click the Tab "File Types"
• Scroll down till you find the Extension XLS
• Click the Advanced button at the bottom
• Highlight the Open and Click Edit
• Click Browse and find your Excel.exe which will be under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office in either Office10, Office11 or Office12
• Then after selecting your Excel.exe at the end of the "Application used to perform action:" line put /e "%1"
• After that un-check the Use DDE box and hit ok all the way out.

Now your Excel documents will load up fine now and maybe even load up faster! Ever had this problem? Know of a different fix? Let us know in the comments.

By Sundance of Dot Net Trickster

Something Funny For You Cubicle

2008-07-07T10:17:00.000-07:00

You probably have seen some of these before, but then again maybe you haven't. My coworkers today are emailing them around, and I tought maybe I would post them up here for your enjoyment. They are various Help Desk "Warning" signs that you can put up at your cubicle to prevent those inevitable stupid questions that you may get. They won't stop them completely, but hopefully they will act as a deterrant.

Think of them as a quazi head on a pike sort of thing... Enjoy!

Layout change complete! How do you like me now?

2008-07-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

Bauer-Power is finished with its latest facelift!

Okay, okay, so the change wasn't that monumental. Not like the first change I did back in December. For that one I went from one of the horrible stock blogger templates to the one I just changed from today. With that one, I had to make all kinds of changes because the layout was a lot different.

For this change, I just merged two different templates from the same designer to make my own slightly unique version. The big difference is that the post area now has the white background. I did this mainly for continuity with my RSS feed. Since the background was dark before, I found that I had to change my fonts to lighter colors so site visitors could see it okay without getting their nuts twisted too much, but then that left the RSS subscribers behind, because the white background of the RSS feed on some readers didn't agree with the font colors I would choose.

I figured, the best thing to do was to use the white background, because the formatting is universal.

So what do you think of the new digs? Please take a moment to vote in my poll, or you can go ahead and leave a comment, take your pick!

Cutting over to new layout Sunday night

2008-07-05T12:19:00.001-07:00

Converting settings over to the new layout was a lot easier than it was moving to the current one. I guess it is because this layout was created by the same developer.

So, I have decided to go ahead and make the change over to the new template Sunday night. If you want to get a taste of what Bauer-Power will look like after the change, please visit my "dev" site http://bauer-powerdev.blogspot.com/

I have already made the changes to make it look the way it will look here, so what you see there (minus the hot girl kissing video) will be what you see over here after Sunday.

I still want to know what you guys think, so please leave some comments for me here so I can take your opinions into consideration. If you don't like it after Sunday, and you didn't complain, I would rather not here about it because I already told you to voice your opinions here.

Going to be changing my layout here...AGAIN

2008-07-04T22:52:00.000-07:00

I have been using this template for a while now (Since Christmas), and I'm getting a little tired of it. I originally switched it up to move to an easier to read, easier on the eyes format, but I just don't feel like I ever truly achieved it with this template since the background is a dark grey.

I am going to move to a similar template, except the blog post area is white. Simple, yet effective, and most importantly easy on the eyes for you the reader. It may take me a while to plan out how I want it to look, so I created a "dev" site where I am playing with it. You can get an early glimpse here: (http://bauer-powerdev.blogspot.com/)

Stop by, let me know what you think in the comments.