I found this one over on Greg Huges' blog this afternoon. All you do is add encarta@conversagent.com as a contact in MSN Messenger then open a conversation window. The first thing I asked was, "what time is it?" Try it out, it is very cool!

I am definately not going to get anything done for the next few hours......

I've been working as a Tier-2 support person for some time now and there seems to be a number of tools that I use frequently to get out of trouble.

• HiJackThis - Removes browser HiJacks
• Ethereal - The best Packet Capture tool you can get for windows.
• Adaware - My preferred adware removal tool.
• Stinger - A tool developed by McAfee that is a stand-alone utility that detects and removes the most recent/popular viruses. It is the fastest virus scanning tool around.
• BartPE - A bootable CD that boots a reduced version of Windows XP. This is the ultimate debugging tool! It allows you to boot a PC into a Windows PE like environment and scan for viruses/adaware, backup files, browse the next, partition disks, restore deleted files....the list is endless.(A MUST HAVE!!)
• RootKit Revealer - If you don't know what a RootKit is then I'd suggest a bit of googling. This is the best tool to detect if you've got one.
• TCPView - An excellent utility from Sysinternals that lets you see all the active connections on a machine.

Stayed tunned, I'll update this post as I use the tools.

I purchased an HP IPAQ from GraysOnline.com.au a few weeks ago. It arrived on friday and after unpacking it I noticed that the screen was behaving really strange. The 'display' of the picture was fine but it was really inconsistent with the stylus. After trying for several hours to find out what the problem was I decided to make a warranty claim. Since this is a problem with the screen I doubt very much that they will replaced it for free but it is certainly worth a try. I'll keep you all updated on the progress.

I've been neglecting my blog:( Well as of today it will be an entry a day.:)

A few days ago I had to install Windows XP on a PC that I was selling to a friend. This usually simply exercised turned into a night of lost sleep because Windows XP apparently doesn't like hard drives formatted with Linux. I popped the Windows XP disk in the drive, pressed any key to continue and then....nothing. I tried another Windows XP cd, thinking the last one must have been faulty. Nothing, just a black screen. I swapped out the CD drive and tried again, nothing! In desperation I tried the Linux (Fedora Core 4) CD which worked perfectly. Grrrr!

I then tried an old Windows 2000 cd I had and strangely it worked. Bermused, I formatted the drive with the Windows 2000 disk cancelled setup and then tried to boot off the Windows XP disk; it work first time. For some strange reason Windows XP setup just didn't like the fact that I previously had Linux installed. It would be interesting to hear from someone at Microsoft about the reasons for this problem....

Finally after four years of toil I've finished my Bachelor of Information Technology. Now I can put BInfoTech after my name on business cards:) It is such a good feeling, almost the same as that feeling when you finish school. It's like you can now do all the things that you couldn't before because you were studying but don't want to do them. You couldn't wipe the smile off my face if you tried.

I'm in the middle of creating an SOE (Standard Operating Environment) and found a neat little way to import and export Dialup and VPN settings. Go into your network connections dialog and create the connections that you wish to export. Then go to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk and copy the file called rasphone.pbk. The next time you need to create those connection you just copy the file to that location. Or if you are building an unattended installed or network install of Windows XP place the file in your $OEM$ dir like so, $OEM$\$Docs\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk.

(Be aware that if you are doing a dialup connection you may need to manually edit the connection if you have imported a .pbk from another machine that does not share the same modem.)

Do you even get the urge to try something new? Well if you learn one thing in the next 12 months make sure it is 'Monad', the new Microsoft Shell. It isn't finished yet but already the power and flexibility of the new shell is clear. You'll need to get the .net Framework 2 RTM for it to work but after that point your browser here and get the latest copy of Monad.

Now this is an idea that I am actually doing to try and develop over the next little while. What I think would be really cool is a calendar control similar to the one on the right that is created from data that comes from an Exchange calendar. It would also need the ability to drill down deeper and just show the appointments/events for a single day or list of days.

This is absolutely hilarious!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8890993777704907613&q=BSB