• SolarWinds Free TFTP Server – upload and download executable images and configurations to network devices – our most popular free network monitoring tool!
• IP SLA Monitor – quickly troubleshoot network slowdowns between sites and easily understand device-to-device performance using sophisticated Cisco® IP SLA operations.
• Free Kiwi Syslog Server – receive, log, display, and forward syslog messages from network devices with this easy-to-use Syslog Server.
• Free Kiwi CatTools – simplify daily management tasks with the ability to manage and backup network
• VM Monitor – continuously monitor a VMware® ESX Server and its virtual machines with at-a-glance virtualization health statistics.
• SolarWinds Free Real-time NetFlow Analyzer – capture and analyze up to one hour of NetFlow data to see what types of traffic are on your network, where it’s coming from, & where it’s going.
• SolarWinds Free Exchange Monitor – continuously monitor Exchange and get real-time insight into services, mail queue sizes, and host server health with this clever desktop dashboard.
• SolarWinds Free NetFlow Configurator – configure NetFlow v5 via SNMP on supported Cisco® devices – a perfect complement to Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and our free Real-time NetFlow Analyzer tool!
• SolarWinds Free Advanced Subnet Calculator – compute addresses for IP subnets – another perennial favorite in our suite of free network monitoring tools!
• SolarWinds Free Wake-On-LAN

  – remotely power up network PCs

I have not tested all of these tools of course, because some of them are too specific for my needs, but the Exchange Monitor and the Kiwi Syslog Server work great and do exactly what you expect them to.

Free tools are always welcome and the quality products offered by Solarwinds are an excellent addition to any administrator’s toolset.

as an enhancement, but that’s really just a matter of how you use your browser.  Whether it will help you get things done faster, is up to you.

Microsoft’s site offers a nice tour of features and lets you download the lastest version.  I have yet to give the final version a try.. I must confess, I still use IE6 sometimes.  I have never upgraded to the dreaded IE7 because every time I have come across it, I noticed weird page renderings and an incredibly slow performance.  However, if I must upgrade to something better eventually (assuming I can’t use my beloved Firefox…), then I would choose Internet Explorer 8 over previous versions easily.

I have read in quite a few places about people who will wait for a while before upgrading because they want to make sure the bugs are fixed.  Well, I have to agree, but this shouldn’t be something to stop you from trying it on a test machine or in a virtual environment.  There are still fixes coming out for IE6 after all ;-)

All things considered, if you are going to upgrade to it eventually and don’t need previous versions for compatibility issues with a specific application or website, then upgrading shouldn’t be a problem.

PhonEx is one of those plugins that once you get used to having it around, you just can’t live without it.  I’ve tried many plugins and applications that modify my contacts and/or my phone, but I always ended up removing them because they either caused problems or simply didn’t have the features I was used to with the standard WM6 functions.  PhonEx is not subtle in its changes and that’s what makes it work for me.  I love the scrolling contacts and the large dial-pad the most.  The Today plugin is also a very nice feature and let’s you change settings and access your contacts and favorites in no time.

The contacts manager is probably the most interesting feature there is because it is the one that sold me to this extension.  You can scroll through your contacts using just your thumb, just like on the iPhone.  no need for the stylus or the scroll bar.  Not only is this convenient, but it make your phone look and feel less antiquated.  Everything moves around smoothly, even on my older processor.  When you select a contact, the screen slides to the left and brings up the details of that contact, with a larger image and options to contact that person in a variety of ways: Call, Email, SMS etc… whatever you have entered is available.  This is where you can modify your contact’s information, assign a new picture etc…  I didn’t have pictures for everyone before, but since I installed PhonEx, I’ve been taking more pictures and trying to get more of my contacts updated because it simply looks good and makes that contacts list more attractive.

PhonEx Phonepad

From there, you can access your favorites, which is a list of people you choose to be easier to reach instead of having to go through your entire contacts list.  You can see a list of all your calls including incoming/outgoing and missed calls.  Finally, you can also go directly to the phone pad for manual dialing.  You could use the “send” key which gets reassigned to PhonEx and takes you to the phonepad as well.  The large buttons on the phonepad allow you to use your thumb only and, in my case, responds much much faster than the standard WM6 one.  For instance, when accessing my voicemail, there was a huge lag when entering my passcode.  With PhonEx, I can tap the numbers as fast as I want and everything works just fine.

There are a number of other great features like the full screen incoming calls.  When you receive a call, you get that on the entire screen, showing a picture of the contact (if you put one in) along with the number and location if it’s available.

Once you’re in a call, you have access to all the usual features, but with large buttons and it even lets you see if you are on Bluetooth right away.  You can conference someone else in and put them on Hold, Speakerphone or Mute.  You have access to the phone pad as well which is useful for dialing extensions or passcodes as I mentioned earlier.

PhonEx is certainly an excellent extension to have on your Windows Mobile Smartphone.  You can give it a try for free for 15 days and see for yourself.

]]> http://www.techforlunch.com/phoneex-makes-your-wm5-6-phone-act-like-an-iphone/feed/ 0 http://www.techforlunch.com/bsod-session-manager-initialization-fails-with-status-0xc000026c/ http://www.techforlunch.com/bsod-session-manager-initialization-fails-with-status-0xc000026c/#comments Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:54:03 +0000 Pascal Roy http://www.techforlunch.com/?p=327 A couple days ago I ran into a weird problem on a customer’s computer and I had such a hard time figuring out what it was, I thought I’d add it in my tips section.  From what I’ve been able to gather, the problem occurs mostly with Windows XP SP2, but it could also be present with other variations.

It was a simple service call and after everything was done, I rebooted the computer to make sure everything was ok.. well, after that, the machine never restarted.  It simply kept looping, while on the windows logo screen, I could see the blue screen flashing and then it would restart.

At this point, I tried safe mode in all its forms and tried “Last Known Good Configuration” etc.. nothing worked.  I couldn’t run System Restore because windows did not even start.  So I used the F8 option to Disable auto reboot on BSOD and finally saw the actual Blue Screen message:

c000021a Fatal System Error
The Session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpecedly with a status of 0xc000026c

A few Googles on the subject helped piece together a solution.  The problem is caused by a Windows Update known as KB925902.  The patch wasn’t installed recently.. it’s been on the machine for at least 6 months, but something must have triggered the problem.

The Solution:

Apparently there are a few variations on how the problem presents itself, so if windows starts in safe mode, I would go for a System Restore or use the Add/Remove programs section to remove that update.

What I had to do was to remove the update manually using the Recovery Console.  here’s how to do it:

1. Boot with your original Windows XP CD.  You need one which will allow you to get into the Recovery Console.
2. Once booted, choose to use the Recovery Console, usually by pressing “r”.
3. You may need to press “enter”  here to choose a different keyboard layout, otherwise you might have a hard time typing the next commands.
4. Choose which Windows installation you need to log into.  if there’s only one on that machine, it will be “1″.
5. Type in the Administrator password.  Yes, there is one, you had to supply one during the Windows XP installation.
6. Change folders using: cd WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB925902$\spuninst
7. Run this command in the folder: batch spuninst.txt
8. If the command ran correctly, you should see a spuninst.tag file, using the “dir” command.
9. reboot the computer.

At this point the computer should boot properly and you should install SP3 and other patches to prevent this problem from happening again.

If the spuninst.tag file doesn’t exist, you may have received a bunch of errors instead.  Joyful.  There are a few reasons why this could happen, one of which is if your windows isn’t really installed on the c:\ drive, even if the Recovery Console always names it that way.  To remove the patch manually, type in these commands: (make sure you replace the drive and path if required, depending on your installation)

• DEL “c:\windows\$hf_mig$\kb925902\mf3216.dll”
• DEL “c:\windows\$hf_mig$\kb925902\gdi32.dll”
• DEL “c:\windows\$hf_mig$\kb925902\user32.dll”
• DEL “c:\windows\$hf_mig$\kb925902\win32k.sys”
• DEL “c:\windows\system32\dllcache\gdi32.dll”
• DEL “c:\windows\system32\dllcache\mf3216.dll”
• DEL “c:\windows\system32\dllcache\user32.dll”
• DEL “c:\windows\system32\dllcache\win32k.sys”
• COPY “c:\windows\$NtUninstallKB925902$\gdi32.dll” “c:\windows\system32\gdi32.dll”
• COPY “c:\windows\$NtUninstallKB925902$\mf3216.dll” “c:\windows\system32\mf3216.dll”
• COPY “c:\windows\$NtUninstallKB925902$\user32.dll” “c:\windows\system32\user32.dll”
• COPY “c:\windows\$NtUninstallKB925902$\win32k.sys” “c:\windows\system32\win32k.sys”
• COPY “c:\windows\$NtUninstallKB925902$\spuninst\spuninst.txt” “c:\windows\$NtUninstallKB925902$\spuninst\spuninst.tag”

I hope this helps someone out there because there aren’t many solutions for this problem and it took me so much time to piece together the solution.  Let me know it there are any errors and if it works for you.

Last week, I heard about FacePAD (Facebook Photo Album Downloader), a nifty little plugin that does exactly that; it lets you go inside an album, right-click on it and download every single image to a folder of your choice.

All you have to do is make sure you are using firefox, and install the plugin. Once installed and running, log on to Facebook and find a photo album from one of your friends that you would like to be able to browse offline.  Simply right-click on the link to the album that you want to download and select “Download Album with FacePAD”.  If you already clicked on that link and you are already in the album, you can simply right-click on one of the page numbers at the top of the album and you will get the same result.

Some people have complained that the plugin only downloads the first page of the album or gives javascript errors.  I have not had these problems and all pages of the albums I tested downloaded just fine.  The only slightly annoying thing with this plugin is that you have to confirm the download for each picture as if you were clicking them individually.  It’s not too bad considering the amount of time you save from having to do all the work yourself.

Happy Downloading!

Have you ever missed an album of one of your favourite artists only to discover it by accident weeks after the release? Do you spend a lot of time on official websites looking for release announcements? With Muspy you will save time and won’t miss any releases.

After you sign in, you may add the artists you want to follow. You can add them one-by-one, copy the list of artists from your Facebook profile, or import the top bands from your Last.fm profile.

When one of the artists releases a new CD, you will receive a short e-mail notification with the album name and release dates. You can also see the new releases on the website sorted in the chronological order, or subscribe to the rss feed and receive release alerts using the feed aggregator of your choice.

Muspy.com is one of those great little services that make the internet such a useful tool.  It’s free, simple and does exactly – and only – what it’s supposed to do.  If you are a music lover and like knowing about album releases before it’s been out for 3 months, then Muspy is something you may want to take a look at.

Norton Labs offer a simple tool that replaces the standard Windows UAC and allows you to respond to each prompt only once.  The Norton UAC tool allows an application to run with silently-elevated privileges only in a specific context, one previously approved by the user with the “don’t ask again” check box selected. This means that there is a difference between regedit.exe launched from the start->run box, regedit.exe originating from a shortcut double-click, and regedit.exe launched from a double click on a .reg file (and the context actually changes with each .reg file), and regedit.exe launched by an application (malicious or not). Given the contextual awareness of Norton UAC tool’s automatic responses, the Norton UAC tool provides a usability improvement over Vista’s default UAC prompts, while maintaining obvious security improvements in the Vista kernel (such as isolation, file/registry virtualization, and user interface privilege isolation) that are all disabled when UAC is disabled.  Here is what the new prompts will look like:

The tool is available in 32-bits and 64-bits formats and is a free download. Simply install it and give it a shot.  I think the only portion that is missing is the ability to tweak on which tasks the UAC is in function, but at least, its better than turning it off all together.  Be aware that since this is a beta “Lab tool”, the program may send Meta Data back to Norton for analysis.  Nothing private, but just what prompts are popping up and what you choose to do with them

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