« How To: Recover Lost Files | Home
By TheEmperor | September 24, 2008
Holding your users accountable for their actions is one of the trickiest things about being an IT Consultant. If a user tells you he didn’t delete or move a file you can’t just sneer at him and accuse him of lying, no matter how much you want to. You must have proof. A nice solid document showing the who, when, and where of the users malfeasance. Enter file system auditing.
There are a plethora of third party... Read Full Story
« Software Review: Event Log Explorer | Home
By TheEmperor | September 19, 2008
In the course of running my vast empire it occasionally occurs that one of my subjects neglects to follow my sage advice regarding backups and is struck by the horror of data loss. In the event of such a cataclysmic situation I turn first to my trusted allies at Recover My Files.
Recover My Files is a relatively inexpensive utility, it will run you about sixty bucks and is well worth the price. The... Read Full Story
« What to do about STOP: C000021a {Fatal System Error} and other scary messages | Home
By TheEmperor | September 18, 2008
In the course of my time as the undisputed overlord of all things technology related it has frequently fallen to me to delve into the Windows Event Logs in search of proof that a mischievous user has deleted their own files or to wrest from them a reason for the demise of a database. Each time I gird myself to wade through the logs I cringe for a moment at the... Read Full Story
« A Brief But Entertaining Divergence | Home
By TheEmperor | September 16, 2008
STOP: C000021a {Fatal Syatem Error}
The session manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc000026a (0×00000000 0×00000000)
The system has been shut down.
No one wants to see something cryptic and terrifying instead of their comfortable windows login page, but sometimes it happens. Sometimes you just get a flash from the screen and then the system reboots, but... Read Full Story
« How To: Reset or Change all Active Directory Passwords | Home
By TheEmperor | August 29, 2008
While the focus of this site is primarily dedicated to Technology related assistance I would like to draw everyone’s attention briefly to something a bit more lighthearted. I’ve been peripherally involved in the development of an Open Source collectible card game called Geek Fight from Diving Dragon Games. The game has been completed and is being debuted at Dragon Con in Atlanta this... Read Full Story
Many times in my career as a consultant and network/systems administrator I have had the need to change multiple AD passwords at one time, or the desire to change AD attributes across user groups. In the past I’ve had problems doing this, the AD tools for it are none too useful. But take heart my friends, I have found a solution. Read Full Story
« Solving the “general error - not enough free memory, write error” problem in AVG 8.0 | Home
By TheEmperor | August 19, 2008
Occasionally as a consultant you will run across people who still live in an age of “Paper” and “Documents” and want you to deliver to them a printed copy of something inane. One of the requests I’ve run across is a desire for a printout of the Directory Structure of a networked storage device.
If you are “Old Skool” you will immediately think, “I can just... Read Full Story
Many many people have been plagued by this issue since downloading the free version of AVG 8. The solution is generally one of two things. First disable your windows firewall and try the update. This is a standard troubleshooting technique when ever a software update fails, so keep it in mind. Read Full Story
Sometimes as a mail server administrator you have to deal with spammers deluging your system, or your users suddenly deciding to email a 600mb Christmas album to the entire office, in july. When this happens it can bring your Exchange server screeching to a halt and prevent mail from flowing. Sometimes these emails are important and you can’t just dump them, but for the times when “Frosty’s Magical Christmas Theater Volume XVI” is trying to hammer your mail server to death you can fire up a... Read Full Story
What happens if you accidentally remove your Standard toolbar in Excel, or make 10 copies of it in Word? Now you have some horribly mangled Frankenstein version of Office lumbering through your machine. How can you fix this? Well, aside from purging it with fire you can try returning Office to the default settings with the following steps:
Open Excel or Word.
Click on Help.
Click on Detect and Repair.
Check the “Restore Default settings” box.
Click Ok. Read Full Story
