Send or transfer large files - for FREE

If you've ever run up against problems with email limits when trying to send files to someone, or you don't have any idea what FTP is, then this will probably help you. There are many services out there that allow you to upload files to their system, then send an email with a link to those files so someone else can download them. This helps you avoid having to attach the files to an email, and really is no different to the end user than downloading something from a webpage. There are two such services that I'll mention here; the first being SendSpace, and the second is YouSendIt. Personally, I've only used each once, but I recommend SendSpace. You can transfer up to 300MB in a single session, and there is no account creation necessary. It has worked fine when I've used it too. YouSendIt works as well, but you're limited to transfers of 100MB or less. Either way will work, and will provide a better alternative than trying to email large files to someone, especially if that someone is really a large group of people.

Windows Vista error during install, must be system administrator

For any of you who run across this problem and don't understand it because you know you're the computer's administrator, don't worry. It's one of the Vista security features. You are the administrator, however, unless you explicitly select to run the program as the administrator, you only have standard permissions. This keeps malicious programs from running under your user admin account because technically they don't have the permissions to do so. If you have the file downloaded already and are having problems when you double-click on it to run it, instead of double-clicking the install file, right-click and go to Run As Administrator (should be second thing from the top). That should help. If you're installing from a CD, you should be able to do the same thing to the CD icon. Otherwise you may have to right-click, choose Explore, then find the installer program on the CD and run that as administrator. Hopefully this helps.

Compress and resize images - for FREE!

If you're looking to send images in an email, or just upload to some sites, you may run into a problem because of the size of the files. This is because most digital cameras now come with enough megapixels to create a high-res image, and that's what they default to. When you put the images on your computer, it's not surprising to see sizes of 2 or more MB. Resizing the images isn't always the easiest, and trying to make the file size smaller isn't much fun either. When I say compress, I don't mean add it to a zip file either. I mean to change the picture's resolution so the quality is a little lower, which will in turn drive the over all file size down.

Axiom's PicSizer application is a free tool that will do just that for you. At the time of this post, the Axiom website appears to be unavailable, so an alternative download link can be found at MajorGeeks.com. This freebie will allow you to resize/compress a single image, or it will also process an entire folder of images. I've used it and recommended it in the past to multiple people, and it's worked great every time. It's as simple as loading the image, then selecting save, reducing the quality slider, and clicking OK.

Automatically create Outlook signature using Active Directory info

I can't take credit for this, but I've used it and it works pretty slick. It is a VB script file (VBS) that can be modified to your needs, and it will create a signature for Outlook 2003 or 2007 by using information it gets from Active Directory. You do need to have an understanding of HTML and probably a little coding (primarily VB) experience, but it's really not that difficult. All the hard stuff has been taken care of and you can focus on customizing the actual signature.

Here's the first post that contains the actual script: http://bradmarsh.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/ad-based-outlook-email-signature-for-2003-and-2007/

And here's the second post with more information on how to implement it: http://bradmarsh.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/ad-based-outlook-email-signature-for-2003-and-2007-continued/

The easiest way, if you don't know what you're doing, is to run the script and see what it does initially. Be aware that this script erases all signatures you already have each time it is run, primarily because it's meant as more of an administrative tool to force a specific signature upon users. I'm sure you can change that feature, but I didn't bother doing it myself because I didn't care. Once you see the output, then you can find where the information is being compiled within the script and reconfigure it to output what you want it to. Good luck!

Outlook email address auto-fill storage file (nk2) location

I've noticed a few people landing on my blog using search terms that involved finding the nk2 file for Outlook, so I thought I'd post the answer for you. First off, it's hidden, so you need to start by showing hidden files and folders on your computer. You can accomplish this the same way in both XP and Vista:

Open up My Computer, then go to Tools->Folder Options (you may need to press the Alt button in Vista to get the Tools menu to show up). Then go to the View tab, then under Hidden Files and Folders, select "Show hidden files and folders".

Now you can go to the nk2 file, which is in different locations in each OS (Vista and XP)

For XP, you can find it at C:\Documents and Settings\"username"\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\

In Vista, it's at C:\Users\"username"\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook

If you have multiple nk2 files, it's because you have multiple Outlook profiles. The nk2 for each profile will be named the same as the profile. If you're moving the nk2 file to a different machine, make sure that after you copy it to the new location, you rename the copied nk2 file so it is named the same as the new profile as Outlook relies on that naming convention in order to open and use the nk2 file with a certain profile. The default profile name is Outlook. For the Microsoft instructions, check out this page.

Palm Treo 750 activate/deactivate call forwarding

For the Palm Treo 750 (at least the AT&T/Cingular model) you can find the settings by going to Start->Settings->Phone->Services, then Call Forwarding. That's where you can set the call forwarding to on or off, and also assign the number that the calls are forwarded to while it is turned on.

Invalid drive letter error during installation in Windows

I've ran across this before, but until today I knew why it was happening. It turns out the problem today was the same cause as the others, but I'm not sure why it had ever changed. Anyway, when you try installing a program, you may get an error saying something like "Invalid drive K:\". The cause of this error is the system registry trying to redirect one of your document folders (My Documents, My Pictures, etc) to an invalid location. I ran into this problem with Vista as well, when I had my My Documents folder redirected to our server in order to have a backup of my files. Once I went back to working locally, the problem disappeared.

There are two ways to fix this. One is to change back the redirection, assuming you know what is being directed. You could check your documents folders by right-clicking them and checking the properties, but that's kind of a hassle.

Another option would be to edit the registry key(s) for your document folders so they're not incorrect. However, proceed with caution because the registry is a dangerous place if you aren't familiar with it. Any incorrect changes hava the potential to make your computer useless, so be careful. You can start the registry editor by going to Start->Run, then type regedit and press enter. I searched the registry for the drive it was showing, so in my case, I searched for "K:\" by going to Edit->Find. There I found that the My Pictures folder was pointing to a path of "K:\My Pictures", which doesn't exist because I have no K drive. I changed this back to the default of "%USERPROFILE%\My Pictures" and everything went back to normal. You may want to go to Edit->Find Next just to make sure that all the incorrect entries are gone before assuming it's fixed. In my case, I only had one incorrect entry, but it would be possible to have more. If you'd rather skip the find and jump right to a registry key responsible for the document location settings, go to MyComputer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders within regedit. Remember, modify the registry at your own risk. You could always back it up first by going to File->Export, and then saving a copy somewhere on your machine

Reset or recover Windows Administrator password

First off, this post is not meant to promote hacking in any way. Please use this information only if you legitimately need to recover an administrator password for a Windows computer that you own or are responsible for managing. If you're looking for information regarding resetting or recovering an admin password for Mac OS X, check out my other post. I know this works for Windows XP Home and Professional because I've used it multiple times. I believe it is supposed to work for Windows Vista as well, but I've never tried it so you'd have to test it at your own risk. One thing I do know is that if you try to modify the administrator password on a disk that is encrypted, all files will be unreadable until you return the password to the original as that's the only entry that will decrypt those files, so keep that in mind as well.

Ok, for starters, you're going to need to download the Ultimate Boot CD, which you can get here. You can then use the download to burn to a CD, which will create a bootable CD with a lot of useful programs you can use on the computer in question. I've used the UBCD numerous times to reset passwords or perform other maintenance.

Once you've downloaded the CD files, and burned the downloaded image to a CD, the next step is to insert the CD in the computer and turn it on. You'll need to make sure it boots from the CD. Most computers will by default. Otherwise you may have to try to figure out how to get into the BIOS to change the boot order, or look for a key to press to activate a one-time boot menu option, where you'd want to choose the CD-ROM drive.

After you get the UBCD loaded and running, you need to go to Filesystem Tools->NTFS Tools->Offline NT Password & Registry Editor. That is the program you'll need to run in order to modify the administrator password. Highlight it, press Enter, then follow the prompts.

When the NT Password Editor has loaded, read the prompts. Typically the default in [ ] is what you want, and if it is, just hit Enter to get to the next prompt. Once you get to where you can reset the password to what you want, the easiest thing to do is just use *, which means to blank the password out. Then use !, then q to quit. When asked if you want to save, be sure to use y to signify yes, otherwise the password will not be changed. You will then get a success/failure message. If it was successful, you can eject the CD and restart the computer. If it fails, feel free to try again, however it's more than likely that it won't work.

Once the computer has rebooted, let it go to the normal Windows login screen. Here you'll want to sign in with administrator (or whatever user account you reset) and leave the password field empty (or enter whatever you changed it to if you didn't blank it). If the computer was on a domain, make sure it's set to login locally. You can't reset domain accounts using this method, as they're stored in Active Directory and would need to be changed on a domain controller by a system administrator. Once logged in, you can go and reset the password to whatever you want, and reset whatever other account passwords you need to change.

This process is surprisingly simple, and pretty scary. Being so simple means that almost anyone could download the UBCD and break into your computer to get your files. In order to protect yourself, there are a few things you could do. The easiest would be to go into your BIOS and set three things: BIOS password, Hard drive password, and boot order to boot from the hard drive first. Setting those three things would render the UBCD useless. You could always go back into the BIOS and clear those settings so it goes back to normal if you don't like it that way. Setting the hard drive password also eliminates the possibility that you could put the drive in another computer to read the information from, which can be done otherwise without any need for an administrator password. Trust me, I used to work for a data recovery company and I bet that a lot of people don't even realize how easy it would be for someone to walk in and steal all the data from their computer without knowing any password for it. That's why I recommend those three BIOS settings, because they practically eliminate that possibility. The way I look at it is if they can get past those three, then they deserve to have my data

The creator of the Offline NT Password & Registry editor tool has his own instructions for using the tool to reset the password, so if mine were confusing or not thorough enough, feel free to check his page here.

Free virus protection for your computer

If you're looking for an antivirus for your Windows computer, but don't want to spend money on Norton or Mcafee to only get a year of protection, here are two free alternatives that seem to work just as well.

AVG offers an antivirus program called AVG Free, which you can download and use for free on your personal machine(s). I've used it for a few years and haven't had any virus problems, and would say it's comparable to any of the others you pay for. There is no account sign-up or anything like that, just download and run.

Avast! also offers a free antivirus program for personal use. I've only actually used this once for someone else's machine, and it appeared to actually have a few bonus features compared to AVG Free, but since I already had a good history with AVG Free I didn't bother changing. It did the job though and cleaned that person's computer, which was really infected with viruses when I started. You do have to create an account, and that grants you a 1-year license for free use. At the end of the year, you can renew and get another year free, and then continue that process each year to continue your free usage.

Don't forget to use spyware/adware protection alongside your antivirus software. You can check my previous entries to find information regarding free software that will work for you.

Open new Microsoft Office documents on a Mac

One boneheaded move that Microsoft made when they released Office 2007 and Office 2008 Mac was not being ready for those on a Mac who would need to open their new file formats. That issue has finally been resolved though, and they have released the updates necessary to do it. If you're running Office 2004 Mac and have been waiting, you can get the updates by opening one of the Office programs, then going to Help->Updates. You'll want to continue searching, downloading, and installing until you've got past at least 11.5.0 (11.5.1 is the most current right now). After that, you'll also need to download and install the Open XML Converter for Mac, which will allow you to convert the docx and xlsx files into something readable by Office 2004.

The funny part of this whole thing is that even though Microsoft made the change, they didn't update the rest of their software to work with their changes. However, OpenOffice.org's free suite of Office alternatives has worked with the Open XML file formats for a while (on both Windows and Mac). It's odd that a third-party can update their software more quickly than the actual developer, but that's a topic for another day...