Author: Bill

Ophcrack 2 — The fastest Windows password cracker

Ophcrack 2 — The fastest Windows password cracker
The Ophcrack LiveCD is a bootable Linux CD-ROM containing ophcrack 2.2 and a set of tables (SSTIC04-10k). It allows for testing the strength of passwords on a Windows machine without having to install anything on it. Just put it into the CD-ROM drive, reboot and it will try to find a Windows partition, extract its SAM and start auditing the passwords.

I downloaded the iso, burned the CD, and tried it on my son’s PC(W2K Pro), my laptop(XP Home) and my desktop(XP Pro). It was impressively fast at figuring out my local Administrator passwords. Naturally it does not know about the network password since it is not stored locally. I had to run it manually with my desktop since it is a dual boot machine and Ophcrack did not detect the NT partition with windows on it.

WordPress Development Blog › Widgets Plugin

WordPress Development Blog › Widgets Plugin
Widgets are an easy way for you to arrange and rearrange your sidebar to your hearts content without touching a line of code.

I tried this on my WordPress blog on XAMPP and it did not work. I could not drag and drop and a javascript error complained about sortable. I installed it on this website and it works.

Getting my ZyXEL WiFi phone to work

I picked up a Prestige 2000W V1 phone on my way out of OfficeDepot a couple of weeks ago. I think it was $60 with a $50 rebate. Unfortunately I could not take advantage of the rebate since the service was no longer available. So I tried hooking it up to Broadvoice. My initial efforts were unsuccessful. I could dial but I always got a busy signal. Yesterday I decided to try again. The first thing I found out that there was updated firmware for the phone. I also suspect that the firmware on my phone was customized for the now non-existenet VoIP service. Since the phone was not working I went ahead and flashed it. Guess what! Now I could dial but I could not hear anything.

I read the instructions for a previous firmware upgrade and it highly recommended resetting the phone to the default settings after applying the new firmware. After succcessfully resetting the phone and then entering in my configuration parameters, the phone works! The sound was better than I expected but the phone features are pretty minimal and I found the user interface to be non-intuitive. The final stumbling block was getting access to voice mail. I had to set the DTMF relay to RFC2833. I could call with “Inband” but it would never recognize my pin. There are three options in the latest firmware and switching it to RFC2833 fixed the problem.

computer-books.us – Free computer books

computer-books.us – Free computer books

I am bookmarking this site although I know I will probably never download and read any of these books. Over the years I have been sufficient and occasionally proficient in many program languages. At this time I just do not think I have the desire or time to plow through a manual although I might seriously consider brushing up my Visual Basic skills. Microsoft is trying to encourage me to try my hand at Visual Basic and I would love to upgrade/modernize a VB application I am using.

How to migrate custom categories to other users in Outlook 2002 and in Outlook 2003

How to migrate custom categories to other users in Outlook 2002 and in Outlook 2003
To share the Master Category List, export the Categories key from the registry and distribute this key to other users.

I finally got around to adding my categories on my laptop version of Outlook.

Broadvoice VoIP, ZyXEL, and X-Lite

I created an account with Broadvoice today. Since I was having a few problems connecting my WiFi phone, ZyXEL, I called them since I was missing some info. Tech support was good and then sent me the configuration info. I eventually got the ZyXEL phone to work. The phonebook is a little clunky and there is the clicking sound when it connects. I am still not sure how to save a person’s phone number. Its a Version 1 phone and I got it cheap. I went ahead and tried X-Lite. It looks pretty nice. Broadvoice’s callmanager is pretty interesting, too. The sound was respectable on all of the devices.
My next test is to hookup the ZyXEL phone to an asterisk PBX.

Asterisk and the Linksys SPA9000

I have to admit that I have been interested in the PBXs for a long time. One of my most gratifying projects I put together was a PBX and telephone trunk upgrade which saved the company a lot of money. Best of all the savings were easy to find. We just looked at the next phone bill.

At that time all PBXs were propietary, hard to understand, and expensive. Only large companies could afford them. Today the picture has completely changed. The cost has gone down and the features and usability have gone way up. One of the best examples of this is Asterisk. Asterisk is an open source PBX built on the Linux platform. My favorite flavor of Asterisk is the pre-built version called Asterisk@Home. Until recently Asterisk was primarily installed on workstation class computers. This year the nice folks at Linksys changed all of that by embedding a modified version of Asterisk into a box that looks like the standard home router and called it the SPA9000.  This box includes a router and is priced at about $400. It is more compact than a PC and they have  made a few changes to make it even easier to install. It even has integrated two analog ports for legacy devices, such as, analog telephones, faxes, or answering machines. With the ability to transfer local numbers to VoIP, this new product should be just what the doctor ordered to reduce telephone costs for small businesses have not been able or unwilling to participate in the cost savings available from VoIP.

I have not been able to get my hands on one so far because it such a new product. Stay tuned for me info!

Updating Azureus and increasing my share ratio

I updated my copy of Azureus today and started figuring out some of the symbols. Everything looked good except my share ratio. For some reason I was not sharing when I downloaded the vm machine of asterisk. The share symbol was red. My share ratio was practically zero. So I am going to leave Azureus up for a couple of hours to get it over 1.

Ubuntu does not work on my latop

My new Inspiron 9400 with duo core does not boot Ubuntu(Breezy Badger). I am sad but not surprised. I tried only a couple of things before finally giving up. I will try again in the next release of Ubuntu. I was trying to label and store my CDs when I found my copy of Ubuntu which I had labeled properly.

Sage: a feed reader for Firefox

Sage: a feed reader for Firefox
Sage is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed reader extension for Mozilla Firefox. It’s got a lot of what you need and not much of what you don’t.

I visited Portable Apps last week and found the Sage extension for Firefox. I don’t use Portable Apps very often but I really like the idea of non-installable apps. I found that the Open Office and Firefox apps work just fine on my laptop. I have been thinking of a backup for the Firefox and Rss Bandit I use on my desktop. So I added it to my USB stick and tried it out. Sage is pretty neat, lightweight, and an adequate RSS reader. I prefer RssBandit but it is nice to have a pretty good RSS reader that is a portable app that is set up to read the feeds I subscribe to. While I was at it I set up my Firefox profile to mimic my desktop setup.

Excel Tip: Converting CSV files into IIF files

The problem with importing data into QuickBooks is their funky multi-line IIF file format. For each transaction(e.g. invoice) in the single row CSV format you need to create three or more rows in IIF format. For me I import the CSV file into one worksheet and create a separate worksheet I call IIF for the IIF transactions. You could code up each cell in the Export individually but I like the cut and paste method for speed and to cut down on errors. They key bit of information for me was learning about the ROW and OFFSET functions in Excel. As an example I have used the following calculation on my IIF worksheet to copy the contents from a CSV row.

OFFSET('February 2006'!$C$2,((ROW()-1)/3)-1,0)

Using C2 as my starting point in the CSV worksheet(i.e. February 2006) and three rows for each IIF transaction in IIF worksheet, I can copy and paste the three rows that make up the IIF transaction to create more IIF transactions in the IIF worksheet. In this example the next IIF transaction will point to C3 in the CSV worksheet without manually editing.

The final trick is save the Excel file once in Excel format and then save the IIF worksheet in “Text (Tab delimited)” format with a file name like, export.iif. When you go into QuickBooks you will now be able to see file in the Import menu. If you have set up your IIF worksheet with the correct values for the Account, Item, etc. you should be able to import the IIF transactions easily and accurately into the correct places.

E-Bitz – SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS

E-Bitz – SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS “Diva” : How do you buy CALs?
Rob from the mailbox asks “How does one buy CALs?” Where do you buy them? Do they come on paper? In an email? How long does the process take?

Click on the link above to read more. Susan gives a good explanation why buying CALs from the OEM is not quite as good as buying from Microsoft with Software Assurance. Don’t get me wrong, the OEM CALs will work. Some customers will find that Open license and SA will have the most bang for their buck.

E-Bitz – SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS

E-Bitz – SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS “Diva” : Looking for resources on Asterisk?

Looking for resources on Asterisk for Voice over IP?

One more resource… Asterisk in a vmware distro…

http://www.vmwarez.com/2006/03/asteriskhome-virtual-machine-updated.html

Outlook-Exchange access from XP Home

It’s not a big deal but I was a little surprised that I could setup my XP Home laptop to access Exchange. I even got it to communicate via the Internet using RPC. I thought that I had to have XP Pro and to be joined to the domain at least once. I guess that since I was using an existing Exchange userid the problem was moot. Then I was pretty sure that I would have difficult with the certificates. It ended up to be pretty simple. Just follow the directions on your SBS website! I am not sure what XP Pro buys me in the notebook case where most of the access is via the Internet.

Microsoft FolderShare Beta Becomes a Windows Live Service

FolderShareTM allows you to create a private peer-to-peer network that will help you to synchronize files across multiple devices and access or share files with colleagues and friends. You no longer need to send large files via email, burn them to CDs/DVDs and mail them, or upload them to a website. FolderShare allows you to share and sync important information instantly with anyone you invite, making it the perfect solution for personal or small business use.

[Via ActiveWin.com Headlines]

I found this to be pretty interesting. I volunteer at a local Habitat affiliate and constantly are backing up data so I can access it from home/laptop. I am still investigating FolderShareTM but I will probably try it out.

XAMPP

apache friends – xampp
XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.

I installed the windows version on my laptop. My laptop still runs XP Home and I was thinking of running a local WordPress blog as a private journal. If it doesn’t work I can always remove it. The basic version also includes FileZilla Server. It took me awhile to work figure things out. I had to add a Firewall exception to get FileZilla to work. I restricted access to FileZilla to the local subnet. I am looking at using FTP to transfer(i.e. backup) files locally to the notebook without changing my workgroup.

I found some WordPress/DNS funkiness. The blog displays correctly when I access it via the VPN because the DNS and Blog URI match up. When I tried to connect to the blog with the VPN disconnected, I had to use the IP address.  WordPress builds the html based on the blog URI so there are a variety of problems.

Variety of failures consuming my time

Last week I got nailed on my regular workstation. It could not authenticate. I noticed it as as a POP3 problem I thought was related to Scanmail. Then my Firewall client started showing the infamous red X. I switched gears and accelerated the provisioning of my laptop so I could run payroll.

I cannot say that I have fixed the problem but I have fixed a couple of problems along the way and restored network access. I ran netdiag and dcdiag. Finding netdiag was the hardest part. It is located in the Cabinet file but is not installed by default. You need to manually extract it. The diagnostics did not tell me anything so far. DNS and DHCP seem to be okay.
My certificate autoenrollment failed on February 11 so I requested and installed a new certificate.
I do not know how it happened yet by I have network access to the server back. Http is working, too. POP3 still has problems. Oh, well!;)