KDCAD Tech Blog

Setting up your work email on a Blackberry Storm:

From the menu screen, open Setup, then choose Email Settings. This will start the connection to Settings.

You are then prompted to ‘Add a new account’ or ‘Create a Blackberry account’. Select ‘Add’ and you are then presented with a  list of possible account types. Select ‘Other’ and you are prompted to enter you email address and password. Unfortunately there is no readily apparent method to skip to entering Exchange information so you have to wait until the search for your mail server settings times out.

Once that happens you get the options to re-enter your information or provide the settings yourself. Pick the latter option and two more options come up – one to designate this as a personal account, one to designate it as a work account. Choose the work option.

There are (*sigh*) two options for a work account: POP/IMAP type or Outlook Web Access (OWA) type. In our case, you should choose the OWA option. NOW you are prompted to enter the settings for your OWA information. This is the tricky part so follow these directions closely:

• Outlook Web Access URL: In our setup it is ‘http://www.domain.com’
• User Name: This must include the domain prefix like this: ‘domain\username’
• Password: Enter the same password you use to login to your PC at the office.
• Email Address: Enter your complete email address ‘first.last@domain.com’
• Mailbox Name: This is your username + @ + domain.local like this: ‘usern@domain.local’

The process is a little different on earlier versions of the Blackberries, but the basic process is the same.

There are a few ways to change the default application associated with a file extension. Here is an example of the simplest way I know. I am saddled with Windows Vista right now, and while the images are a little different, the process is the same for XP.

1) Right click on a file with the extension you want to re-associate and select “Open With”…

2) This opens the “Open With” dialog box. In Vista, you are presented with the current default program. Click the little down arrow to view other options.

3) Scroll through that list to find the correct program. If you don’t find it in the list (it happens), click the Browse button to navigate to the file that contains the right program executable (i.e. WINWORD.EXE). Before clicking ‘OK’ to re-associate the file extension, be sure the box is checked next to “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file.”

Once you click OK, the all files with the extension of the one you selected will open with the program you  chose.

I have Vista Business x64 installed on my laptop (not recommended btw) and our print server runs Windows Server 2003 x86. Our printers are typically initially installed using a vbs logon script that’s pushed via group policy. Well, that doesn’t work for my configuration for two reasons: 1) Vista account controls are are a complete pain in the a** (and no, I’m not referring User Access Control), and 2) because x64 drivers can’t be installed on a x86 server – well, not directly – and if they can’t be installed, they can’t be served up when an x64 workstation needs them. While trying to install our Oce CM4521 Office MFC, I finally got fed up and pushed to figure it out.

At first, I tried to add the x64 driver to the 2003 server using the Additional Drivers button on the Sharing tab for the printer. Unfortunately, I get told that either this is the wrong hardware or that it can only be installed from a remote system running an x64 OS.

After much searching, I discovered that it was really much easier than expected. On my workstation, I went through the motions of installing the network printer. When I got to the point where it told me the the correct drivers were not installed, I downloaded and installed the x64 drivers. This got the printer installed – for me. In a ‘production’ environment of many x64 workstations the server has to push the drivers down…

So anyway, like I said, it was easier than I thought. I simply went to the Sharing tab of the printer I installed and used the Additional Drivers button. (NOTE: That I did not actually share the printer.) Checking the x64 box here, pushes the x64 drivers back to the server making them available to other x64 PC’s.

I guess that’s exactly what the instructions told me in the first place, although only for this printer. The Dell printer (used in the example above) only told me that the driver wouldn’t work for the “requested processor architecture.” Go figure…

We have a Watchguard x500 firewall and use the VPN with SSL client to access the network remotely. In anticipation of some of our power users moving to Vista Business x64, I’ve been running a copy through the paces. So far I’ve run into a few glitches – surprisingly none of them major with one exception. The Watchguard SSL client version 10.0 is not compatible. It installs without error or warning, but just will not connect. Apparently, there is a 10.7 update to the Fireware software that over comes this, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of updating the entire system just to get the VPN client to work. As it turns out I didn’t have to. (updated 6/26: OpenVPN changed their download location and have a new RC package. I just tested it on a new x64 installation and the steps still work.)

There are two primary components to the VPN with SSL client – the client GUI and the TAP driver. The TAP driver creates a virtual network connection. This is the part that fails in Vista x64. Fortunately, the Watchguard VPN with SSL client is built using the opensource OpenVPN (http://openvpn.net/) program. Thankfully, OpenVPN has a new version that includes a TAP driver that does work in Vista x64!

Here’s what I did:

1. Installed the Watchguard VPN with SSL version 10.0 client (didn’t work)
2. Swore a bunch, did a lot of research…
3. Went to http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/downloads.html and downloaded the OpenVPN 2.1_rc18 client software. (the 2.0 “stable” release does not work in x64)
4. Uninstalled the Watchguard client.
5. Rebooted.
6. Downloaded the Watchguard client from our Firebox again.
7. Started the install BUT UNCHECKED the BOX next to the TAP Driver.
8. REPEAT – DO NOT install the TAP driver included with the Watchguard client.
9. Once that finished, I ran the installer for the OpenVPN client.
10. There are a lot more installation options with the Open VPN client, and I unchecked all of them EXCEPT the TAP Driver.
11. Once the new TAP driver was installed, I was able to connect without a hitch.

Hope this helps!

This is a pretty simple one, but since I keep forgetting the registry key, I’m putting it here:

In order to use these steps, you need to know the machine name or IP address of the remote computer.

• Use Regedit to connect to the registry of the remote machine. (File menu > Connect Remote Registry)
• Find the key: HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlTerminal Server
• Under that key, find the value: fDenyTSConnection and change the value from 1 to 0
• Close Regedit and try the remote connection.

If you still cannot connect to the remote machine, you may need to restart it. Here is the remote restart command (also lots of fun to try on your coworkers):

• shutdown -m \computername -f -r

This one was a doozy – a real pain in the you-know-what. This was the problem: I had a client that tried to update his Norton 2006 using Symantec’s online purchase and update process. Somewhere in the middle of the update process it quit and when he tried to get back online to find out what happened and/or restart the process and/or get some help from Symantec, he found that he could not get back on the internet. His wife’s laptop and and old Windows 98 machine still connected fine – so it was just the one machine.

I discovered the machine could ping IP addresses, but not Domain names. I could also get IE and Firefox to go to Googleand other website using the IP address, but not the name. There were several possible solutions I found on the web which included repairing the TCP/IP STACK (netsh int ip reset reset.log) & WINSOCK (netsh winsock reset catalog), running the Norton Removal Tool, updating NIC drivers, flushing the DNS, pointing the nic to specific DNS servers… I tried all of the these and nothing worked.

I also scoured the machine for viruses, trojans, malware, etc using HiJackThis, SuperAntispyware, Avast, McAffee’s Stinger, and Malwarebytes. There was the typical long list of tracking cookies, but otherwise clean. The HOSTS and LMHOSTS files were squeaky clean as well.

Ultimately what did work was a solution provided by the fine folks at Zone Alarm (even though ZA had never been installed). It turned out to be a problem with a previous Windows Security Update: (KB951748). Once I uninstalled that update per the ZA directives, the Internet worked immediately, no restart required. Both browsers came back online and were recognizing domain names. 6 hours to research, 30 seconds to fix. Go figure.

Side note: Norton will not be reinstalled. It has been replaced by Avast Home Edition (free) and SuperAntiSpyware (Free edition). For the record, even though the new Norton 2007 has been rebuilt from the ground up, so to speak, I encourage everyone to refrain from purchasing software from a company that has such a horrible track record when it comes to providing stable software and anything that resembles customer service!

Link to Zone Alarm Advisory (the solution)

Link to the forum that lead to the solution

If you’re a fan of simple, free video conferencing – there’s a new player in town. Well, it’s been around for a little over a year, but really came into it’s own last spring. It’s "ooVoo" and you can find it at www.oovoo.com. If you’re used to Skype or Windows Live, then you’ll have no trouble with ooVoo. With ooVoo you can make free computer-to-computer voice calls and video calls just like Live and Skype. The big advantage to ooVoo is the ability to add up to two more people in a video conference. Conference up to 6 people for the $10/mo ooVoo Super and add unlimited calls to land lines for $5 more.

With ooVoo, you can create an "ooVoo Link" that you can send in an email or post on your website. If you want to check it out and I’m available – here’s my ooVoo Link:

Our Setup: We have MS Exchange 2003 SP 2 installed on a single Windows 2K3 R2 server. We also have a few other servers hanging around for running applications and our intranet, etc. After some initial research (and because I don’t completely trust RIM), I chose to install the Blackberry Professional Software (aka Blackberry Enterprise Server or BES) on one of the other app servers. As it turns our this was a good thing. You can install BES on the same server that hosts your Exchange store, but it has to be in a virtual environment – i.e. VMWare, etc. So if you don’t have that, you’d better get more iron.

We are just getting started with Blackberry Enterprise, so we installed the "Express" (aka free) edition. Supposedly it’s the same as the "non-express" except that you can only authorize a single user. Since our user base will be small, we stuck with using the local installation of MS SQL Express that was already installed on the BES server.

A Few Things I Discovered:

1. Don’t install BES where you have or plan to have use IIS as BES installs some Apache business that, according to unofficial posts around the ‘net, will do some damage to to IIS.
2. You do need to have the Exchange System Manager installed on the same server as BES in order for the MAPI connections to work. I read a few posts with instructions for manually registering the necessary components, but really it was just easier to install a copy of ESM on the BES server. Choose the Custom installation from the Exchange 2003 setup menu.

The Install: The RIM instructions were pretty simple, but it did seem like the Exchange 2003 configuration instructions were written from someone’s memory rather than from a step by step install. Some steps were out of order and I felt they went out of their way to be purposely vague when it came to anything you had to do to prep your server. Here are some prereq’s in the order that worked for me – you need to read the BlackBerry Professional Software Getting Started Guide PDF as I’m not going to repeat all their steps here:

1. When you downloaded the Blackberry professional software, you should have been presented with some ID and license/CAL codes. Find them.
2. Create your BESadmin user account first, Then add it the BUILTIN Administrator’s group, and configure the account and Exchange permissions, etc. per the guide. Including adding it as a local administrator on the BES server.
3. Download any Exchange 2K3 service packs and the Hotfixes noted in the guide. The hotfix for the "Send as" feature is post SP2, so you will definitely need it. You can go ahead and install them on your Exchange Server.
4. Find your Exchange Server install CD.
5. Log in to the future BES server using the BESadmin account and install the Exchange System Manager.
6. Restart the BES server.
7. Install SP2 if you need to on the Exchange server and BES server, then install the hotfixes on both servers.
8. Open the ESM on the BES server and verify that all the permissions you applied in the primary location carried over to the BES server.
9. Now install the Blackberry Professional Software.

From here on out, things are pretty simple and the installation went smoothly.

A Few Things That Went Wrong the First Time:

1. In order to Add a user to the Builtin Administrators group, you have to create the account first.
2. I didn’t have ESM installed on the BES server. I’m no Exchange guru, so the MAPI errors I was getting when trying to install the Blackberry software.
3. After installing the ESM on the BES server, I was still getting the MAPI errors. A reboot solved that problem DUH!
4. I could not grant the BESadmin Log on as a service in the local security policy. I had to go to our Default Domain Policy GPO and grant it there.
5. Test messages kept failing to send claiming that the BES did not have permission to send. Turns out I was logged in as the domain admin, not the BES admin. Once I logged in as the BES admin, everything was fine.

Suddenly all my old word docs started giving me fits. When I double clicked them, they wouldn’t open in Word 2007 like they used to. Instead, they opened in the Microsoft Open XMLConverter – which means they didn’t open, they popped up in a Save As dialog box with “Word 2007 Macro-enabled Document (*.docm)” and “Word 2007 Document (*.docx)” as the only format options. I also noticed the icon had changed. I Googled and Googled and finally came up with an obscure post about changing the default program for *.doc files from the Microsoft Open XML Converter to Word 2007. Once I did that, the icon switched back and they open fine.

If you get a stop error on your Ricoh printer with a number in the 540’s, here is a way to clear the error and get your printer back up and running until it hit the error again or your technician arrives to actually fix the problem:

• Touch the Clear button (yellow button)
• Tap the #1, #0, and #7 buttons
• Hold the Clear/Stop button (Orange button) and tap Copy SP
• Hit Exit twice
• Press the white power button on the right side of the panel
• Cut off the main power using the orange switch on the right side
• Leave off for about 20 seconds
• Turn the main power back on