Today I got my copy of Visual Studio 2005 through the post, so I’ve been having a play with that, by upgrading some of my VB.NET 2003 projects. Unfortunately, I got a rather confusing error message from them, and I couldn’t find much info on the web, so I’m documenting it here for other people’s …
Author archives: John C. Kirk
Anatomy of a hack: mail server
Today I’ve been fixing a problem with my mail server after someone “hacked” (cracked) it. I’m reconstructing the chain of events as best I can, but the causality wasn’t obvious at the time. Background: this machine is running Windows Server 2003 SP1 with Exchange Server 2003 SP2. A few weeks ago, someone gained unauthorised access …
Firewall blacklist
One of my current projects is configuring ISA 2004 as a firewall. Without wanting to get sidetracked into advocacy debates, all I’ll say is that: a) It’s a lot better than ISA 2000. b) It’s annoying that it doesn’t support more than one internet connection, so hopefully they’ll fix that in ISA 2006. Anyway, today …
HP printer drivers
Here’s an obscure problem that had me banging my head against the wall until I figured out the solution. If you add a printer to Windows XP/2003 (and possibly other versions too), and choose to share it, there’s an option to install additional drivers. That way, someone running NT4 can connect to it, and automatically …
Make-shift repairs
“The three most dangerous things in the world are a hardware engineer with a software patch, a computer programmer with a soldering iron, and an end user with an idea…” (Anon) Back in my undergrad days, there was one fine Sunday morning when I needed to swap a couple of hard drives around, i.e. the …
Digital certificates
I’ve been taking an interest in computer security recently, and as part of that I’ve been investigating digital certificates, primarily in the context of code signing (e.g. applications/macros/plugins). There seem to be two main misconceptions here (at opposite ends of the scale), which are worth addressing: 1. “If something has been signed then it’s safe.” …
Event Viewer problems
I’m currently spending an exciting Friday night in the office. Specifically, I’ve been fixing a Windows 2000 PC that’s been running extremely slowly for the past few days. I’ve got that problem solved now (I’m just sticking around to do general maintenance on it), and I thought it was worth documenting here, in case anyone …
LaTeX formatting
I’m currently doing an MSc; this includes a project, and there are regulations about how to write up the final report. In particular: “The project report must also contain listings of all source code. The source code listings must be contained in an appendix, and do not count towards the 40 page limit for the …
Configuring a Palm Vx for WAP access
Introduction I have a Palm Vx, and a Nokia 6310i mobile phone on an Orange account. A while back, I set up my account for WAP access and GPRS, and I was then able to view WAP pages on the mobile phone. I then wanted to be able to view these pages on my Palm …
70-165: Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Programming
Introduction I recently decided to become a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), starting with the VB 5 exam. I passed it with a score of 898/1000, which I’m pleased about. I can tell you what I did to prepare for this exam, although I can’t guarantee that the same thing will work for you. I should …
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