I finally used Windows’ arp command for something useful.
Last week I was configuring numerous brand new LinkSys routers for various branch offices. After successfully configuring the first one, I plugged in the second and tried to connect to it’s web admin page. Unfortunately, my connection attempt kept on timing out. After a couple of minutes of pulling my hair out, I remembered something I had learned about in school a few years ago — Address Resolution Protocol or ARP for short. …Continue reading » Arp Tip
I use Cobian Backup to automatically backup my Outlook mail file (i.e. PST file) as well as other types of files. There is a catch with backing up PST files with Cobian Backup — Outlook cannot be running. If Outlook is running, Cobian will not backup the PST file because it will be locked by Outlook.
Luckily, Cobian has a feature called “events”, which can be used to run arbitrary tasks before and/or after a backup job. I use this feature to kill Outlook before running my backup job, which removes the file lock and allows Cobian to backup the PST file.
If you want to use this feature to kill Outlook, the first step is to create a batch file that can kill Outlook from the command line. I called my batch file “kill_outlook.bat”. Here are the contents: …Continue reading » How to Kill Outlook Before Backing Up Your PST file
Anyone who has used Linux traceroute and Windows tracert knows that the two programs have very different command line options. But did you know that there is a fundamental difference in the way that these two programs work? …Continue reading » Linux traceroute vs Windows tracert
My boss came to me yesterday with her notebook and said “My notebook has been really slow for the last week or so. Can you please fix it?”
Of course I can! I started by turning on her notebook and noticed that it started up very slowly. Then, after logging in, I noticed that there was constant hard drive activity, even when the notebook was left idle for 30 minutes.
I ran msconfig and noticed that there were several stupid and unnecessary “services” configured to startup automatically at boot time. For example: …Continue reading » Norton GoBack…To the Stone Age
