Alternative name servers
If you’ve ever had a problem with your ISPs DNS name servers then you’ll probably find this very useful.
The domain name system (DNS) is a way of resolving a host name to an ip address.
* Dns resolved example.com to 208.77.188.166
To do this, you need DNS servers or name servers, which are usually provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Sometimes the domain name servers provided by your ISP go down or get overloaded and stop responding.
If your computer is unable to resolve a domain name to an IP address, generally this means that you will be unable to browse the internet. Very annoying, I’m sure you’ll agree.
So what can I do if my ISPs name servers go down? Use alternative name servers often known as public nameservers or public dns servers.
RemoveWGA
Back in 2007 I briefly wrote about Windows Genuine Advantage Removal.
I have decided to revisit this topic after Microsoft released Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) recently and writing about how to remove the OGA notifier.
ERROR 5 (0×00000005) Copying NTFS Security to Destination Directory
Got this error today using ROBOCOPY to copy files to a SAMBA share.
ERROR 5 (0×00000005) Copying NTFS Security to Destination Directory e:\xxxx\
Access is denied.
I figured out a workaround…
Remove OGA Notifier
I had a call today about Microsoft OGA (Office Genuine Advantage) Notifier becoming an annoyance for a client.
Office Genuine Advantage covers Office XP, Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office System.
It had to go…
Ways to prevent malware infection for free
There’s lots of ways to prevent a malware (virus or spyware) infection for free, here’s a list:
Read the rest of this entry »
Error 1747 : The Authentication Service is Unknown
Today I had a newish Windows Vista machine that had the following error:
Error 1747 : The Authentication Service is Unknown
This error occurred when I attempted to start the “Windows Event Log Service”.
Fix Adobe Illustrator (.ai) and Photoshop (.psd) Thumbnail Icons for Windows Explorer
If like me you don’t like using Adobe Bridge and instead like to see thumbnail icon previews of your Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop (.ai, .eps and .psd) files in Windows Explorer then this is the fix you need.
How do I make Yahoo Mail default mail provider in Vista?
Many users, particularly users of BT Yahoo! Broadband (btinternet.com) are having trouble understanding how to get to their BT Yahoo Mail on Windows Vista.
This is because on Windows XP BT Yahoo used to provide the BT Yahoo Browser, which was based on Internet Explorer 6 and now outdated, which means that BT Yahoo Browser is no longer available.
Blocked links in Microsoft Outlook
When you click a link on an email in Microsoft Outlook, you are blocked from visiting the URL and you see the following error message:
This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.
Troubleshooting routing issues
Recently I’ve received reports from clients on a particular ISP are having trouble reaching services on a particular server in a data centre.
Although they did first report it as “the internet is down”, I soon discovered it was actually just their email and home page which they were having trouble reaching.
Once I had told them to visit “www.google.com” in Internet Explorer, I could confirm that this was in fact a routing issue.
So how do you troubleshoot and diagnose a routing issue to identify the problem? That’s what we’re going to find out…
