Archive for 'Uncategorized'
Internet Explorer Secuity Warning: Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely?
April 21st, 2011. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
I came across a computer with Internet Explorer 8 that was showing this warning every time he browsed to a new page within a few banking websites. I added the URL to the Trusted Sites zone, but this did not do the trick. I then enabled “Display mixed content” for the Trusted Zone, which should have done the trick (Internet Options -> Security tab -> Custom Level button.
However, this did NOT do the trick. The issue is that the website, which is secured with HTTPS, is trying to load some content that is NOT secure (via HTTP). This causes IE to throw the warning. The “Display mixed content” tells IE to ignore this issue. The reason this did not fix the issue in this case is because I enabled “Display mixed content” in the Trusted Sites zone, but the HTTP data was being loaded from another domain which was NOT in my Trusted Sites zone. I enabled “Display mixed content” for the Internet Zone as well and the warnings ceased.
I know what you are thinking. Isn’t this now less secure? The answer is “probably”, but in my opinion, this isn’t a big deal. Maybe I am wrong and this can trick you into having malicious code run, I’m not sure. Honestly, I think if any site loads HTTP data within and HTTPS session, its bad coding to begin with.
Anyway, there are a lot of posts for this fix out there, but many of them say the “Display mixed content” fix didn’t fix the issue for them at all. Maybe doing this for all zones will fix the issue for them.
Recycle Bin is corrupted on Windows XP
March 16th, 2011. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
I fixed this today using a bit of info I found on here. Google-fu will turn up a lot of different suggestions. Even the Kelly’s Korner registry file failed to work for this one. Once we did see the “The Recycle Bin on c:\ is corrupted. Do you want to empty the Recycle Bin for this drive?” error.
Basically, you make sure you have “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” UN-checked in Explorer, which you find by clicking Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab from an Explorer window. Then you’ll be able to see the hidden “RECYCLER” folder on the root of each drive.
If you rename the RECYCLER folder on the drive that has a corrupted Recycle Bin, then delete something on that same drive, Windows will create a new RECYCLER folder and the problem will be resolved.
I suggest re-checking “Hide protected operating system files” in Explorer when you are done.
My Computer does not show CD or DVD drive in Windows XP
October 14th, 2010. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
I have seen this a few times in recent months, so it is worth documenting. The CD or DVD drive does not show up in My Computer, and in the Device Manager it is showing a warning (yellow circle with black exclamation point in it). The description of the warning states something about the drivers being installed but the device is not present, when the device is most certainly present.
The fix is a registry hack. Be sure to export this key before making deletions, in case things go awry. The key to navigate to is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Delete the following values in the right pane. Note that both values may not exist.
- UpperFilters
- LowerFilters
Restart the computer and your drive letter should return.
Outlook AutoComplete cache
July 13th, 2010. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
Many times I have been asked about the Outlook address auto complete cache. This is the way Outlook provides email addresses you have sent or received mail with in the To, CC, or BCC fields in mail messages. I thought this wasn’t possible in the past.
Not so, apparently. This cache is stored in the “profilename.nk2″ file, where “profilename” is the name of the Outlook profile. This file is hidden, so “view hidden files and folders” must be enabled in Windows Explorer. It resides in the “%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook” folder. Just copy this over to the new location to bring the autocomplete cache along and remember to rename the file if the destination Outlook profile name is different.
More details for this process can be found in this post at mycomputeraid.com.
Asian Domain Scams
May 11th, 2010. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
Back in 2008 I posted about this domain scam, and it seems the scam is still making rounds, as I just received another very similar message from a Hong Kong address. Here is the entirety of the message, with my real domain name being swapped out with “domainname”:
From: Gavin [Gavin@ansl.hk]
Subject: About “domainname” Domain dispute (To Principal)Dear Principal,
We are a domain name registration and dispute organization in Asia which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain names registration and internet Intellectual property right protection.
We have a very important issue need to confirm with your company. On May 09,2010, we received an application from one company named
“MC-BSSD Technology,LTD” who wanted to apply for registering some domain names related to “domainname” and Network Keyword through our company.
But after our initial investigation, we found that these domain names and Network Keyword were related to your company’s web keyword.I am wondering if you consigned MC-BSSD Technology,LTD to register these domain names and Network Keyword in our company or not? If you did, we will complete their registration. If not, please let me know because this may bring some negative impact to your company.
If you are the person in charge of this, I will feedback some problems to you; if you are not, please forward my letter to your company’s corporate representative or web administrator. In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by email or phone as soon as possible.
Best Regards,
Gavin Yue
Auditing Department
Chris at Firetrust.com has a good post about this with many pages of comments from others who have received these scam messages.
Add-ons list in Firefox is empty / blank
March 4th, 2010. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
In Firefox 3.6, I was suddenly unable to install or edit any of my add-ons. The list of add-ons was blank, and it would not let me install any new or update any existing add-ons. The add-ons themselves worked just fine in Firefox.
After doing some searching, I found the issue had to do with the use of Personas. This issue also can occur in Firefox 3.5.x. The following solution (found here) fixed the issue for me:
- Enter about:config (type “about:config” in the address bar of a new tab)
- Filter for “lightweightThemes”
- Erase the value for lightweightThemes.usedThemes
- Change the value to “false” for lightweightThemes.isThemeSelected
- Close and restart Firefox
Doing this of course removed the Persona I had loaded, but it solved the issue.