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Tips

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Running and maintaining computers is not always "smoke and mirrors" work. Much of the magic comes from knowing simple steps to get certain tasks done quickly. Periodically, we will post some of these little gems here on the Tips page. In addition, any formal documentation we produce will have links here as well.

If you have questions about any of the tips listed here, or if you have discovered a neat trick that you'd like to share, drop us a line at tips@eonconsulting.net. We will either answer your questions or take your tip into consideration for posting on this page.

Current Tips/info:

Microsoft updates

As Microsoft releases another round of patches this week, we've also seen a return of the phony update e-mails that claim to be sent from Microsoft. These phony messages either have "updates" attached to the e-mail, or they provide links directly to the updates on the web.

Unfortunately, these messages are not what they seem. The attachments are some sort of spyware or trojan, and the links go sites that do not belong to Microsoft. These messages are fakes. Very convincing, yes, but fakes. If you receive one of these messages, you should delete it immediately and not take any action that is described in the message.

The only official location to get information about security updates from Microsoft is http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/current.aspx. This page lists the current security releases and valid links to those updates. Operating system updates will be available through Windows Update, Office systems updates will be available through Office Update, and other updates will be available as described. If you have questions about the legitimacy of an update, check on this page first.

 

A Different Look at Computer SecurityIf I were to ask you where your biggest computer security threat was for your organization, what would your answer be? Viruses? Spyware? Internet attacks? Spam? Weak passwords?

All of these items are valid security threats to your organization, but you may be surprised to know that even though you have protected yourself at your server and your connection to the internet, you are still vulnerable to each of these threats. Your biggest risk comes not from external attacks, but from within - at the internal desktop or laptop PC.
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Multiple DOS Commands On The Same Command Line I recently learned this little trick, and it's been very helpful for me when troubleshooting or implementing configuration changes. You can enter multiple DOS commands on the same line by separating them with the '&&' identifier. For example:

net stop smtpsvc && net start smtpsvc

Entering that command at a command prompt will stop the SMTP service and then restart it again. The second command doesn't start until the first has fully completed.

This has been indispensable when I've been troubleshooting ISA over a Terminal Services connection. Occasionally you have to restart the ISA services to implement a configuration change. If you stop the ISA services manually while connected over TS, your connection will get dropped and you cannot reconnect. However, restarting the services using this command line trick will momentarily interrupt your connection, but it will get restored as soon as the services start again.

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