System Restore Wizard

Using the System Restore Wizard

The System Restore Wizard guides you through the steps of each task in System Restore.

When you run the wizard to restore your computer to an earlier state, it displays the following screens:

• Welcome to System Restore

This screen gives you the option to restore your computer to an earlier time or state.

• Select a Restore Point

This screen allows you to pick a date on the calendar and then select a restore point to restore your computer to an earlier state.

• Confirm Restore Point selection

This screen allows you to change your mind about the selected restore point or the restoration and to save all files and close all programs before starting the restoration. After you confirm the selection, the restoration process starts, the system restarts, and a user logon screen is displayed.

• Restoration Complete

This screen indicates your restoration has been successful. If the restoration fails, the Restoration was unsuccessful screen is displayed, and no changes are made to your computer.

For more information about System Restore, see System Restore overview.

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Blazing Fast External Hard Drive

How fast is fast enough when dealing with data transfer? When you’re dealing with backups or copying large files from one drive to another, you can never have too much speed. The new USB 3.0 spec emerged last year. The speed comparison between a USB 2.0 drive and a USB 3.0 drive is staggering. Fortunately, the costs have dropped and adding a USB 3.0 external hard drive to your computer has become an attractive idea.

USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 Speed Comparison

The leap in throughput was as substantial in USB 3.0 as it was between USB 1.0 and 2.0. With the newer USB 3.0 specification topping out near 5 Gbps, it is faster than the wired computer networks in most homes.

USB Speed Comparison chart

USB 1.0 speeds are 1.5 Mbps
USB 2.0 speeds are 480 Mbps
USB 3.0 speeds are 4800 Mbps

Investing In USB 3.0

Because the standard is relatively new, your computer may not have a USB 3.0 card installed. Motherboards will eventually ship with USB 3.0 on-board, but if your computer only has the older USB 2.0, then you’ll need to purchase a USB 3.0 card. The cable is also different. So there will be some investment costs in upgrading, but the price is minimal in comparison to the huge performance boost you’ll get after upgrading.
USB 3.0 Hard Drive
This USB 3.0 hard drive from Buffalo is said to out-perform internal hard drives. It is an external drive and would be great for moving massive amounts of data back and forth between computers or even just being used as a standard backup hard drive. It is backward compatible with USB 2.0, but you will want to invest in the USB 3.0 card to get the maximum performance. As with most external hard drives, this model also ships with its own cable, so you will not need to purchase the new USB 3.0 cable.
Buffalo Technology DriveStation 1 TB SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive

View Other USB 3.0 hard drives

USB 3.0 PCI-Express
This Buffalo Technologies USB 3.0 card will enable your computer to get the full 4800 Mbps speeds out of your new USB 3.0 hard drive. You must have a PCI-Express port on your motherboard to install this, so make sure your motherboard has that expansion capability before purchasing. The card comes with a driver disk and is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Buffalo Technology DriveStation SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PCI Express

View other USB 3.0 cards

In Conclusion
As file sizes and hard drives get larger and larger, the time it takes to backup and copy data will increase. Having a USB 3.0 hard drive in your computer will eventually become a necessity. If you deal with a lot of files, or are into movie and photo editing, upgrading to a faster hard drive is paramount in maintaining a productive work environment.

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Creating a First Aid kit to Your PC

For many computer users, troubleshooting individual issues can be very time consuming and wasteful. If you value your time, you need to have a plan in place that will fix bugs quickly and efficiently.
The simplest way to accomplish this would be to create a fast “full reset” process for your system. The moment your computer starts to show signs of trouble, you can just wipe it clean instead of spending hours trying to fix malware, viruses or other obscure bugs.
This post is intended for people who’ve either:

• just bought a new computer,
• or who have just recovered from a major crash.

In order to do this properly, you’ll need to set up 2 different tools:
A fresh, fully-functional system image
The first thing that you’ll want to do is set up a fresh copy of Windows, with all of the latest updates. Next, you’ll want to install all of the programs that you might need. This may in include Firefox, MS Office, Adobe Suite, or any other applications you’ll use on a daily basis.
Once you’ve installed all of your applications, you’ll want to create a snapshot or “system image”. Backing up a system snapshot with pre-installed applications will allow you quickly reset your computer in one easy step, without having to spend hours manually loading these programs again.
Next, you’ll need to make several copies of this system state image. Keep one on-site, and one off-site.
This can be as simple as burning 2 DVDs and mailing one to a friend. Or, you can also try keeping one copy backed up with an online storage provider for easy download… or on another computer via FTP.*
A recent and up-to-date file backup
Of course, a good system image is just a time-saving tool. It isn’t enough to keep you protected. For that, you’ll need an automated backup process.
Automated backups are especially important because manual backups just don’t cut it. Just like starting a diet, backing up data is a habit that gets neglected and eventually dropped over time.
Another disadvantage of manual backups is that they leave a large “data-loss window”. Most home users will back up once per week or once per month. This leaves 7 to 30 days worth of your most important data at risk at all times. (Your most recent files are usually the most critical)
Compare this to an automated backup system that can copy files over every few minutes… and never forgets. It’s almost impossible to lose any data with these types of applications.
An off-site NAS box is good for remote backups. But the best solution would be an online backup service, since it’s much more resilient, secure and maintenance-free.
Once you’ve got a good system image and backup process in place, you now have a fast and convenient solution for 90% of your computer problems. If you start to notice your machine acting strangely, just reinstall your system image, then download your latest file backups on top of it.
This will help ensure that your machine is always fresh, clean and running smoothly.
* I’d strongly advise against storing any backup data with your web host, since it may be against their “Terms of Service”. Violating this agreement could get your web site shut down without notice.
About The Author: Storagepipe’s archiving and online backup are designed to help keep your system well-protected and ready for restoration on a moment’s notice.

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Setup a Wake on LAN Control Panel for your Network

As an IT manager, there are a lot of things you can do which directly impact your company’s bottom line. While the most obvious are direct hardware and software costs, an often overlooked aspect is energy/electricity consumption by computer systems. While servers need to be available 24/7, desktop systems only need to be available when the respective user needs it or for scheduled maintenance tasks. The rest of the time (usually more than 50% of the time), the system can stay in low power mode which reduces power usage, hence cost.

While Windows systems have options to wake themselves to run scheduled tasks, if users access their systems remotely (i.e. Remote Web Workplace) there is not an easy way for the system to be awakened on demand. The solution is implementing a Wake on LAN system such as the free ASP.NET Wake on LAN Control Panel. Through this, client computers can be brought out of standby with the simple click of a button. This makes is an ideal solution for finding a balance between availability and power savings.

Requirements

• SQL 2005/2008 (Express or Full) must be installed in your network. Out of the box, the ASP.NET Wake on LAN Control Panel is configured to use SQL Express with user instances but we will show you how to use the full version of SQL Server as well.
• Desktop computers must be configured with the ability to be awakened remotely. Typically, this is the default setting for your network card but if you want to be sure, you can check the device properties of your network card in Device Manager.
• Overall, the documentation which is downloadable from from the ASP.NET Wake on LAN page is very good. It covers using the installer to set everything up, but in true geek fashion we are going to set up everything manually.

Setup the Wake on LAN Control Panel

Create the folder “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\WakeOnLan” and extract the contents of the Wake on LAN zip package.

Open the “Web.config” file and note the connectionStrings section:

–>

If you are using SQL Express with user instances enabled (default option during the installation of SQL Express) on the local machine you do not have to modify anything and can ignore the rest of this section, however if you are using the full version of SQL or have SQL Express user instances disabled, you will need comment out/delete the second connectionString key and uncomment the first and save your changes. By default, the SQL Server connection string is set to use the local computer with trusted authentication. Depending on your environment, you may want/need to alter these connection settings.

The ASP.NET Wake On Lan package includes a SQL database creation script to use for setup on SQL Server. Before running this script, you will need to make one minor correction to the the SQL file. Open the file “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\App_Data\Schema.sql” in Notepad and add “WakeOnLan” in the location highlighted:

Once this is done, save the changes and then run the install script as a Windows Administrator (where –S “.” specifies the SQL Server to install to):

SqlCmd -S “.” -E -i “C:\inetpub\wwwroot\App_Data\Schema.sql”

Configure IIS to Run the Wake on LAN Control Panel

Once you have the files and database in place open Internet Information Services Manager. Under the ‘Default Web Site’ you should see the WakeOnLan folder. Before the control panel can be used, you must convert the directory to an application which runs on .NET version 2.0.

In IIS 7, you simply need to right click on the folder and select ‘Convert to Application’. In IIS 6, you need to use the ‘Add Application Wizard’ which is available by right clicking on the ‘Default Web Site’.

The default settings of the application are typically correct and do not need to be modified.

Once the application is created, you should be able to access the ASP.NET Wake on LAN Control Panel by visiting “http://localhost/WakeOnLan”. If this does not work, check to make sure:

• The IIS WakeOnLan application is running in a .NET 2.0 AppPool.
• Your SQL connection strings are correct in your Web.config file.

Adding Computers

Once you have set up the control panel, all that is left is to add computers. This is pretty intuitive, just click the ‘Add New Computer’ link and enter either the computer name or local IP address of the system to add.

The MAC Address will automatically be resolved and the new computer will appear in the list.

Using the Wake on LAN Control Panel

Usage of the ASP.NET Wake on LAN Control Panel is incredibly intuitive. When you access the page, the status of the connected computers is scanned and presented.

• Computers which are active/awake, are presented in blue.
• Computers which are asleep (standby/hibernation) are presented in black.
• Computers which are waking up are yellow.

To wake a computer, simply click the appropriate link.

The computer will turn yellow and a few minutes later, it will turn blue. After about 30 seconds, the computer which was asleep is now ready to be accessed.

Conclusion

The ASP.NET Wake on LAN Control Panel can easily be made available outside your network. As long as the IIS web site you have configured it in is available externally, you can access the control panel from http://www.domain.com/WakeOnLan. You would just need to train your users to access this page prior to connecting to their computer. For example, by adding a link to a company portal to access the control panel can minimize the “how do I do that again?” questions.

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How to Change Your Linux Hostname Without Rebooting

If you’ve worked in the admin world for any length of time, you’ve probably run into an instance where you needed to change the hostnames on your server to match some corporate naming standard, but you can’t have downtime either. So how do you change the hostname without rebooting?

Changing the Hostname

First, you must change the config file that controls this. The actual file and its location will vary across distributions. In the Redhat derivatives, the file to modify is /etc/sysconfig/network so vi this file and change the line that reads HOSTNAME=

From this:

To this:

For SuSE distributions you would similarly change the /etc/HOSTNAME file while Debian admins would modify the /etc/hostname file to set the new name.

Next, the /etc/hosts file needs to be changed. This is identical across all flavors and consists of using your favorite text editor and modifying the old hostname within. Such as from this:

To this:

“But”, you mutter under your breath, “I just typed in `hostname` and got ‘Snoopy’ as a result. It doesn’t work!”.

What you need to know is that the previous steps are to permanently set the new name. You are much too quick to judge, obviously. So, continue on by entering (at the command line as root or a sudoer):

# hostname mdmvr14s9db

This will set the hostname for now but the change is not saved (that is what the above steps are for, remember?). Go ahead – test it. Type in `hostname` (without the tickmarks ) and the command should return ‘mdmvr14s9db’ (without the single quotes).

Now let’s set it in stone. If you are using chkconfig and service commands (RedHat family folk, usually), you can simply type

#service network restart

which will restart the network with the new host name. The rest of you should be able to type

#/etc/init.d/network restart

to obtain the same results.

Then test again with the hostname command – you should get the new name returned.

This has been the easy part. Hopefully, prior to starting this, you checked all application conf files for any hard coded reference to the new name and changed that as well. And you need to then change your DNS ‘A’ record to also reflect the new name. And once you have restarted named with the new name on the DNS you will have succeeded in temporarily irritating around half of those 18,000 users previously mentioned who now can’t get to the server since the name has not propagated around the network yet. But this too shall pass as long as you hide long enough.

And at least you can keep the small stuffed plush Snoopy sitting at your desk to remind you of that gentler, simpler time.

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How to Setup a VPN (PPTP) Server on Debian Linux

VPN-ing into your server will allow you to connect to every possible service running on it, as if you were sitting next to it on the same network, without individually forwarding every port combination for every service you would like to access remotely.

Using a VPN connection also has the upshot of, if desired, granting access to other computers on the network as if you where in it locally from anywhere across the internet.

While not the most secure of the VPN solutions out there, PPTP is by far the simplest to install, configure and connect to from any modern system and from windows specifically as the client is a part of the OS since the XP days and you don’t need to mess with certificates (like with L2TP+IPsec or SSL VPNs) on both sides of the connection.

Did i get you interested? then let’s go 

Preface

• You will need to forward port 1723 from the internet to the server to enable the connection (not covered here).
• You will see me use VIM as the editor program, this is just because I’m used to it… you may use any other editor that you’d like.

Server Setup

Install the pptp server package:

sudo aptitude install pptpd

Edit the “/etc/pptpd.conf” configuration file:

sudo vim /etc/pptpd.conf

Add to it:

localip 192.168.1.5

remoteip 192.168.1.234-238,192.168.1.245

Where the “localip” is the address of the server, and the remoteip are the addresses that will be handed out to the clients, it is up to you to adjust these for your network’s requirements.

Edit the “/etc/ppp/pptpd-options” configuration file:

sudo vim /etc/ppp/pptpd-options

Append to the end of the file, the following directives:

ms-dns 192.168.1.1

nobsdcomp

noipx

mtu 1490

mru 1490

Where the IP used for the ms-dns directive is the DNS server for the local network your client will be connecting to and, again, it is your responsibility to adjust this to your network’s configuration.

Edit the chap secrets file:

sudo vim /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

Add to it the authentication credentials for a user’s connection, in the following syntax:

username * users-password *

Restart the connection’s daemon for the settings to take affect:

sudo /etc/init.d/pptpd restart

If you don’t want to grant yourself access to anything beyond the server, then you’re done on the server side.

Enable Forwarding (optional)

While this step is optional and could be viewed as a security risk for the extremely paranoid, it is my opinion that not doing it defeats the purpose of even having a VPN connection into your network.

By enabling forwarding we make the entire network available to us when we connect and not just the VPN server itself. Doing so allows the connecting client to “jump” through the VPN server, to all other devices on the network.

To achieve this we will be flipping the switch on the “forwarding” parameter of the system.

Edit the “sysctl” file:

sudo vim /etc/sysctl.conf

Find the “net.ipv4.ip_forward” line and change the parameter from 0 (disabled) to 1 (enabled):

net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

You can either restart the system or issue this command for the setting to take affect:

sudo sysctl -p

With forwarding enabled, all the server side settings are prepared.

We recommend using a “Split Tunnel” connection mode for the VPN client.

A more in depth explanation about the recommended “Split Tunnel” mode, as well as instructions for Ubuntu Linux users can be found in the “Setting up a “Split Tunnel” VPN (PPTP) Client on Ubuntu 10.04” guide.

For windows users, follow the guides below to create the VPN client on your system.

PPTP VPN Dialer Setup on XP (split tunnel)

We will create a regular VPN dialer with one note worthy exception, that we will set the system to NOT use it as the “Default Gateway” when connected.

Skipping this step will limit the connecting computer’s surfing speed to the VPN server’s upload speed (usually slow) because all of it’s traffic would be routed through the VPN connection and that’s not what we want.

We need to start the connection wizard, so we will go to control panel.

Go to “Start” and then “Control Panel”.

*If your system is setup with the “Classic Start Menu” you need to just point on the “Control Panel” icon and then select “Network Connections”.

In “Control Panel” double click “Network Connections”.

Double click “New Connection wizard”.

In the “New Connection wizard” welcome screen click “Next”.

Select the “Connect to the network at my workspace” option and then “Next”.

Select the “Virtual Private Network connection” option and then “Next”.

Give a name to the VPN connection.

Type in the name of your VPN servers DNS-name or IP address as seen from the Internet.

Optionally You may choose to “Add a shortcut to the desktop” and “Finish”.

Now comes the tricky part, it is vitally important you do NOT try to connect now and go into the dialer’s “Properties”.

Go to the networking tab and change the “Type of VPN” to “PPTP VPN” as shown in the picture below (this is optional but will shorten the time it takes to connect) then go into “Properties”.

On the next window go into “Advance” without changing anything else.

On the next window, uncheck the “Use default gateway on remote network” option.

Now enter the connection’s credentials as you set them on the server and connect.

That’s it, you should now be able to access all the computers on your network from the XP client… Enjoy.

PPTP VPN Dialer Setup on Win7 (split tunnel)

We will create a regular VPN dialer with one note worthy exception, that we will set the system to NOT use it as the “Default Gateway” when connected.

Skipping this step will limit the connecting computer’s surfing speed to the VPN server’s upload speed (usually slow) because all of it’s traffic would be routed through the VPN connection and that’s not what we want.

We need to start the connection wizard, so we will go to the “Network and Sharing Center”.

Click the network icon in the system tray and then “Open Network and Sharing Center”

In the Network center click on “Set up a new connection or network”.

Select “Connect to a workplace” and then “Next”.

Click on the first option of “Use my Internet connection (VPN)”.

Set the address of your VPN server as seen from the internet either by DNS-name or IP.

Even though it won’t connect now because we stil need to go into the dialer’s properties, Set the username and password and hit connect.

After the connection will fails to connect (that’s normal), click on “Set up the connection anyway”.

Back in the “Network Center”, click on “Change adapter settings”.

Find the dialer we have just created, right click it and select “Properties”.

While its optional, for a faster connecting dialer, set the “type” of VPN to PPTP under “the “Security” tab.

Go to the “Networking” tab, select the IPv4 protocol and go into it’s properties.

In the next window, click “Advance” without changing anything else.

On the next window, uncheck the “Use default gateway on remote network” option.

Now enter the connection’s credentials as you set them on the server and connect.

That’s it, you should now be able to access all the computers on your network from the win7 client.

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