to a logon screen (similar to what you would see at your workplace:

They both work the same, the change is pretty much cosmetic only for most users.

How do you change it? Well, from within control panel>user accounts there is a link labelled ‘change the way users log on or off’. From there you would change that to your desired preference. All of 15 seconds work – normally.

I came across an interesting situation the other day where I could not change it. I received an error say that the rtlgina.dll file was missing. Yeah that helps me ….. /sarcasm.

I bit of searching around and found the problem to be related to the software I installed for my Netgear WG111 USB wireless adaptor. The welcome screen and fast user switching had been disabled and I could not enable it without getting a message about deleting this rtlgina.dll file.

Anyway, how do I fix it? Bit more searching found that Doug Knox, a MS Most Valuable Professional (MVP), wrote a program to reset the registry to use the standard windows gina DLL file and return the use of the welcome screen in Windows XP.

The registry fix can be found here

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The advantage of using an existing standard as opposed to creating a new one is that it can reuse existing encoding hardware that is already in place in millions of cameras and chipsets worldwide. Pretty smart.

Human Monitoring’s hipix™ patent pending technology utilises the existing h.264 video Codec to achieve two to seven times more effective still image compression compared to JPEG images. Sounds almost too good to be true, but if you check out the demos on their website, you will be suitably impressed.

To view hipix images on a computer or mobile device, users must initially download a viewer and to create or convert images users need the hipix “Wiz” application. The applications are available for Windows, Linux and Android operating systems.

Just think of the how much bandwidth could be saved when emailing or sending photos over the internet – all while keeping a very high quality image.

Check out the video demo:

More info can be found on the hipix website here.

Fortunately, after a bit of research I found a solution that did actually work, and the PC hasn’t missed a beat since.

The error message can indicate a IRPStackSize bug, and looking at the event log of the machine for an error with ID 2011, is further eveidence of this particular bug.

What is the IRPStackSize? Well, straight from the Microsoft website:

The IRPStackSize parameter specifies the number of stack locations in I/O request packets (IRPs) that are used by Windows 2000 Server, by Windows Server 2003, and by Windows XP. You may have to increase this number for certain transports, for media access control (MAC) drivers, or for file system drivers. Each stack uses 36 bytes of memory for each receive buffer.

I don’t know about you , but I’m still none the wiser

Anyway, let’s get around fixing it…..

Before I go on, my disclaimer: Trying the below is done so at you own risk. I take no responsibility for any problems that may occur. The fix involves a registry change, so if you are not comfortable playing with the registry, get someone that is.

Open up the registry (regedit from the run box), and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet
\Services
\LanmanServer
\Parameters

Look for a parameter called IRPStackSize. Whatever the value is, we need to increase it. From what I’ve read on other sites, a value of between 15 and 25 will work. I tried 16 and it didn’t. 20 did.

if you don’t have a IRPStackSize entry, create one by right clicking in the right hand window, and select new>DWORD value. Call it IRPStackSize (note: case sensitive).

Once done, click on it and enter a value (as a decimel). As you can see, I entered 20 – shown here as 14 in hex:

Once done, close the window and restart the computer and then you should be able to access the share.

What causes the bug? Well I read that programs like Acronis True Image, Seagate Disc Wizard and Symtec Endpoint protection can be the culprits. In my case, I had a fresh install of XP Pro, with Acronis True Image. Fairly easy fix, and as I said earlier, all has been fine since.

I would be interested in other people’s experiences. Please share them below.

Why did I want to do this? A friend bought a new laptop which had a trial version of Outlook 2007 – Once the trial had run out, they had to move to something else, and WLM is only found on Windows 7. Outlook Express is no more.

Let’s start …..

Note: I did all of the below on my friend’s PC while Outlook was still installed. Once I had imported all my email into WLM, I then uninstalled Outlook.

* Download a program called Mailstore from here. This free program (for home use) is for archiving of mail, but also is perfect for achieving what we want to do.

* Run Mailstore. The first thing you need to run the archive process. Follow your nose and (obviously) select Outlook as your email program. Here is a screenshot of the archive window:

* You will now need to export your email into a format that WLM will recognise:

With the options for Export, select “file system” and the message format will be “EML”:

Browse to any folder on your hard drive or thumb drive and kick off the process.

* OK, Now you are ready to import into WLM. From the File menu, select import>messages and then select the ‘Windows mail’ format. Browse to your folder where you exported all the mail and start importing.

Once finished you should be ready to go!

When I did the above on an another PC, I got a message to say that there was no files in the folder or another program has locked the folders. When i worked out which ones had not been imported, I just click and dragged them over to my WLM inbox from Window Explorer. End result still the same.

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Well, worry no more. There is a program called ISObuddy that will burn most (if not all of those obscure image formats). From their website, the list of supported images is as follows:

- Roxio Global Image (gi)
- Nero Image (nrg)
- Padus Discjuggler Image (cdi)
- Alcohol 120% Image (mdf)
- IMG Image (img)
- Blindwrite (Old) Image (b5i, b6i)
- Macintosh Image (dmg)
- Pinnacle Instant CD/DVD Image (pdi)
- CDRWin Image (bin)
- CloneCD Image (ccd)

Well, here’s a fix:

Type “gpedit.msc” into the run box, go to Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components>Windows Update and enable the options “No auto-restart for logged in users…” and “Re-Prompt for restart with scheduled installations”.

Pretty easy all up, and you have some flexibility in how you want to configure those options. Note: you may have to run it as administrator if using Vista.

1. Press win+r key and Type Regedit at run prompt

2. Locate following registry key

HK Local Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

3. Now in right-side pane, change value of OEMBackground to 1.

4. Now place your custom image in %windir%\system32\oobe

5. Create a new folder info and background within newly created info folder

Folder path should look like this %windir%\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds

6. Now place your desired logon wallpaper within this background folder with file
name as backgroundDefault.jpg

Images Name with resolutions

backgroundDefault.jpg

background768×1280.jpg

background900×1440.jpg

background960×1280.jpg

background1024×1280.jpg

background1280×1024.jpg

background1024×768.jpg

background1280×960.jpg

background1600×1200.jpg

background1440×900.jpg

background1920×1200.jpg

background1280×768.jpg

background1360×768.jpg

NOTE: Images must be less than 256kb in size

The backgroundDefault.jpg image is loaded and stretched-to-fit when a resolution/ratio specific background cannot be found.

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What I did notice was that from a command prompt, an ‘ipconfig’ command did not give an IP on the same subnet that other devices (in this case 10.10.10.x). Instead it gave an IP of 169.x.x.x. This is this is an Microsoft automatic private address assigned to computers that are not connected to the Internet.

Thinking it was a problem with the DHCP server on the modem, I tried to connect with my laptop and iPhone which worked fine. Ahhhhh, I thought ‘I bet it’s Vista or Norton’.

The troubleshooting started. I disabled Norton – no change. Googling around seemed to pretty much confirm it was Vista, and down below I have listed some things to check and try. Results were varied from what I read so if you are having issues, try these one at a time (which I listed from quick to more in depth methods in order). Note: I am assuming that the WEP/WPA key used was correct in connecting to the network , and that the issue is not getting a IP or any internet connectivity.

The first thing to try is giving a static IP to the wireless card. More than likely this will work, but having it set as auto would be more preferable, and you probably would want to know why you have to do it this way.

Wireless card drivers:

1. Right-click on “My Computer” and click Properties

2. Click on “Device Manager” from the left column

3. Expand “Network Adapters” Section

4. Right click on each network adapter and click “uninstall”

5.Click “Action” from the toolbar and Select “Scan for hardware changes”

IPV6 causing issue

1. Control Panel > Network and Sharking Center > Manage Network Connections > right click your Friendly Neighbourhood Network Connection > Properties

2. Under the Networking Tab, uncheck Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6)

3. Exit the dialogs.

Invalid MAC address in Vista for the wireless network card.

Now this is a very interesting one, and ended up being the problem with mine.

Vista does not preset a MAC address for the network card.
As a result the network card identifies itself as: 00-00-00-00-00-00
this causes problems with any standard equipment.
To fix this go to:
Device Manger and view driver details for the network card.
Select MAC, you will see that the option Not Preset is ON.
Check ON the option to set a MAC address and type in a 6 hex digits e.g.:
001a2b3c4d5e

Save and restart your network. It should be working now.

DHCP bug in Vista

Taken from a MS article located here,

This issue occurs because of a difference in design between Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Specifically, in Windows XP SP2, the BROADCAST flag in DHCP discovery packets is set to 0 (disabled). In Windows Vista, the BROADCAST flag in DHCP discovery packets is not disabled. Therefore, some routers and some non-Microsoft DHCP servers cannot process the DHCP discovery packets.

Care: as the fix for this possible involves a registry change, please make sure you have all you important files backed up if things go haywire.

So as you can see, there could be a few things that are causing this issue. Please share any thoughts/experiences you may have had.

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The AVG Rescue CD also contains the following set of admin tools:

* Midnight Commander – a two-panel file manager
* Windows Registry Editor – simple registry editor for more experienced users
* TestDisk – powerful hard drive recovery tool
* Ping – to test the availability of network resources (servers, domains, IP addresses)
* Common Linux programs and services – vi text editor, OpenSSH daemon, ntfsprogs and the like.

Now I haven’t actually tried this yet, but from what I’ve read it’s not a bad little addition to the IT professional’s toolkit. If you want support for this from AVG, it is free if you have a purchased AVG product. Else check their forums.

Check it out here, and if you have tried it let me know what you think of it.

I was getting a msg ‘BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart’.

WTF?

Looks like the Master Boot Record (MBR) had become corrupt. Fortunately there was an easy fix for this:

Disclaimer: Proceed at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any loss of data caused by the actions below.

* Find your Windows CD and boot off this (as if you were to reinstall)
* Enter recovery mode (Option R from the main screen)
* You will be prompted for the admin password. Enter it.
* Type in ‘fixboot’
* Type in ‘fixmbr’
* Type in ‘exit’

The PC should now boot and startup as per normal.

Good Luck!