windows

Office365 PWNage!

Office Taskbar PWNage!

0
19 hours ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in , ,

So I just recently re-installed windows on my desktop and was installing my office365 suite (I’m doing the annual 5 seat license, so far I’m very happy with it other than trying to find the installer for each system, but that’s a different rant).

I happened to pin them to my task-bar and it spelt out “pwn” and I found that funny so I wanted to share. :)

Office365 PWNage!

 

 

 

(I’m using Powerpoint a lot for my capstone at ITT if you curious why it made it to the task-bar. It won’t be there much longer.)

results of running this bat file

Vanity Bitcoin Keys

1
1 week ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in , , , , , ,

So it’s been a while since I’ve talked about bitcoin and I’ve recently gotten more interested now that the prices have grown significantly. So I started explaining it to some friends at school and have gotten them interested as well. So of course I wanted a nice and custom key to show off, and it’s really quite easy with tools like vanitygen by samr7 over on the bitcoin forums which is the tool that we will be using for this post.

Because it’s actually doing alot of math to figure out (or more correctly guess) at the key, the longer you want your custom key to be, the longer you will have to crunch these numbers so don’t get too crazy with it.

The tool has several options but most of them won’t be used, in fact I only use one of the possible flags below, but there are more, you can view them by running vanitygen.exe with the “-h” flag, or just save this as something like help.bat in the same folder as vanitygen.exe and double-click the .bat file to run the help command for you.

Now that you have read the options the batch file below might make more sense, we are going to ask you for the pattern you want your custom key to have, and decided if you want it case-sensitive which takes MUCH longer, and might have strings that are not allowed, but it’ll error out if it does so you can try something different.

So save this file as something like vanity.bat in the same folder as vanitygen and run it. (Change the highlighted lines 19 and 23 to reflect the executable you are going to use for your system. (ie: if on a 64 bit system you would use vanitygen64.exe, on a gpu you would use oclvanitygen.exe)

Here is what the output of the script does (note, I’ve highlighted the user input for clarity, there is no color in the actual script results, and No this key should NOT be used!):

vanity.bat result

Then create a shortcut on your desktop for vanity.bat and change the icon to something that you prefer, I’ve added the image I use below for fun, and then just run this anytime you (or a friend) want a custom wallet key!

As for wallet’s, I use the Armory wallet but for most users I would recommend multibit as it’s much faster, and much smaller, but you do give up some freedom and security relying on others where armory can offer a true TNO security standpoint, just my 2 bitcents on that topic, now get mining!

 

2012-10-08_11-24-09

Remotely add a domian user to the local machines remote desktop group (win7)

0
7 months ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in , ,

So here’s another problem that I’ve run into at work, that I just wasn’t able to find a good resource to answer, so I’ll go ahead and post my workaround so that it might help someone, or myself sometime later.

Let me first explain the problem I was running into so that you get an idea of why and how this happened.

I work for a managed service provider, and we were just getting ready to migrate them away from their old POP3 email to office365′s hosted exchange server, and at the same time we were replacing about 20 pc’s.

The computers were built in house, and most of the work, adding updates, software, users, and enabling remote desktop etc was done locally before the computers got delivered to the remote offices as well.

The computers were delivered, and installed, and everything was going fine, their old email was setup in outlook, and they were able to connect to the main remote desktop server running a few select pieces of software just fine. Sweet!

A week goes by and it’s time to start making sure all of my ducks are in a row before pushing out the new settings for outlook to connect to the new email service, so I tried to use remote desktop (RDP herein) just to test it out. I get an error along the line’s of:

To log on to this computer, you must be granted the Allow log on through Terminal Services right. By default, members of the Remote Desktop Users group have this right…

Now first, understand I was logged in as a domain admin. This error was definitely unexpected.

I try logging in as the local machine’s admin account, and get the same error message. Now I’m starting to get worried, these remote offices are not exactly close, and I really don’t want to spend the next 2 days running all over the place to add the user to the local machines Remote Desktop Users group, but it’s starting to look like that’s what’s going to have to be done, as I can’t just call the end-user, give them the local admin’s login info, then have them start a teamviewer session so that I can add the users to the local RDP group.

But wait! Now I remember, there’s a “Run As” option in windows!

We’re going to need some kind of remote access to the machine to get this configured so I call the user, have them run the teamviewer quick support app (No I don’t get paid by them I just really love the service!) while still logged in as the domain user.

Then here’s the workaround.

Click the start button, type in powershell, but DONT click it yet!

Hold down “Shift” then right-click it. You should see an option for “Run As a different user”

Then you will get a login prompt!

Sweet! Go ahead and enter in your cred’s.

This will open a powershell prompt as the user you just entered the creds for (in my case the domain admin). Neat! Now I just need to open the local machines user and groups settings to add the users. Type in “lusrmgr”.

This will open a window I hope your familiar with,

Now you should be able to add users the same way you usually do! Nice!

If you need a hand actually adding the users to the RDP group, I’ll go ahead and finish walking you through adding a user, but for everyone else, you should be good to go! Enjoy!

To add someone to the RDP group, first click Groups in the left side window (1) in the Local Users and Groups window, then in the main window section, double-click Remote Desktop Users (2).

From this next window, Click Add:

This will open up another window, if you already know the name’s go ahead and start typing them in, click “Check names”(1) and “OK” this will add a user, I don’t usually know all the name’s so I go this route:

Click “Advanced…” (2)

Then hit the “Find Now” button to populate the list with all of the members and groups of your domain (I’ve already done this in the following picture).

Select all of the users and groups you want added and click “OK” and viola! They’ve now been added to the local machines Remote Desktop Users group, remotely, and without giving up the admin’s account info to the end-user! Yea! You should now be able to login as the users you selected to that machine, and can disconnect your teamviewer session, and continue administering that machine via RDP like you wanted to before.

Good Luck!

Also a side note, I don’t believe that Windows XP had the command “lusrmgr” so you might need some tweaking of this to make it work for you. But then again, it’s time to upgrade if you’re still using XP anyways, End of life support for XP is April 8, 2014 just in case you needed to start thinking of that!

Devices_and_Printers-2012-07-14_03.32.01

Get your netgear wpg606 to support WPA-2 (nerds only)

0
10 months ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in , ,

So this title might be a bit misleading, as this setup will require you have a spare router that will support the dd-wrt firmware, I wanted to say this up front to avoid anyone reading this to get upset by letting you know half way through this post.

I had to hack this together because my I run a windows domain, and my roomate’s new laptop has windows 7 home on it, so of course, he can’t be brought onto my domain but I still wanted to share out my printer with him.

I have random hardware laying around so I came up with this solution as it didn’t cost me anything to do. Sure I could have waited until Fry’s opened tomorrow, but I’m saving for a new car, and like I said, I’d rather put the hardware I have to work!

Here’s the breakdown, I can give more detailed instructions if you like, but I figured that would be better suited for the Forums as all those instructions would make this a very dry post.

You will need:

  • Wireless Access Point that supports at least WPA-2 Personal (TKIP or AES both work) and broadcasting it’s SSID
  • A Second wireless router that has dd-wrt installed
  • A Printer that accepts USB
  • A netgear wpg606 wireless print server (or any networked print server on second thought!)
Your wireless Access Point I’ll assume is working fine, and you have DHCP running on one of your servers or router. We won’t be making ANY changes to your wireless access point! All the heavy lifting will be handled by the secondary dd-wrt router.
Configure your dd-wrt router to be a wireless bridge. I followed this guide but would recommend you change your IP’s last, just before you join your wireless network from the site survey. Just my two cents, it seemed to go easier for me if I disabled everything first. It’s a very informative guide, so read through it first, then you’ll see that making a wireless bridge is actually really simple. (and it’s saved me a lot of work on random projects, especially old hardware just having a bridge lying around let me tell you!)
Next, in the print server setting’s I disabled the wireless radio, and set a static IP then just plugged in my printer. That’s it!
In windows 7, the way you actually add this printer is a little confusing, as you’ld think it’s a networked printer now right? Sorry, windows doesn’t recognize it as such, you’re going to want to create a local printer then define a Standard TCP/IP Port. Also it’s not a raw printer communication, it’s LPD so I’ll just show you in some screenshot’s how this works in windows 7.
From Devices and Printers, Add a printer.
Like I said before, Add a LOCAL printer.
Next we’re going to create a new port, pick “Standard TCP/IP Port” from the dropdown.
Enter in your printserver’s static address you set earlier, and give this port a name.
Then windows will try to do the right thing and detect the printer for you. This will fail. Don’t get discouraged!
You’ll then be asked for more port information. Being we’re going geeky, let’s choose the “Custom” Option and then click Settings…
Now in my case, the netgear wpg606 can support 2 different printers at the same time, make note of which usb port you used, in my case I used the first port. USB1. This get’s referenced in the “Queue Name” Port 1 is referenced as “L1″ port 2 would be, yep, L2. Also choose LPR for the printing protocol.
Click OK, and you’ll be taken back to the previous window. Click Next.
Everyone’s favorite part, Find your drivers. I’ll leave this up to you, I usually just choose have disk, and download the latest drivers from the manufacture’s page. If it’s an .exe file, you can usually extract it using your preferred app (I like winrar and have purchased a license years ago) you’ll need to end up with a .inf file somewhere to use the have disk option.
This is the file I’ll end up using.
Select it and click OK in the install from disk window.
Your printers driver should be selected now. Click Next.
Because I’ve already installed this driver before, I’ll get this window. In my case I’ll go ahead and use the driver that’s already installed, as I know it’s up to date. Click Next.
Name your printer if you like…
Decide if you want to share this printer. I’m not going to as it’s already a networked printer!!!
Now click Finish! Your printers installed!!! Go ahead, try it out, Print a test page. Yep your old hardware can still be used, if you want it to badly enough!
If this hasn’t helped, at least get this out of it, there’s always a way, sometimes you just have to keep thinking of how to make it happen!
CMINECRAFTserver.properties_-_Notepad-2012-03-03_02.39.34

Another How to host your own Minecraft Server – Windows – Part 1

1
1 year ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in ,

So I have had a few people at school ask me how to host a minecraft server, so I figured I’d go ahead and do a walkthrough for the basics and then work into config’s etc on a later post. I’ll also be doing a similar walkthrough for Linux so look for that to come soon :)

I’ll also say that google will return a million different posts as well, but at least this one you know the source of the info and hopefully I’ve vetted the software enough for you to trust my outside links as well, so here we go.

 

Alright First you have to make a choice. (explained further down)

Vanilla or Bukkit?

(click the link above to download after making your choice)
A Vanilla is the Official plain (plain like vanilla get it?) minecraft server. Just your friends, you and the world as it was intended to be played by the creators at Mojang.

 

A Bukkit server is a re-write of the official server that allows a very strong plugin community to (GREATLY) extend the functionality and interactions you can have in the minecraft world.

 

Running a vanilla server is quite simple, download using the link above and run the .exe file. That’s it. :)

Running a bukkit server is a little more work. First download bukkit from the link above, and save the .jar file to a directory of your choice, I will use C:\MINECRAFT\ as my default location.

Once you have it saved you will need to create a file to launch it so you don’t have to keep opening a terminal and typing commands. Again we will be using our friend the .bat file.

Create a new file named something like start_bukkit.bat and enter in the following:

[codesyntax lang="bash" title="start_bukkit.bat"]

[/codesyntax]

Save and close. This will need to be changed each time the folk’s at bukkit.org release a new updated version so that the name represents the file you download.

Then again you could take the easy way and just change the line in the file above to say craftbukkit.jar and then just rename the .jar file you download each time.

I personally like being reminded what version I’m using so I just change it manually each time, but meh, I’m a nerd… So I’ll also tell you that you can set the memory sizes for the server to be able to use in the above file by changing the -Xms (minimum) and -Xmx (maximum) amount of memory in Mb that you want to dedicate to your server instance.

So one last thing before you run that .bat file. Make sure you have this and the .jar file in it’s own directory and not on your desktop or something because it will generate several new files once you run it.

Go ahead and run the .bat file you created, it should open a terminal and run craftbukkit :) It will lo

ok something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then stop the server by typing in “stop” and pressing return (then press any key to close the window)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now when you look in your minecraft directory, you’ll see all the newly created files and folders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice.

This is what a new install should look like. Now let’s do some simple configurations as the rest of the bukkit config will be covered in a seperate post as it works the same for windows or linux after this point.

First open the server.properties file. I prefer notepad++ but your more then welcome to use your editor of choice.

Here are the setting’s and their function:

 

[codesyntax lang="python" lines="normal" title="server.properties"]

[/codesyntax]

 

Be sure to set this up as you see fit.

That’s about it! Make sure your incoming port (25565 by default) is forwarded through your windows firewall and any other firewall’s you might have in place, and you should be able to connect! If you need a name to give your friends, check out the site http://www.no-ip.com/ (they have a free version as well that works fine) and install the .exe so that it can track your dynamic IP address. The rest will be covered in following posts :)

Hope this has helped!

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