Good Routine for Spyware and Viruses Removal

Here is a list of things you can do to help diagnose and fix problems associated with viruses and spyware.  Hopefully you have been running an anti virus program and have been keeping it updated, if not then these steps can probably help fix a spyware/virus problem.

1. Go into Add/Remove programs, and remove all unwanted entries, and toolbars.  If you are not sure what something is, google it.
2. Go into MSConfig (got to RUN and type: msconfig)>, go to startup tab, remove all unwanted and suspicious entries.
3. Download Ad-Aware free edition (DO NOT INSTALL YET)
4. Download Spybot S&D. (DO NOT INSTALL YET)
5. Download Hijackthis (DO NOT INSTALL YET)
6. Download ccleaner (DO NOT INSTALL YET)
7. After all of these are downloaded, turn off  the System Restore feature then reboot into safe mode (hit F8 before the Windows screen). Read the rest of this entry »

How to control Windows with Apple Remote Desktop

If you do not want to use the Microsoft Remote Desktop application as detailed here. You can do the following to allow you to control Windows via Apple’s Remote Desktop application.

Install RealVNC Server (www.realvnc.com or www.tightvnc.com) on your Windows PC.

Once installed it will appear in the tray area of the taskbar or in your program files, select options and set a password, and adjust any necessary settings.

Now on Apple Remote Desktop you can connect to the Windows PC via the IP address. You will have remote control and view capabilities but no other Apple Remote Desktop features such as remote install.

Quickly Restore a SQL Server Database

If you frequently need to restore other peoples DB’s for testing here is a quick way to do so in Microsoft Sql Server.

1. Open your Sql Server manager
2. Create a new database (note the names and locations of the created files)
3. Select the newly created DB and select Restore.
4. Select from Device and choose the backup file to restore.
5. Make sure you are overwriting the new database you created, usually quite apparent, look at the path.
6. Check the log file and database name, modify where needed to the new database and log files (usually under logical name)
7. Hopefully once set, you can restore the database, proceed hopefully, if not check the error and modify accordingly.
8. Now you likely need to take ownership of the DB, run the following on the newly restored database to give it sa ownership:

   exec sp_changedbowner 'sa','true'

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Rails and Microsoft Sql Server

So you want to connect your rails application to Microsoft SQL Server. The following instructions will take you through setting this up quite simply. This setup is on a a Ubuntu 8.04 server connecting to SQL Server 2000 (we will use the Northwind sample database). The first thing you need to do is install the following gems:

$ gem install dbi --version 0.4.0
$ gem install dbd-odbc --version 0.2.4
$ gem install rails-sqlserver-2000-2005-adapter -s http://gems.github.com

More info can be found on the sqlserver adapter gem development page. This is just the first step. Read the rest of this entry »

Removing the hiberfil.sys

By default Windows Vista and Server 2008 have a hibernation file equal to the size of the amount of memory you are using. Of you have 12GB of RAM, that will be a 12GB hiberfil.sys. If you are using a small SSD, that would be a killer waste. Removing this file is a quick way to free up HD space, although considering how cheap drives are, you could always upgrade. Furthermore if you are using a virtual machine, you probably don’t need this space wasted either.

Now I do not know why they do this on the Server version since who hibernates a server (that being said I am sure some people probably do, silly tree huggers). The real bugger with this problem is that shutting off hibernation does not always remove the hiberfil.sys file. Alternatively, what if you want to remove it without needing to reboot the server. I found a very fast and simple way to do this is to launch a command prompt as an administrator and run the following command:
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