Best posts on Help Desk Geek – Help Desk Tips For IT Pros from Oct 2008

Too many posts to handle? If you missed out on a great post from last month, here’s a quick digest of the top posts that you may want to check out:

• What is simple file sharing and how to turn it off
  Posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 in How-To – Views: (269)
  Simple File Sharing is a feature built into Windows that makes it very easy to share files and folders with other computers on your local network. It’s so simple that it’s pretty unsafe too. If you share a folder, everyone can access it, there are no permissions and no passwords to prevent access to the shared folder.If you are running Windows XP Home Edition, this is the only option you have for sharing files.
• How to block remote connections to a Windows XP computer
  Posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 in Windows XP Tips – Views: (150)
  If you’re not careful, it may be possible for hackers to remotely connect to your computer without your knowledge and copy, change, or delete files. If you travel a lot and have to connect to unsecured wireless networks at hotels, airports, etc, you should make sure to beef up the security on your system so that you do not become the victim of a hacker.
• How to hide user account in XP
  Posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 in Windows XP Tips – Views: (128)
  You can hide a user account from the Welcome screen in Windows XP, but it requires editing the Windows registry. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do it unless you use a third party application. I’ll explain both ways in this article.Note that when you hide a user account in Windows XP, it’s better if you are running Windows XP Professional rather than XP Home edition.
• How to determine open and blocked TCP/UDP ports
  Posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 in Networking – Views: (127)
  Looking for a way to determine which ports are open and which ports are blocked on a computer? Ports are basically logical connections between two computers or network devices for sharing data. Port numbers range from 1 to 65536 and some port numbers are assigned to specific tasks, such as port 80 for transferring HTTP data.Port 21 is for FTP, port 25 is for SMTP, port 110 is for POP3, port 23 is for Telnet, etc, etc.
• Prevent users from creating new email accounts in Outlook
  Posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 in Office Tips – Views: (120)
  If you are using Microsoft Exchange with Microsoft Outlook in a corporate environment to handle your email, you may have noticed that there is no way to stop your users from creating secondary email accounts in Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007. So in addition to their Exchange email account, they can import email boxes, add a POP3 email account, etc.This is bad for IT Administrators as they cannot directly control what is being sent and received in those secondary email accounts.
• Cannot delete Outlook 2007 reminder
  Posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 in Office Tips – Views: (118)
  Can’t delete a reminder in Outlook 2007? I recently had this very strange problem where I created a calendar event in Outlook 2007 with a reminder attached to it, the event passed, I dismissed the reminder, but it won’t go away! The reminder pops up each time I open Outlook 2007.Not only that, I deleted the calendar event thinking that it would get rid of the reminder, but it doesn’t!
• Remove, disable, or stop Windows startup programs using AutoRuns
  Posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 in Tools Review – Views: (115)
  Do you know which programs load at startup? Windows likes to make it very hard for people to quickly and easily disable useless startup programs, which is why there are literally a thousand programs out there that allow you to configure and change the Windows startup programs list.One of my favorite is AutoRuns, a freeware app that allows you to see EVERYTHING that starts up in Windows.
• Spiceworks – Free helpdesk, network inventory, and network monitoring software
  Posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 in Tools Review – Views: (110)
  There is a lot of great open source software out there that can help make the life of any IT Administrator easier and I’ve written about several like a, b, c. However, there are a couple of applications that stand out for their features, their ease of use, and their cost.Spiceworks IT Desktop is a free software application that combines several programs into one including network monitoring, network inventorying, Help Desk software, reporting, and troubleshooting.
• How to fix Stop:0×000000F4 blue screen error in Windows
  Posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 in How-To – Views: (100)
  Working in IT, I’ve come across number strange STOP errors in Windows that are only fixed by doing something ridiculously obscure! Recently, I came across another STOP error that is very obscure, but pretty easy to fix! Well, at least it was easy to fix for me.Here’s the error on the associated blue screen when I am working on the troubled computer:Stop: 0×000000F4 (0×00000000003, 0xFFFFFADF50, 0xFFFFFADF50EC32A8, etc)To fix this, I tried all kinds of things before calling Dell support, such as replacing the memory, switching out video cards, replacing the motherboard, running all kinds of hardware and memory diagnostic tools, etc, etc.
• Device Manager empty or blank in Windows?
  Posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 in Windows XP Tips – Views: (98)
  I recently had a problem where I opened my Device Manager and found that is was blank! Nothing there! Just plain empty! It was very strange and it took me a while to figure out what the problem was!If your Device Manager is completely blank or empty, then there are two possibilities of why the problem is occurring: either you have a critical Windows service disabled or your permissions in the registry for the Device Manager key are corrupt.