Mountain Vista Technologies

IE7 loading web pages slow: VMware Fusion

Problem: Using WMware with Windows 7 on a Mac Pro.  I had some troubles accessing sites like You Tube and Groupon.  What would happen is that it would take many minutes for the site to load and then it wouldn’t complete.  The CSS wouldn’t process so all I got was a list of links.  Thought it was our content filter and it did help performance a little to bypass the content filter but performance still wasn’t up to snuff.  Also, I didn’t have this problem with non VMware workstations that were being filtered which told me that this was a VMware problem, not a content filter problem.   Turned off the firewall on the Windows 7 side and my network adapter is set to “Bridged(autodetect).”

Solution:  First thing I did was switch my adapter to NAT within the Virtual Machine settings.  You Tube loaded just fine and performance was much better.   I then switched the adapter back to “Bridged(autodetect)”  and it was still working well.  Tried all of my troubled websites, including You Tube and they were loading in a timely fashion.  Have no clue why this worked for me but it worked on two separate workstations running VMware Fusion.   Hope this works for you.

Top 6 user related reasons why email deliveries fail

Have you ever received that call from your boss or an employee saying that “email is down” or “what are you doing to the email?”   After a few breaths to calm yourself you look into the problem and find out it was the error of the user.  What I find is that they usually don’t read the details of the bounce back message and just assume email is down.   So here is my list and next time you get that complaint, maybe this will help you track it down.

1. Use .com just by habit.   I work for a non profit so we have a .org extension in our domain.  When people try to send us email or if one of our employees give out their email address, they use .com.  I guess old habits are hard to break.
2. Adds an S to the domain or forgets the S to the domain.   I work in education so one might send the email to @yourschool.org when it should be @yourschools.org or vice versa.  I find many emails like this in the failed queue.
3. User doesn’t exist:  This can be a few things.  Most commonly, I will find someone is sending out emails on a distribution list and hasn’t updated it for a while.  Someone on the list is no longer at the place they were so an error message comes back.  Unfortunately, the user comes to me and says that their email failed and they need to get it out yesterday.  Sound familiar?   Another one is that they simply mis-spelled the username for the email.  Transposed letters or used the wrong naming convention.
4. Saved it to drafts thinking that email was sent.   I have run into enough if this to list.  User claims that they sent the email hours ago and it hasn’t been delivered yet.  I check their Outlook drafts and find it in there. 
5. Forgets the domain extension:  I have seen many emails fail because the user forgets to add .com, .org, .net, .TV, etc.. to the email address.
6. Has a cached version of the address that is wrong:  In Outlook and many other email programs, frequently used emails will be cached.  This is convenient so you don’t have to retype the whole thing.  But it caches all sent email.  Not just emails that were successful.   So I user starts typing in an email the cached version pops up, they select it and send but it fails.  Over and Over!   The clue to this is the complaint, “I can reply to their emails and they get it but I can’t send them a new one.”

Do you have any email stories to share?   Good user created issues you need to vent on?  Leave a comment. Would love to hear some.

An automated WordPress update has failed to complete error

Problem:  Had an out of date WordPress install so I upgraded it to the new version.  After the upgrade process completed, the WordPress dashboard said I was on the latest version.  However, I was still getting the error, “An automated WordPress update has failed to complete.”  I had no way of knowing what was causing this error.

Solution: After some looking around, I realized that this was similar to a problem I had when I was stuck in maintenance mode.  So I looked at the root of my WP install and found a .maintenance file.  I deleted it and all was well.

Exchange 2010: Limiting the number of recipients

Problem:  One of our Exchange accounts were compromised and then used to send mass amounts of spam through our system.  We shutdown the account and cleaned up the mail but wanted a way to limit the number or recipients so the spammer couldn’t send out so many at the same time.

Solution:  The default for Exchange 2010 is 5000 recipients. Since we only have 200 mailboxes, we could lower this a bit to hopefully curtail these mass sends.  To do this, go into Exchange Management Console and go into Organization Configuration.   Then right mouse click on Hub Transport and select properties.  Under the General tab, you will see the max number of recipients option.  Choose a number that suites your organization and click Apply.  

Bypass Adtran Router password, reset password and reconfigure.

Problem:  Acquired a used Adtran 3450 router and needed to configure it for a location that needed a router.   Problem was that I didn’t know the password for the web user, enable and the console user.   I needed to find a way to reset this router or change the password.

Solution:  To get into the router and bypass the passwords, you need to console into the router using a DB9 serial cable and a VT100 emulator like Putty or HyperTerminal.  When connected, pres ESC within the first 5 seconds of the unit powering on to get into bootstrap mode.  Once in bootstrap mode, type “bypass passwords” and press enter.  Then type “boot” and the unit will reboot, bypassing the need for passwords.

Reset Password:

1. At the # prompt type config terminal and press Enter.
2. At the (config)# prompt, type enable password “password” Where “password” is your new password.
3. At the (config)# prompt, type username “youruser” password “yourpassword” and click enter.  Of course “youruser and Yourpassword” are the user and password that you choose.  This will create a new administrator user where you can login without going into bootstrap mode.
4. Type exit and the write mem to save the config.

Set the IP address to Eth1:

1. At the # prompt, type config terminal and press enter
2. At the (config)# prompt, type interface eth 0/1
3. Enter ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 (Put your desired IP address instead of the 10.0.0.1 supplied above.)
4. Type exit and the write mem to save the config.

Make sure HTTP access is turned on:

1. At the # prompt, type config terminal and press enter
2. at the (config)# prompt type ip http server and press enter
3. Type exit and the write mem to save the config

After you turn on HTTPS access, you can do all the other configuration via the web browser which is much easier.