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Category: Tips

  • PSA: Scam Alert! Forever Yorkie Kisses – Happy Pet Companions

    PSA: Scam Alert! Forever Yorkie Kisses – Happy Pet Companions

    My wife found a really cute Yorkie puppy named Blue and wanted to buy it. After a couple of emails, the alarm bells started ringing. Following are the points of evidence for me to call a scam alert.

    Here is a picture of Blue on the site https://foreveryorkiekisses.com/available-puppies/

    {imagealt=237}

    My wife filled out the “Adopt Blue” form on the site and here is the first email we got back in response.

    We are writing to you in response to your inquiry on Yorkie puppy; BLUE
 We greatly appreciate your interest in our little buddy and also hope that the information on Blue stated below meets your expectations so he can make you and your family absolutely happier.
 BLUE’S INFO:
 He is AKC registered just like the rest of our Yorkies.
 He is current on all his shots (vaccines).
 His birthday is January 21st, 2021
 He currently weighs 1.4 lbs and his estimated adult weight is 5 lbs
 Blue has equally been Microchipped
 Like the rest of our puppies, he has been potty trained to use a puppy pad.
 Blue loves giving puppy kisses, he loves to cuddle, he's filled with love and he is also very playful
 He gets along very well with children as well as with other home pets.
 Basically, Blue loves to be spoiled.
 Since all our puppies are a great part of our family (Forever Yorkie Kisses), we are always concerned about the kind of home/family any of our babies will be going to at any given moment.
 For that reason, we have a couple of questions we would like for you to answer before we can proceed with the entire process.
 How big is your home/house/apartment? Will your job/school provide you with enough time to be able to take care of this puppy?
 Are you experienced with this breed of puppy or with puppies as a whole?
 Do you have any intentions to breed our puppy/puppies?
 Do you live with kids or other home pets?
 How soon would you like to have BLUE as part of your home/family?
 The cost to adopt Blue is $500.
 From the inquiry you sent earlier, we noticed that you are from [name of our town] which is about 18 hours drive away from us, but that isn't a problem at all because we shall have Blue transported safely to your city by a professional pet transportation company via flight (in the cabin), and then he will be delivered to your address by an agent within the same day. Transportation to your location will cost $200.
 Hence, the total cost will be $700 for you to have Blue.
 We are very much looking forward to hearing from you soon.
 Kind regards!

    Fair enough. Breeders should be careful about where the puppies are headed. No red flags here, except that price! My wife sent an email in response to the questions with a couple of questions of her own. Namely, where are they located? Here is the second email we got from them.

    Thank you for getting back to us. We have read through your mail and would like to inform you that we are pleased to let you provide a home for baby BLUE. He is in perfect health condition and doesn’t not have any genetic or physical defects. 
Find attached a recent photo and a video of Blue.
 
In order for us to proceed, when we receive your reply to this email stating if you are still willing to provide a home for this fur baby, we would then forward to you a “PURCHASE AGREEMENT FORM”
via email in the form of PDF which you will download and print the documents; then fill the form, and finally scan the filled form and send back to us before you make the payment for your to-be puppy. If you do not have a means to scan the form, simply take clear photos of each page of the form with all 4 edges of the pages showing in the photos. Once we receive the filled form and your payment, we will then proceed with necessary arrangements for transportation of the puppy to your home address which you will include on the form.
A deposit of $400 is required to reserve a client’s puppy till they are ready to receive the puppy at their home.
 
We currently accept payments via ZELLE, APPLE PAY, GOOGLE PAY, Walmart2Walmart, Western Union, MoneyGram, and BITCOIN.
 
We hope to hear back from you soon!
 
Warm regards!

    Following are the included picture and video.

    {imagealt=240}

    Cute little guy, isn’t he?

    No answer to the question about their location. The use of language is stilted and the list of payment methods is concerning, as well as a 57% deposit. So now the red flags are starting to fly. That led me to do some hunting. I discovered that Blue is also named Kevin on this site https://happypetcompanions.com/available-puppies/

    {imagealt=238}

    That was the last red flag for me. I cannot say with empirical evidence that the people involved with this are scammers and neither am I interested in finding that evidence. I’ll pass on getting scammed, thank you very much! All in all, there are many reasons to believe that both sites are run by the same people and that neither of them is to be trusted.

    There is uncommon effort put into this attempt. I’m positive there are many thousands of these stories happening now so that means uncommon diligence is needed. Stay frosty my friends!

  • Lock My PC Scam

    I just finished tussling with a client’s computer that was locked with a small legitimate program called Lock My PC from FSPro Labs. I found several articles talking about the response they had to an increase in the nefarious use of their program. Here is one of them at Bleeping Computer talking about the response fspro.net/lock-pc/ had for the scammers.

    My customer had been scammed and had enough of dealing with them. The clowns threatened him with locking him out of his computer if he didn’t give them his banking login details. They were planning to make good on their threat with this program. It was very scary for him, but thankfully I was able to help him out of his pickle.

    The recovery method offered on this page https://fspro.net/_service/lmpc-passrec/ did not work for me and after further digging, I realized that I was dealing with Lock My PC v4.6 and not with the latest v4.9.6. Ah ha! A clue!

    The program is no longer offered by FSPro for download so I turned to Major Geeks for the newest version https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/lock_my_pc.html. After a boot into safe mode and an upgrade install of the program, the fix worked! Entering the code provided by FSPro revealed a recovery code that when entered into the online tool generated a passkey to unlock the program. The same passkey worked to unlock it at uninstall also.

    A quick swipe with Revo Uninstaller later and everything is gone!

    Kudos to FSPro for a decisive action to cut these crooks off at the knees.

  • Logitech Mouse Hitching in Windows 10 Fixed

    Logitech Mouse Hitching in Windows 10 Fixed

    My Logitech G502 was plaguing me with intermittent hitching. Sometimes it would work great for days and other times it would be barely usable. I assumed it was a driver or Windows issue. I tried many suggested solutions and none of them worked. The problem even pursued me through a major computer platform upgrade from Intel to AMD. The common denominator ended up being the mouse itself.

    I installed Logitech G Hub and poked around until I discovered that I was able to edit the onboard settings of the mouse.

    The Surface Tuning was set to custom. I changed it to default and it started behaving perfectly.

  • Repair error 3371 status code 11118 in Quickbooks

    I have used this solution in two different situations when I changed hard drives in computers by imaging the old one. I ripped it from here for the sake of preserving knowledge. I don’t trust Intuit.
    If the encrypted file containing your licence number and product code is damaged, QuickBooks will not open, and might display an error message. In those situations, deleting the entitlement file and reentering your license and product information may resolve the issue.

    To rename the entitlement file (QB 2013):

    1. Close QuickBooks if it’s open.
    2. Open the entitlement data folder for your operating system and version of QuickBooks.
      1. On your keyboard, press Windows + R to open the Run window.
      2. Enter (or copy and paste) the following information, and then press Enter
        1. QuickBooks 2013-2016 and Enterprise 13.0: C:\ProgramData\Intuit\Entitlement Client\v8
    3. Right-click the EntitlementDataStore.ecml file and select Delete.
    4. Click Yes to confirm you want to delete the file.
    5. Open QuickBooks, open your company file, and follow the instructions to register the application.

    Thank you IntuitVince

  • How to Add or Change the Manufacturer Information for your Computer

    If you build your own computers, you will occasionally notice in various places that the manufacturer of your computer is listed as unknown. The system properties applet will show the information you place using this method.

    Add or Change the Manufacturer Information for your Computer

    1. Open the Registry editor.
      • Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
    2. Navigate to the following location 
      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OEMInformation

      Note: If the OEMInformation key is missing, you’ll need to create one manually.

    3. Create string values (REG_SZ) and add matching data, as per the table below:
      Value name Data Value type
      Logo <Path to your logo file>* REG_SZ
      Manufacturer <System manufacturer name> REG_SZ
      Model <System Model number> REG_SZ
      SupportHours <Support hours> REG_SZ
      SupportPhone <OEM Support Phone number> REG_SZ
      SupportURL <OEM Support URL> REG_SZ
    4. Exit Registry Editor.
    5. * Note: Logo is ignored on Windows 10 Anniversary. The logo should be a 32 bit or flaked 24 bit image BMP file with the dimension of 120×120. Logos larger than 120×120 pixels are scaled to 120×120.

    Shamelessly copied from here for knowledge redundancy.

  • Restore Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10

    Restore Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10

    If you would like to use and or restore Windows Photo Viewer as your default photo viewer in Windows 10, this write-up is for you. askvg.com

  • Move Primary Domain Controller to New Server

    Copied from Ali’s Blog (link removed because blog is now dead) for my own convenience and for the sake of knowledge redundancy.
    Here is a High Level process of migrating from a server 2003 PDC to 2008R2 PDC (Or to any new windows server):
    1.     Configure a new server 2008 R2
    2.     Join to the domain
    3.     Run adprep /forestprep on the server 2003 PDC (This can be found in the tools directory of Server2008r2 dvd)
    4.     raise the Domain and forest functional levels to 2003 in Active Directory Domains & Trusts
    5.     Run adprep /domainprep on the server 2003 pdc
    6.     Run DCpromo to add it as secondary DC, make the new server a GC and DNS server
    7.     Move all 5 FSMO roles to the new server (See Below)
    A.    Schema
    B.    Domain Naming
    C.    RID
    D.    PDC Emulator
    E.    Infrastructure
    8.     Leave the two servers to replicate for an acceptable period.
    9.     Run DCpromo on the old server and demote from DC role.
    A.    Note that this is an important step to decommission the server properly from the network
    B.    If this step is skipped, the new server will still have all the traces of the old server in DNS and everywhere
    C.    This may cause issues down the line.
    10.  Once the server is gracefully decommissioned, take it off the domain
    11.  Shut down and remove from network.
    Further details shamelessly copied from KB 324801
    FSMO Roles
    In a forest, there are at least five FSMO roles that are assigned to one or more domain controllers. The five FSMO roles are:
    ·      Schema Master: The schema master domain controller controls all updates and modifications to the schema. To update the schema of a forest, you must have access to the schema master. There can be only one schema master in the whole forest.
    ·      Domain naming master: The domain naming master domain controller controls the addition or removal of domains in the forest. There can be only one domain naming master in the whole forest.
    ·      Infrastructure Master: The infrastructure is responsible for updating references from objects in its domain to objects in other domains. At any one time, there can be only one domain controller acting as the infrastructure master in each domain.
    ·      Relative ID (RID) Master: The RID master is responsible for processing RID pool requests from all domain controllers in a particular domain. At any one time, there can be only one domain controller acting as the RID master in the domain.
    ·      PDC Emulator: The PDC emulator is a domain controller that advertises itself as the primary domain controller (PDC) to workstations, member servers, and domain controllers that are running earlier versions of Windows. For example, if the domain contains computers that are not running Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Microsoft Windows 2000 client software, or if it contains Microsoft Windows NT backup domain controllers, the PDC emulator master acts as a Windows NT PDC. It is also the Domain Master Browser, and it handles password discrepancies. At any one time, there can be only one domain controller acting as the PDC emulator master in each domain in the forest.
    You can transfer FSMO roles by using the Ntdsutil.exe command-line utility or by using an MMC snap-in tool. Depending on the FSMO role that you want to transfer, you can use one of the following three MMC snap-in tools:
    Active Directory Schema snap-in
    Active Directory Domains and Trusts snap-in
    Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in
    If a computer no longer exists, the role must be seized. To seize a role, use the Ntdsutil.exe utility. 
    For additional information about how to use the Ntdsutil.exe utility to seize FSMO roles, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
    255504 Using Ntdsutil.exe to Seize or Transfer the FSMO Roles to a Domain
    Transfer the Schema Master Role
    Use the Active Directory Schema Master snap-in to transfer the schema master role. Before you can use this snap-in, you must register the Schmmgmt.dll file. 
    Register Schmmgmt.dll
    1.    Click Start, and then click Run.
    2.    Type regsvr32 schmmgmt.dll in the Open box, and then click OK.
    3.    Click OK when you receive the message that the operation succeeded.
    Transfer the Schema Master Role
    1.    Click Start, click Run, type mmc in the Open box, and then click OK.
    2.    On the File, menu click Add/Remove Snap-in.
    3.    Click Add.
    4.    Click Active Directory Schema, click Add, click Close, and then click OK.
    5.    In the console tree, right-click Active Directory Schema, and then click Change Domain Controller.
    6.    Click Specify Name, type the name of the domain controller that will be the new role holder, and then click OK.
    7.    In the console tree, right-click Active Directory Schema, and then click Operations Master.
    8.    Click Change.
    9.    Click OK to confirm that you want to transfer the role, and then click Close.
    Transfer the Domain Naming Master Role
    1.    Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Domains and Trusts.
    2.    Right-click Active Directory Domains and Trusts, and then click Connect to Domain Controller.

    NOTE: You must perform this step if you are not on the domain controller to which you want to transfer the role. You do not have to perform this step if you are already connected to the domain controller whose role you want to transfer.

    3.    Do one of the following:
    o  In the Enter the name of another domain controller box, type the name of the domain controller that will be the new role holder, and then click OK.

    -or-

    o  In the Or, select an available domain controller list, click the domain controller that will be the new role holder, and then click OK.
    4.    In the console tree, right-click Active Directory Domains and Trusts, and then click Operations Master.
    5.    Click Change.
    6.    Click OK to confirm that you want to transfer the role, and then click Close.
    Transfer the RID Master, PDC Emulator, and Infrastructure Master Roles
    1.    Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
    2.    Right-click Active Directory Users and Computers, and then click Connect to Domain Controller.

    NOTE: You must perform this step if you are not on the domain controller to which you want to transfer the role. You do not have to perform this step if you are already connected to the domain controller whose role you want to transfer.

    3.    Do one of the following:
    o  In the Enter the name of another domain controller box, type the name of the domain controller that will be the new role holder, and then click OK.

    -or-

    o  In the Or, select an available domain controller list, click the domain controller that will be the new role holder, and then click OK.
    4.    In the console tree, right-click Active Directory Users and Computers, point to All Tasks, and then click Operations Master.
    5.    Click the appropriate tab for the role that you want to transfer (RID, PDC, or Infrastructure), and then click Change.
    6.    Click OK to confirm that you want to transfer the role, and then click Close.

  • AT&T Towers

    I just got off of the phone with AT&T customer service complaining about a lack of service. The lady gave me this address to send a request to get a tower placed on my property. Basically you need to send this information to them and (hopefully) they will contact you about putting a tower on your land.

    AT&T Network Real Estate Administration
    12555 Cingular Way, Suite 1300
    Alpharetta, GA 30004

    You will have to also include the following info as well.

    I was informed that you may or may not get a response from them but it cannot hurt if you at least try.

    Contact name
    Phone number
    address and/or email address
    Property address
    city
    state
    county
    Property size (acres or square feet)
    Latitude/longitude of site (if available)
    Map and/or survey (if available)

  • Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.

    This morning I encountered this error when I tried to open Outlook. “Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.” Turns out, all you need to do is go to run and type or paste “outlook.exe /resetnavpane”.

    • In XP “run” is located at Start > Run…
    • In Vista and Windows 7 it is combined with the search box that is at the bottom of the menu that pops up when you click on the round glow ball that took the place of the Start button.

  • How to Delete (or Force Delete) Print Jobs

    When you have a print job stuck in the “deleting” stage, you either need to reboot your computer or follow these instructions.

    1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator
      • Click Start, type cmd, then right-click and choose Run as administrator.
    2. Stop the Print Spooler
      • In the Command Prompt, type: 
        net stop spooler
      • Hit Enter
    3. Delete the Stuck Files
      • Open this folder: Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS folder
      • Delete any files ending in .SPL or .SHD
    4. Restart the Print Spooler
      • Back in Command Prompt, type: 
        net start spooler
      • Hit Enter

    Pro tip: Hit the up/down arrow keys in Command Prompt to cycle through your previous commands. This allows you to make small modifications or corrections to previously typed commands without needing to retype the entire string. In this case, when you get back to the Command Prompt, you can hit the up arrow once, tap back and remove “op” and enter “art” and hit enter.

  • IBM xSeries 346 PCI slots

    This is a picture of the PCI riser card in my IBM xSeries 346 8840-45u server
    From this diagram, I surmise that the PCI slots are the 3.3v 64-bit style.