If you forgot your Windows 7 password, the best way is to reset a forgotten Windows password. How? There is third party software available to reset Windows 7 passwords. There are several free and commercial Windows 7 password recovery tools available in market. We will discuss 3 free tools in this article.
1. PC Login Now
PC Login Now is a free tool. Instead of discovering and displaying your current password, “PC Login Now” removes the password so that you can access your computer again and you can set new password. It works similar to the free and popular Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, it’s much easier to use.
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor erases your lost or forgotten password instead of recovering it. Infect it’s like a password reset tool, rather than a recovery tool. To use this utility, you need to boot to a burned CD created with the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor ISO file. Once you reset your password you can log in to your Windows account without password. It is text based program and a little inconvenient when you use it to regain access to the locked computer.
The Ophcrack is by far the most popular free Windows 7 password recovery tool available. Unlike Offline NT Password & Registry Editor motioned above, Ophcrack helps you recover the lost passwords by using LM hashes through rainbow tables.
With Ophcrack, you don’t need any access to Windows system to be able to recover your lost passwords. Simply visit the site, download the free ISO image, burn it to a CD and boot from the CD. The Ophcrack program starts, locates the Windows user accounts, and proceeds to recover (crack) the passwords automatically.
If you like to try Windows 8 but don’t want to give up Windows 7. Here’s how to dual boot Windows 8 with your current Windows 7 installation so you can run them both side by side. All you need to do is create a new partition for Windows 8, install it on that partition, and then edit your new boot menu so Windows 7 stays the default OS.
Step 1: Create a partition for Windows 8 installation under Windows 7
As you can see in my disk management, I have a 160GB hard disk that is configured with a 64GB partition on which Windows 7 is installed and other two data partitions. What I need to do now is to make a new partition for Windows 8 installation.
Open the Start Menu and right click on the “Computer” option. Click “Manage”, and in the window that appears, click on “Disk Management” in the left sidebar.
Find the system hard disk in the graphical list that appears in the bottom pane. Right-click on the partition F and then click “Shrink Volume”. Shrink it down so you have at least 20GB of space left on the end of the drive, and click OK. Then, click on the “Unallocated” block of that drive that appears and click “New Simple Volume”. Click Next on the next few windows until you get to the “Format Partition” window. Here, give it a volume label you’ll recognize (like “Windows 8″) and click Next. It should format the drive for you. Now you’re all set to install Windows 8.
After creating the new partition, it’s time for the easy part: Installing Windows 8 on the new partition. Insert your Windows 8 disk installation CD and reboot your computer (you’ll need to have enabled booting from your DVD drive in your system BIOS).
Windows starts to install automatically. When you’re choosing installation type, be sure to select Custom (advanced).
Be careful here. Choosing the wrong partition could mean wiping your other Windows installation altogether, so make sure you pick the new partition created for Windows 8 installation in the first step. Choose it to continue.
When you’re done, your computer should reboot into Windows 8. It’ll probably reboot one more time after it does, then you’ll be greeted with the Windows 8 Start screen. If you choose to enter a Windows Live ID here, make sure you have access to your email and can confirm your computer – otherwise it might not let you boot into it.
Step 3: Make Windows 7 the default (Optional)
When you first boot up into Windows 8 that you’re presented with a new graphical boot menu that’ll let you choose between your Windows 7 and Windows 8 installations. Windows 8 will be the default, meaning if you don’t manually choose Windows 7 from the menu, your computer will boot into Windows 8 after three seconds of inactivity. If you don’t want to make Windows 8 the default quite yet, so here’s how to make Windows 7 the default.
On the boot menu, click on the button at the bottom that says “Change Defaults or Choose Other Options”, and hit “Choose the Default Operating System”. From there, you can pick Windows 7 from the menu. From now on, your computer will boot into Windows 7 by default.
Now you have dual booted Windows 7 and Windows 8 sucessfully!
On Windows Vista when you map a drive under your admin account you will find that your mapped drive is not available after you switch to your full token via a RunAs or Consent dialog. This is by design because there are actually two tokens in play here. What happens is the LSA recognized that you are admin at logon and creates two logons. The first with a “filtered” token or non-admin which is used to render your desktop and the other containing your full token to be available after consent dialogs.
Because there are two separate logons there are separate logon ID’s. When network shares are mapped they are linked to the current logon session for the current process token. Meaning you don’t have access to the network drive from the alternate logon. This can come into play with logon scripts and a number of other areas where you may require access to a network share from both tokens.
If you set the following key it will change how SMB shares are mapped. They will be mapped to a token, which means that LSA will check to see if there is a linked token associated with the user session and add the network share to that location as well. Basically all of this means that after setting this drives will be accessible from both tokens no matter which they are mapped under.
Disclaimer: This is not supported by Microsoft and was never tested. Use at your own risk.
Note: All images, brand names and code used in articles are property of their respective owners. Do not use them without written approval of the respective owner. Windows/ Windows 7 is trade mark of Microsoft Corporation.
Active Directory (AD) has sites, which you can use to group servers into containers that mirror your network’s physical topology. Sites also let you configure replication between domain controllers (DCs). In addition, you can map several TCP/IP subnets to sites so that new servers can automatically join the correct site depending on their IP address and so that clients can easily find the DC closest to them.
When you create the first DC, AD creates the default site Default-First-Site-Name and assigns the DC to this site. Subsequent DCs also add to this site, although you can later move the DCs to other sites. You can rename the default site if you want.
You use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Directory Sites and Services Manager snap-in to create and administer sites. To create a new site, perform the following steps.
Start the MMC Active Directory Sites and Services snap-in. (From the Start menu, select Programs, Administrative Tools, Active Directory Sites and Services Manager.)
Right-click the Site branch, and select New, Site from the context menu.
Enter a name for the site (e.g., NewYork). The name must be 63 characters or fewer and can’t contain spaces or periods. You must also select a site link (only one site link, DEFAULTIPSITELINK, exists by default). Alternatively, enter
IP
Click OK.
After you create the site, you can assign various IP subnets to the site as follows.
Start the MMC Active Directory Sites and Services snap-in. (From the Start menu, select Programs, Administrative Tools, Active Directory Sites and Services Manager.)
Expand the Sites branch.
Right-click Subnets, and select New, Subnet, as shown in image below:
Active Directory New Subnet
In the past, you needed to enter the subnet name in the formnetwork/bits masked (e.g., for network 200.200.201.0 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0, you’d enter 200.200.201.0/24). However, this method proved too complicated. Now, you simply enter the address and mask, as the Screen shows.
Active Directory New Subnet Screen 2
Then, select the site to associate the subnet with.
Click OK.
After you have a subnet linked to a site, you can assign multiple subnets to the site.
Determining the bits masked portion of the subnet name can be confusing. This value is the number of bits set in the subnet mask, which ranges from 22 to 32. The subnet mask consists of four sets of 8 bits. You can use the following Figure to convert the subnet mask to bits.
Active Directory New Subnet Mask
For example, the subnet mask 255.255.255.0 is 11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000 in binary, which uses 8 + 8 + 8 bits (i.e., 24) to define the subnet mask. The subnet mask 255.255.252.0 is 11111111.11111111.11111100.00000000 in binary, which is 8 + 8 + 6, or 22.
After you define multiple sites, new DCs that you use DCPROMO to create will automatically join the site that matches their IP address. If no site exists for a DC’s IP subnet, the DC will join the site that authorized the DC’s promotion.
You can disable Windows Automatic updates following methods as below:
The default setting in Windows XP is to have XP scan for updates automatically. If you follow a specific routine for your updates or if your connection doesn’t effectively support having this feature run automatically, disable it as follows:
Click on Start menu button >> [Control Panel] >> [Performance and Maintenance] >> [System] >> select [Automatic Updates]
New window will launched, click on Turn off automatic updates. I want to update my computer manually.
Click on OK button to apply changes.
Disable Windows Automatic Update
To Disable Automatic Update Service through Services MMC panel
Note: It’s named as Windows Updates service in Windows Vista / Windows 7/ Windows Server 2008)
Start menu button >> Control Panel>> Administrative Tools >> Double click on Services OR
Click on Start menu button >> click on Run >> type “services.msc” and click on OK button
Windows Services Management Console window will launched, Scroll down for “Automatic Update” Service (in Windows 2000/ XP/ 2003).
Note: It’s “Windows Update” services in Windows (Vista/ Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008)
Right click on “Automatic Update” services and stop it.
You can also do the same thing at the command line by typing:
net stop wuauserv or
net stop "automatic updates"
To disable double click on service and change start up type to disabled and save.
On
Disable Windows Automatic Update Service
You can Disable Windows Automatic update through Group Policy too. It’s effective for domain environment.
Click on Start >> Run >> Type “gpedit.msc” to bring up the group policy editor.
Navigate to the folder: Local Computer Policy >> Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Windows UpdateLocal Computer Policy >> Computer Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Windows Update
Double Click on “Configure Automatic Updates” option
New Window Will launch, select Disable “Automatic Option” and click on OK button to save.
Note: You These setting will be effective on next reboot of your system.
The ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′ provider is not registered on the local machine.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request.
Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: The ‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0′
provider is not registered on the local machine.
Solution:
You will get this error on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 64 bit. To fix it, switch your Application Pool from Native 64 bit to 32 Bit more under Advanced Settings.
Suggestion:
It is also suggested that you upgrade your application to new ACE OLEDB provider, you can download from here.
HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error
The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.
Config Error
This configuration section cannot be used at this path. This happens when the section is locked at a parent level. Locking is either by default (overrideModeDefault="Deny"), or set explicitly by a location tag with overrideMode="Deny" or the legacy allowOverride="false".
226: <system.webServer>
227: <handlers>
If you get the error above, you have to make a change in ApplicationHost.config file. To fix this error follow the steps as below:
Open ApplicationHost.config file in notepad This file is located under C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config
Search for <location path=”Default Web Site” overrideMode=”Deny”>
Replace with: <location path=”Default Web Site” overrideMode=”Allow”>
Change “Default Web Site” with the name of your website.
NOTE: On 64 bit Windows, if you are using 32 bit editor or File Manager, you will NOT be able to see any files in the config folder. Navigate using Windows Explorer or Notepad in native 64 bit mode.
If you need a domain URL redirection from yourdomain.com to www.testdomain.com or vise versa, you can do something like this:
Place either of these (depending on what you’d like done. And edit to match your domain) inside the <system.webServer></system.webServer> tags in the web.config of the domain.
Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7) doesn’t use metabase-like file from IIS6. Instead the settings and configuration are stored in schema files and applicationHost.config files.
Since the configuration files are different, the old IIS6 tools will not be able to backup IIS7 settings.
This is the new script that you can use to backup your IIS7 web servers.
1. Using notepad or any text editor create a file backupiis7.cmd
2. Insert the following code and save the file:
Code:
@echo off
cls
pushd "%WinDir%\System32\inetsrv"
echo.| date | find /i "current">datetime1.tmp
echo.| time | find /i "current">datetime2.tmp
for /f "tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6" %%i in (datetime1.tmp) do (
echo %%n>datetime1.tmp
)
for /f "tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6" %%i in (datetime2.tmp) do (
echo %%m>datetime2.tmp
)
for /f "delims=/ tokens=1,2,3" %%i in (datetime1.tmp) do (
set TMPDATETIME=%%k%%i%%j
)
for /f "delims=:. tokens=1,2,3,4" %%i in (datetime2.tmp) do (
set TMPDATETIME=D%TMPDATETIME%T%%i%%j%%k%%l
)
appcmd add backups %TMPDATETIME%
del datetime1.tmp
del datetime2.tmp
set TMPDATETIME=
popd
echo.
3. The IIS7 configuration will be backed up at the following path:
C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\backup
NOTE: you can also use Task Scheduler to automate backups.
Problem: When someone send email through smartermail web interface anything with Arabic Language shows ????. Is this SM related or something we need to set server side?
Solution: This can be controlled at the User’s Inbox through Settings > My Settings > Account Settings >> Compose. Set the Text Encoding to “Unicode (UTF-8)” (“Arabic (ISO)” might work too) and then try sending the email again. This will affect any outgoing mail after the settings are saved, existing messages will not be changed.
