Windows – Yeri Tiete

Remote desktop and Wake-on-LAN

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 23:14:54 +0200

Shan uses her iPad a lot, but a lot of the more serious (interior design) work needs to happen on AutoCAD or Photoshop. That is just not going to work on an iPad.

When we're travelling (read: holiday) she's carrying an old Lenovo ThinkPad 13 (great device!) just "in case" she needs to open AutoCAD and edit something minor or read the drawings/dimensions. But honestly, most of the time that device is turned off and dead weight.

But all the above is just an excuse to "I was bored, and I wanted to test something": can I use an old Raspberry Pi (zero W) to remotely wake her Intel NUC, and then use Tailscale to use RD on her iPad? Well, yes I can.

I completed this using:

Tailscale to remote desktop from anywhere to home
Cloudflare Tunnels, Access and DNS to have a web interface to wake the desktop
A Linux device that's always on and in the same LAN, and that'll run a PHP script.

Prep work: enable WOL

First off: enable Wake-on-LAN (WOL) in the BIOS and in your Windows settings. This article explains it for Intel NUCs, but would be similar enough for most devices. The Device Manager pane looked different on our i5 NUC, but was close enough.

On Mac, you just need to enable it in the Energy preference pane, for Linux I have no clue. 🤷‍♂️

Second step: have a working Raspberry Pi (or any Linux device) in the same LAN. This device needs to be turned on 24/7, so use something that uses very little power.

I do have a more powerful RPi4 I wish I could've reused (running Docker and some other "serious" stuff; however it's currently in a different VLAN, and it's quite crucial the Linux device is in the same LAN as the device(s) you want to wake up), so I went with an old Raspberry Pi Zero W that was collecting dust (it used to run pwnagotchi).

On the Linux device, install etherwake. The command to run is quite simply etherwake aa:bb:cc:11:22:33 (= the ethernet MAC address of your device).

If this doesn't wake your desktop, something is wrong and there's no point continuing. Go and troubleshoot.

Install Tailscale and RD

On the (Windows) desktop and your iPad, install Tailscale. Login, and make sure it works by pinging from one to the other.

Then set up Remote Desktop on both (Windows, iPad). You should test and make sure you can properly connect using the LAN IP address and then the Tailscale IP address.

Fun fact: I create a DNS record for all my devices using Cloudflare DNS with the syntax of device-name.ts.yeri.be, so I don't need to ever remember IPs, and can easily ssh or ping devices without having to look up IPs.

Cloudflare DNS screenshot, filtered on "ts". I add both A and AAAA records (not shown in the screenshot)

Fun fact side track: I actually have a dynamic script that runs (on Linux) and creates hostname.ts.yeri.be for the Tailscale IP, hostname.wg.yeri.be based on the Wireguard IP, hostname.lan.yeri.be based on the LAN IP. This dyndns script runs every so often and updates IPs if needed. All this is running using Cloudflare DNS and their API. Super convenient.

Nginx, php and etherwake

I'm a 80s kid, so I'll use dirty PHP to run this script. I'm sure I'll go straight to hell for this, but yolo.

Install nginx and PHP (no need for MySQL and other stuff).

etherwake requires root to run (because it needs root access to create a weird magic ethernet packet). Create a file in /etc/sudoers.d/etherwake and add this line:

www-data ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/etherwake

This will allow www-data (nginx/php) to run /usr/sbin/etherwake using sudo, without password.

In /var/www/html/ create an index.php file with:

Wake on Lan

Wake up My Cool Desktop

And a mycooldesktop.php (or whatever) file with:

&1');
echo "$output";
?>
Back

It ain't pretty -- but it gets the job done.

And be sure to edit the MAC address to match your desktop's ethernet MAC address.

Cloudflare tunnels

Install Cloudflare Tunnel (via Zero Trust dashboard).

When creating a new tunnel, the dashboard will give you all needed commands to install the tunnel on your RPi -- but be sure to select the right OS/architecture (arm64? arm? armhf?).

Easy.

And then point the tunnel to http://localhost. No need to mess around with SSL certs.

Lastly, set up Cloudflare Access (via the same Zero Trust dashboard): create a new application, and make sure only approved users can sign in (i.e.: using a pin code emailed to only approved emails).

I only allow access to my own emails, and my family, by using groups.

You can try it yourself via wol.superuser.one. You won't get in. :)

Optionally, but recommended: lock down Nginx to only allow connections from localhost (127.0.0.0/8 and ::1) if using Cloudflare Tunnels, or Cloudflare IPs if using port forwarding with Cloudflare Access in front.

Love my design skills... But it gets the job done: click that link, and it'll execute etherwake.

To recap

We used Tailscale to create a VPN network between the desktop and the iPad. The big benefit is that Tailscale works effortlessly across NAT networks without having to open ports,
We used Cloudflare DNS so we don't need to remember hostnames :),
We used Cloudflare Tunnels to make sure the RPi web interface is accessible across NAT (without port forwarding) and from anywhere,
We used Cloudflare Acces and locked down access to the right people using ACLs,
We used etherwake running on a RPi to wake up devices that are hibernating or turned off.

And that's it really.

PS: technically WoL works with WiFi, but when I enabled WoL on the WiFi adapter, the NUC refused to hibernate/sleep for more than a minute, and kept waking itself up. So, there seems to be some kind of trigger in my network that keeps waking it up. Also, not sure if WoL via WiFi would work if the device is turned off (as opposed to sleep or hibernate). I just ended up using ethernet. 

PPS: both Cloudflare Tunnels and Tailscale use Wireguard tech in the background, so that's really cool.

Screen going black with AutoCAD (LT)

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 03 May 2021 10:20:00 +0200

I am not sure what is the problem -- I've upgraded Shan's 27" 2k monitor to a 32" 4k monitor and AutoCAD LT recently updated from 2021 to 2022. Shan's been using a 2017 i5 NUC (NUC7i5BNB) with 32Gb RAM using the onboard GPU. Something that should be plenty for a bit of Windows, Chrome, Photoshop and AutoCAD LT.

For the past few weeks, several times a day her screen would black out for half a second or so and then everything should go back to normal. Sometimes it would happen several times in a row, sometimes it wouldn't for hours on end.

I tried several things, including getting a 8k 120hz HDMI cable, using a usb-c to DP cable, changing the GPU vRAM minimum from 128Mb to 2048Mb (quite the hack, as it can't be set in the bios -- requires messing around in the registry. Wow.), updating all the drivers, updating the bios, making sure the NUC was properly ventilated and keeping cool (every full moon the NUC shuts down due to overheating in Singapore if I set the fan to 'balanced' instead of 'cool'), and probably more. And because it happened so sporadically it was quite hard to debug (to the point I sometimes didn't want to believe her as I couldn't see it blacken out).

Shan was getting frustrated (which in turn means I get frustrated)... and I started looking at getting either an eGPU (I can get a free Nividia M6000, just need the enclosure, but the enclosure would be $$), an AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 NUC (no more Intel in this house, but also $$$), or some other refurb (massive) desktop some friend had lying around (HP z240 or something, zero $, but Shan would kill me for having this massive thing on her desk).

Turns out, the quick fix, was to simply disable hardware acceleration.

Run GRAPHICSCONFIG and uncheck hardware acceleration.

This is probably not ideal in the long run (hopefully it's an issue with AutoCAD 2022 that is getting fixed, as opposed to the onboard Intel GPU getting messed up with AutoCAD).

When in doubt… Turn off hardware acceleration.

Belgian banks & SSL — part 3

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 15 Feb 2015 11:11:42 +0100

EDIT: ING is now A- (not reflected in this blog post). EDIT 2: Keytrade & Hello Bank also went to A. I’ll post a new blog post later tonight. EDIT 3: Updated post here.

Part three, or how I single-handedly “fixed” SSL at the Belgian banks. ;)

Part one and two are available here. Not related but useful nonetheless NY Times article about bank hackers.

Argenta promised to fix their SSL, so it’s the time to check everything again.

TL;DR: Only Argenta’s status changed for the better.

Those that did not change:

Rabobank: A+
Triodos: A+
Belfius: A-
BNP Paribas Fortis: A-
bpost bank: A-
AXA: B
beobank: B
CPH: B
KBC: B
Keytrade Bank: B
Crelan (internet banking): B
Hello bank!: C
Bank Van Breda (internet banking): C
- BvB no longer supports secure renegotiation (which, afaik, it did before). However, it's still rated as C, as this isn't a real issue.
ING: F
Record Bank (internet banking): F

Those that did change:

Argenta (internet banking): F to B
- No longer vulnerable to POODLE,
- Support for protocol downgrade attacks prevention,
- Still using SSL3 (obsolete and insecure),
- Weak signature (SHA1),
- RC4 cipher is supported (insecure),
- No Forward Secrecy.

Still a little way to go for Argenta, but it’s on the right path.

Those that I hadn’t tested before:

VDK: B
ABK: F
MeDirect Bank: F
Ogone: C (technically not a bank, and promised a fix, but it got delayed).

The entire list updated:

Grade A

Rabobank (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
Triodos (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
Belfius (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
BNP Paribas Fortis: (A-) weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
bpost bank: (A-) weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.

Grade B

Argenta: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
AXA: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
beobank: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
CPH: no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
KBC: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.
Keytrade Bank: weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
VDK: SSL3 (insecure),no TLS 1.2, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy
Crelan: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), no TLS 1.2, RC4, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade C

Hello bank!: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
Bank Van Breda: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy, no support for secure renegotiation.
Ogone: payment facilitator
- weak signature (SHA1), RC4, vulnerable to POODLE, no Forward Secrecy

Grade D

Grade E

Grade F

ABK: SSL2 (insecure), vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy, no TLS 1.2.
ING: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
MeDirect Bank: vulnerable to POODLE attack, OpenSSL CCS vulnerability (quite bad),
Record Bank: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.

Information about SSL Labs grading can be found here. Grade A (+) being the best possible ranking, and F the worst.

Also, shame on you ING. More than any other bank.

Belgian banks & SSL -- part 2

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 01 Feb 2015 11:32:43 +0100

I previously wrote about Belgian banks & SSL. Updated version (15/02/2015) here.

Going through my Google Analytics I noticed some noteworthy network domains, which Google discribes as “The fully qualified domain names of your visitors’ Internet service providers (ISPs)”.

There are a few more (Belgian) government institutions and universities, and the top in the list are “(not set)” and “unknown”.

Clearly some people at the banks read the post during their work time. So it’s only fair to recheck the websites… Here goes:

Those that I hadn’t tested before:

CPH: B
Record Bank (internet banking): F

Those that did not change:

Rabobank: A+
Belfius: A-
AXA: B
beobank: B
KBC: B
Keytrade Bank: B
Crelan (internet banking): B
Hello bank!: C
Bank Van Breda (internet banking): C
ING: F
Argenta (internet banking): F

Those that did change:

Triodos: A to A+
- downgrade prevention correctly applied.
BNP Paribas Fortis: F to A-
- No longer vulnerable to POODLE,
- Disabled SSL3 (insecure),
- Disabled RC4 (insecure),
- Still using a weak signature (SHA1),
- No Forward Secrecy.
bpost bank: F to A-
- No longer vulnerable to POODLE,
- Disabled SSL3 (insecure),
- Disabled RC4 (insecure),
- Still using a weak signature (SHA1),
- No Forward Secrecy.

Huge thumbs up for these last three banks! Well done, especially BNP & bpost! :)

Keep on shaming the others.

The entire list updated:

Grade A

Rabobank (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
Triodos (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
Belfius (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
BNP Paribas Fortis: (A-) weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.
bpost bank: (A-) weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.

Grade B

AXA: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
beobank: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
CPH: no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
KBC: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.
Keytrade Bank: weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
Crelan: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), no TLS 1.2, RC4, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade C

Hello bank!: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
Bank Van Breda: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade D

Grade E

Grade F

ING: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
Argenta: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
Record Bank: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.

Information about SSL Labs grading can be found here. Grade A (+) being the best possible ranking, and F the worst.

Belgian banks & SSL

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 11:40:50 +0100

Tested using SSL Labs on 20/01/2015. Updated version 01/02/2015 here and 15/02/2015 here.

Only providing the weak points. Once there is one SHA1 key in the chain, I will report everything as weak.

Check SSL Labs for a full report, including what they actually did good (if anything).

Grade A

Rabobank (A+): no known issues. Support for HTTP Strict Transport Security and prevented downgrade attacks.
Triodos (A): no downgrade attack prevention.
Belfius (A-): weak signature (SHA1), no Forward Secrecy.

Grade B

AXA: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
beobank: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
KBC: weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.
Keytrade Bank: weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
Crelan: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: weak signature (SHA1), SSL3 (insecure), no TLS 1.2, RC4, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade C

Hello bank!: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure).
Bank Van Breda: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, weak signature (SHA1), no TLS 1.2, no Forward Secrecy.

Grade D

Grade E

Grade F

BNP Paribas Fortis: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
bpost bank: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
ING: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.
Argenta: no SSL on main page.
- internet banking: vulnerable to POODLE attack, SSL3 (insecure), weak signature (SHA1), RC4 (insecure), no Forward Secrecy.

Information about SSL Labs grading can be found here. Grade A (+) being the best possible ranking, and F the worst.

PS: none of the domains support IPv6 (while expected, it would have been nice – Belgium has the highest IPv6 adoption rate for end users, but almost no IPv6 websites or businesses).

5 Reasons The Guy Fixing Your Computer Hates You

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 17:08:55 +0100

Office 2010: cannot verify the license for this product

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:16:45 +0100

Due to continuous Access errors, I decided to reinstall Office Professional 2010 (64 bit).

As I couldn’t find the original CD key I installed it with, I used another one from another installation. So far so good, installation went fine, etc.

Once I started any Office app, it popped up this error: “Microsoft Office professional plus 2010 cannot verify the license. blablabla useless crap check control panel”

I’ve tried:

Reenter CD key (via setup)
Repair Office
Install every single item I could select during the install
Remove office + reinstall office
Removed CD key with this
Reboot over a zillion times
Cursed

None of this worked.

However, this seems to fix it for me:

Open command
cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14
cscript ospp.vbs /act
reopen any Office. No more errors. Yay

Windows 8

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:20:42 +0100

I lolled.

oops

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 19:49:49 +0200

There is not enough memory or disk space to run the grammar checker

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:58:01 +0100

Word (or Office in general) refusing to get proofing tools to work (spelling checker doesn't work, spawns these odd errors, won't find any spelling mistakes, etc).

Lots of Googling and running Microsoft "fixit" applications didn't do much.

Simple fix: run setup of the proofing tools again, and select repair, reboot, and all should be good.

Malformed or invalid time zone in working hours XML in mailbox

Yeri Tiete — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:56:40 +0100

This error might be caused by changing this setting.

When having this error in OWA, ECP or Outlook:

You can fix this by setting the correct time zone in Outlook (you cannot change it through ECP – you need Outlook):

File > Options > Calendar > Time Zone section

Label: YourCity (e.g. Brussels) Time Zone: YourTimeZone (e.g. UTC+1 Brussels).

Be sure to pick the correct time zone and fill in a label.

Changing Outlook (folder) language

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 18:51:27 +0100

In case you started Outlook with say, a Dutch localization, folders like “Inbox” are named “Postvak In”. Idem dito for replies on read receipts (Gelezen ipv Read), or Meeting Requests.

I haven’t found an option to change this within Outlook, but using OWA, you can change the option and rename it.

For example, using the ECP from my company:

Restart Outlook – the problem should be fixed.

Exchange error 0x6d9

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 17:02:38 +0100

I noticed my “Offline Address Book” was no longer automatically updating.

Running “get-offlineaddressbook |fl” in the EMS showed it last updated somewhere 16th November 2010.

Trying to manually update it through EMC (“Organizational Configuration > Mailbox > Offline Address Book > right click Default Offline Address Book > click update”) it gave me this error:

 --------------------------------------------------------
 Microsoft Exchange Error
 --------------------------------------------------------
 Action 'Update' could not be performed on object 'Default Offline Address Book'.
 Default Offline Address Book
 Failed
 Error:
 Failed to generate the content of the offline address book
 '\Default Offline Address Book'.
 Two possible reasons for the failure are that the System Attendant Service is not running or
 you do not have permission to perform this operation. Error message :
 'Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from RpcEpResolveBinding'.
 Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from RpcEpResolveBinding
 --------------------------------------------------------
 OK
 --------------------------------------------------------
 --------------------------------------------------------
 Microsoft Exchange Error
 --------------------------------------------------------
 Action 'Update' could not be performed on object
 'Default Offline Address Book'.
 Default Offline Address BookFailedError:Failed to generate the content of the
 offline address book '\Default Offline Address Book'. Two possible reasons for
 the failure are that the System Attendant Service is not running or you do not
 have permission to perform this operation. Error message :
 'Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from RpcEpResolveBinding'.
 Error 0x6d9 (There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper) from RpcEpResolveBinding
 --------------------------------------------------------
 OK
 --------------------------------------------------------

I googled for quite a while trying to find a fix, but nothing useful could be found.

I then checked the “Microsoft Exchange System Attendant” (yes, something I probably should have done first), to find it was stopped even though its startup type is set to Automatic.

Starting this service fixed the issue, and I could now update the Address Book again.

But rebooting the server, caused the service to not start again (and I couldn’t find anything in event logs).

Solution: change it to delayed start and set the first and 2nd failure to “restart the service” and change “restart the service after” to 5 minutes.

Yes, a dirty work around but this solved it. As this service only takes care of address book generation and legacy support, it’s not critical to start at boot.

IE9 is the IE6 of CSS3

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 11:08:52 +0200

I giggled. And then cried a little bit.

StarCraft 2: Beta

Yeri Tiete — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:47:36 +0100

Windows client only, 1,64Gb download.

OpenVPN & Windows 7

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:10:11 +0100

There’s a great GUI out for OpenVPN & Windows, located here.

However, this GUI includes an old OpenVPN, that is no longer compatible with Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

The TUN/TAP driver will be blocked due to compatibility issues, and when trying to connect to a VPN, you’ll get an error along the lines of:

All TAP-Win32 adapters on this system are currently in use

The simplest fix, is to install the GUI package (including the old OpenVPN binaries), and reinstall OpenVPN afterwards.

You can find the latest OpenVPN binaries here and the latest version, when writing this post here.

This will overwrite the old files and update the driver with a Windows 7 compatible driver.

Try to connect now, everything should work like a charm. :)

http://openvpn.se/download.html

Fraps to iMovie

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:48:54 +0100

How to successfully import a movie recorded using Fraps into iMovie;

Get Fraps, record whatever you want
Get XviD4PSP (freeware) & install
Import your avi files recorded using Fraps into XviD4PSP (drag & drop)
Pick the encoding you want on the left. x264 q21 DXVA-SD-Insane seemed to be an acceptable quality.
Click enqueue (and repeat 3->5 for multiple files)
Click encode
... wait ...
This will create .mp4 files; transfer those to your Mac
Open iMovie, File -> Import -> Movies -> select the mp4 files
... wait ... A couple of hours
Your movie should now be in iMovie, and you should be able to edit it
Edit whatever you want to edit, share and export and have fun.

A little hint, if your video is cropped (parts cut off), click your movie sequence -> on the left corner of your sequence a little "gear" will appear -> Cropping & Rotation -> in your right display window click "fit" to make it full size.

Took me quite some time before I managed to do it, but hey, now I know… ;)

Windows 7 + iPhone tethering

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:56:25 +0100

If Apple was so kind to give you tethering (and didn’t silently remove it after an update), or if you just happen to have enabled it using, let’s say, the alternative method. And you happen to be forced to use Windows, and you really are tired of XP, and Vista surely isn’t an option; you’re probably running Windows 7.

To enable tethering on the iPhone + Windows; just pair the bluetooth devices (I actually haven’t tried with USB yet, and don’t really plan on doing that), Windows will start to QQ about it being unable to find a suitable driver for the iPhone… I even installed iTunes to see if the message would go away, but apparently it won’t. I’ll have to do some more Googling later on.

Anyway, to tether, just go to “Control Panel” > “View devices and printers” (under “Hardware and Sound”) > Devices > $iPhone_Name (it has a fancy yellow warning sign next to it…).

Right click, “Connect using” > “Access point”.

Simple enough. Pick “Public network”, just to be sure (though, your ISP should already block most direct connections between devices, and your iPhone won’t forward any ports I guess/hope).

And don’t forget to disable WiFi or unplug your network cable if you want to test it at home.

Oh, right, and I probably should give you a bunch of warnings about data consumption and that AT&T might brutally murder you and your family if you dare using tethering (as far as they can actually check you’re tethering, and if they can, I’m pretty sure they’ll be violating a couple of privacy laws). As for the customers of the 95% other decent providers who allow tethering and aren’t living in the middle ages, have fun using it. Finally work can be done on the train/while waiting/… ;)

Hamachi: Failed to connect to the engine

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:35:49 +0100

After getting the Hamachi 2 update (without a prior notice, nicely done… No more auto update if they continue to break stuff) I started to notice a bunch of XPs receiving this error after a reboot: Failed to connect to the engine.

Hamachi is auto started, at boot, because we have a shortcut in the startup folder. No other way to auto start the free version (as far as I know).

Yet, when starting Hamachi manually after the PC had booted, there were no more errors. So it’s clear Hamachi tried to start before the engine (see services.msc -> LogMeIn Hamachi Engine or something) was started.

And reinstalling Hamachi only seemed to work on one of the XPs.

As there’s no easy way to delay the starting up of a program, I used some dirty vbs and batch… Kinda.

Here’s my solution:

Place both scripts in the Hamachi directory (c:\program files\logmein hamachi)

hamachiStart.vbs:

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run chr(34) & ".\hamachi.bat" & Chr(34), 0
Set WshShell = Nothing

hamachi.bat:

@echo off
ping -n 30 127.0.0.1 >NUL
"C:\Program Files\LogMeIn Hamachi\hamachi-2-ui.exe"
exit

Hamachi.vbs will start the bat file. This seems to be the only way to prevent a command prompt from opening (and staying open all the time).

Hamachi.bat will ping itself for 30ish seconds (don’t think there’s a cleaner way to do this…) and then start the Hamachi GUI.

If you’re still having problems, increase 30 to something like 60 or even more.

Anyway, last thing you’ll need to do is to make a shortcut of hamachi.vbs, and drag it into the startup folder.

Reboot, wait a bit, and enjoy.

HP ProtectTools and Windows 7

Yeri Tiete — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:23:24 +0100

If you’re having troubles using HP ProtectTools and Windows 7, you’ll probably using an outdated version of ProtectTools. Eventhough HP tells you this is the latest version for your notebook.

A simple fix, is to download the latest version, which is model independent.

Be sure to completely uninstall the previous version, reboot, and reinstall the latest version. I can now successfully login using the biometric fingerprint device.

Windows update error 80070005

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:42:15 +0200

This is usually an error due to incorrect rights on certain files on your system.

In my case, Windows 2008, as domain controller, I was added to the “Domain Guests” group.

Make sure you’re not member of that group, and reboot. This should fix the problem.

iPhone Crashlogs

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:08:00 +0200

This one, I’ve taken from the Brightkite iPhone beta Google Group.

This should help several people who aren't yet privy to this information. Your iPhone or iPod Touch's iTunes backup process (the thing that some people tend to skip) dumps your device's crash logs to a folder in your home directory. Here's how to get to those logs.
DEPENDING ON YOUR OS:

Mac OS X: <your-home-directory>/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/<device-name>/<brightkite-crash-log>

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\Apple computer\Logs\CrashReporter\<device-name>\<brightkite-crash-log>

Windows Vista: C:\Users\<user-name>\AppData\Roaming\Applecomputer\Logs\CrashReporter\MobileDevice\<device-name>\<brightkite-crash-log>

If you can't find either of those, the logs should be on your device anyway. If it's jailbroken, your logs can be found under:

/var/mobile/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/<brightkite-crash-log>

Red Alert

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:52:21 +0200

Which reminds me, and I guess I’m late again with posting, but you can get a free Red Alert (yes, the original) @ the EA website. Yes, they actually give out free stuff too (the thieves!). But don’t forget, it’s no more than a commercial stunt to get you to preorder Red Alert 3.

Go and get it here, or direct links here: Soviet disc (0.5Gb), Allied disc (0.5Gb).

Dear Tuinslak,
EA has claimed some or all audio and visual content in your video Red Alert 3 Trailer. This claim was made as part of the YouTube Content Identification program.

Your video is still live because EA has authorized the use of this content on YouTube. As long as EA has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video’s page.

Claim Details:

Copyright owner: EA Content claimed: Some or all of the audio and visual content Policy: Allow this content to remain on YouTube.

Place advertisements on this video’s watch page.

Applies to these locations: Everywhere EA claimed this content as a part of the YouTube Content Identification program. YouTube allows partners to review YouTube videos for content to which they own the rights. Partners may use our automated video / audio matching system to identify their content, or they may manually review videos.

If you believe that this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you can dispute this claim with EA and view other options in the Video ID Matches section of your YouTube account. Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes between content owners. Learn more about video identification disputes.

Sincerely, The YouTube Content Identification Team

© 2008 YouTube, LLC

Not even two hours after I posted it. They got scanning bots or what?!

WoW:WotLK 3.0.1 installers

Yeri Tiete — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:51:10 +0200

Here’s a list of all World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King installers:

English: Win - Mac

French: Win - Mac

German: Win - Mac

Spanish: Win - Mac

The download is 2.04Gb (on a Mac), I haven’t started the download on a Windows yet.

And yes, you will still need a beta invitation before being able to login!

You’ll find me under Tuinslak or Isazi on the EU beta realm.

As for the character copy, it was done within 10 minutes. Just 5 hours left on the download. :(

Vista pointing out the obvious

Yeri Tiete — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:40:52 +0200

Ventrilo 2.1, Vista, and Surround 5.1

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 13:45:29 +0100

Helene’s new Vista pc seemed to be working fine, except for Ventrilo 2.1 (the free and, well, illegal version).

It managed to connect, but no sound was coming out of it. Not when someone was talking, and not when there was a status message (like a join/connect/…).

I tried every out- and input device in “Setup”. I deleted the config, reinstalled, … Nothing seemed to work. I even checked if Vista wasn’t muting it, and it wasn’t. ;)

Yet, when plugging in her (USB) headset, it worked fine… So it had to be a Vista/sound config problem.

My Vista, at home, and the one om my Macbook could run Vent just fine…?!

That’s when I went to her sound settings (config panel -> sound). Selected the speakers, and clicked on Configure.

They were set to 5.1 Surround, which is what she’s using.

I tried to use some other audio option, like stereo (or quadrophonic), and restarted Vent… And guess what! Yep, it worked.

So I assume Ventrilo 2.1 does not have surround/5.1 (and greater) support.

Some ugly workaround, to change that each time, but at least it works now.

CoD4

Yeri Tiete — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:52:25 +0100

I recently got my hands on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

I must honestly say I really enjoyed the singleplayer. Great action, nice graphics, damn exciting maps, cool effects, nice movies, cool story, …

The only big downside was how short it was. After not even 2 days (so, around 4-5 hours of gaming) I completed it. I was just getting warmed up, finally mastered all controls, felt a small addiction coming up, when suddenly I saw the credits flashing over my screen… That day, will be remembered as a sad day. :(

Can’t wait for an expansion or followup!

Bootcamp

Yeri Tiete — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:40:31 +0100

For a few courses I’m following at school, I need to be able to run Windows.

As I’m owning a Macbook Pro (with Leopard) that shouldn’t have to be any problem using Bootcamp.

I created a 5 Gb partition and installed WinXP a few weeks ago. So far all fine.

As I don’t really like to reboot into XP (I can’t access my mails, don’t have my IRC client, all my Camino tabs are closed, …) I tried Parallels.

Parallels, at first, was a real disappointment. It crashed my Mac OS X several times. It was only, just a few days later, when they released a patch to solve all Leopard issues, that I started to enjoy it.

Running all my programs from Parallels (instead of rebooting), I never noticed my Bootcamp WinXP was actually broken. As exams were approaching (I’m not allowed to run a virtualization of Windows, because my school’s key and network loggers won’t work like intended, not that I care that much, but they do ;) ), I rebooted for the first time in weeks to my Bootcamp XP, and noticed the famous hal.dll error (or Google it, you’ll see why it’s famous).

I repaired my Windows XP install (as explained in Parallels’ knowledge base), and that indeed fixed the problem… of Bootcamp… My parallels was now broken (hal.dll error for Parallels, instead of Bootcamp). Trying to recreate a new Parallels virtual disk for bootcamp, or even reinstall the program, … All failed. (There should be bootflags to edit, and force Parallels to use a different hal.dll, well, read about it here, it’s no longer useful for me.)

Googling and searching their forums, no luck, no one had a fixed solution. Only ’try this’ and ’try that’. (To follow the above howto I’ve posted, you need to be able to (re)install Parallels, and by the time I found that howto I wasn’t even able to do that; Parallels froze during installation.) I e-mailed the Parallels support team with my problem, and the form said they’d reply within 3 working days… It has been over 2 weeks, and I’m still waiting.

I then noticed that my Mac/Apple keyboard driver weren’t working in Bootcamp-XP, some chars like #, @, > and so forth weren’t working (or at least the layout didn’t match with my Apple keyboard). I tried to reinstall the Bootcamp drivers (located on my Leopard DVD), they all failed to install (no error message…). Being quite fed up with it, I decided to reinstall XP (without formatting, just overwriting my Windows dir). And here too, the drivers failed to install, with no specific error message… Took the required backups, formatted, and had the wild idea to install Vista.

Booted from the Vista install DVD, and came to the conclusion I needed at least 7 Gb disk space to install Vista (having a 5 Gb partition, this wouldn’t work). Back in os X I deleted the Windows partition, and tried to recreate a new (10 Gb) one.

And… This error came up: “Your disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved” (other link). I now started to panic, as I had less then a week to fix this problem. Following a few try-this-and-try-that’s, I removed a few big files from my disk (someone even said to remove Office 2004, but I wasn’t about to do that), I tried to repair my disk (from the Leopard DVD), I tried smaller partitions, even 5 Gb wouldn’t work, and then, when all hope was almost lost, I tried one last thing; ‘Zero Out Data’. This will overwrite all deleted files (well, marked for deletion by your disk, but still written on it, so this data can theoretically be recovered) with zero’s.

And this too, has to be done from the Mac OS X install CD/DVD.

After, well, about 40 minutes Disk Utility was done, I rebooted right into Leopard, and retried to create a 5 Gb partition… And guess what?! It worked!

I deleted that partition again (5 Gb being to small), and recreated a 15 Gb partition, and this too worked with no problems.

I now happily run Vista on my Macbook Pro, and so far I can’t complain.

The only thing I haven’t been able to fix is Parallels, I can’t even reinstall it (it freezes during install). But heck with it, I’ve lost enough sweat already to fix Bootcamp.

Windows – Yeri Tiete

Remote desktop and Wake-on-LAN

Prep work: enable WOL

Install Tailscale and RD

Nginx, php and etherwake

Cloudflare tunnels

To recap

Screen going black with AutoCAD (LT)

Belgian banks & SSL — part 3

Belgian banks & SSL -- part 2

Belgian banks & SSL

5 Reasons The Guy Fixing Your Computer Hates You

Office 2010: cannot verify the license for this product

Windows 8

*oops*

There is not enough memory or disk space to run the grammar checker

Malformed or invalid time zone in working hours XML in mailbox

Changing Outlook (folder) language

Exchange error 0x6d9

IE9 is the IE6 of CSS3

StarCraft 2: Beta

OpenVPN & Windows 7

Fraps to iMovie

Windows 7 + iPhone tethering

Hamachi: Failed to connect to the engine

HP ProtectTools and Windows 7

Windows update error 80070005

iPhone Crashlogs

Red Alert

WoW:WotLK 3.0.1 installers

Vista pointing out the obvious

Ventrilo 2.1, Vista, and Surround 5.1

CoD4

Bootcamp

oops