Take Control Over Your Keyboard's Number Lock

Having a number lock turned off, or on, automatically can be a great time saver. It could also be a huge annoyance when the number lock is enabled on a laptop as normal lettered keys may function as numbers with the lock enabled.

To enable or disable the number lock setting for a keyboard during Windows logon, follow the steps below.

1) Go to Start, then Run and type: regedit
!!This will open up the Windows registry. Be VERY careful when editing as incorrect changes can damage your computer!!
2) Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Keyboard
3) Double click the InitalKeyboardIdicators option
4a) To enable the number lock on startup, enter the value data of 2
4b) To disable the number lock on startup, enter the valud data of 0
5) Click OK on the Edit String Window
6) Navigate to: HKEY_USERS \ .DEFAULT \ Control Panel \ Keyboard
7) Double click the InitalKeyboardIdicators option
8a) To enable the number lock on startup, enter the value data of 2
8b) To disable the number lock on startup, enter the valud data of 0
9) Click OK on the Edit String Window

You have now change the startup settings for the number lock on your keyboard. Once you restart your computer and log back in, the settings will be applied.

Clearing a Fickle Printer Queue

Printers are a fickle thing. Honestly, they are my least favorite piece of hardware to troubleshoot. Often I come across a printer jam that is not actually a printer jam, but a jam of the printer queue. While canceling or deleting all the jobs from the queue does sometimes work, there are cases where a print job just will not go away.

To completely delete everything from the queue, follow these steps below.

1) Open a command prompt and enter: net stop spooler
2) Browse to C:\Windows\system32\spool\printers
3) Delete any file that you see in the folder from step two
4) Return to the command prompt and enter: net start spooler

After these four steps are completed, the queue should now be cleared and printing will (hopefully) resume.

What is the best anti-virus software?

I often get asked, both at work and by friends an family, what to use for anti-virus software? Most people are looking for a free solution but often end up paying for consumer grade AV that they don't really need. My first recomendation is always Microsoft Security Essentials. I've used it for a few years now and while yes, it is a Microsoft product, it really does work! Often, I've found that it works more efficitantly then some of the more beefier products out there. It is also very light weight, often non-obtrusive and honestly it just works.

Checkout Microsoft Security Essentials

For a more consumer/business related solution, Sophos would be my first choice. Their enterprise solution is very easy to use and does so much more then AV. I use it to block users from plugging in external drives, stop them from burning to disks and can even block programs from running on their computers. The GUI is clean and user friendly, but most users won't even notice it's there until they get a warning. I can't say how much it costs as it will vary from company to company, but it is definitly something to look into if you are gearing up for a new enterprise AV solution.

Checkout Sophos.com

DIY PC Tower Case Using LED Christmas Lights & USB Cable

Lighting up the internals of your PC may be a bit geeky but it doesn't have to be expensive. Taking advantage of post-Christmas decoration sales, you can light up your PC tower for under five bucks. After returning a gift to Target today, I checked out the Christmas section to see what they had left. Turns out they have a TON of left over battery powered LED strands and are selling them for only $3.50 each! I grabbed a blue and multi-colored strand and headed home to warm up my new soldering iron. I've been wanting to light up my tower for awhile now but figured it would be too expensive, but this really worked well. After cutting the LEDs off the battery pack and chopping a USB power cable in half; I soldered the two wires on the LEDs to the black and red wires of the USB. After testing it with a USB AC adapter (to not fry my PC), I strung them inside my tower, put the USB cable through an extra slot in the back and plugged them in. My case is now glowing blue after spending only a few bucks and 30 minutes of my time.

Sync Your Passwords with Keepass & Dropbox

Everyone has a lot of password and you most likely, like me, can't remember them all all the time. There is a great piece of software out there called Keepass that lets you keep all your passwords locked up in a digital "password safe" encrypted and all. Keepass is simple to use and works really well. Too well in fact, since you will most likely forget all your passwords once you start using it! Having a local copy is the way to start off, but when you have multiple computers you will most likely want your Keepass database to move along with you. This is where Dropbox comes in. If you're tech savy you most likely already have a Dropbox account. The way that Keepass and Dropbox unite is to allow your password database to sync between all machines as you update it. Before you start anything, make sure you have Keepass and Dropbox installed on all computers (and mobile devices) you want your database to sync to. Then just drop your Keepass database file into a folder on your Dropbox account and make sure all devices are set to sync that file. Once the database is there, just point Keepass to the new, Dropbox location of the database file and any changes you make will not be made to all machines.

Get Dropbox Here: Dropbox.com
Get Keepass Here: Keepass.info

Regaining Unusable Space On USB Drives

After playing around with a few USB-Bootable operating systems I found that some of my once 2GB flash drives were down tremendously in size. For instance I popped in a USB drive and was shocked to see it only had 250MB of space. Not just usableable space but 250MB TOTAL space. After reformatting a few times I checked Disk Manager only to find the space was still there, just "Unallocated". There was no easy way to expand the usable space or combine the two. So I did some Googling and found something that actually works: BootIt. It's meant to create a bootable USB drive but works just as well for regaining the space that was missing. Here's how to get it and how to make it work for you.

1. Download BootIt.exe from http://tinyurl.com/bootitexe
2. Plug in the USB drive that is having the issue
3. Unzip the file and launch the BootIt.exe file.
(If you are using Vista or Windows 7 make sure to run it as administrator)
4. When BootIt loads, select your USB drive under Devices
5. Make sure to select Non-Active under the Partition option
6. Press the Format button
7. When the formatting is complete, remove your USB drive and reinsert it into the PC
8. You will be asked to reformat the drive again, select Yes and your USB drive should now be back to full capacity

Microsoft Exchange 2010 & Mobile Device Control

Being new to working with Microsoft Exchange 2010 I was surprised to see how much power it has over mobile devices that are connected to an Exchange server. While doing some work for an upcoming audit I found that not only can you control WIFI, Bluetooth and even camera settings on connected phones, but completely wipe the phones as well. Now when finding this out of course it had to be tested, and thankfully my boss offered up his iPhone to be the "test device". It was more just to see if it actually worked then anything and oh did it do its job.... too well. Just by clicking the "Wipe Drive" option the phone suddenly powered off and rebooted. It was stuck on the Apple logo for about half and hour and when it came back it was if he just bought the phone. We were both shocked since we just assumed it would wipe out any emails or contacts that were associated with the company but no, EVERYTHING was gone. All his apps, all his contacts... everything.

This small but powerful feature is phone to test out but gets very scary if you think about it. Someone could very easily erase an unsuspecting users enter personal phone by accident, or even on purpose if they really wanted to. It does come in handy when a phone is lost, stolen or someone is fired without getting a chance to clear out any settings. But when it comes to a setting such as a college campus where thousands of students can be connected to the Exchange database makes it very scary. Being that I used to work for a college IT department the idea that someone has the power to wipe a students phone, who really has no idea how they are connecting to the network, makes me nervous. I'm surprised we haven't seen stories about more accidental wipes happening but I'm sure the time will come when something goes kind of screwy and hundreds of phones get wiped.