If you try to run a scheduled task in Windows XP, it will balk if you don’t enter a password (or if your main account has no password, it won’t let you proceed).

There are two potential fixes:

Run the task as the administrator (i.e. your-machine-name\administrator) You can then enter the administrators password. You may need to set this in Computer Management first:

• Right click My Computer
• Click Manage
• In the right hand window, click into Users and Groups
• Right click the Administrator account, and click Change Password
• Enter a password of your choice.

You can then run the task as the system administrator.

Change the system security settings
On Windows XP professional, do the following:

• Click Start
• Click into Control Panel
• Click into Administrative Tools
• Click into Local Security Policy
• Click into Security Settings>Local Policies>Security Options
• Ensure the option ‘Accounts: Limit local account…’ is disabled. It’s enabled by default.

On Windows XP home:

• Go to Start>Run>Regedit
• Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
• Find the value name: limitblankpassworduse
• And change the entry. 0 is disabled, 1 is enabled

We use the scheduled tasks frequently with programs like FastCopy to carry out daily backups.

Imagine you have two sites:

• www.abc.com
• www.newsite.com

After adding the newsite.com entry to your list of domains the home directory may be set to www.abc.com/newsite/ – this will allow a user to browse to www.abc.com/newsite and access the new site.

Why is this a bad thing?
It’s uncertain whether sites like google treat multiple domains pointing to content as a bad thing – there is some information out there, like here, but the situation isn’t 100% clear.

The best situation is to have the content isolated properly, so that the new site we have created newsite.com cannot be browsed in this fashion.

There are two methods to resolve this issue:
Set the home directory of the primary website to a subdirectory

• Configure abc.com to have a home directory of /http_docs/abc.com (or similar)
• Configure newsite.com to have a home directory of /http_docs/newsite.com (or similar)

1&1 have information on how to do this here.

Use a 301 .htaccess redirect
You’ll need FTP access (or another way to access your websites files) to do this.

Create a file called .htaccess (or append your existing .htaccess file)
Add the following lines (don’t add the Options… and RewriteEngine… lines if they already exist):

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{http_host} !^www.newsite.com$ [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newsite.com/$1 [r=301,nc,L]

This will ensure that if the site is browsed to from a different location, your browser (and Google) will be redirected to the correct location.

You can find a whole load more information about 301 redirects here.

We have come across an issue recently with the new version of the Citrix online plugin (now called Citrix Reciever). Installation of the Citrix Reciever software from the OSX App store is not sufficient to allow the downloaded ICA file to auto open. The result is, you install Citrix Reciever and login to the Citrix site only for the ICA file to download, but not open. This makes it look like Citrix isn’t working properly.

The fix is simple:

• First, you have to modify what Safari considers as a “safe” file. Ensure that in Safari’s Preference panel that ‘Open “Safe” files’ is checked.
• Next, download this zip file: http://www.jaytag.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Auto_Open_ICA.zip
• Extract the plist (preferences file) from the downloaded zip file
• Drag and drop the file to /Library/Preferences. (On OSX Lion, type \library in the ‘Find’ box and double-click into the preferences folder)
• Restart Safari

The ICA files should now automatically open, allowing Citrix to work as intended.

If you try to update a freshly installed copy of WordPress on 1&1 hosting without making this change, some functions (mainly the automatic update processes) will not complete successfully.

The key is to edit the .htaccess file in the WordPress installation directory:

• FTP to your WordPress installation directory
• Download the .htaccess file
• Edit the file, adding the following line:
• AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
• Upload the file to the server, overwriting the old .htaccess file

WordPress updates should now complete without error.

You may also want to have a look at this post which deals with an error message after a failed update.

Before you start!
I’d always recommend taking a backup of the company files before making any changes to Sage program or data files – just in case! The Sage file database system is a little antiquated and can be temperamental.

The fix itself is simple:

• Browse to the Sage company file directory on your computer (this will vary, although if you check the COMPANY file in your install directory, it will be listed)
• Open the ACCDATA directory
• Delete the queue.dta file

You should now be able to login.

If like us, you still encounter Office 2000 out in the field, you may find it needs updating from time to time. Sadly, the necessary updates are not all available from Microsoft.

You can download these updates here:
Office 2000 SR-1 administrator updates (O2KSR1aDL.exe)
Office 2000 Update: Service Pack 2 – SP2 (sp2upd.exe)
Office 2000 Update: Service Pack 3 – SP3 (O2kSp3.exe)

Hope this helps all of you out there still using/supporting Office 2000.

The fix is extremely simple:

• FTP to your WordPress installation directory
• Delete the .maintenance file at the root wordpress folder (where wp-config.php lives)
• Login and retry the plugin operation

The issue should be resolved.

Although there are a number of tools available online, none quite fit our needs. As a result, we’ve quickly written a simple MySQL backup tool in PHP.

Features

• Tested compatible with PHP version 5.2.14 and MySQL 5.0
• Allows for SQL and ZIP export of a single MySQL database
• Lists previous backups made

This is version 0.1a – it is no doubt buggy. We would appreciate any feedback if you do decide to use the tool.

The application is fairly self explanatory in its usage.

Installation

• Extract the Zip file
• Copy the contents to a directory on your server
• Browse to the directory you saved the files to with your browser

Features to be added in v0.2a (Release date 4th February 2011)

• Improved documentation
• Backup multiple databases
• Additional security (password for created ZIP files, and password for the utility)

You can download v0.1a here:
PHP_Online_Backup_v0.1a

Warning! The utility lists previous backups and there is no password feature as yet. Please ensure that you either remove the tool after use as the backed up databases are available for any user to download.

After upgrading your desktop or laptop to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx you may experience the following symptoms:

• Reduction in audio quality (jittery calls)
• Crashing after receiving an Instant Message
• Crashing when trying to send an Instant Message
• Slow program functionality

All of the above issues can be resolved by removing Skype and ensuring that the newest version is installed (2.1.0.81 at time of writing)

Skype can be downloaded here.

We use Thunderbird exclusively within our organisation for email, and with the Lightning add-on, for task and calendar management.

Recently, we have come across an issue with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) whereby the New Event and New Task buttons were greyed out or disabled – making adding calendar entries impossible.

This was fixed by uninstalling the add-on, closing Thunderbird and running the following command in a terminal session:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

Reinstalling the add-on after libstdc++5 was installed fixed the issue – the calendar portion worked as it should. It appears that this prerequisite was not installed on the machine we were using.

In any case, Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightning represent (in our opinion!) the killer email and calenar application for Ubuntu.

You can download Thunderbird here, and Lightning here.

Thanks to this blog for the pointer!