This is not the first time. I just changed my password (a practice I do every couple months or so) and couple of days later, I have problems logging in to my account! Can't go on my Exchange email, nor even access any system that uses the domain account. Very mysterious indeed.
I would end up calling helpdesk to reset my password as the first suspicion would be a typo in my new password. I'd check my network connections and everything is as normal as can be. It pings fine with the domain server as well, DNS resolves beautifully.. No problems there. Tried the OWA version of the email and still no luck either... So what else is left?
I called up helpdesk again asking for help to check whether my account was 'accidentally' disabled. But then 5-10minutes later, I tried login in and hey, it worked! I'm just dumbfounded. This will be forever a mystery to me. Intermittent network connection? I doubt it... My only suspicion left is the authentication server. Either its load is too high, or something else is disrupting the transaction and my packets were dropped somewhere along the way...
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Sharepoint: Failure to sync user profile
This site seems to have a fix. Stsadmin command to update farm credentials: stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials
And this one seems to have a step-by-step solution to solve it forever!
And this one seems to have a step-by-step solution to solve it forever!
There's a good chance that you have a profile synchronization issue (or several). Here are the steps I took to correct these errors:
1. I downloaded a wonderful, free (yes, FREE!) utility called SharePoint Inspector, created by Gat Bouveret. His blog with a link to the codeplex download site can be found here. I used this tool to identify the web applications and sites referred to by their GUID in the event log errors.
2. I opened a command prompt and typed stsadm- o preparetomove –Site http://whatevertheguiltysiteis –OldContentDb
3. After this completed successfully, I ran stsadm –o sync –deleteolddatabases 0 (note: Depending on how long you’ve been seeing these errors, you may be able to use a switch greater than zero. If it’s been 2 days since it synched last, you can use 2. You can tell this by typing stsadm –o sync –listolddatabases
and look for the offending content db guid. In my case, there were 4 “my site” sites that were not syncing with the profile database. After performing these steps, I rechecked the event log at the top of the hour to see if the errors had reoccurred. GONE!
A little something extra: I have also had to do this on occasions where a web application was deleted, leaving the content db intact, and re-created attaching to the same content db without first running the prepare to move command. Same steps apply.
Hope this helps!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Java Script Virus - Threats of Higher Capacity Thumdrives
There has been a recent outbreak of viruses where I work. One such virus is called "faizal.js". Symptoms are obvious. Your Internet Explorer is hijacked and the title of the window will have "-Faizal" attached at the end.
From what I gather and after reading the code on the bugger, I've found that it is quite the smart one. It's designed to copy itself to ALL partitions of any drive that is attached to the computer. So, if the hard drive has 2 or more partitions, all partitions will have a copy of the "faizal.js" and "autorun.ini" files. And when any thumbdrive is plugged it, it copies itself to the all removable drives as well.
Not only is it smart in transmitting itself, this bugger also has a high payload. So far, we've had about 5 or more cases of damaged/corrupted hard drives, thus nullifying any chance of data recovery. A few had their partition table (MBR) corrupted, but data was safe, so still had hope.
One thing is who in the hell came up with it, and WHY? Obviously it's the work of someone in the South East Asian region, Malay/Indo speaking, thanks to some of the comments that I was able to comprehend in the script. Guess they enjoy seeing people suffer and IP lost to the toilet.
Kapersky we have tested to be able to remove the threat. Others have all failed miserably. You can prove me wrong if you've found otherwise... The other way is to manually clean the registry: all the autoruns, mounted drive registries, and going into safemode to kill the processes and delete all associated files in root directories and Windows\System dircetories.
Still it begs the question -- despite all the fancy and 'great' antivirus/antispyware protection that we have installed and protected from the net, the simple use of a 'harmless' thumdrive, ranging from only about 128MB back in the days to a standard 8GB now, more & more threats are abound. Reminds me of the days when 3.5" floppy disks were the main carriers of the virus until 'write-protection' feature came along... I guess they should also implement that to ALL thumbdrives as well. I've seen a few models with the feature, where they have a small latch/switch/button to activate read-only.
Until then, what can we do on our computers? Well, if you have Spybot There a installed, activate the Tea-Timer to notify you of any changes to the registry or system files. They'll alert on ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. So be prepared to be annoyed, but at least you'll have the power to Accept or Deny a change, especially if the change was not done deliberately by yourself. There are other variations I've used before. I believe Norton has a similar feature.
From what I gather and after reading the code on the bugger, I've found that it is quite the smart one. It's designed to copy itself to ALL partitions of any drive that is attached to the computer. So, if the hard drive has 2 or more partitions, all partitions will have a copy of the "faizal.js" and "autorun.ini" files. And when any thumbdrive is plugged it, it copies itself to the all removable drives as well.
Not only is it smart in transmitting itself, this bugger also has a high payload. So far, we've had about 5 or more cases of damaged/corrupted hard drives, thus nullifying any chance of data recovery. A few had their partition table (MBR) corrupted, but data was safe, so still had hope.
One thing is who in the hell came up with it, and WHY? Obviously it's the work of someone in the South East Asian region, Malay/Indo speaking, thanks to some of the comments that I was able to comprehend in the script. Guess they enjoy seeing people suffer and IP lost to the toilet.
Kapersky we have tested to be able to remove the threat. Others have all failed miserably. You can prove me wrong if you've found otherwise... The other way is to manually clean the registry: all the autoruns, mounted drive registries, and going into safemode to kill the processes and delete all associated files in root directories and Windows\System dircetories.
Still it begs the question -- despite all the fancy and 'great' antivirus/antispyware protection that we have installed and protected from the net, the simple use of a 'harmless' thumdrive, ranging from only about 128MB back in the days to a standard 8GB now, more & more threats are abound. Reminds me of the days when 3.5" floppy disks were the main carriers of the virus until 'write-protection' feature came along... I guess they should also implement that to ALL thumbdrives as well. I've seen a few models with the feature, where they have a small latch/switch/button to activate read-only.
Until then, what can we do on our computers? Well, if you have Spybot There a installed, activate the Tea-Timer to notify you of any changes to the registry or system files. They'll alert on ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. So be prepared to be annoyed, but at least you'll have the power to Accept or Deny a change, especially if the change was not done deliberately by yourself. There are other variations I've used before. I believe Norton has a similar feature.
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