Today I received an additional 4GB of RAM for my 64-bit installation of Vista. I shut down my system, installed the RAM, and while booting up I decided to go into BIOS and play with settings related to WOL because I've been trying to save more energy at my house and figured not having my computer on all day would be a good idea, but having WOL capabilities would be nice. I committed the changes, and when I started up Vista with my 8GB of RAM, the network wouldn't connect. I couldn't ping my gateway address or anything.
Long story short, apparently *something* within my Realtek RLT8168B NIC drivers did not like the additional memory, or most likely the fact that there was now more than 4GB. After installing the latest drivers, I was able to gain connectivity again. If you need the latest drivers, check out the Realtek website. Hopefully you've found this article short in your journey and this saves you the headache. I must have spent a solid two hours on this problem!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Automating logins with KeePass's Auto-Type scripting and Firefox
First off, if you haven't been using a password database tool, I highly recommend using one. This forces you to stop using the same password for each account you have out on the Internet, and lets you keep the list centralized in an encrypted file. I highly recommend KeePass, as it is open-source and free.
I have enjoyed using KeePass to store my account information, but for logging into web pages I wanted it to be a more automated process, having it login for me instead of copying the URL, username, and password into the appropriate fields. I started playing with the Auto-Type feature within KeyPass, and after some tinkering I was able to login to my credit card company's interface. The way it works is you tell it which application to gain focus on, which URL to go to, and lastly to type in the username and password. An example Auto-Login script that logs me into my bank looks like this:
Note before proceeding: You must be have Firefox as your last focused window, otherwise your data will spill into another window.
In my example below, Auto-Type opens a new tab (^t) in Firefox, types in the URL ({URL}), hits enter ({ENTER}), gives the page some time to load ({DELAY 4000}), types in the username ({USERNAME}), tabs over to the password field ({TAB}), and lastly types in the password ({PASSWORD}).
Auto-Type: ^t{URL}{ENTER}{DELAY 4000}{USERNAME}{TAB}{PASSWORD}
Warning: If you do not have Firefox your last focused window, KeyPass will not know which window to gain focus on and most likely spill your details to your friend you're chatting with (or whatever window has focus). For this reason, I have left out having Auto-Type hit {ENTER} after my password, just for safety reasons. You've been warned!
For more information about Auto-Type, check out the KeyPass Auto-Type documentation.
I have enjoyed using KeePass to store my account information, but for logging into web pages I wanted it to be a more automated process, having it login for me instead of copying the URL, username, and password into the appropriate fields. I started playing with the Auto-Type feature within KeyPass, and after some tinkering I was able to login to my credit card company's interface. The way it works is you tell it which application to gain focus on, which URL to go to, and lastly to type in the username and password. An example Auto-Login script that logs me into my bank looks like this:
Note before proceeding: You must be have Firefox as your last focused window, otherwise your data will spill into another window.
In my example below, Auto-Type opens a new tab (^t) in Firefox, types in the URL ({URL}), hits enter ({ENTER}), gives the page some time to load ({DELAY 4000}), types in the username ({USERNAME}), tabs over to the password field ({TAB}), and lastly types in the password ({PASSWORD}).
Auto-Type: ^t{URL}{ENTER}{DELAY 4000}{USERNAME}{TAB}{PASSWORD}
Warning: If you do not have Firefox your last focused window, KeyPass will not know which window to gain focus on and most likely spill your details to your friend you're chatting with (or whatever window has focus). For this reason, I have left out having Auto-Type hit {ENTER} after my password, just for safety reasons. You've been warned!
For more information about Auto-Type, check out the KeyPass Auto-Type documentation.
Friday, April 17, 2009
You receive "The RPC Server is Unavailable" when trying to add IPs via netsh
If you receive an error when attempting to add IPs with netsh on Windows Server 2008 (this may apply to earlier versions as well), if you do not have the DHCP Client service enabled, you will receive the error:
"The RPC Server is Unavailable."
This unfortunately took many hours, including many hours from Microsoft (which were unsuccessful), to figure out. Hopefully someone finds this post and helps them out.
"The RPC Server is Unavailable."
This unfortunately took many hours, including many hours from Microsoft (which were unsuccessful), to figure out. Hopefully someone finds this post and helps them out.
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