Ntbackup on XP

Useful tip for backing up to CD in XP courtesy of WinntMag.
Back up to a CD-ROM—A major limitation of XP’s Ntbackup utility is its inability to select a CD-RW drive as a backup destination. To work around this hurdle, open Ntbackup, select the files to back up, then select C:\documents and settings\username\local settings\application data\microsoft\cd burning\backup.bkf as the backup destination. When the backup finishes, XP will prompt you to write the files to the CD-ROM

Nav sorted

The problem with Norton has been fixed. I tracked the bandwidth down to our main update server downloading antivirus updates every 10 minutes – the same updates every 10 minutes. Once I disabled “continuous live updates” which should only attempt to get live updates if the definitions are more than 10 days old (they were uptodate) , I found it was *still* trying to download the updates. A long call to Symantec helpline and he asked me to check everything that I had already done, which was comforting to know that I was on the right track. We re-enabled continuous updates,clicked apply and then disabled it again….and the updates still kept being downloaded every 10 minutes. It was decided that maybe a reboot would force the system to reread the configuration and start downloading once a day (although I had already done one reboot). I scheduled a reboot for 10pm and went home – At 7pm the updates stopped.Reboot at 10pm and a scheduled download at 4am – as per configuration. Very strange.

wrong type of envelopes for email.

Our remote site got an error message when trying to pull their email from a remote server which said “Unable to process From lines (envelopes), change recognition mode. A quick call to the isp (suprisingly quick actually) and everything was working. Being curious I searched on the error message and it looks like the mail file was corrupt and the first line needed to be changed to be
From: fred@asdadsasd
Thanks to unix managers mailing list

Norton AntiVirus For Exchange version 3.

now this is the sort of message I’d expect to see – I’m very impressed with this AV for Exchange – content filtering could be good fun if you set the word “the” as objectional content 🙂
Location of the infected item: //Mailing Lists/uniVerse
Sender of the infected item: MS Corporation Internet Security Center
Subject of the message: Newest Net Security Pack
The attachment “PACK817.exe” was Quarantined for the following reasons:
The file was unrepairable. Virus Info:
Virus W32.Swen.A@mm was found.
This was done due to the following Symantec AVF settings:
Policy: Standard
SubPolicy: Error SubPolicy
Rule: Unrepairable Virus Rule

Possible new virus?

I think there might be a variant on the swen virus doing the rounds as since 8.19 this morning we are getting similar looking emails coming into the office but NAV is not able to scan them and instead of “Attachment something.exe was Deleted for the following Reasons: Virus W32.Swen.A@mm was found” we are now getting “No action was taken on the attachment. Attachment something.exe was Logged Only for the following reasons: Scan Engine Failure (0x80004005). The symantec query results look like its a problem with some compressed files but I’m shortly about to upgrade our email scanning software so we’ll see if we still get it then.

Boot to Windows.

Finally worked out how to get the laptop to default boot back to Windows instead of Mandrake. I had already configured /etc/lilo.conf but the changes needed to be written away to the boot sector. By su’ing and then running drakboot I was able to check the boot menu and when I clicked ok it saved the changes, a quick reboot later and I’m in XP and not Mandrake…..Now to try and fix the wireless lan.