TIP/IDEA: Make a virtual Internet Explorer browser and solve all your lockdown problems using Altiris Software Virtualization Solution

Hi Everyone,
Altiris software recently released a product called Software
Virtualization Solution. This little gem of a program is Free for
personal use and under $4 a user for educational use.

The program basically allows you to take any program you want to lock
down or force settings to and put it in its own "virtual environment" So
for example instead of waiting for the IE7 windows vista version where
Internet explorer plays in its own memory space and cannot interact at
all with the Windows Operating system, you can now do that on your
current Windows 2000 and XP systems.

I figured out how to do this in about 4 seconds after playing with the
product and realized what a GREAT THING this could be for a library
system. No longer will you need to be clearing out or rebooting systems
in order to clear the browser, just close it. All Users previous
browsing is gone! The site http://www.svsdownloads.com/download.php has
some great other programs that you can virtualize.


1 Download the Altiris SVS program from
http://www.svsdownloads.com/download_svs.php
2. Download the Internet Explorer Reset on Close Virtual App on close
and Save it to the root of your C: drive from
http://www.svsdownloads.com/download.php?filename=archives/Internet%20Ex
plorer%20-%20Reset%20On%20Close.vsa
(note the above line is the full link you may have to copy and paste it
or just get it from the svsdownloads site)

3. Use Explorer and navigate to and rename the Internet Explorer Reset
On Close.vsa you just downloaded to just Iexplorer.vsa.

4 Install the Altiris SVS client click on the Get Key from Altiris link
in the installation and insert the Key from the download.

4. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Altiris\Software Virtualization Agent
and right click on the SVSCmd.exe and create a shortcut to it.

5. Copy the shortcut you just created to your Desktop.

6. Right click on the shortcut you just created and choose properties
and click in the target line field and add the following to the end of
the line:

Iexplorer A

7. You can now right click and rename the shortcut to Explorer or
anything else you want to call.

8. Clicking on the Shortcut opens up a sandboxed Internet Explorer
browser that when it is closed clears out every site, cookie and
everything else that was done in the browser session.

Now buy the product and follow the same steps on your patron
workstations and put the shortcut in the Startup folder of their Start
menu and change out the Internet Explorer shortcut with the SVS one.

You can then also pick up the free Autorestart utility from
http://www.teamsoftwaresolutions.com/files/AutoRestart.zip

Put autorestart in your startup folder and then add the SVS shortcut
location into autorestart and you will always have an open browser.

Peruse the SVSdownloads site as there are a lot of applications you
could do this with. If you use OpenOffice this would be ideal way to run
it also. If you download the admin kit for this product from Altiris you
can create your own vsa files and virtualize and sandbox any application
you want!

Now think about the possibilities of doing this through Terminal
Services!

Pretty exciting stuff!

Jim Kenzig
Network Manager
Cuyahoga County Public Library

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Don't Spend any money on a content management system until you have looked at Joomla a "Cutting Edge" CMS!

OK my company has just spent 10's of thousands of dollars on a content management system by a company called Ektron. It is a world class system but it still has it's limitations.

My ISP host is one of the best ones out there in my opinion, a company called enom.com. I host 20+ sites for under $10 a month with database and .Net support and over 250 meg of storage for many years. Recently Enom.com added support for both community server and Joomla.

I've used Community server in the past and it never suited my needs, so I thought I would take a look at Joomla. Enom made it sooo easy to set up... create a DB, pick the domain you want to install Joomla to in your account and click on the Joomla add application link. The pointing of the database was a little tricky but within 15 minutes I had a full blown CMS set up and running. I wanted it for a site I am starting called CIPA.US about E-Rate and the childrens internet protection act. So I got the site up and was able to immediatly start adding links and information to it. By 9:00 pm the next day the site was already receiving over 15,000 unique user hits in the first day!!! What can I say I am good at promoting.

Anyways the next day I dug more into Joomla and it was one of those times when I started getting more excited and going Wow look at this... I can add this, Wow, cool, and ended up adding things and playing of course until 2:00 am in the morning before I realized it. It was just one of those times
when you find something that is so great you are mesmerized by it!

OK before you start asking how much, let me tell you how much.. 0 that is zero, zilch, nada...not 10s of thousands of dollars, nothing, under the GNU GPL, it is THE most powerful open source CMS that I have come across and has more modules and components wrtiten for it than any other. It has a simple web based admin form to install components and modules, you download the component or module as a zip and browse to it and click install and it will add the component to the control panel!

Once you get the thing going the first module you will want to load is Community Builder, once you get this one going you need little else! Get it from here

Then start browsing the extensions, mods, and components and you to will start to be amazed at what is out there! Joomla just turned 1 year old on September 1st, 2006 so they are now well established and several bug fixes and versions into being Stable. You'll need PHP and MySql on your server but check out Enom.com if you want a host that already has it for you and you can easily set it up. It runs on Linux or Windows.

2 snaps and 2 thumbs up to Joomla, a must check out if you run web sites. Peruse the Joomla website at http://www.joomla.org

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Download Pick of the Week: VirtualCD Control Panel

Want an easy way to mount CD ISO files without burning them to disk on your Windows XP machine? Well this download is for you, the Windows VirtualCD Control Panel from Microsoft will allow you to do just that:

Get it from:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe

This little unsupported utility will allow you to open up an ISO file as a Virtual CD on your system.

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Link Pick: Microsoft Activesync Troubleshooting guide

How many aggravating hours have you taken to get your Windows Mobile device synced up to your PC and watched and listened to the connection wizard go boop, boop, boop, and never connect? What is going on here?

Well I'll tell you. ActiveSync uses TCP/IP ports for connection. And most new Antivirus products are coming with a built in firewall, not to mention the good old Windows XP Firewall (which already knows about these ports, yay).
Turns out that the ActiveSync processes use the following ports which need to be open in your firewall application:

Inbound
990
999
5678
5721
26675

Outbound
5679

If these ports are not open.. No tickie, no workie, no sync.

Here is a link from Microsoft page on troubleshooting your ActiveSync 4.x connectivity and my pick for the week:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/help/activesync/default.mspx

I found this out when we upgraded our network to the new version of Trend Officescan which snuck in it's own firewall service and our directors telephone all of sudden stopped syncing. After several maddening hours of reinstalling activesync, getting a new phone and cradle and still not working, I had to count back the hours and figure out exactly what changed. Didn't figure for trend to throw that curve at us but you live, you learn.

Oh and here is another gotcha... if you unplug your cradle with a Smartphone be sure and plug it back into the SAME USB PORT that you unplugged it from or you'll end up going through the whole device recognition, syncing wizard again.

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