OK, so this blog is about why you don’t want to TOUCH an E-Machine! I ended up doing some work for a client, reloading an E-Machine model C2881 that he handed me. Installed was 512 MB of RAM, and after loading XP SP3 and all updates along with removing all the crap that E-Machines puts in their Ghost image (imagine software from 2004 staring you in the face), and loading a couple of simple, newer, open source programs, the thing is running like a 286 SX-25 loaded with Windows Vista.
More RAM, obvious, that and streamline startup. OK, so startup is streamlined, and I used CPU-Z to look at the memory clock so I don’t have to open it up. It uses DDR 2700, great, I know what kind of RAM, but how much will the system handle, so I can send a link to my client to purchase some memory? Off to www.emachines.com (or whatever their site is). I pull down the user manual, which has no tech specs. I look on their page where they claim “specifications”, but it just tells you what the stupid thing shipped with, 512 MB DDR. So I have to pull up a chat with their support, and get this, max memory is coveted! Trade secret from what I was told, take a look at the chat session and see how long it took me to get through to this guy. So here is the secret, in all it’s glory, available for all the world to see.
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When you have trouble reaching outside domains via email, the first place to look is your mail queue. Regardless of mail server version, Exchange, sendmail, take a look at the queue and see if mail is building up. If it is, find out why. I wanted to share an experience I had with my Exchange 2003 server recently, that is important to know if you run into it. We found that we were unable to send email to certain outside domains, such as company2.hk and institution.edu, but we were able to send email to our Gmail just fine.
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This is a utility no admin can be without. This is a third party app, as opposed to the nbtstat command. When run, it will show you detailed information on your network, and machines that are alive on the subnet you are scanning. It also provides MAC addresses etc. Download here. Website here. The syntax is as follows:
nbtscan 192.168.1.0/24
And the results look like:
Doing NBT name scan for addresses from 192.168.1.0/24
IP address NetBIOS Name Server User MAC address
——————————————————————————
192.168.1.2 WHS <server> <unknown> 00-19-66-52-86-72
192.168.1.127 XANETH-DELL <server> <unknown> 00-11-95-bd-ad-0b
192.168.1.129 NATALIE-PC <server> <unknown> 00-19-d1-0e-61-3a
192.168.1.138 HTPC <server> <unknown> 00-13-46-97-9c-dc
Comes in handy when you’re trying to track down the MAC of a particular machine to find out, say, what port it’s connected to on your Cisco Catalyst (sh mac-address-table address 00:00:00:00:00:00).
