One of the ways by which Computers get affected by viruses is through USB Pen drives. Anti viruses are unable to detect them and even if they do, in most cases they are unable to delete the virus. Following are the precautions you can take when plugging USB Drive on your Computer.

Whenever you plug a USB drive in your system (which you think is infected by virus), do not open it -  Do not click ‘OK’ !
click on ‘Cancel’. Now open Command Prompt by typing ‘cmd‘ in run box.
Type dir /w/a and press enter.
Above command will display list of files in pen drive. Check in the list if the files are not

* Heap41a
* New Folder.exe
* Autorun.inf
* svchost.exe
* Ravmon.exe
* or any other exe file which may be suspicious.

If any of the above files are present in the list, then your USB drive is infected. To remove these files, type the following command in command prompt
attrib -r -a -s -h *.* and press enter.
This will remove from files  Read Only, Archive, System and Hidden attributes .

The files which you will now be looking on are the junk files (viruses) and can be deleted using  del command. Delete all those files which you find suspicious. To be on a safer side, just scan again your  USB Pen drive using a anti virus to check whether it is free of virus or not.

What is Hot linking ?

The process of direct linking to websites files such as images, videos etc is called as Hot Linking. It is like using an image (tag/image link) which you have found on someone else web page, and would be using on your blog. Every time the blog is browsed image will be shown because it is Hot linked from it’s original source.

This becomes a point of concern when your website is Hot linked by someone else.

Let me explain
Every website has a fixed bandwidth (bandwidth - Amount of data transferred from website to a users computer). When any internet user browses a website and if that website is hot linked to your site then your website’s
bandwidth is used in transferring the requested data.
??? => This means you are paying for the bandwidth which is not used by you.

To overcome Hot linking(Bandwidth Theft) Hotlink Protection is used. It prevents other websites from directly linking to files (as specified above) to your website.
Hotlink Protection can be set from Plesk Control Panel as well.

Using Pass Phrases to Encrypt Data

A password that allows for spaces can be referred to as a pass phrase. The benefit of pass phrases is that you can make them meaningful and easy to remember. Instead of creating and managing encryption keys or certificates in your database server, you can encrypt data using only a pass phrase.The ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement uses the supplied pass phrase to generate a symmetric key, which is used to perform the actual data encryption. No key management is required, as the key will be recreated each time the same pass phrase is supplied.The common syntax of the ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement is as follows:

ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE ('PASSPHRASE', 'PLAINTEXT')

In this statement, PASSPHRASE specifies the data string to be used to derive an encryption key. PLAINTEXT specifies the data to be encrypted. No permissions are required to run the ENCRYPTBYPASSPHRASE statement.

The following syntax encrypts the string using the supplied pass phrase:

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To set more than one website on server you are required to set Host Headers
Procedure to set Host Headers
1) Load  IIS (Start >>> Run>>>type “inetmgr” hit enter)

2) On left pane, expand server name, then click “Web Sites“>>>right click on right pane>>>select  New>>>Web Site

3) Website Creation Wizard will open , here you have freedom to write absolutely anything (we will write – Testing) >>> Click Next

4)Under IP address and Port settings
Enter Ip address and port number (Default port – 80) and Host Header for the website >>> Click Next

5) Enter the path for Websites Home Directory and tick (check) “Allow anonymous access to this website” >>> Click Next

6) Under Website Access Permissions , necessary permissions for using ASP , Run Scripts can be used as per requirement. >>> Click Next

7) Click Finish and you’re done.

Log into Plesk Control Panel and  steer yourself to “phpMyAdmin”

For Backup of MySQL database click on Export.

1) Make sure that entire database is selected for Export, and not just one table.
All the Tables under Database list should be added in Export List.

2) Now, follow the steps given
select “SQL” for output format
Check “Structure”
and “Add AUTO_INCREMENT” value
Check “Enclose table and field name with back quotes”
Check “DATA”
check use “hexadecimal for binary field”
Export type set to “INSERT”

3) Check “Save as file”, it is not necessary to change the file name.
Click “GO” to download the backup file.

Backup of your MySQL database is created !

Now, for Restoring backup of MySql database

1) Click on SQL tab, to start restoration of your backup file.

2) Un-Check “Show this query here again”.

3) Browse to your database backup file.

4) Click – “GO”

Backup is Restored !

Large MySQL Backups:

Error: MySQL has gone away

To restore large SQL backups there are 2 setting that you will need to take of:

1. Make sure that you PHP upload size is great than your MySQL backup file, this setting will be needed to be changed in php.ini file. Only those who has server administrator access would be able to make changes in PHP.INI file. Hence you will have to contact your Hosting provider if you are hosted on a Shared server. But if you have a Dedicated Server then this file is normally stored in C:\Windows\php.ini or you can esily get the path from phpinfo() page. The option that you need to change is upload_max_filesize. It is also suggested that you increase the following parameters as per the size of your MySQL backup file:

max_execution_time = 30     ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
max_input_time = 60    ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data
memory_limit = 8M      ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (8MB)

2. You will need to increase the MySQL buffer size in MySQL configuration size, the file is my.cnf in Linux server and my.ini on Windows Server. The parameter that you need to change is:

read_buffer_size

By default it is set to 1MB, if the entry is not present then add it under [MYSQLD] section.

Please Make sure that you restart IIS webserver after making change to php.ini and restart MySQL after making changes in my.ini file.

If you looking backup MySQL using VBS or ASP script then refer the link below:

How to backup MySQL using VBS or ASP script.

What is NTFS ?

The File system comes with Windows NT. (NT File System) An optional file system for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista. NTFS is the more advanced file system, compared to FAT32. It improves performance and is required in order to implement numerous security and administrative features in the OS. NTFS supports Active Directory domain names and provides file encryption. Permissions can be set at the file level rather than by folder, and individual users can be assigned disk space quotas. NTFS is designed to log activity and recover on the fly from hard disk crashes. It also supports the Unicode character set and allows file names up to 255 characters in length. See FAT32 and file system.

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Microsoft Windows Server 2003 does not install Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) for
NTS (CDONTS). Therefore, applications that use   do not function on a Windows
Server 2003-based computer.

Windows Server 2003 provides improved alternatives to CDONTS. To make CDONTS
functioning on a Windows Server 2003-based computer, use one of the following

solution:

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What is Apache ?

The Apache HTTP Web Server, we all well know it as Apache, is one of the world’s most widely used Web servers. It is very popular because of its strong security features, most outstanding performance & the fact that it does cost us any thing. It comprehensively supports and it is most recommended for MySQL & PHP/Perl/Python (and now also supports Ruby) programming languages.

It’s available for all flavours of Unix (GNU/Linux & UNIX systems), Microsoft Windows including other OS as well, for Example Linux distros such as  RedHat, SuSe, Debian, CentOs, Gentoo, Mandrake, Fedora, etc etc. Apache is used to serve both dynamic static content & static Web pages on the Internet. Some web applications are developed expecting the features & environment that Apache provides. It is one of the most basic feature in the hosting world is what allows your website to be seen by the world.

What is a DDoS attack ?

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We all have an impressions that it is very difficult to install RRDTool on a Windows Server but that is not the case. There are few very Simple Steps to install RRDTool on a Windows server:

STEPS:

1. Create a Folder on any of your drives with name RRDTool.

2. Download the latest version of RRDTool from the link below:

DOWNLOAD RRDTool

3. Extract the ZIP in RRDTool folder.

4. Open START >> Run >> type cmd to open Windows command prompt.

5. Type following command on prompt to use the RRDTool.

cd C:\RRDTool\

That is it…!!!! You are ready to use your RRDTool on your Windows machine.

These steps are applicable to all Windows versions including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows NT and Winsdows 2003/2008 Servers.

Some times we see the error below in the event logs:

“SQL Server has encountered 1 occurrence(s) of I/O requests taking longer than 15 seconds to complete on file [T:\MSSQL\DATA\%file_name%] in database [%DB_name%] (2).  The OS file handle is 0×00000838.  The offset of the latest long I/O is: 0x000000ebdc0000“

Do you refer it to as a stalled IO? We always hear a questions such as, what’s wrong with SQL Server..? Why is SQL taking so long to read or write to the disk..? Let us discuss why it is not a MS SQL Server problem:

MS SQL Server does data file reads and writes almost exclusively as asynchronous IO, using the win32 APIs ReadFile, WriteFile, ReadFileScatter and WriteFileGather. Each of these APIs behave in a fairly similar steps, the caller sends in a handle to the file, some memory location to read or write, the size of the block and a structure that tells the kernel how to handle the IO. In MS SQL Server’s case, how to handle the IO is Asynchronously, please.  The call returns immediately so that the thread issuing so that the IO can get out of the way and make life happy for other users who are also waiting got their query to return.

The catch here is that, ordinarily the time between the Asynchronous call to read or write and the completion of the read or write should be on the order of 10ms. The longer it takes for an IO to return the more noticeable a performance impact there is to end users.

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Here are some useful tools that help us in configuring IIS server to be more secure and less resource consuming:

1. IIS Passwords Sync:

IIS 6.0 web sites run under anonymous user accounts. It is IUSR_<machine name> (by default) or other user accounts created by your web hosting control panel. The users’ passwords are set automatically set and are never known. However, sometimes for some reason the passwords get out of sync or corrupted and need to be reset. The easiest way to reset these passwords is to use IIS Passwords Sync program. It extracts the passwords that Microsoft IIS 6.0 has in its metabase and updates the accounts in “Local Users and Groups” to use that passwords.

DOWNLOAD LINK

2. IIS Pool:

With IIS Pool tool we can easily search the problematic sites which have default application pool.

IIS Application Pools Monitoring and Analysis:

This program allows monitoring of IIS 6 application pools. All the monitoring data is stored in log files. It is possible to analyze a pool to find a website (or a virtual application) using too much resources. …

Overview -

IIS Application Pools Monitoring and Analysis:

* This program allows monitoring of IIS 6 application pools.

* All the monitoring data is stored in log files.

* It is possible to analyze a pool to find a website (or a virtual application) using too much resources.

Features -

* IIS application pools monitoring

* IIS application pools analysis

* Find websites using too much resources

DOWNLOAD LINK

3. IIS Report:

Overview -

IIS Report is a command line tool. It allows us to create different IIS related reports. For example it can get the list of all SSL websites and sort it by IP address, or get the list of all websites and sort it by application pool name and then by website name, …

There is no installation required. Just download and unrar the archive file. Then start the program with:

C:\>iisreport.exe /?

to get more information and see all the parameters available.

Benefits -

* Easy-to-use

* Fast

* It is possible to import the reports with Excel

* It is possible to parse the reports with VBS or BAT programs and other administration applications.

DOWNLOAD LINK

Remote Assistance
is performed between 2 systems. One asking for support/help is called Novice and other which will provide support/help is called Expert.

1. To open Remote assistance, navigate yourself as shown below.

2. Open Help and Support Center by clicking Start, and then clicking Help and Support. Following window will open up.

Click on => Invite someone to help you (shown inside red outline)

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When you first learn about ‘Remote Desktop‘ and ‘Remote Assistance‘, you might easily make it out that both services are the same. They allow you to remotely control a PC from any where, let it be on your local network or even over the Internet. Although there are some important differences that we need to check between these two services.

1] Remote Assistance uses Windows XP/2003 Terminal Services to share desktop and other resources between two PCs.

Terminal Services - It is a way of using RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), which allows users to connect to their Windows XP desktop or a dedicated server (Terminal Server) combining with VPN (Virtual Private Network) with the help of which users can connect to their office network remotely and work with their applications.

Virtual Private Network – Creates a secure connection between private networks.

In a *Remote Assistance Session* -

Both users must be present at their respective PCs and must agree to establish a connection.

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