Alexander’s Blog

Windows Vista contains a new feature that allows you to quickly preview the contents of documents and pictures without opening them first in the application. Here’s how it works.

Within Windows Explorer in Windows Vista, you can adjust the view to large icons, or even extra large icons, from the Views menu. However, you can’t really read the contents of a Word document or select and copy data because such a small thumbnail preview only gives you a hint of what the content may be, it’s not meant to actually read the content. In case of a photograph, the extra large icon, or even large icon is much more useful. In order to view as much information as possible, you should enable all three panes: Preview pane, Details pane, and Navigation pane in Windows Explorer. These can be enabled by clicking on Organize, Layout. You will not see a check mark next to them but they toggle between enable and disable. By the way, you can click and drag the dividers between the various panes to view more or less content.

As I mentioned earlier, the Preview pane is a new option in Windows Vista that allows you to view the contents of a file without opening it. This is true for documents as well as pictures. The preview pane will work for any application that supports this feature. For example, it will work with Office 2007 applications, PDF files, JPEGs, GIFs, HTML files, Windows Media Audio/Video files, etc. The preview pane is a great feature because it is so much faster to preview the documents in Windows Explorer rather than loading them in Word or PowerPoint. The following screen shot shows a preview of a sample video file with all three panes enabled in the Explorer window. The preview pane is one of the several features from Macintosh OS X that are now available in Windows Vista.

When working with documents, such as Microsoft Word, you can select individual text and then copy it. You can even perform these functions in a zipped file without extracting the file.

NOTE: You can copy from a document but you can’t paste text into a document in preview pane because preview pane is a viewer, not an editor.

Here’s a preview of a sample zip file that contains a Word document.

I discovered an interesting “feature” while working with preview pane. When I previewed a Word 2007 document that contained a logo, I was only able to see the text but not the logo. However, if I clicked anywhere inside the document, the logo became visible. If you have any interesting observations to share with the readers, please let me know.

The Malware Removal Starter Kit, the newest Solution Accelerator from Microsoft, provides free, tested guidance to help you combat malware attacks and restore infected systems—so users can safely get back to work. The kit shows you how to use the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) to discover malware by performing a thorough offline scan of your computers, uncovering malware that may be hiding in the operating system. And once malware is located and identified, it can be quickly removed from infected PCs with a number of free anti-malware tools, like the Malicious Software Removal Tool from Microsoft.

The Malware Removal Starter Kit answers questions like:
• What are the keys to a reliable, effective response plan to remedy malware outbreaks?
• How do I build a bootable CD that lets me perform offline virus scans?
• How can I discover and remove viruses and other malware hiding in the operating system?
• How does the Malware Removal Starter Kit augment Microsoft’s anti-malware strategy?

Click here to download the kit.

By the time excited consumers were unwrapping their brand new iPhones, hackers had already found ways to hack into the iPhone. While AT&T had a nightmarish time dealing with activation problems, hackers are claiming to have successfully activated iPhones without paying for the service. Web sites like iphonehacks.com and numerous blogs are full of information related to iPhone hacks.

It didn’t take very long for researchers at Errata Security to find several security holes in Apple’s new iPhone, as reported by DarkReading.com. Errata discovered at least three major flaws in iPhone, which is based on a version of OS X. One of them has to do with a heap overflow bug in Safari browser. If a user visits a malicious Web site, it can potentially take over your iPhone. For example, if a user clicks on a spam message it can take him/her to the malicious Web site. This is only one of several examples of how the iPhone can be hacked due to this vulnerability.

Another bug is in the iPhone’s Bluetooth feature related to a potential denial-of-service attack. A third bug has to do with data “seepage” that can potentially cause data to be exposed by client applications over a WiFi connection. Similar to the known problem on Mac notebooks, if you come close to a wireless access point (WAP), your iPhone may just decide to connect to it and expose your information without your knowledge.

Errata, Flexilis, and other security companies are finding more bugs. However, security researchers say that they will wait until Apples announces the flaws before they will go public with their findings.

Over the past one or two years, security professionals have attempted to raise awareness of the dangers associated with connecting smartphones, PDAs, iPods, and other devices to business network-connected endpoints. Some vendors stepped up and provided centrally managed methods of protecting information stored on company and privately owned devices. The Apple iPhone, however, does not fall anywhere near the “secure device” category.

In a Gartner publication released in June, Frederica Troni and Ken Dulaney provide a list of business reasons why businesses should shy away from the much touted touch-screen device (How to Plan for User Interest in the Apple iPhone, Gartner Research article G00148854), including,

* Lack of support from major mobile device management suites and mobile security suites
* A clear statement by Apple that it is focused on consumer rather than enterprise business

Further, the iPhone lacks support for popular wireless business email solutions-including Microsoft Exchange. Click here for more details.

Ever seen this error while working with Virtual PC images?

The name or security ID (SID) of the domain specified is inconsistent with the trust information for that domain.

This can happen if you create a copy of the virtual PC image. For example, let’s say you’ve created a couple of Virtual PC images of Windows Server 2003 by copying one to another. You then promote the first image successfully to a Domain Controller. You join the second image successfully to the domain as a client or member server. However, when you try to logon to the second computer you get the above error regarding the SID.

Here’s the possible cause. By recreating the Virtual Machine Console file you’ve gotten rid of the duplicate MAC address of the network interface card on your guest computer. However, the problem you are running into has to do with the SID. You need to find a way to ensure that the second computer is using a different SID.
One solution is to download NEWSID.EXE from Microsoft. This is a free tool that will allow you to change your computer’s SID on a Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 computer.

To confirm that you have a duplicate SID issue you can use another free tool called PsGetSid. Another solution, that’s supported by Microsoft, is to use SysPrep. However, you will find that newside.exe is much easier to use than SysPrep.