Send Mails using Telnet with authentication

Sending mails using telnet comes handy when you are troubleshooting mail issues. You will find lots of such small set of instructions for the same however this guide also explains how to authenticate to the server before sending a mail.

1. Open a telnet session on port 25

2. type 'ehlo YourDomain.com', and hit enter.

3. Type 'auth login', and hit enter. You will see output something like this.

4. Now enter your full email address and then your password encoded in BASE64. To convert your full email address and your password to BASE64, you can use this handy BASE64 encoding tool.

5. If your username (the full email address) and password were entered correctly, the mail server would respond with “Authentication successful”.

6. You have just authenticated yourself with the mail server and now can start entering the email details.

7. Type 'mail from: YourUserName@YourDomain.com', and hit enter.

8. Type 'rcpt to: Destinationemail@DestinationDomain.com' and hit enter.

9. Type 'DATA', hit enter

10. Type 'Subject: Your Subject Here', hit enter.

11. Hit enter once again to send a blank line to seperate header from the message body.

12. Type your mail.

13. Type '.' (A single dot in a line to indicate end of your mail and submit it for delivery).

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Tags: Exchange Server

Published Date: 20080617

You may receive Error ID: 5079 (000013d7) after uninstalling Double Take software

When you uninstall/remove Double Take software from your Windows Cluster you may receive the following error message when starting Cluster Administrator.

An error occurred attempting to read properties for the 'Double-Take Source Connection' resource type.

Error ID: 5079 (000013d7)

You can alway safely ignore this error message. However to get rid of it completely just remove the Double Take Resource type from the registry.

Open registry editor and take the backup of current registry.

Delete the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Cluster\ResourceTypes\Double-Take Source Connection

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Tags: Clustering, Windows Server 2003

Published Date: 20080609

Disable Autologon in Windows XP

If you've configured Windows XP to automatically login earlier, and want to cancel the auto-logon, try any of these methods:

Method 1:

By default, MSGina.dll checks the state of the SHIFT key when AutoAdminLogon is 1. If the SHIFT key is held down during the boot process, MSGina.dll will ignore the AutoAdminLogon key value and prompt the user for identification and authentication information interactively. You can use this method to temporarily disable automatic logon at startup

Method 2:

Click Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type control userpasswords2, and then click OK. In the dialog box that appears, enable Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer check box, and then click OK.

Method 3:

Click Start, Run and type "rundll32 netplwiz.dll,ClearAutoLogon"

Method 4:

Use this method only if you've configured the automatic logon using the registry manually. Because, automatic logon procedure using Control Userpasswords2 or using Tweak UI does not involve Winlogon \ DefaultPassword key at all. They are stored in protected area rather.

• Open Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ WindowsNT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon

• Delete the DefaultPassword entry.

• Double-click AutoAdminLogon, type 0 in the Value Data box, and then click OK.

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Tags: Windows XP

Published Date: 20080608

Check for specific components on IIS Server

Have you ever wondered whether or not a specific component is installed on your host's server? Have you ever just wanted to see a list of the components available for you to use? Perhaps you know that an email component is offered by your host, but you're not sure that it is setup and functioning properly. The Component Tests offered by http://www.pensaworks.com answer those questions and more.

1. Download this free test from http://www.pensaworks.com/prg_com.asp
2. Extract the asp files to any directory on your local harddrive.
3. Upload the files to your website via FTP or any other File Transfer Program.
4. Access the scripts by typing in the full URL to the script.
5. The script will run automatically and prompt for further action if required.
6. Use 'test_mailer_components.asp' to test whether or not certain Mailer Components are installed and functioning properly.
7. Use 'test_asp_components.asp'  to test whether or not a list of over 300+ server Components are installed on your server for you to use. Details on the version, DLL name, and more are provided for those COMs that are installed.

If your browser tries to download the file instead or returning plain HTML, then you do NOT have an ASP enabled server. Sorry, it just won't work!

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Tags: IIS

Published Date: 20080607

How to add new Website in IIS5.1 on Windows XP

If IIS is running in Windows XP, it does not give you an option to add a new Website in the Internet Services Manager mmc console. However you can add a new website using a vbscript that comes with IIS. However do remember that only ONE website can run at a time in IIS running on Windows XP. To add a new website  follow the below instructions.

1. Open Internet Services manager and stop the Default Web Site
2. Open a command prompt windows and navigate to the folder 'c:\Inetpub\AdminScripts'
3. Type “adsutil.vbs enum w3svc /p" to get a list of websites created. Basically only the Default Website is listed (W3SVC/1)
4. Type “adsutil.vbs create W3SVC/2” (the last number can be anything; it is the index of the new website)
5. Type “adsutil.vbs copy W3SVC/1 W3SVC/2” to copy the whole directory structure and settings to the new website
6. Go to the Internet Service manager and and rename this new website, give it a new root folder and set it up however you like
7. To delete an existing website type “adsutil.vbs delete W3SVC/2” (Remember DELETING A WEBSITE IS IRREVERSIBLE so please be extremely careful)

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Tags: IIS, Windows XP

Published Date: 20080606

How to install CDONTs in Windows XP to run liberum helpdesk software

When you are running liberum helpdesk software and choose to use CDONTS as the underlying email service users may receive the following error

Application Error
Number: 424 (0x000001A8)
Source: Microsoft VBScript runtime error
Description: Object required
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No more information is available.
Contact your administrator or visit the Liberum Help Desk website.

This happens because CDONTS is deprecated and is not available in Windows XP or Windows 2003. To resolve this issue follow the below instructions.

1. Hunt for cdonts.dll on Internet and copy it to %systemroot%\system32 folder.
2. Open command prompt and navigate to System32 directory.
3. Type the following command 'regsvr32 cdonts.dll'

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Tags: Helpdesk, IIS

Published Date: 20080605