Education and Technology

This post is from one of my other blogs that I am not updating anymore, but have left up because the content is useful and is indexed in Google. I moved the post here so that my visitors her could take advantage of it. I hope it helps someone that visits.

I’ve noticed a lot of people using Outlook Express on service calls recently. One client was having a problem with deleting emails. They would click delete to get rid of an email, but it wouldn’t delete. It would stay in their inbox and was still able to be read. My first thought was something wasn’t right with the deleted items folder. Here is how I fixed it.

I moved all the messages out of the Deleted Items folder into another mail folder that I created called Backup. I then located where the Outlook Express data files were on the hard drive. You can do this by clicking Tools in the Outlook Express menubar and selecting Options. From the tabs on the Dialog box select Maintenance and click the Store Folder button

The Deleted Items.dbx file is a hidden file on XP. You may need change your view settings to see hidden files. To do this:

1. Click the Start button
2. Click My Computer
3. Click Tools
4. Click Folder Options
5. Click View
6. Click the “Show hidden files and folders” option.
7. Click Apply, then Okay

You can now go to the store folder and delete the file “Deleted Items.dbx.” Outlook Express will create a new one when it is restarted because it can’t find the old one.

Another problem solved.

This post is from my old blog on Wordpress.com, but it is something that is useful so I am copying it to here for your reading pleasure and use.

In our district the school technology support professionals have a limited account and an administrative account in the Active Directory. While most of the time I can administer my campus and users from the limited account, there are times when I need to access the administrative account for just one thing. An example of this is looking up a staff or student ID for a program they need access to.

In this case the steps for this simple thing are:

1. logging off
2. logging into the admin account
3. running the program to look up the ID
4. doing the look up
5. logging off
6. logging back into the limited account
7. adding the user into whatever I need to

Now, that is way too much to do for something so simple. So, my solution is to use “runas” in a batch file to run the program I need as the admin account. This saves all the wasted steps, while letting me be secure in my limited account. Security, plus ease and working smarter is what it’s all about.

So, what does the batch file look like? Here it is:

runas /user:adminusername@domainname “Cirectory pathFilename [any commands to send to the program]“

Okay, now here is a visual example:

runas /user:edutechation@edutechation.com “Crogram FilesInternet Exploreriexplore http://mysite/admin”

The batch file will open a command window to ask you to input the admin password and if the password is correct it will launch Internet Explorer to the web site mysite/admin as the admin account with admin privileges. When you exit IE it drops the admin privileges so the next time you open IE it will be as the limited user account you are logged in as.

The time this saves me is invaluable. Try it, you’ll like it. If you would like to read about the runas command at Microsoft click here

Technorati Tags: RUNAS, Network Administration, Educational Technology