Unkhown Publisher warning message after SP2

After Windows XP Service Pack 2 installation and whenever you are going to run an application, this security warning message appears in your screen:

 "Unknown Publisher - The publisher could not be Verified. Are you sure you want to run this software?" and you have to choose the "Yes" or "No" option to allow or not, the program execution.

Note: Keep in mind that if you disable this security warning, following the steps below you open a security hole on your computer, because every program with the excluded extension can run on your computer without your permission (e.g. virus, Trojans, etc.)

Windows XP Security Tips

In our days all of us, we use a computer in a small network connected to internet, in our home or in a biggest network in our job for work, information or just entertainment.

However, over time the security risks are increasing but a lot of simple users or small companies, they don't know how to protect themselves from viruses, internet computers attacks, or data abstractions.

At this post, i 'll try to give some personal advices, for your own protection in Windows XP environment , from my experience until today.

1. First of all choose the Windows XP Professional Edition instantly Windows XP Home Edition, for operating system in your computer.

And this, because unfortunately Windows XP Home Edition, doesn't have all of the security features of Windows XP Professional Edition.

2. Use a strong password for each user account you have at your computer. A big security risk at Windows XP installation, is that Administrator account already exists but has a blank password. If a little expert user tries to log on in your machine using this account in safe or normal mode, then he will have full access in your data and in all of your computer settings and information.

Outlook Express folders Oversized or Corrupted

Problem:
When you try to receive mail in Outlook Express, you can't and you received the following error message:
"An unknown error has occurred. Account: 'your-account-name', Server: 'pop.mail.mail-server.com', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure (SSL): No, Error Number: 0x800C0133"

This problem usually occurs, due to a corrupted or oversized* "inbox.dbx" file.
*As you might know, the maximum file size of the .dbx files that are used by Outlook Express is 2 gigabytes.
(see: Microsoft's article)

Enable Administrator account in Windows

When you install Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, windows asks you to create a user account. When you try to create an account with the user name "Administrator", Windows tell you that you can't do this, because this account already exists by default but is disabled.
At this point you can create, an account with a different user name than "Administrator" and when you log on in Windows, you want to enable the built in "Administrator" account.
Following the below process you can do this.

Windows XP activation backup

The problem:
You have an already activated Windows XP installation on your computer and you want to format your drive and reinstall Windows XP, but you don't have the serial number of your Windows XP install disk or you don't want to waste time to reactivate Windows after the format.
With this procedure, you can easily backup and restore the Windows activation
(As long as you didn't make any hardware changes on your machine)

Solution:
The first step is, to backup your activation files:
1. Open Windows explorer and navigate to C:\Windows\System32
2. Copy the files Wpa.dbl and Wpa.bak to another media such a flash disk or another hard drive, like an external one.

How to easily diagnose network errors.

In a Windows XP/2003/Vista/2008 machine you may experience network problems.
A simple but useful tip, to view the network errors and packets lost, is to enable the status of send/receive packets errors, on to your network card.
After you enable this, you can easily view the status of your network card, by double clicking the "Local area connection" icon, from Control Panel > Network connections".

Cannot add a domain user as local administrator - Domain does not appear in Location...

The problem:
In a Windows XP workstation, after joining the Windows 2003 Domain you can log on to the domain, but when you try to add a user from the domain as local administrator, the Domain name does not appear in the Location box.

Solution:
The problem usually is the DNS settings on the workstation's network card.

How to clone a Dynamic disk

The problem:
A few days ago I had a customer running a Primary Windows 2000 Domain server, installed on a Dynamic Disk, that consisted of two partitions (System C:\ & Data D\:).
The disk had errors and it should be replaced before final failure.
I looked at the internet for a program for dynamic disk cloning.
At first I made an attempt with Acronis Enterprise Server v9.1 boot CD, but I didn’t have luck.
When I ran the Acronis application, the first problem was that the application cloned the partitions and not the entire dynamic disk, and the second problem was that the disk was not bootable and presented an error about corrupt files or something like this.
I continued trying other products, from other companies, but as with the Acronis Enterprise Server application, none of them cloned dynamic disks or if they proceeded with the entire process of cloning, (like HDClone from http://www.miray.de), the final result was boot problems with corrupt files.

After many hours of testing, reading and failed tries, I finally found one procedure that worked for me.