I recently had to assist my 75 year old father with an issue he was having and it was a struggle to get through the “Buy Now” banner ad that was popping up from Teamviewer. I probably use Teamviewer 1-2 times a month for 20-30 minutes so I can’t justify dropping $49/monthly on that solution. So I did what any techie would do and I took to Google in search of a new solution.

I stumbled across a solution called AweSun by AweRay. I’ve never heard about AweRay so I dug a little deeper and found the domain name was registered in May 2019 and their first news release was in April 2020. So they are a fairly new player in the space from what I could learn. I also noticed that their infrastructure is housed in Google Cloud Platform.

I’ve spent a few days with the solution and it worked really well. I was able to quickly and easily connect to my parents computer using their Device ID and Passcode very similar to how Teamviewer works. The product also supports copying clipboard data between the local computer and the computer you are remote controlling, so you can cut and paste between computers with ease. When I rebooted my parents computer AweSun properly started itself back up and allowed me to remotely connect after the reboot without any issues or problems.

Looking through their pricing and features list it seems like the “free” version is extremely functional.

The pricing is definitely much better than many of the competing solutions on the market. Obviously you can’t beat free, but even at $9/month – it’s definitely feasible to throw the company some business for a month or two in order to support the product without breaking your wallet.

I’m curious if anyone else has tested AweSun?

Cheers!

Log into Aruba ClearPass and go to the Policy Manager and select Configuration -> Authentication -> Sources and select your Windows Active Directory source – see the example below;

You need to update the filters on the source such as follows.

Original ClearPass Filter Query:
(&(sAMAccountName=%{Authentication:Username})(objectClass=user))

Updated ClearPass Filter Query:
(|(&(objectClass=user)(sAMAccountName=%{Authentication:Username}))(&(objectClass=user)(userPrincipalName=%{Authentication:Username})))

And then don’t forget to Save the changes and now you should be good to go!

Cheers!

It’s now Friday and I finally have some time to try and figure out what actually happened? Why did my Windows 10 desktop up and reboot itself, seemingly applying some type of update.  I had received an odd reboot dialog box earlier in the evening and had declined it. Looking at the system log I can see the reboot request;

Log Name:      System
Source:        User32
Date:          12/21/2016 10:10:34 PM
Event ID:      1074
Task Category: None
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Classic
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      Bigbird
Description:
The process C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe (BIGBIRD) has initiated the restart of computer BIGBIRD on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: Operating System: Service pack (Planned)
 Reason Code: 0x80020010
 Shutdown Type: restart
 Comment: 

The last Windows Update was applied on 12/14/16 so it doesn’t appear to have been a Windows Update although code 0x80020010 indicates a restart because of some update.

I kept digging in the system log and found the following entries;

Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-WindowsUpdateClient
Date:          12/21/2016 6:04:57 PM
Event ID:      43
Task Category: Windows Update Agent
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Started,Installation
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      Bigbird
Description:
Installation Started: Windows has started installing the following update: Candy Crush Soda Saga

I’m really hoping that Microsoft didn’t reboot my Windows 10 desktop to install some update to Candy Crush Soda Saga but it looks like that’s the case.

Well, lets take care of this once and for all… thankfully I’ve been working on my Powershell kung-fu. I dump the list of all install software via Get-AppxPackage, found the package name for Candy Crush Soda Saga and issued the following in Powershell;

Remove-AppxPackage king.com.CandyCrushSodaSaga_1.80.600.0_x86__kgqvnymyfvs32

Cheers!

It doesn’t help that Windows 2003 Server is End of Support on July 15, 2015.

Cheers!

References;

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms15-027.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/rmilne/archive/2015/03/17/update-015_2d00_027-revised-_2800_3002657_2900_.aspx
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2897814/operating-systems/server-2003-admins-beware-microsoft-re-issues-botched-netlogon-patch-kb-3002657.html

Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, …..

I personally use Ctrl – 1 through Ctrl – 5 for my keyboard shortcuts which correspond to buffer positions 1 – 5, I usually don’t use more than five. When I want to paste the last item I copied I can either use the Windows default of Ctrl – V or Ctrl – Insert, or I can use Ctrl – 1. When I want to paste the second to last item I copied I can use Ctrl -2 and so on.

Cheers!

Note: This is a series of posts made under the Network Engineer in Retail 30 Days of Peak, this is post number 16 of 30. All the posts can be viewed from the 30in30 tag.

While doing some research for this post I discovered that you can purchase DisplayFusion from Steam. I thought Steam only sold games but I guess why would they limit themselves to just games. Why not leverage their platform and client to deliver any type of application. Brilliant!

WallpaperFusion is a companion website where users can upload their own custom wallpapers to share with the entire community. There are some incredible looking wallpaper backgrounds on that site and they make it super simple to install through DisplayFusion.

Cheers!

Note: This is a series of posts made under the Network Engineer in Retail 30 Days of Peak, this is post number 14 of 30. All the posts can be viewed from the 30in30 tag.

We utilize Juniper’s Network Connect client to provide connectivity over a broadband Internet connection for all our remote call center agents. We recently had an issue where the Network Connect client couldn’t enable it’s GINA integration with Windows XP. The GINA automatically launches the Network Connect sign-in function at every Windows user sign-in. This provides the users a single sign-on capability to both log into Windows XP and establish remote connectivity.

Upon our first connection to the Juniper SSL Secure Access appliance we were prompted to install the Network Connect client. During that installation the client prompted us to enable the GINA functionality but then returned the following error, “Network Connect is configured to start when Windows starts, but this function cannot be enabled due to a conflict with another Windows application (nc.windows.app.23679)”.

We currently use both PointSec and Courion internally so I originally suspected one of these application although I quickly discovered that neither of these applications where installed. So I fired up Regedit and went looking to see which GINA was installed other than the default Microsoft GINA.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Under the GinaDLL registry key I found “awgina.dll” configured which is the GINA for Symantec’s pcAnywhere. I deleted the registry key (while pcAnywhere was installed we weren’t using it’s GINA capabilities) , uninstalled the Juniper Network Connect client and rebooted the laptop. I ran back through the installation again was this time I was successfully able to enable the GINA capabilities of the Network Connect client. I’m not 100% sure that you need to remove the client and re-install it although that was the safest course of action at the time for me.

Here are some of the more popular GINAs in the industry;

• Cisco VPN client (csgina.dll)
• Microsoft GINA (msgina.dll)
• Nortel Networks VPN client (nngina.dll)
• RSA SecurID (aceGina.dll)
• Novell GINA (nwgina.dll)
• pcAnywhere32 (awgina.dll)
• IBM Fingerprint GINA (vrlogon.dll)
• Pointsec GINA (pssogina.dll)
• Courion Password Reset (ssogina.dll)
• Juniper Network Connect (dsNcGina.dll)

Cheers!

References;

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321031

http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/software/ive/admin/6.5-ClientSideChanges.pdf

You might recall that I wrote about software release 6.5R2 back in December 2009, detailing our troubles with the 6.5R1 software release and our hope that Juniper could save the day.

Thankfully I’m hear to tell that software release 6.5R2 for the Juniper Secure Access SSL VPN appliances appears to be a winner!

About six days ago I upgraded a pair of SA4000s running 6.5R1 to 6.5R2. The primary goal was to resolve the compatibility issues that were introduced in 6.5R1 and finally provide support for both Windows Vista 64-bit and Windows 7 64-bit. The actually upgrade of the appliances was pretty straight forward and the initial testing didn’t reveal any issues. Unfortunately there’s no amount of testing can always predict how things will go when working with home personal computers and the myriad of software available. We waited nervously for the first few days… thankfully the calls never came. While we had one or two users that needed some hand holding during the software upgrade/installation process, the majority of our 800+ users didn’t seem to have any issues whatsoever.

Let me congratulate Juniper Networks on a job well done!

I’ve created discussion forum for anyone that would like to discuss the Juniper Secure Access SSL VPN appliances. If you have a question or would like to make a comment why not join the discussion?

Cheers!

We’ve been using the IP 2050 v2 for connecting to our Nortel Succession 1000M Call Servers with very good success. It’s very reliable and the audio quality has been excellent. I should point out that we lease our corporate laptops with a 24 month refresh so we always have decent hardware to work with. And it doesn’t hurt when you have a Gigabit network backbone from Nortel of course.

We’ve held off deploying the IP 2050 v3 because of the new licensing server that is required although we can’t fault Nortel for moving towards such a solution. While we’ve been very honest in our purchasing and deploying of the IP 2050 softphone I can only guess how many others out there haven’t been so honest. If you’re interested in the Nortel IP 2050 just don’t forget that you’ll need to purchase a copy of the Nortel IP 2050 software along with an Internet IP User ISM (license) for each user.

You may also want to evaluate Microsoft Office Communications Server before you deploy the IP 2050 in any large numbers. We’ve started testing OCS in our lab and we’re hoping to start evaluating it’s voice and video conferencing capabilities in the next few months. You’ll probably still want to use the Nortel IP 2050 Softphone for any Nortel Contact Center (Symposium) agents but for basic voice, instant messaging and video conferencing OCS looks very promising.

Cheers!