Category: Tech Stuff

Something that I had a LOT of trouble finding, was a way to keep my Outlook PST files synched between my new laptop, which I use away from home, and my desktop machine which I use most of the time.

If you don’t use Exchange, Microsoft does not seem to have any answers for you, which seems ridiculous as there are many people now in the same situation.

Then I stumbled across SynchPST, a program that does exactly what I need and at a reasonable cost. The “basic” version synchs all the bits that you would care about in your PST file – email, calendar items, tasks and contacts with no fussing about.

SyncBack is 2BrightSpark’s freeware backup solution. I have been using their freeware product for a couple of years now and have been exceptionally pleased with both its flexibility and its reliability.

I just recently upgraded to their paid-for product (SyncBackSE) and I couldn’t be happier. The reason for the upgrade was prompted by my desire to back up open files as well as to make my backups run a little bit faster.

But for simple backup needs, the freeware product is an excellent choice.

I had tried Window’s built-in backup solution, as well as complicated solutions using batch files and WinZip’s command line interface. The Windows solution is simply terrible – if you don’t think so, try restoring a file some time. It simply didn’t do what I wanted when I wanted.
The Winzip option worked quite well, but changes to it always required a little bit of programming and, to be honest, I don’t need most of my files zipped anyway. Xcopy worked for some stuff, but exclusion lists became a real hassle.

Enter SyncBack – You can do everything through the GUI interface, including selecting folders and subfolders, you can exclude/include files based on criteria or explicitly choosing them, you can choose to zip all files as individual zip files (very handy for a lot of large files – you don’t end up with a super-large zip) or just zip entire folders into their own zip files.
You can keep directories in synch or you can use it to back up your files – and yes there is a difference between the two functions.
And it interfaces elegantly with Window’s task scheduler to allow you to run any profile or group of profiles on any schedule you desire.

I have both my main computer and my wife’s computer back up all out data files to my server computer at 3 am every morning. Once a week, the server computer copies all those files to a separate partition for safekeeping after having made a backup of the copy it just replaced!
It sounds like overkill, but anything I value is stored on 3 separate physical hard drives and I can usually retrieve anything up to just under 3 weeks old if I damage it on my main machine.

This may sound like overkill, but I’ve got enough unused capacity on my server machine to handle it and I *really* value my digital pictures and other items that cannot be easily reproduced. So why would I take the chance since there is no expense for me and I have only my data integrity to gain.

And for the anal retentive out there, yes, I make periodic backups of REALLY critical stuff to CD ROM and store them off site.

Anyway, if you are looking for a free or inexpensive backup solution, SyncBack is an excellent choice.

I’ve decided to give Skype a go. But I’m not so sure I want to wear a full headset when I use the “phone” so I thought it would be a good idea to use my cell phone earbud instead with it.

It wasn’t exactly obvious where to find this but I should really have known to just try Radio Shack in the first place. Thanks to Joel Ross for finding and posting a link to this little gadget that allows you to plug a standard cell phone headset into the 3/32″ jack at one end and has two 1/8″ plugs at the other to plug into your PC’s Microphone and Speaker jacks.

Note: Radio Shack sometimes changes things around a bit. If you end up at an index page just do a search for part 42-2428.

By the way, if you are using an older Thinkpad you may find you have some issues with this or any other headset/mic combination. Apparently earlier Thinkpads require some sort of gadget inline with the mic in order to work, do a find on Google for 600E microphone. Here is one of the results that helped me.

When I was in Radio Shack to purchase the headset Y-cable one of the employees warned me that somebody else had already tried and it didn’t work. He suggested getting one of their headphones instead. I didn’t argue with him at the time but this didn’t make any sense at all. The next time I’m in I’ll let him know that his other customer simply didn’t do enough homework (and probably came back later to return the headset he’d purchased as well…).

I had a problem where my Outlook PST was duplicated and showed up twice in the “All Mail Folders” list. I found a similar issue on the Computing.net site (read it here) but I could not post a follow up. In case the link fails, here is a quick summary of the original problem and of the entry that helped me out. Hopefully this can help others:

Original issue:

Name: Jet (by luckypingudog)
Date: July 19, 2005 at 13:57:54 Pacific
Subject: Outlook Duplicate Personal Folders
OS: Win XP Pro SP2
CPU/Ram: 2GHz 1GB
Comment:

I recently installed Office 2003 Professional on a computer which previously didn’t have Office installed.

I then copied my PST file from Outlook 2000 on another computer onto the new computer, pasting this PST file into:

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook, replacing the PST file that was there already.

Then when I opened Outlook 2003 (on the new computer) for the first time, it said something along the lines of “PST File cannot be found” (I can’t remember sorry), and it prompted me to browse to my new PST file (in the above directory), which I did. I selected this new PST file then Outlook 2003 opened and all my emails where there.

The problem is that I have two duplicate “Persoanl Folders” in the “All Mail Folders” list on the left of my screen.

Every time I receive a new email, it appears in the inboxes of both of these duplicate “Personal Folders”. Everytime I delete an email from either folder, it is also deleted from the duplicate folder.

My PST file is approximately 1.5GB in size and I have approximately 100 custom sub-folders in each “Personal Folders” list – and each one of these is totally duplicated in each list!

Another seemingly related issue, is that when I click “Send/Receive”, Outlook 2003 does two sends and two receives. As if it’s doing one for one “Personal Folders” and the other for the suplicate “Personal Folders”.

If I right-click on each of the “Personal Folders” and choose “Properties”, the properties for each are 100% identical – even when I click “Folder Size”. When I click “Advanced” in the properties dialogue box, I get the error message:

“The Operation Failed. An object could not be found.”

If I right-click each of the two “Personal Folders” and choose “Open Outlook Data File…” – they BOTH browse to:

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook and show ONLY “outlook.pst” in that folder.

(I have ‘show hidden files and folders’ turned ON, so I’m sure there’s nothing else there).

If I right-click on the two “Personal Folders” then the “Close Personal Folders” option is disallowed (it’s grey and unavailable).

I have tried doing a repair of office 2003 professional, and I’ve also uninstalled it, reinstalled it, and performed an Office Update – but still the problem persists.

Can anyone help? I’ve hunted on the net and it seems a few people have this issue, but I’ve tried following suggestions and so far none apply and/or work.

luckypingudog at hotmail.com

Here is the helpful response:

Name: kdpape
Date: January 04, 2006 at 17:40:25 Pacific
Subject: Outlook Duplicate Personal Folders
Reply:

i get this all the time (don’t know what causes it – but – it’s easy to fix (temporarily – for a week or so)

-close outlook
-go to control panel
-go to mail
-select ‘data files’
you’ll see two listed – although only one has a full path

-highlight the one that doesn’t have a path

– select ‘Remove’

– reopen outlook and all is peachy –

… now if i could just figure out why it happens randomly every couple weeks!

sheesh

And my attempted response:

Thanks kdpape,

I had the same issue and your response just helped me clean up this annoyance.

In my case it was some sort of problem with SynchPST that resulted in an issue with my outlook. For some reason my Desktop outlook started trying to open the PST file that resides on my laptop. When I tried opening laptop on the desktop when the laptop was turned off Outlook complained as described in the first message above. I naively navigated to my existing desktop pst file and ended up “double opening” it and then couldn’t get rid of the 2nd entry or the annoying fully qualified folder names in the favorite folder section.

Again Thanks for the quick solution!

Marc

 *Update* check out this posting. I do NOT recommend this router.

I’m sitting here now with a new D-Link DI-524 on my desk. I ordered this to replace my venerable WRT54G. The WRT54G is generally a well regarded wireless router but if you search my blog for “WRT54G” you’ll see some of the interesting issues I’ve faced with it over the past couple of years. I’ll shortly be configuring the D-Link. My hope is that I’ll be able to re-enable WEP and 802.11g wireless communications. My primary motivation for replacing my existing router is that it seems to periodically “stall” which can be very irritating. Not only does your web surfing grind to a halt, but any VPN connections your are maintaining drop like hot potatos. Most of the time it seems resetting the WRT54G has resolved these outages but I have my suspicions about my Comcast Motorola modem and the Vonage Linksys RT31P2. I’m not an expert on networks so there are probably plenty of tools out there that could help me accurately determine where the failure lies when I have problems, but the wireless encryption issue helped push the WRT54G to the head of the list. It was very difficult to decide on a replacement router. Reading the reviews on CNet and other sources yielded no obviously superior products out there. They ALL seem to have their issues. The up and coming “N” standard has some appeal, but I don’t have a lot of faith that the “Pre-N” offerings would conform to the standards without a lot of monkeying about. Not only does the router need to be upgraded but also any wireless cards would need to be flashed or somehow updated too. One thing that seems very obvious to me is that the lay-user doesn’t stand a chance if they wish to purchase one of these devices and really be safe. For instance, my WRT54G allows you to use WAP as well as WEP encryption schemes, but the associated Linksys wireless drivers do not implement WAP on my laptop and Desktop. WEP can only be implemented using the 1st of the 4 possible keys generated from the passphrase on one of my devices (I *think* the other device will allow me to use other than the first one). I’m sure the D-Link will have its share of quirks so I’ll post a quick review of how it compares with the WRT54G when I install it. But I have high hopes that its particular quirks will be for things that I don’t need or care about.

 *Update* check out this posting. I do NOT recommend this router.

Just finished configuring my DI-524, WEP enabled, MAC filtered and all and so far I’m very impressed. Performance seems to be MUCH better than my Linksys WRT54G.

I have a machine in my den at the front of the house (about 45 feet from the router plus going through about 4-5 interior walls) which, using the WRT54G I usually maxed out at 18 Mbps and more often hovered in the 5.5 – 11 range. With the new router I seem to be holding steady at 24 Mbps and it flirts with 36 (instead of with 18…) on a regular basis.
Since that machine is usually unattended the speed was never really an issue but I see it as an indicator.

Also, all my devices appear to be happy with the WEP encryption turned on. My little Roku soundbridge is merrily putting out my favorite songs with nary a hiccough.
Even more impressive to me is that I recycled the DI-524 and none of my devices complained. Not even the extra-sensitive Roku.

So far the only outstanding issue apppears to be that my BitTorrent client (Azureus) doesn’t seem to be able to get through the new configuration properly. I’ll post an update if I figure it out, the directions from D-Link for port forwarding are pretty straightforward but this doesn’t seem to help.

More Details – This Article indicates how to set up a virtual server port forwarding to the machine you run Azureus on. You also should choose a different port from Azureus’ default (6881) since it seems ISPs like to block it. I also have a Vonage Linksys RT31P2 router sitting between the D-Link and my cable modem so I also needed to forward the port I chose through that router too.

I finally had to break down and pick up one of these fine machines. I’ve been itching to get one for a while now.

Since the IBM (now Lenovo for the laptops) site is ever changing – I’m not sure that I’ve ever managed to find the same page more than once – I’ve copied the spec sheet onto my own website and you can view it here.

The tablet PC format sold me right off the bat, but there are a lot of them out there. This one is very light, about 4+ pounds with the 8 cell battery attached. The battery is *supposed* to give up to 6.5 hours of working time – we’ll see. But it should be much better than the 2+ that I am used to with laptops.

Also slick is the integrated biometric fingerprint reader to unlock the machine and to supply passwords to various applications.

Here is some more info on the x41.

Take a peek and tell me what you think.

**Update 1/24/2006***
Don’t download the 1.2.7 release, use instead 1.2.6. There is a problem with numlock and shift keys with the 1.2.7. I installed it and went back to 1.2.6 and am still very happy.
***End Update 1/24/2006**

Where KM is just a play on KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse). If you ever deal with more than one computer on your desktop and have plenty of screens but want to get yourself down to one keyboard and mouse, this is a solution for you.

I find the cramped keyboard and pointing solutions associated with laptop computers to be fine if you’re on the road. They are designed to work in a confined space and meet that need admirably. However, given the choice, I prefer the nicer feeling “real” keyboard with a separate keypad all the keys where my fingers “remember” them from years of touch-typing.
And nothing I’ve tried yet matches the precision and intuitiveness of a mouse for day-to-day GUI operations (note I’m not talking about specialized apps like gaming and the like).

Synergy (from Sourceforge.net) is a free software solution allows you to choose your primary computer and then allows you to control both the mouse and the keyboard for any number of different other computers. Linux, Windows, whatever, this will work. It even lets you share your clipboard across the different machines.

You can line up 5 laptops side-by-side and just run your mouse across all 5 screens if you choose. You can even go so far as to synchronize the screen savers.

All that’s required is that they all be talking via TCP/IP on the same network.

Take a look at it and don’t just dismiss it out of hand. It can take a few minutes to get your head around what it offers. This is a rock-solid application that impresses me a LOT.

1042
This is a slick little device that allows me to pull iTunes songs wirelessly through my home LAN network and play them on any stereo in the house.

Here is Roku’s website if you want to take a peek.

The unit is functioning properly and so far I’m quite happy with it.

All was not perfect however, I had some issues that I eventually tracked down to a, presumably, longstanding issue with my venerable WRT54G Router.

Here is the chain of messages that I left on the Roku Soundbridge Set-up forum. This is probably only of interest to you if you are having the problems I was experiencing.

Initial Post
Soundbridge works fine, talks to network and acquired IP via DHCP with no issues.
Able to identify available library from iTunes.
Can play, shuffle, acquire Internet time, works normally for a while.
After an indeterminate amount of time, begins to exhibit symptoms similar to those specified for Firewall issues (Buffering… (0%) but does not play the 10 seconds or so of songs before failing) just fails and moves to next song .
Disabled XP’s firewall and WRT54G’s firewall with no change.
Restarting the Soundbridge yields “connection to server failed” message.
– Note that inspecting the WRT54G’s ” Wireless Client MAC List” shows the Soundbridge as still being in contact
Unplugging the Soundbridge, waiting for a minute or so yields same result.

Unplugging the Soundbridge removing the Wi-Fi card (which is quite warm) and allowing it to cool resolves the issue.

Next post after suggestion that I try hardwiring the Roku unit and see if the problem persists

Per your suggestion I removed the Wi-Fi card and plugged in the ethernet cable and let her go. The unit has been running all day now and, while quite warm, is still performing flawlessly.

This may not be the best test in the world, I have the unit sitting with me on my computer desk so I can see that it’s playing the songs, but I am not able to keep it plugged into the stereo and hardwire it to my WRT54G at the same time. So two variables have changed. I’ll Reconnect the Wi-Fi card and leave the unit on my computer desk to see if / when it begins to fail.

Next post

After about 1/2 hour after switching from wired to Wi-Fi and the SoundBridge began misbehaving again (Buffering (0%)).

Removing the Wi-Fi card and allowing it to cool and then re-inserting it resolves the problem. I cannot yet guarantee that cooling the card is what allows the soundbridge to function correctly or if it’s simply the time I have the unit powered down that causes it to work again. This time I how long it took to cool the card and restart the unit (about 5 minutes). The next time it fails I will simply power it down for 5 minutes and restart. The unit remains hot enough that the wi-fi card will not cool down during that interval and, I predict, will continue to fail.

then

*Sigh*
Letting the unit just sit for 10 minutes has also temporarily resolved the issue. So I’m not sure if it cools down enough or maybe there is something else going on that allows it to reconnect with my Wi-Fi network.

Hopefully I can get some good suggestions from email support. I like the unit and the theory. Now if only I can get it to work…. 🙁

Final Post

OK, I just wanted to end this saga and let anybody else who may be having this issue know how I resolved it.

I’ve had the WRT54G for just under two years now and it’s performed pretty well. My main computer is hardwired to the router as it is right next to it, but my wife’s computer is connected wirelessly. She leaves that machine on all the time and uses MSN Messenger – I’ve always noticed that her MSN messenger periodically logs her in (I see a pop-up that this “buddy” has logged in) and wasn’t sure if it was an MSN thing or a symptom of something else. Her machine is in the next room and is always reporting an “Excellent” wireless connection.

Anyway, after this problem with the M500 started, I found I couldn’t rule out the WRT54G as a possible cause. So yesterday I switched the “Wireless Network Mode” from “Mixed Mode” to “B-Only”. The M500 has now been playing solidly for over 18 hours with nary a hiccough.

So it seems the problem has two parts, the WRT54G is partly the cause because of intermittent drop outs – These probably impact my wife’s computer’s performance but it doesn’t complain and we have never noticed. The second part appears to be an overly sensitive Wi-Fi connection from the Roku M500 unit. It just doesn’t seem to be able to recover from either a single drop out or maybe there is some combination of drop-outs that mess it up. I’m not really equipped to say. I can only black-box it and tell you what I see.

Anyway, I hope this helps anybody else. For me, the increased stability is worth the Wi-Fi speed hit so I’m going to be leaving the WRT54G’s Wireless Network Mode at “B-Only”. I have another computer in the back of the house that never really attained much more than 11 Mbps anyway.

**Addendum** I had disabled WEP encryption while doing all this as I’ve found it to behave rather erratically in the past. Once everything had settled down I re-enabled Wep (128 bit) and found my wireless devices started dropping off periodically – no rhyme or reason. They would connect and acquire an IP and then, after some period minutes of use just drop off.. or not… WEP is disabled until either Linksys or the folks responsible for implementing these technologies get their act together. 🙁

All is stable now – just a bit more exposure than I’d like.