How to install your OEM certificate on Windows 7

• Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
• Click OK.
• At a command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:
• slmgr.vbs -ilc oem-cert.xml

See Also:

• How to Activate Windows 7 on a OEM Machine
• Windows Activation Error : Error Code 400CF025

Free online diagram drawing tools

• Creately
• Draw Anywhere
• Cacoo
• Lovely Charts
• Lucid Charts
• Gliffy
• Mockingbird

See also Online Diagramming

Remote desktop to Windows 7 (or Windows 2008 server) which requires Network Level Authentication using freeRDP

FreeRDP is a free, open source implementation of the RDP protocol, according to the Microsoft Open Specifications. It is released under the Apache License and is available on OS X, Cygwin for Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris.

As of January 2012, FreeRDP adds support for Network Level Authentication. You can then use FreeRDP to connect to Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 which requires NLA by default.

Note: freeRDP is commonly used on Linux. Since

• Remote Desktop Connection for Mac OS X supports NLA.
• Windows XP SP3 added NLA support and NLA can be enabled by updating some registry values. Linux is the platform that does not have native support for MS therefore, currently you have no other choice to use FreeRDP.

To install freeRDP on Ubuntu Linux:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freerdp-team/freerdp
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install freerdp

To use freerdp to connect to a remote Windows machine:

xfreerdp --plugin cliprdr -g 1024x768 -k no -u {username} -d {domain} {remote-windows-machine}

Enable Network Level Authentication on Windows XP

By default, remote desktop server (Terminal server) on Windows Vista or Windows 7 requires the client to have network level authentication enabled. However, Windows XP does not have network level authentication enabled by default.

You can allow non-NLA client to connect on the server side. I do not recommend to do that because it downgrades the security.

To enable network level authentication on Windows XP, first, you have to make sure you have upgraded to Windows XP Service Pack 3. The NLA is not enabled in Windows XP SP3 by default, you also need to do the following to enable it:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press Enter.
2. In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
   In the details pane, right-click Security Packages, and then click Modify.
   In the Value data box, type tspkg. Leave any data that is specific to other SSPs, and then click OK.
3. In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders
   In the details pane, right-click SecurityProviders, and then click Modify.
   In the Value data box, type credssp.dll. Leave any data that is specific to other SSPs, and then click OK.
4. Exit regedit and restart the computer

Shortcut keys for special characters

http://www.nouilles.info/keyboard_shortcuts.html

Online safe HTML encoder

If you want to post XML or HTML source code into your blog, try use the encoder/formatter/converter below:

Generate md5 hash in command line

• On Mac OS X

  md5 -s "string"

• On Linux

  echo -n "string" | md5sum

• Use the online MD5 calculator: http://www.adamek.biz/md5-generator.php