Recently after migrating to Windows 7, I’ve been encoutering the this message a lot from Outlook 2003.

After poking around a bit (like removing and re-adding my mail account, removing and re-adding my personal and archive folders, etc), the only solution that worked for me is to force Outlook to recreate the OST file. For those who are interested the location of the file is at:

Windows 7:
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\

Windows XP:
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\

Just rename all the files with the .ost extension to something else and try to start Outlook again.

This morning Outlook gave me a big scare. Nope, it didn’t deliver a particularly nasty email, but it crashed as soon as it started. Here’s a look at the nasty error message:

No amount of begging and coaxing would make Outlook start normally, so I started Outlook on Safe Mode and after it managed to start without error, ended it in hopes that it will fix whatever stuff that is wrong when the program quits. And guess what? It did.

So, for anyone who encounters the above error, the first thing you can do before trying the myriad of troubleshooting suggestions found on the internet, give Outlook a chance to fix itself by starting it in Safe Mode. To start Outlook on Safe Mode go to Start -> Run and type:
outlook /safe

I recently purchased a Compaq C749TU via the Citibank Malaysia Shell Card promotion (stated as HP Compaq PC700 Notebook on their promotion). It came with FreeDOS and since I have an unused version of Windows XP, I decided to install on it. Read the rest of this entry »

Scenario: You have one Oracle database with 3 different SID for different purposes: DR (disaster recovery), UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and SIT (System Integration Testing). You are tasked to configure the Database to open one port for each of the SID to control access. Piece of cake, you will only need to edit two oracle configuration files to achieve it. Read the rest of this entry »

Scenario: Your AIX server has OpenSSH installed and sFTP configured. How do you restrict sFTP users from accessing other shells (like ksh, bash, csh, scp, ftp, etc)? How do you prevent them from traversing through your directories and potentially doing all sorts of damage?

The answer: Set up rssh with chroot jail. Restricted shell (rssh) is a replacement for the standard shell (in AIX’s case, ksh) to be used with OpenSSH that lets you restrict shell access to only sftp and scp. It supports chroot jail which is a method to sandbox users and programs in a specific directory. Read the rest of this entry »