Sunday, November 26, 2006

NetAddiction.com featured on ZDNet

One of our clients was featured on ZDNet - http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/index.php?p=604 :

Internet Addiction Self-Test, Center for Internet Addiction Recovery

Internet addiction is a type of compulsive disorder and as an organization, we are specifically dedicated to helping people who suffer from this new form of addictive behavior:

Cybersexual Affairs, Cyberporn Addiction, Chat Room Addiction, Obsessive Role Play Gaming, Compulsive Online Gambling, eBay Addiction, Compulsive Surfing…

How do you know if you're already addicted or rapidly tumbling toward trouble? Developed by Dr. Kimberly Young, the Internet Addiction Test is a 20-item questionnaire that measures mild, moderate, and severe levels of Internet Addiction.

SiteUptime - Monitor your website for any failures

I'd like to clue readers in on a great service - SiteUptime Web Site Monitoring - with SiteUptime you can receive email and SMS alerts anytime your web site goes down. We find tools like this indispensable to ensure the highest possible percentage of uptime for our clients.

Laurasnotes.com - coming soon!

check out laurasnotes.com -a preeminent stationery website with features for all major stationery products - invitations, cards, etc., one of our newer clients that is launching a sophisticated e-commerce site soon, to allow customers to create and place orders online! This site will feature a WYSIWYG product editor, and an easy to use interface for customers and the business owner.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Removing the Small Business Server Domain Controller Requirement

Have you ever wanted to use your license of Microsoft Small Business Server, just to use the base Windows Server 2003 portion? I know, I know, there are so many advantages to having a domain and using exchange, etc... etc... etc....

For my purposes, I wasn't interested!

So, going through the SBS install, I decided to skip the follow-on steps after installing Windows Server 2003. All was well for exactly 1 week, when for some reason, the server began shutting down, hourly. Not cool.

After taking a peek at the Event Viewer, I found this:

"This computer must be configured as a domain controller. It will be shut down in 60 minutes. To prevent this computer from shutting down, run Setup on the disk that you used to install the operating system to configure the computer as a domain controller."

See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555087

Next, I did what I always do, I Googled for a way around this... Luckily I came across a great post here: http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?t=173731

The post is about 3/4 of the way down the page by Blarghie.

Worked like a charm and I am very thankful! It saved me a huge headache. Here's the basics of what he said:

The first thing I did was to install the server normally, the first chance you get to cancel the install of SBS bloat is when Windows starts for the first time after install, I seized my opportunity.

What I didn't see however was the quite frankly ridiculous scenario whereby Microsoft had decided to force restart the server every hour and NET SEND spam the network "this server doesn't comply with licensing requirements" across the entire network. Microsoft can stick that.

Anyway, like I said it was Pafts post that brought me here to the forum, and I've found a slightly more elegant solution to this problem rather than just aggressively killing the process until Windows gives up trying to start it again, and I'd like to share it in the hope that Google will re-index and pick it up for others to use. You may have noticed this service cannot be disabled via the MMC snap-in.

My search term on google was: how to stop the SBCore service

Anyway, down to business…
- Tools you'll need – Process Explorer from www.sysInternals.com

As you probably know, you have a service called SBCore or "SBS Core Services", which executes the following process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\sbscrexe.exe

If you kill it, it just restarts – and if you try and stop it you are told Access Denied.

If you fire up Process Explorer, you can select the process and Suspend it, now we can start to disable the thing.

Run RegEdit32.exe and expand the nodes until you reach the following hive / key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SBCore

Right click this, hit permissions and give the "Administrators" group on the local machine full access ( don't forget to replace permissions on child nodes ). F5 in regedit and you'll see all of the values and data under this key.

Select the "Start" DWORD and change it from 2 to 4 – this basically sets the service to the "Disabled" state as far as the MMC services snap-in (and windows for that matter) is concerned.

Next, adjust the permissions on the file C:\WINDOWS\system32\sbscrexe.exe so that EVERYONE account is denied any sort of access to this file.

Then go back to process explorer, and kill the sbscrexe.exe process, if it doesn't restart – congratulations!

Load up the services MMC snap-in and you should find that "SBS Core Services" is stopped and marked as Disabled.

Hope this helps you out like it did me!

Friday, November 17, 2006

Celebrating the Launch of LaBrozziGroup.com

After much hard work and dedication to this project, we are happy to announce the launch of LaBrozziGroup.com, LaBrozzi Insurance Group's first web site! LaBrozzi Insurance Group, Inc., is a leading personal insurer in northwest Pennsylvania, that continues to grow through aquisitions and new client policies.

After analyzing both regional and national levels of competition for LIG, we were able to establish a Search Engine Optimization strategy and outline a set of competitive functionality that not makes LIG's customers' lives easier (the ultimate goal), it also improves internal business processes for LIG. By moving several of the manual processes that were in place to the web, LaBrozzi Insurnace Group can now do business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and reach a national audience.

Through a custom e-newsletter web application that we developed, LIG can keep in touch with their customers and potential customers, as well as provide them with useful tips for improving their Insurance premiums. Users can also request several types of quotes, along with update their existing coverage or request changes to their account.

The web site and web application features were all developed in ASP.Net 1.1 (VB.Net) with SQL Server 2000 as the back end DBMS, and the site is hosted through protocol 80's hosting service.

Again, we are excited to introduce LaBrozziGroup.com!