How to change the drive letter in Windows XP for an external USB stick or hard drive

This is a guide on how to change a drive letter in Windows XP for an external device. Here’s a common problem that I have seen: Plug a USB flash drive into your computer and it’s says ready to use, but for some reason nothing shows up in the list of drives. Take it out, plug it back in and still nothing shows up!!! What the heck is the problem? Well, it could be several things, but the most common issue is that the drive letter Windows is trying to assign to your device is already taken by some other drive or maybe mapped to a network drive.

Sadly, Windows XP does not figure this out itself (which is should) and your drive is basically lost in la-la land somewhere. In order to fix it, we need to go to Computer Management and change the drive letter there manually. There are two ways to get to the Computer Management dialog in Windows, one through Control Panel and the second by right-clicking My Computer and choosing Manage.

Right-click My Computer

Computer Management in Administrative Tools

Click on Disk Management under the Storage section and the right side will show you all of the current drives and partitions on your drive. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, just find the drive you are looking for in the graphs at the bottom. They are usually named Disk 0, Disk 1, CD-ROM, CD-ROM1, etc. If you’re looking for a USB flash drive, you’ll see the word “Removable” underneath Disk X.

As you can see from my computer, I plugged in a USB flash drive and it’s currently assigned drive letter is F. If you want to change this, right-click in the white space to the right of the drive letter and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Click the Change button in the dialog box and then pick a new letter from the drop-down list. Just for your info, the Mount in the following NTFS folder option is used if you had right clicked on an external hard drive and instead of giving it a drive letter, you wanted to just have it show up as a folder on your current hard drive. That means you could create a folder in My Documents called pictures that actually points to another hard drive instead of one where all of your My Documents are currently stored.

Click Ok twice and your drive should now have the new letter assigned. Usually, if you USB stick was not showing up before, once you change the letter, it will automatically pop up and ask you what you want to do. And that’s about it! You can also use Disk Management to format disks, determine the type of File System, and see the amount of free space available.

[tags]windows xp, change drive letter, change xp drive letter, windows xp[/tags]

Fix “\\computer is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource”

I’ve previously written an article on how to network two computers together that are running Windows XP. I’ve also written about a cool program called WiPeer that lets you connect two computers wirelessly and share data!

However, I’ve never really written a troubleshooting guide for file sharing or networking two computers. Unfortunately, Windows can be finicky and even though you may think everything should work, accessing a share on another computer may not work.

So if you’ve read my post on creating a peer to peer network at home, but still cannot access a share on another computer on the same network, try out the following troubleshooting tips!

1. Workgroup – Make sure that each computer that you want to access is in the same workgroup. The name of the workgroup should be exactly the same on every computer. Also, be sure to use the same case for the names (all upper or all lower).

2. File and Printer Sharing – Make sure that file and printer sharing is turned on for the network adapter. You can enable this by going to Control Panel, Network Connections, right-clicking on the network connection, choosing Properties and making sure File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks is checked.

3. Correct Subnet and IP addresses – You really shouldn’t have this problem if all your computers are connected to the same router, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Make sure that the Subnet Mask and Default Gateway are the same for all computers. If these are not the same, then you will have issues connecting the computers over the network.

You can view these details by going to Start, Run, typing CMD and then typing IPCONFIG /ALL at the command prompt on each computer.

4. Check Firewalls – My suggestion here would be to first disable the Windows Firewall on all computers and then try to access the shared folders. Also, be sure to disable any third-party firewall programs like Norton or Comodo.

If you find that the sharing works with the firewall off, make sure to add File and Printer Sharing to the exceptions list in your Windows Firewall and third-party firewall programs.

5. Shared Permissions – If you are getting the “You might not have permission to use this network resource…Access is Denied.”, your problem could also be that the permissions for the shared directory are not properly set.

Depending on whether you are running XP Home or XP Pro, you will have to configure the sharing properly. For XP Home, you can only share files using Simple File Sharing. It’s pretty easy because they have a wizard to walk you through the sharing process.

For XP Pro, you need to disable Simple File Sharing and set the NTFS permissions and share permissions to allow everyone access. You can read my post here on how to configure share and NTFS permissions in Windows.

6. Use TCP/IP Protocol – You probably don’t have to worry about this either, but just to cover all bases, you need to make sure that the computers on the network are all using the Internet TCP/IP protocol to communicate and not IPX/SPX or NetBEUI.

You can go to Start, Control Panel, Network Connections, right-click on the network connection, choose Properties and see which protocol is listed in the list box.

7. Username and Passwords – If you’ve done everything above correctly and still can’t connect, then you can also try making sure that the usernames and passwords on all computers are exactly the same.

It’s best to have passwords on all accounts and to create a new account on each computer with the same username and password. Sometimes it’s important to create a new account instead of just changing the name or password on an existing account. Make sure the accounts are Administrators.

8. Computer Names – Make sure that the NetBIOS names for all computers are unique. NetBIOS names are only 8 characters, so if you named one computer JohnnyBoy1 and JohnnyBoy2, they will have the same NetBIOS name.

Make sure that the first eight characters of a computer name are unique, otherwise you will have problems.

9. Local Security Policy – Another reason you may not be able to access another computer across the network is because of a local security policy.

You can go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Local Security Policy, Local Policies, Security Options. Now find the following policy:

Network access: Do not allow anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts and shares

Make sure that the value is set to Disabled. Also, make sure to disable only the setting that says “SAM accounts and shares” not the one that says “SAM accounts” only.

10. Uninstall anti-virus and Internet Security – Finally, make sure that all your anti-virus programs are either turned off or uninstalled to test out the connection. If you have any Internet Security program such as Norton Internet Security or Kaspersky Internet Security, disable them!

That’s about it! Those are all the tips I can think of for troubleshooting file sharing issues in Windows! If you still can’t access a network share, post what you’ve tried up till now and I’ll try to help!

How to create an "Invisible" hidden drive in Windows

You’ve probably read a bunch of posts on how to create hidden folders, secure folders, locked folders, etc, etc in Windows on many occasions! Hell, one of the most popular articles on this blog is How to create a secure and locked folder in Windows XP. However, hiding a folder is a tricky proposition and usually doesn’t work well unless you use something like Truecrypt.
But there’s yet ANOTHER way you can hide your “private” files using a nifty little registry hack that will completely remove an entire drive from your computer. The drive will not show up in My Computer, will not be accessible from the command prompt, and won’t even show up in Safe Mode!
Ok, so here’s how to implement the hack: first off, back up your registry as this requires adding a key to the registry. Once you’ve backed up your registry, open the registry editor by clicking on Start, Run and typing in regedit.

Now navigate to the following registry hive shown below:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\Explorer
Right-click on Explorer and choose New and then DWORD Value.

Name the new value NoDrives and then double click on it to open the properties dialog box. Click on Decimal for the Base unit.

Type in one of the following values depending on that drive letter you want to hide.

A: 1B: 2C: 4D: 8 E: 16

F: 32G: 64H: 128I: 256 J: 512

K: 1024L: 2048M: 4096N: 8192 O: 16384

P: 32768Q: 65536R: 131072S: 262144 T: 524288

U: 1048576V: 2097152W: 4194304X: 8388608 Y: 16777216

Z: 33554432All: 67108863

If you want to hide drive E, just type in the value 16. The really cool thing about this trick is the fact that you can hide multiple drives by adding the numbers of the particular drives together. For example, if you want to hide drive E and drive G, you would type in the number 80, which is 64 + 16.
Restart your computer and your drive will now be hidden! Trying to hide your system drive (C) will not work as Windows has to use this drive to run correctly, so don’t store your secret files there!
When you want to get your drives back, change the value of NoDrives to 0 or simply delete the value altogether. Of course, having to do this everyday can be a pain, so if you’re up for it, you can try and write a registry file that will allow you to insert and delete the value by just double-clicking a file.
This trick also works for mapped drives, so if you want to hide mapped drives, you can do it this way (though it might just be easier to disconnect a mapped drive).
Enjoy!

How to create a Windows XP hidden folder share

If you have multiple computers on a network and want to share folders between them, you can add an extra bit of security by creating a hidden Windows share. This guide is fairly basic and assumes that you are in either a workgroup or domain Windows environment. Hidden shares are useful if you want to share a folder, but only want it accessed by people who you’ve given the share name to.
Of course, a hidden share does NOT ensure that someone cannot gain access to the folder if they try hard enough. It’s best to use this as an extra security step along with your other network security policies. If you’re in a Windows domain, like within a corporate network, you will find that 99% of the time, your local hard drives are shared out. These are called admin shares in IT lingo. Basically, it’s configured that way so that any administrator can connect to any computer on the network and access all of the local files.
The admin shares are also all hidden shares, so that anyone browsing the network will not see them. You can see if your local drives are shared out by going to My Computer, right-clicking on the local C drive (or whatever letter you have), and choosing Properties. Click on the Sharing tab and you’ll see that “Share this folder” is selected and the share name is C$.

The $ symbol after the share name is what makes the folder hidden on the network. As you can see here, my entire C hard drive is shared out since I’m on a corporate domain. Remember, this means that any Administrator can access all of your files at any time! So you really have no privacy in a Windows domain.
Of course, to share a folder on a home network or even in your office, follow the same procedure as described above. By default, when you click Share this folder, the share name is filled in with the name of the folder. Just add the $ right after the share name without any spaces. Also, if you want people to be able to add and delete files in the folder, you’ll need to click on the Permissions button and click either Change or Full Control.

Change is usually good enough because it allows people to add files and delete files. Full Control allows someone to change the permissions on the folder itself.
In order to access the hidden share in Windows, you need to go to Windows Explorer (My Computer) and type the full UNC path to the folder. If that didn’t make any sense, the UNC path is simply the computer name and folder name that you want to access. So if I shared a folder called MyFiles as MyFiles$ on a computer named Comp1, I would access that folder by going to My Computer and typing in the address bar:
\\Comp1\MyFiles$
As long as everything was setup correctly, the contents of the folder should pop up without a problem!

And that’s it! You have now shared a folder on the network that is hidden! Enjoy!
[tags]windows hidden share, folder share, windows admin share, administrative share, create hidden share, view hidden share[/tags]

How to hide files in JPEG pictures

If you’re looking to hide files on your PC hard drive, you may have read about ways to encrypt folders or change the attributes on a file so that they cannot be accessed by prying eyes. However, a lot of times hiding files or folders in that way requires that you install some sort of software on your computer, which could then be spotted by someone else.
I’ve actually written quite a few articles on how you can hide files and folders in Windows XP and Vista before, but here I’m going to show you a new way to hide files that is very counter-intuitive and therefore pretty safe! Using a simple trick in Windows, you can actually hide a file inside of the JPG picture file!
You can actually hide any type of file inside of an image file, including txt, exe, mp3, avi, or whatever else. Not only that, you can actually store many files inside of single JPG file, not just one! This can come in very handy if you need to hide files and don’t want to bother with encryption and all that other technical stuff.

Hide File in Picture

In order to accomplish this task, you will need to have either WinZip or WinRAR installed on your computer. You can download either of these two off the Internet and use them without having to pay anything. Here are the steps for creating your hidden stash:

• Create a folder on your hard drive, i.e. C:\Test and put in all of the files that you want to hide into that folder. Also, place the image that you will be using to hide the files in.

• Now select all of the files that you want to hide, right-click on them, and choose the option to add them to a compressed ZIP or RAR file. Only select the files you want to hide, not the picture. Name it whatever you want, i,e. “Hidden.rar”.

• Now you should have a folder that looks something like this with files, a JPG image, and a compressed archive:

• Now here’s the fun part! Click on Start, and then click on Run. Type in “CMD” without the quotes and press Enter. You should now see the command prompt window open. Type in “CD \” to get to the root directory. Then type CD and the directory name that you created, i.e. “CD Test“.

• Now type in the following line: “copy /b DSC06578.JPG + Hidden.rar DSC06578.jpg” and press Enter. Do not use the quotes. You should get a response like below:

Just make sure that you check the file extension on the compressed file, whether it is .ZIP or .RAR as you have to type out the entire file name with extension in the command. I have heard that some people say that they have had problems doing this with a .ZIP extension, so if that doesn’t work, make sure to compress to a .RAR file.
And that’s it! The picture file will have been updated with the compressed archive inside! You can actually check the file size of the picture and see that it has increased by the same amount as the size of the archive.
You can access your hidden file in two ways. Firstly, simply change the extension to .RAR and open the file using WinRAR. Secondly, you can just right-click on the JPG image and choose Open With and then scroll down to WinRAR. Either way, you’ll see your hidden files show up that you can then extract out.

That’s it! That is all it takes to hide files inside JPG picture files! It’s a great way simply because not many people know it’s possible and no one even thinks about a picture as having to the ability to “hide” files. Enjoy!
[tags]hide files, hide file in picture, hide file in pictures, hiding files in pictures, hide file in image[/tags]

How to map a drive in Windows

Mapping drives is Windows

is one of the essential actions everyone should know how to do. Whether you are at home or at the office, there comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to map a drive! It sounds all complicated, but it’s actually really simple to do.
You may need to get some information from your IT administrator at work, since mapping a drive usually means connecting to a server

share. A server share is basically a folder on a different computer that is being shared with everyone else. So when you “map a drive”, you are just saying that you want access to that folder on your computer also, which is done by mapping it to a letter, i.e. F, G, H, etc.
In this article, I’ll explain how you can map a drive in Windows XP, Windows Vista, and even map a drive via the command prompt.

Map a drive in Windows XP

Open My Computer and click on the Tools menu option. From the drop down list, choose Map Network Drive.

Pick a drive letter that you want to use to access the shared folder and then type in the UNC path to the folder. UNC path is just a special format for pointing to a folder on another computer. You first use two slashes “\\” and then the computer name, \\testcomp and then another “\” followed by the shared folder name, \\testcomp\foldername.

Click on “Reconnect at logon” to make the connection permanent, which means the drive will still be mapped even after you restart the computer.

If you’re not sure what the name of the folder is, you can click on Browse and try to find the computer that way. Click on Entire Network, then Microsoft Windows Network and then expand out the workgroup or domain that your computer is in.

If there are any shared folders on a computer, you will be able to see them here by expanding each computer individually. Click Finish and you have now mapped a drive!

How to map a network drive in Vista

Mapping a network drive in Vista is slightly different than in XP, but pretty simple also. First, click on Computer from your Start Menu or Desktop. You’ll see a couple of buttons across the top, one of them being “Map network drive“.

Other than the fancy interface, all of the options are the same! Choose a drive letter, type in the folder path, choose “Reconnect at logon” and click Finish!

Remember, the folder can be located on a local or remote server or even to a FTP site!

How to map a drive using command prompt

First click on Start and then Run. Type cmd in the Open box.

Then type the following DOS command to map the network drive:

net use x: \\computer name\share name

where x: is the drive letter you want to assign to the shared folder.

You can delete a mapped network drive using the command prompt by typing in

net use x: /delete

If you have any problems mapping a drive in Windows, post a comment and I’ll try to help you out! Enjoy!
[tags]map network drives, map drives, map a drive, how to map a drive, how to map network drives[/tags]

Layer by Layer Troubleshooting with a Cisco Router

Every network admin is going to have trouble with network links on a Cisco router, at one point or another. The best way to troubleshoot any networking issues is to use the OSI model and go layer by layer. In my article How to use the OSI Model to Troubleshoot Networks, we talked about the different troubleshooting approaches and how to use them to troubleshoot your network, in general. In this article, you will find out how to use the OSI model to troubleshoot, bottom up, using a Cisco router.

OSI Model - Bottom Up Troubleshooting

If you will recall, the OSI model starts with the physical layer (layer 1) and goes up to layer 7 (application). When troubleshooting with a Cisco router, much of your time will be spent working in layers 1-3. They are:

• Layer 3 - Network
• Layer 2 - Data Link
• Layer 1 - Physical

Because these layers build on each other, Layer 1 is most critical, without layer 1, layer 2 will not function. Without layer 1 & 2, layer 3 will not function, and so on. For this reason, I start troubleshooting at layer 1, physical, and move on up from there.

Router Troubleshooting at OSI Layer 1 & 2 - Physical & Data link

Remember, if Layer 1 isn't up, nothing else will work so make sure you start here. Examples of layer 1 are your T1 circuit or your Ethernet cable - physical connectivity. I usually troubleshoot layer 1 and layer 2 in union because they are so closely paired. Examples of layer 2 - data link - are your line protocol (such as Ethernet, ATM, 802.11, PPP, frame-relay, HDLC, or PPP).

To troubleshoot at these layers, the first thing I would do on your router is a show interface. Here is an example of a LAN Gigabit Ethernet circuit:

To troubleshoot at these layers, the first thing I would do on your router is a show interface. Here is an example of a LAN Gigabit Ethernet circuit:

Router# show interface
GigabitEthernet0/0 is up, line protocol is up
Hardware is BCM1125 Internal MAC, address is 0015.2b46.5000 (bia 0015.2b46.5000)
Description: LAN Connection to Data center
Internet address is 10.20.100.1/16
MTU 1500 bytes, BW 1000000 Kbit, DLY 10 usec,
reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255
Encapsulation ARPA, loopback not set
Keepalive set (10 sec)
Full-duplex, 1000Mb/s, link type is autonegotiation, media type is RJ45
output flow-control is XON, input flow-control is XON
ARP type: ARPA, ARP Timeout 04:00:00
Last input 00:00:00, output 00:00:00, output hang never
Last clearing of "show interface" counters never
Input queue: 0/75/0/0 (size/max/drops/flushes); Total output drops: 0
Queueing strategy: weighted fair
Output queue: 0/1000/64/0 (size/max total/threshold/drops)
Conversations 0/2/256 (active/max active/max total)
Reserved Conversations 0/0 (allocated/max allocated)
Available Bandwidth 750000 kilobits/sec
5 minute input rate 3218000 bits/sec, 1715 packets/sec
5 minute output rate 1390000 bits/sec, 2129 packets/sec
1416888620 packets input, 15402720 bytes, 0 no buffer
Received 0 broadcasts, 0 runts, 0 giants, 0 throttles
0 input errors, 0 CRC, 0 frame, 0 overrun, 0 ignored
0 watchdog, 1556005 multicast, 0 pause input
0 input packets with dribble condition detected
1666663097 packets output, 573841802 bytes, 0 underruns
19 output errors, 0 collisions, 3 interface resets
0 babbles, 0 late collision, 0 deferred
19 lost carrier, 0 no carrier, 0 pause output
0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out

Here is what a WAN T1or T3 circuit might look like:

Routerl# show interface serial 3/0
Serial3/0 is up, line protocol is up
Hardware is DSXPNM Serial
Description: Sprint T3
Internet address is 10.2.100.2/30
MTU 4470 bytes, BW 9000 Kbit, DLY 200 usec,
reliability 255/255, txload 77/255, rxload 26/255
Encapsulation HDLC, crc 16, loopback not set
Keepalive set (10 sec)
Last input 00:00:00, output 00:00:00, output hang never
Last clearing of "show interface" counters never
Input queue: 0/75/0/0 (size/max/drops/flushes); Total output drops: 18394
Queueing strategy: fifo
Output queue: 0/40 (size/max)
5 minute input rate 927000 bits/sec, 1914 packets/sec
5 minute output rate 2752000 bits/sec, 1504 packets/sec
1560997932 packets input, 3254680247 bytes, 0 no buffer
Received 255480 broadcasts, 1 runts, 1 giants, 0 throttles
1567 input errors, 1567 CRC, 976 frame, 496 overrun, 0 ignored, 908 abort
1303636803 packets output, 3737276508 bytes, 0 underruns
0 output errors, 0 collisions, 3 interface resets
0 output buffer failures, 0 output buffers swapped out
1 carrier transitions
DSU mode 1, bandwidth 9000, real bandwidth 9000, scramble 0

Here is the quick version:

Router# show ip interface brief
Interface IP-Address OK? Method Status Protocol
GigabitEthernet0/0 10.20.100.1 YES NVRAM up up
Serial3/0 10.2.100.2 YES NVRAM up up

Here is what you look for:

• Is the interface UP?
• Is the line protocol UP?
• If both the interface and line protocol are NOT up, your connection is never going to work.
• To resolve a line down, I look at the cable or the keepalives
• To resolve a line protocol down, check to make sure that the protocols match on each side of the connection(notice the "line protocol" on each of the interfaces above).
• Are you taking input, CRC, framing, or other errors on the line (notice how the serial interface above does show errors)? If so, check your cable or contact your provider.

In general, verify that you have a good cable on each side, verify that line protocols match, and that clocking settings are correct.

If this is an Ethernet connection, is there a link light on the switch?

If this is a serial connection, do you have an external CSU/DSU? If it is an external CSU, check that the Carrier Detect (CD) light & data terminal ready (DTR) lights are on. If not, contact your provider. This also applies if you have an internal Cisco WIC CSU card. If that is the case, take a look at this Cisco link on understanding the lights on that card.

You can, of course, use the Cisco IOS test commands to test your network interfaces with internal staff and with your telecommunications providers.

Do not proceed to upper level layers until your Physical interface on the router shows as being UP and your line protocol is UP. Until then, don't worry about IP addressing, pinging, access-lists or anything like that.

Router Troubleshooting at OSI Layer 3 - Network

Once you have Layers 1 & 2 working (your show interface command shows the line is "UP & UP", it is time to move on to layer 3 - the OSI Network layer. The easiest thing to do here to see if layer 3 is working is to ping the remote side of the LAN or WAN link from this router. Make sure you ping as close as possible to the router you are trying to communication with - from one side across to the other side.

Here are examples of successful & failed pings:

Router# ping 10.2.100.2

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 10.2.100.2, timeout is 2 seconds:
!!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 1/2/4 ms
Router#
Router#
Router#
Router#
Router# ping 1.1.1.1

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 1.1.1.1, timeout is 2 seconds:
.....
Success rate is 0 percent (0/5)
Router#

The easiest way to check the status of Layer 3 - the network layer - is to do a show ip interface brief, as I did above. Here is an example:

Router# show ip interface brief
Interface IP-Address OK? Method Status Protocol
GigabitEthernet0/0 10.20.100.1 YES NVRAM up up
Serial3/0 10.2.100.2 YES NVRAM up up

Notice the IP addressing on each of these interface. Also do a show running-config, like this (you can even specify an interface, like this):

Router# show running-config int serial3/0
Building configuration...

Current configuration : 225 bytes
!
interface Serial3/0
description Sprint T3
bandwidth 9000
ip address 10.2.100.2 255.255.255.252
no ip proxy-arp
no ip mroute-cache
dsu mode 1
dsu bandwidth 9000
no cdp enable
end

Router#

I would recommend taking this interface configuration and comparing it, side by side, with the remote WAN connection to ensure they are the same. Ask yourself questions like:

• Are these interfaces on the same IP network?
• Do these interfaces have the same subnet mask?
• Are there any access-lists (ACL) that are blocking your traffic?
• Can you remove all optional IP features to make sure that the basic configuration works before adding additional features that could be causing trouble?

Here is an example. Look at the two interfaces below. What is the real problem, causing these two to not communicate?

Router 1

interface Serial3/0 description Sprint T3 - TO ROUTER 2 bandwidth 9000 ip address 10.2.100.2 255.255.255.252

Router 2

interface Serial3/0 description Sprint T3 - TO ROUTER 1 bandwidth 1500 ip address 10.2.100.5 255.255.255.252

No, there is no problem with the bandwidth statement. Bandwidth statements are only used as comments and by routing protocols to select the best route. The real problem here is that the second router's serial interface is not on the same IP subnet as router #1. Even though they have the same subnet, the 10.2.100.5 IP address will never be able to communicate to the 10.2.100.2 IP address because they are on different networks but directly connected.

Let's say that you are now able to ping across the link, from one side to another. While that is a great sign, it doesn't always mean that everything is "fixed". You still may not be able to communicate from a client on the LAN of one router, to a client on the LAN of another router, due to things like improperly configured IP routing protocols.

For one LAN to communicate to another LAN, through routers (through a WAN, usually), you MUST have either static routes or dynamic routes configured. To ensure you have a route configured for the network you are trying to reach, do:

Router# show ip routes

and look at

Router# show ip protocols

For troubleshooting layers 3, all the way up, look at the output of this command:

Router# show ip interfaces

GigabitEthernet0/0 is up, line protocol is up
Internet address is 10.20.100.1/16
Broadcast address is 255.255.255.255
Address determined by non-volatile memory
MTU is 1500 bytes
Helper address is not set
Directed broadcast forwarding is disabled
Multicast reserved groups joined: 224.0.0.10
Outgoing access list is not set
Inbound access list is not set
Proxy ARP is disabled
Local Proxy ARP is disabled
Security level is default
Split horizon is enabled
ICMP redirects are always sent
ICMP unreachables are always sent
ICMP mask replies are never sent
IP fast switching is enabled
IP fast switching on the same interface is disabled
IP Flow switching is enabled
IP CEF switching is enabled
IP CEF Flow Fast switching turbo vector
IP multicast fast switching is disabled
IP multicast distributed fast switching is disabled
IP route-cache flags are Fast, Flow cache, CEF, Subint Flow
Router Discovery is disabled
IP output packet accounting is disabled
IP access violation accounting is disabled
TCP/IP header compression is disabled
RTP/IP header compression is disabled
Policy routing is disabled
Network address translation is enabled, interface in domain inside
WCCP Redirect outbound is disabled
WCCP Redirect inbound is disabled
WCCP Redirect exclude is disabled
BGP Policy Mapping is disabled

Router Troubleshooting at OSI Layers 4 - 7

Now, let's say that you have made it to the point where you can ping from LAN to LAN, through your WAN. Congratulations - that is a very good sign. If you are still having trouble, it must be in OSI Layers4-7. Here are those layers listed out and possible issues you might experience in each layer:

• Layer 4 - Transport - in the transport layer are TCP and UDP - you could be have an ACL or QoS feature blocking or slowing this traffic. Your TCP traffic could also be fragmented to the point that it could not be reassembled. Another option is that you may not be receiving an ACK back from your traffic that was successfully sent.
• Layer 5 - Session - in the session layer are protocols like SQL, NFS, SMB, or RPC - you could be taking errors on any one of these session protocols. I would recommend using a protocol analyzer like Wireshark to analyze your session data.
• Layer 6 - Presentation - in the Presentation layer are data encryption, compression, and formatting - your VPN tunnel could be failing or perhaps you are sending one type of data (like a MPEG) and the receiver is trying to view it as a WMV file.
• Layer 7 - Application - in the Application layer are, of course, your applications like FTP, HTTP, SCP, TFTP, TELNET, SSH, and more - you could be trying to connect to a telnet server with the SSH protocol, for example.
• Layer 8 - End User - the standing joke is that "Layer 8" is the user - the user could be just mistyping their username or password or you, the network admin, could have been troubleshooting the wrong IP address all along.

Summary

In summary, using the OSI model to troubleshoot connectivity issues is the fastest and most efficient way to troubleshoot any network issue. Even if someone calls you to work on a Windows share problem, all of the same principles in this article apply to that troublesooting process. So remember, the next time you work on a network issue - remember the OSI model and how to use the bottom-up approach to troubleshooting! It could same you a while lot of time!

WIsh u a very Happy New Year.-20new year wall papers

20 Happy New Year 2010 wallpapers

The new year 2010 (MMX) will be a common year starting on Friday in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It will also be the first year of the 2010s decade. Since we are facing problems related to climate change, the United Nations also proclaimed the year 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity. The proclamation of the International Year of Biodiversity is aimed at raising the awareness of people worldwide about the importance of biodiversity. Saving biodiversity requires an effort from everyone. The UN hopes that through activities and events in many countries, the global community will work together to ensure a sustainable future for us all.

Meanwhile, according to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of 2010 is the Year of the Tiger, which begins on February 14, 2010 and ends on February 2, 2011. The Tiger is the third sign in the cycle of Chinese Zodiac, which consists of 12 animal signs. It is a sign of courage. This fearless and fiery fighter is revered by the ancient Chinese as the sign that wards off the three main disasters of a household: fire, thieves and ghosts.

Thus, the Biodiversity Year and the year of the tiger has been the dominant theme of most New Year wallpapers for 2010. Here, we gathered 20 of the most creative new year wallpaper designs to welcome 2010. Have a happy new year everyone!

Happy New year 2010 Cool Wallpapers 01

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Happy New year 2010 Cool Wallpapers 02

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Happy New year 2010 Cool Wallpapers 11

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Happy New year 2010 Cool Wallpapers 12

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Happy New year 2010 Cool Wallpapers 14

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Happy New year 2010 Cool Wallpapers 15

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Happy New year 2010 Cool Wallpapers 19

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Happy New year 2010 Cool Wallpapers 20

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