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  • Norton Symantec Ghost is not displaying all my machines on the console
  • Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 is not showing embedded graphics
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It was not an easy task for me to setup the Norton Symantec Ghost Server in a production environment. It is a brand new server, brand new installation, brand new Symantec Ghost but yet I was unable to see any of my machines on the domain. After fiddling around for a while found out that the subnet was not configured to handle this. Basically my server was on one subnet and all my machines were on commodity subnet. As soon as I plugged in the server onto commodity network, it started working and I was able to view all my computers.

It was not as simple as this to figure this out, but if you run into the same problem, try it out it may help you.

Here is another new issue I came across. After working on the new Symantec Ghost server for couple of weeks, we had to do some Windows Operating System updates including the server environment. Everything went smoothly as far as I was concerned. In the morning I came in and fired up the console for Symantec Ghost, and to my disbelief I saw that all my machine names are displaying something I have never seen before. All my machines turned into, “Not Known” status. Here is the screen shot.

Anyways time to scratch my head off. I tried to find some information that will help me from Symantec forum, but my problem seemed to be very unique and found no help anywhere. As a good System Admin, by the process of elimination I have implemented the following steps:

1. 1. Undo the changes done by the update.
2. Uninstall and then reinstall Symantec Ghost Console
3. Removed all the computers from the Server and then tried to re-add them.

But every time I would remove one machine it would automatically come back as, “Not Known.” I had total of 120 licenses. After a while it crossed 150 entries on my console and all are displaying, “Not Known.” Then I thought to myself, lets see what happens if I turn off all my 120 machines. Sure enough as soon as I did that it stopped generating the error.

So the only thing that came to my mind that it might be a BAD Network Card. Of course it was. One by one I started to turn them back on, and the 39th machine was the culprit. I ordered a NIC and its been working like a charm ever since.

Now I am not entirely sure if anyone will have this problem or not but just something to look for if you suddenly see all your Symantec Ghost machines are taken over by “Not Known” zombie.

Cheers.

Today I was puzzled with a Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 problem that took me about an hour to figure out.

Here is the issue: One of my user is having, “embedded graphics/pictures not displaying” issue. Where the picture is supposed to be (in this case it was a screenshot pasted into the HTML email format) there is a “x” sign and a white rectangle box. However the user can see the picture when she tries to forward the message. After further investigation I have noticed that I can see any other pictures from old emails, just not from new emails. Obviously this should have clicked in my brain but it didn’t. I searched the net and found few different solutions. I tried them all. Here are my steps.

Here are the things I have tried unsuccessfully:

Method 01 trying to fix embedded image issue on Office Outlook 2003:

1. Open Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 under the username that is having the trouble.
2. Click on Tools from the Menu bar at the top.
3. Select Option.
4. Click on *Change Automatic Download Settings* button under Download Pictures section.
5. Make Sure all 4 boxes are checked.
6. Apply and exit out from Outlook.
7. Reopen.

Technically this should have worked. But it didn’t in my case.

Method 02 trying to fix embedded image issue on Office Outlook 2003:

1. Check for any Microsoft updates.
2. I have found that there were some office updates that needed to be done.
3. After doing the update, I have restarted the Outlook but still no images.

Here is the method that worked: While it was updating, I realized that it is only happening to new messages with embedded pictures in them but not to old messages. I then thought to myself, it may has something to do with temporary folder where outlook stores its attached or embedded pictures. Then I followed the steps below:

1. 1. Locate Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 temporary Items folder. You can do this by going to Start > Run > HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security
2. Double click the *OutlookSecureTempFolder* and then select Modify.
3. Select and Copy the Value data however way you want. (Remember: the value is like: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLKX where X is a randomly generated number. It will be different for different users but may be the same sometimes on different machines.)
4. Now go to Start > Run
5. Paste the Value data you copied in step 3 into the Open section and then press Enter button on your keyboard.
6. It will bring you to that user’s temporary items location.
7. Select all the items in there and delete them.
8. Close the Temporarry Items folder.
9. Open Office Outlook 2003 and like a magic the picture started to display.

What I did not try: Uninstalling and reinstalling is something I don’t want to try right of the bet. I did not want to reinstall Office 2003 program.

Hope this helps some others. If you have any other tips please let me know.

Further to my post below, today (Thursday, December 18, 2008) I have found another possible variant of bobzop.com as colzop.com. I was unable to find any information on the Internet, but it presents the same symptoms as described below. Be careful clinking on any links from your MSN.

This is possibly a new virus or spy ware for your computer. Time to time some users of MSN messenger are receiving a message such as: *Hey (Friend name) this site is giving away free blackberry phones if you are willing to test one, hurry before they give them all away go to http://(myname).bobzop.com* <—- DON’T CLICK THE LINK!

While I don’t know much about this but seriously speaking no one is going to give away free blackberry phones. It also appears that you will find this message on many different versions of MSN including the Live Messenger. The solution so far seems to be the following:

1. If you receive such message from a contact on your MSN list contact the user
2. Inform them about the problem
3. Ask them to change their password for MSN messenger
4. Run a scan on their computer with an up to date anti virus program
5. Run a scan with spy ware software

If the user is not helpful and do not want to do any of these, you may want to block the user for awhile.

If anyone else has any other solutions please let us know.

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