Open .eml attachments in Outlook 2003/2007

I came across a problem today where some co-workers were forwarded a bunch of emails that were attached as files, instead of inline, but they couldn’t open them. They kept trying to open in Outlook Express, which we don’t use. I could have just let them open all the attachments in Outlook Express, it wouldn’t have been a huge deal. But if they wanted to respond back to them they would have to bounce back and forth between the two – slightly annoying. I googled and found this website where you can download the registry key that allows you to open the .eml files in Outlook 2003 or 2007. You just have to make sure you install the key for the correct version of Outlook and either the 32 or 64-bit version of windows (most of you are probably 32-bit).

Before you install the key, you have to make sure you have all the current windows updates associated with Outlook, it won’t work if you don’t. After you check for updates, all you have to do is download the zip file, open it, and double click on the version that matches what you have – the key will install itself. You don’t need to restart the computer and I don’t think you even need to restart Outlook, if it was open. The .eml attachment should now open in Outlook without any problems.

If the link for the .zip file on that website ever dies, I uploaded it here.

“The Facebook Team” has sent you a virus!

Yet another email is floating around out there trying to get you to download a file that’s really a virus. It’s sent from “The Facebook Team” and says something like “for security reasons your password had to be reset” and it tells you to download the .zip or .exe file that is attached (Facebook_Password_4cf91.zip or Facebook_Password_4cf91.exe).

If you look at the email closely enough, it probably isn’t even addressed to you. My Aunt got this email and the name they used referring to her, in the body of the email, was just a bunch of random letters. That, the random letters at the end of the file name and the fact that there is even an attachment at all should throw up red flags. But there will always be people who fall for this kind of thing or just don’t pay attention and download it anyway, which is why there are geeks like me around to fix things when this happens. Unless you reset your password yourself and triggered a confirmation email, you will not get these kind of emails, period.

My Aunt flipped out because she thought she may have saved the file on her computer so this prompted me to do a bit of research on what this virus is. I found the virus total report that shows which scanners are able to locate and eliminate the virus. Only 14 out of the 41 scanners are able to detect it – my Aunt happens to have Symantec, which if you notice is not one of those 14. I’m currently running F-Secure’s online scan and will run Microsoft’s Security Essentials since both of those are listed as being able to detect it.

Here’s the page on F-Secure’s website about the virus. There isn’t a whole lot of information on it. But it does list a registry key that is installed.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\”RunGrpConv” = “1″

If you’re comfortable working with computers you can check the registry yourself for that key. If not then I suggest running the F-Secure online scan on complete mode, if you have time to let it sit for awhile, and also running Microsoft Security Essentials. They are both user-friendly and free. Just be sure to remove security essentials once you’re done if you do have another anti-virus currently installed. Having more than one can really slow the computer down.

The good news is, from what I’ve read it looks like it’s just another virus that causes messages to pop up telling you that you need to pay to download a fake anti-virus in order to fix your computer.  So it doesn’t appear to be something that is terribly difficult to get rid of.

• F-Secure’s online scan
• Microsoft Security Essentials

Disable the restart now prompt

I’m sure you recognize the reminder we all love to hate.  I could easily disable automatic updates altogether so I don’t get the prompt at all, but knowing me, I’d forget to check for months at a time.  I went searching for a better solution mainly because I was playing a game online one day when the prompt came up in the middle of the game, which forced the game to minimize.  There’s nothing like being in the middle of an attack by a horde of zombies (Left 4 dead, ftw!) when the game suddenly minimizes to remind me to restart my computer!  Ahhh!

Permanently stop Windows Update from both restarting your computer automatically and reminding you to restart:

1. Go to start -> run (for Vista type this in the search bar), type gpedit.msc.
2. Navigate to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components – > Windows Update.
3. Double-click No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations and enable it.
4. Then to stop that irritating reminder from popping up every 10 minutes, double-click on Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations.  You would think that disabling this would disable the reminder, but it does the same leaving it not configured would do – allows the reminder to popup to interrupt you every 10 minutes.  I don’t quite understand that.  But anyway, after opening the box for this, click on enable and type a 1440 in the box.  This will set it to remind you once a day so you can restart it whenever you want.

I don’t have a Vista box here to test it on, but I’m fairly certain the directions are the same.  If not, leave a comment and I’ll update them.

Recover deleted email in Outlook

We had a co-worker come to us asking if it was possible to recover some email messages she had accidentally deleted using shift+delete, which skips the trash folder entirely. I’m not sure how one accidentally presses two keys that really aren’t next to each other and happens to delete important emails, but I have learned not to ask. I googled it and came up with a simple solution.

1. Exit Outlook.
2. Open the Windows registry editor.
3. Browse to My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options.
4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type the name DumpsterAlwaysOn.
Note Do not type any spaces in the name.
6. Set the DWORD value to 1.
7. Restart Outlook.

The Tools menu now has the Recover Deleted Items command for every Outlook folder.

Source: Microsoft Office Online

How to create a bootable USB drive

You would think that you would be able to Google the title of this post and easily find a link that would make this possible. I’ve spent a lot of time the last few days doing that exact same thing and not finding much in the way of things that actually work. I wanted a bootable usb drive so I could throw ghost and ghostwalk on it and whatever image we wanted to use. It would save me from having to burn a new CD every time I wanted to use a different image, this way I just delete and copy/paste.

What you will need:

• Boot disk files – you can Google boot disk and get what you need. If you still have a floppy drive in your computer and happen to have a disk laying around you can pop it in, go to my computer -> right-click on the floppy -> format -> and check the box that says create an MS-DOS startup disk.
• HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool – The weird thing is that I couldn’t even find that on their website. But once again Google comes to the rescue, there are plenty of links to it out there.

What to do:

1. Open the HP format tool.
2. Make sure you select the correct drive.
3. Choose either of the FAT file system options.
4. Under volume label give the USB drive a name.
5. Check the box for creating a DOS startup disk and select using dos system files located at:. This is where you either point to your floppy drive if you created a boot disk or to the folder where you downloaded the files to. Tell it to start.
6. You aren’t quite done yet. Go to my computer and open the location of the startup files that you either downloaded or had windows put on the floppy – copy those and paste them onto the flash drive. DO NOT overwrite any files when prompted.
7. Done. Now you can use it as is or add more files to it like I did with ghost and ghostwalk.