None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient

Ok I had a very strange email issue today. One of my clients tried sending to various email addresses and kept getting a bounce message with “None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient” error. 

After some investigation a number of contacts had been setup to use “MAILTO” rather than “SMTP” (you can check this by double clicking on the contacts name) to resolve the issue I deleted the contact and typed them in, then doubled clicked on them to verify that it had defaulted to SMTP.

Form_Load and Textbox.Focus()

I was working on a project recently, where I had MDI forms with SplitContainers and I came across an annoying issue where the Split Containers split bar had the focus, and it made the form look really ugly, so upon load I wanted to set the focus to a textbox, however the normal method of Textbox.Focus() doesn’t seem to work when used inside the Form_Load event, the solution to this is rather simple

Me.ActiveControl = Me.Textbox

Firefox "advert" removal Plug-in

I recently came across a fantastic plug-in for Mozilla Firefox.

Ad-Block Plus lets you toggle adverts on and off, sounds pretty simple and it is. Browsing has become somewhat refreshing recently, not being constantly bombarded by adverts!

If you use Firefox I’d recommend you check it out https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865/

Free Antivirus

I see a lot of personal laptops of work colleges and friends and I am always surprised by the number of people not running an anti virus. Now days it seems you need a good antivirus and a good anti spyware. Very few antivirus packages provide both. There are a now a number of free antivirus products on the market; many years ago it was just AVG but recently products like Avast! and Avira’s AntiVir I always take online antivirus statistics with a pinch of salt, and I much prefer to go with personal experience. If you have the cash I’d recommend going with ESET NOD32 and also something like Prevx, I happen to be a reseller for both these products (Surprising that I’m recommending them then?) However if you don’t want to spend money, then I’d recommend going for Avira’s AntiVir. The only drawback to the free version of their product is the rather annoying popup adverts. Check out the AV Comparatives tests at http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/main-tests

Corrupt profiles Windows 7 (Domain users)

A client has been having some issues with their laptop, installers have been complaining that their ‘My Documents’ folder (redirected to H:\) doesn’t exist. After pushing and poking some settings I decided the quickest and easiest thing to do would be to recreate their user profile.

Reboot the system and login as another use (preferably Administrator) then browse to C:\Users and rename the user’s folder.

Normally when the user logs in next Windows will create a profile automatically, however under Windows 7 it decided to create a temporary profile.

It turns out Windows 7 stores the path that a user should be using for their profile under the following registry folder;-

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Look through the various folders listed until you find the one with your pesky profile, delete it and then login as normal.

5-Minute Management Course

I recived this via email earlier today and liked it enough that I though I'd steal it and share it with the rest of you.

5 Minute Management Course

Lesson 1 :

A priest offered a Nun a lift.

She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown to reveal a leg.

The priest nearly had an accident.

After controlling the car, he stealthily slid his hand up her leg...

The nun said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129?'

The priest removed his hand. But, changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg again. The nun once again said, 'Father, remember Psalm 129?'

The priest apologized 'Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.'

Arriving at the convent, the nun sighed heavily and went on her way.

On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm 129. It said, 'Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.'

Moral of the story:

If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a great opportunity.

Lesson 2 :

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp.

They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says, 'I'll give each of you just one wish.'


'Me first! Me first!' says the admin clerk.. 'I want to be in the Bahamas , driving a speedboat, without a care in the world.' Poof! She's gone.

'Me next! Me next!' says the sales rep. 'I want to be in Hawaii , relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas, and the love of my life.' Poof! He's gone.

'OK, you're up,' the Genie says to the manager. The manager says, 'I want those two back in the office after lunch.'

Moral of the story:

Always let your boss have the first say.

Lesson 3

An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing.

A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, 'Can I also sit like you and do nothing?' The eagle answered: 'Sure, why not.'

So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story:

To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

Lesson 4

A turkey was chatting with a bull. 'I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree' sighed the turkey, 'but I haven't got the energy.'

'Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?' replied the bull. It's full of nutrients.'

The turkey pecked at a lump of dung, and found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree.

The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch..

Finally after a fourth night, the turkey was proudly perched at the top of the tree.

He was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot him out of the tree.

Moral of the story:

Bull Shit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there...

Lesson 5

A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground into a large field.

While he was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on him.

As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was.

The dung was actually thawing him out!

He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate.


Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, and promptly dug him out and ate him.

Moral of the story:

(1) Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy.

(2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.

(3) And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut!

Firefox bookmarks recovery

I don’t tend to mess around with my own personal systems too much (as a kid I used to format almost monthly) now days I simply can’t be bothered. Recently my trial version of Windows 7 expired and I was forced to perform a clean install. Before I format any system I always like to try and take a Norton Ghost backup, this relevantly cheap piece of software (version 12 costs around £50) has quickly earned my appreciation and in terms of man hours I think it’s paid for itself already.

Looks like Norton Ghost is up to version 15 now but you can read a review of version 12 over at PCPro.co.uk

Anyway I just wanted to post myself a reminder (and others in case they’ve forgotten or don’t know) that it’s now pretty easy to restore bookmarks in Firefox (and this has been the case since version 1.5)

If you know beforehand that you’re going to reinstalling your OS then I’d recommend you start Firefox and go to Bookmarks -> Organise Bookmarks  -> Import and Backup -> Backup, this will then prompt you for the location to save the backup file (which will have the extension of .json)

If however you are like me and you forget to backup your bookmarks then provided you have a system backup then you can recover (I didn’t wipe my disk during the reinstall so Windows 7 [as I believe Vista also does] kindly created a Windows.old folder on my C drive so I didn’t actually need to use my Ghost backup)

Step 1: Locate your .json backup file, if you didn’t make one then you’ll need to locate the backups that Firefox makes itself, on Windows XP these will be located ‘C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default\bookmarkbackups\’ on Vista/W7 these will be located at ‘C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default\bookmarkbackups\’

Step2: Open Firefox and navigate to Bookmarks -> Organise Bookmarks  -> Import and Backup -> Restore -> Choose File

If you cannot see the Application Data or AppData file then you’ll need to edit your folder options via Control panel, under the view tab select ‘Show hidden files, folders and drives’

PHP is_dir/opendir on UNC under IIS

Been really banging my head against a wall on this problem and last night I finally solved it. I have been trying to open a Windows network share by providing is_dir with a UNC. I got this working under Apache but I couldn’t get it up and running under IIS6.

The solution is really simple;

1. Right click the virtual directory that houses the script running is_dir

2. Select ‘Properties’

3. Click the ‘Directory Security’ tab

4. Under ‘Authentication and access control’ click ‘Edit’

5. Make sure ‘Enable anonymous access’ is selected

6. Change the user name and password to a user that has access to the network share

For step 6 above I created a dedicated ‘web user’ that I have given only access to the share I wanted, in theory I think you should be able to use the IUSR_machinename user, but I couldn’t get it to work and as part of my process of elimination creating a ‘web user’ resolved the problem.

As the share I was testing the above setup with resided on a system running F-Secure I had to disable F-Secure so that the web server could access the share, I was quite surprised by this.