Settings for my Linksys PAP2

I have been using a Linksys VOIP adaptor PAP2 for 2 yearts. It has two phone ports and supports two phone lines. So far I've been using Voipbuster for outgoing calls and Stanaphone for incoming calls. There's a lengthy discussion thread on Fatwallet about PAP2 and its setup.

I don't use STUN for either lines so I need to forward the SIP ports on my router to PAP2 (with a IP address of 192.168.0.106) as suggested in the user guide of PAP2. The router is a D-Link DI-614+, which I have been using reliably for more than 4 years. The settings are shown here:


Some usefule informations about PAP2:

• Dial plan for Voipbuster:
  
(<:001919>[2-9]xxxxxx|<:00>1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|<:001>[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|<011:00>xx.)

• Dial Plan for Stanaphone:
  (<:1>[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|<:1919>[2-9]xxxxxx|1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|08xxxxxxS0)
  
• Protect RESET# in IVR with password
• GPP_K value: it is located in the "Provisioning" tab of the adapter's web-interface (i.e login as "admin," switch to "advanced" mode and click on the "Provisioning" tab). Attributes of the FACTORY FRESH GPP_K value:
  • 44 characters long
  • Comprised of alpha (A-Z, a-z), numeric (0-9), and symbols
  • Ends with an EQUAL SIGN (=)
  • Example: Q7CeXsESr8Q3qfaFympWUXJpXlWeohe8V2OxzdgzpX8=

Getting back my DVD drive after missing in XP

I found two related MS KB articles on how to get my DVD drive back after it disappeared in my computer.

• A computer that is running Windows XP cannot detect a USB thumb drive, an Apple iPod, or an external hard disk drive
• You can no longer access the CD drive or the DVD drive, or you receive an error message after you remove a CD recording program or a DVD recording program in Windows XP
  

According to the above, I located the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\
{4D36E980-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} and delete the UpperFilters registry value and the LowerFilters registry value. The problem is resolved after restarting the computer and my DVD drive is back.

Fix the boot sector problem of partitions

Yesterday when I ran mkbt program from BartPE, it accidentlly modified the boot sector of my data partition D on hard disk-- a NTFS partition of about 40GB size. Today after I reboot the computer, the file system of partition D is displayed as 'RAW'. And every time when I click on it, Windows ask if I want to format the drive. I click NO absolutely.

The partition's first sector is also known as the boot sector. When the MBR is for entire drive, the boot sector is for an individual partition: like the MBR, the boot sector contains information that the system needs to locate the materials that are necessary to access the partition. A corrupt or missing boot sector is a serious problem. Without it the partition can not be accessed.

However, since mkbt only wrote stuffs to the first sector of partition D, all other sectors are intact. I guess there must be a way to fix the boot sector. Actually I found a couple ways:

• Fixboot command of the Windows XP Recovery Console: Use it to write the new Windows boot sector code on the system partition. This command fixes damage in the Windows boot sector. The fixboot command is supported only on x86-based computers. I tried using "fixboot d:" in recovery console.
• Commercial softwares sucn as PTDD Parition table doctor. It also has a fixboot command in parition operation menu.
  

After the new boot sector is written to partition D by fixboot, the partition can be recognized by windows again as a NTFS volume.

Make CA 2GB flash drive bootable

I got a 2GB Flash Drive with CA Internet Security Suite 2007. But I was not able to boot BartPE from it.

• I tried "PE2USB -f" to format the drive and install the PE to it. The boot sector appears OK to mkbt but I always get "Missing Operating System" error when I try to boot from it.
• I searched about the error and found this thread: the error might be due to bad partitioning scheme on the flash drive.
• I downloaded a MCNLive CD iso and burned it to a DVD. MCNLive is a Mandriva Linux based distribution designed to run from a USB Flash Drive or a CD.
  
• After booting into MCNLive DVD (NOT using the copy2ram bootcode), I check the drive with "fdisk -l /dev/sda"and there's something abnormal about the drive, saying "Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings" etc
• So I deleted the partion in fdisk and created a new partition. Then I went to mcc and formated the partition with FAT16 file system.
• Finally I can create MCNLive USB. Now I relax and enjoy booting the system from the CA 2GB flash drive with "livecd copy2ram" bootcode.
  

Stop annoying IMAP error message in Outlook

I am using Outlook 2007 as my email client. But I periodically get an annoying dialog box when using it. The dialog box says: "Your IMAP server has closed the connection. This may occur if you have left the connection idle for too long. Details: LOGOUT received ..."

I have one IMAP email account and a few POP3 accounts but I never got such an error when using outlook express as my email client. After I did a search I found that Outlook was trying to periodically retrieve mail headers from the IMAP server but that's not really necessary since its a 'live' connection. The mail appears in my IMAP account when I view its Inbox folder with no need for Outlook to do automatic send/receives.

The solution is to change a setting in Outlook 2007 using the following steps:

• Navigate to Tools->Send/Receive->Send/Receive settings->Define send/receive groups or simply press the hot key Ctrl+Alt+S
• Exclude the IMAP account from any group that has a automatic send/receive scheduled (e.g. "All accounts" group)
  

After the change is saved, outlook would no longer do scheduled send/receive on my IMAP account and not generate any more annoying dialog boxes. I found I had similar setting in outlook express:

• Navigate to Tools->Accounts..., click "Properties" for my IMAP account
• Under "General" tab, uncheck "Include this account when receiving mail or synchronizing".
  

Running Mozilla::Mechanize

• Mozilla::Mechanize tries to be a sort of drop-in replacement for WWW::Mechanize. It uses Mozilla's Gecko HTML-rendering engine via the modules Mozilla::DOM and Gtk2::MozEmbed.
• In my Mandriva system, I need to install package libmozilla-firefox2.0.0.6-devel by running
  #urpmi libmozilla-firefox2.0.0.6-devel
  This package provides both pkgconfig(firefox-gtkmozembed) and pkgconfig(firefox-xpcom).
• Later I found I also needed to symbolicly link some libraries in package libmozilla-firefox2.0.0.6 from /usr/lib/firefox-2.0.0.6 to path /usr/lib. Otherwise the tests on Mozilla::Mechanize would fail bizarrely with lots of core dumps. I pinpointed the cause of core dumps through strace.

How to turn NUM LOCK off for the logon screen

When I use a laptop running windows XP, I really want to turn the NUM LOCK off for the logon sreen. To turn NUM LOCK off before a user logs on, I use the steps below:

1.	Run Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).
2.	Navigate to HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard.
3.	Change the value for InitialKeyboardIndicators from 2 to 0.

If a desktop keyboard or a numeric keypad is present, I will try to keep the value 2. The method is borrowed from MS KB154529.

Web interface of my cable modem Motorola SB5100

I am able to connect to my Motorola SB5100 cable modem's web interface by typing in 192.168.100.1 into my web browser. The signal level I saw is shown below:

Recently I bought a new SB5101 modem to replace the SB5100. Its web interface is still accessed by by typing in 192.168.100.1 into my web browser. The new signal level I saw is shown below: