Deity 3 Pro Mic Won't Charge, Only Works When Plugged in

I originally tried to post this to https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/ but evidently I'm not turtley enough for the turtle club to post there. So I'll put it in my obscure blogspot post so maybe some search engines will catch it. 

So I ran into a situation where my mic hadn't been used in probably near half a year, maybe even closer to a year. I took it out thinking it would be fine but it wouldn't work at all. Here were my symptoms:

- Plugging in the light goes immediately green and it can be used in this way. However, no indication of charging, the light didn't change between green and red at all.

- Unplugging the power and attempting to turn the mic on doesn't do anything, having something plugged into the 3.5mm makes no difference on the experience.

So the thing to remember on the Pro models is that they have an internal battery. And in my case I ended up tearing down the mic (more on this down below) and got to the point I could get to the battery. When I took a multimeter and read the volts on the battery I read 0.6V. Considering the battery is a standard 3.7v this is not good. Although I don't know the lowest point these will charge at, I would assume its somewhere around 2v, give or take a half a volt.

The fix: I charged the battery in the mic up to about 3.4v and now it behaves normally.

The fix, detailed: Okay, so now the how I fixed it. First I must put a shout out to this video which helped with the teardown and will be my reference points in explaining it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMK8WWqICXU - Thanks DensiKen!

1:00-1:03 - Do everything shown.

1:03-1:07 - You do not have to tear off the metal screen, in my opinion this makes re-assembly harder.

1:08-1:12 - You do not need to pull the entire piece off as he shows here, however, the screws do need removed as shown in the next section.

1:12-1:35 - Pull back or just push your screwdriver through this material and get these two screws out.

1:36-2:21 - Skip.

2:21-2:25 - What wasn't shown in the video is that there is a small flathead screw between 0 and 10, remove that screw first, then remove the end of this knob. I accidentally pulled my entire shaft out missing this bit. It still works though, just much harder.

2:27-2:33 - This is a 10mm nut if you happen to have sockets around to use.

2:34-2:45 - Do everything shown. There is another screw not shown, there is one just under the charge and output ports, this will need to be removed before the casing will come off.

2:46-3:09 - Skip.

3:10-3:20 - What he started showing but doesn't finish is that there are 3 screws on the edges holding the circuit board down, you will need to remove all 3 to get to the battery.

3:21-3:32 - This is where the battery gets exposed but he doesn't go into more detail.

At this point you need to pull off the protective coverings (a foam pad and a cardboard on the positive and orange tape on the negative). Once you have that done measure your voltage. If your battery isn't a dead 0v, you can probably recover it (my experience with 18650 batteries has taught me this). The next step is getting a charge on the battery. I happened to have bench power supply that I tuned to 3.6v (just to be safe), I don't know the limitations on the battery but .5a would also probably be the safest, I let the battery pull whatever it wanted, which turned out to be close to 1.5a to start and dropping down to .5a within a minute or two. If your battery is at a dead 0, you would need to replace it. The battery marker on this unit is 10440, you might be able to replace it with another 10440 battery and solder in a replacement. I would probably replace the leads with a short bit of cable and hot glue the battery to the board.

There are a few solutions on amazon if you don't have something between (guessing on the lower voltage) 2.5v and 3.7v that you can destroy or be able to pull the positive and negative leads from. If you happen to have a desktop power supply lying around you could also use the 3.3v leads to get the battery up to a certain point and let the standard charger do the rest. Below is a diagram I found. Any of +3.3v and ground sets pins you can use any of the to start charging the battery. The important thing here is to not exceed 3.7v on the battery. To turn the power supply on you also need to put a cable between the green and a black as well.

Desktop Power Supplies

Either way, pull power from a power source and attach the positive to the end away from the mic (closest to the knob we removed in 2:21) and the negative toward the mic (the mic is the section in 1:36 I said to skip).

Using a plastic and rubbert clamp (clamp cannot be conductive!! No all metal touching the ends of the battery!) I left mine charging for around 5 minutes and it was at about 3.4v when I took it off the bench and tested it again. After doing this I pressed the button that is the LPF button (pictured below) on top for 2 seconds. The light below it lights up orange since i didn't have anything connected to the 3.5mm.

Button to push and hold for 2 seconds

This told me that the mic was working as normal. I reassembled it after this point and charged it as normal.

IIS 10 user account for writing to file system

Recently I was trying to identify what user account was writing a .json file from the web server so we can lock down permissions specifically to that account. Lots of articles reference several accounts like IIS apppool\{pool name} or the iis_iusrs accounts built in. Neither of these accounts were working in our scenario. After turning on file auditing and reviewing the security logs I found a frustrating but simple answer to my question. The account being use is just "iusr" for the write permissions on that file. I granted that account permission to the file specifically needing modified and suddenly it worked as expected. This is the equivalent of "apache" ownership for apache web servers. 

PrintNightmare, aka CVE-2021-34527, disable print spooler script

Hopefully by the time I publish this you've already heard about this PrintNightmare exploit. Going off of microsoft's post here: https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-34527 There are a couple ways to handle this exploit.

Say you wanted to go with the "I want to disable print spooler on all applicable machines" route specified in microsft's work around. Say you had a decent sized environment that you had a list of, or could get a list of. Now say you could powershell your life into happiness. Here's that powershell for disabling this service across a list of provided servers:

Make sure if you have print servers that you exclude them from your list!

#This list can be rather long, I've tested it with over 50 servers in the list. Just make sure you quote each server and provide a list

$list = ”Server01“, ”Server02“, "Server03"

#This is where we are going to get the current status of the service, stop the service, disable the service, and finally, display the status of the service again. This will prove that the service has been stopped and disabled.

foreach($server in $list){
#This next line just echos out what its doing, un-necessary if you don't care to keep an eye on the servers as it works through the powershell. I highly recommend it though.
echo "Starting on $server"
#displays the current status of the print spooler
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | select displayname, status, starttype
#Stops the print spooler service
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | stop-service
#Sets the print spooler service to disabled
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | set-service -StartupType disabled\
#Displays the current status of the print spooler again
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | select displayname, status, starttype
#Again, echos out the name of the server so you can isolate the server reporting back. This was just more of a sanity check. you could drop either of these echos if you wanted to.
echo "Completed on $server"
}

Code without the comments:

$list = ”Server01“, ”Server02“, "Server03"

foreach($server in $list){
echo "Starting on $server"
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | select displayname, status, starttype
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | stop-service
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | set-service -StartupType disabled\
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | select displayname, status, starttype
echo "Completed on $server"
}

This is what that looks like in powershell:

Disclaimer: I am not a security expert of any sort. I do IT for a living and sometimes I just need to share cool/helpful things I've worked on that may be causing headaches for others. I hope this helps you. This information is provided as a guide and contains no guarantees. There may be better ways of doing this, this is just what worked for me. Please test this code in your environment on either test/dev boxes or on low impact production before full scale running this across everything. Feel free to discuss possible variances in coding in the comments below. 

Changing Management IP of Compellent Storage (SC4020)

 The following has been tested against 2 SC4020 appliances and been found to be an effective method of gaining access to the appliance in a new network.

Situation: Two appliances had been moved to a new network and their management network had not been reset. Thus management through the Dell Storage Manager was not possible.

Assumptions: You need to have a console TRS cable, understanding of a terminal client to use said cable, and the admin password. If you don't have the admin password you can make a fat32 formatted disk, make a file named unlock.phy and put the contents of "unlock Admin" on the usb disk. Once that has been made put the USB drive in the controller you connect the TRS cable to. This is not necessary if you know the password for the Admin or another full admin account. You will also need the IP address, your subnet in the form of a netmask, and gateway IP address of the new network.

Process:

Open a terminal client on your com port and hit enter until you receive the login prompt.

Log in with "Admin" (this is case sensitive).

For password use your known password, if you had to unlock use "mmm" as the password.

Once the prompt has dropped to "sn#####>" use the following commands:

shellaccess developer

ifconfig inet eth0 <your IP here with your / netmask at the end>

    IE: ifconfig inet eth0 192.168.0.10/24

ifconfig inet gateway <your gateway address here)

    IE: ifconfig inet gateway 192.168.0.1

That's it. Your management IP address should now be able to be ping'd. After that you will need to use the Dell Storage Management Client to connect and you can change the other controller through that interface, or you can repeat the process above on the 2nd controller. 

I did notice on both of my appliances that the top controller reverted back once I could get into the storage center, so double check that before changing the VIP address on the controller if its giving errors about "failed to modify object" when attempting to modify the Appliance IP. 

Clearing Out Shoretel ShoreWare Gear (T1k / SG90 / SG30)

I find myself needing to reset a bunch of Shoretel Shoreware gear for my job and needing to compile a bunch of different resources in order to get what I truly wanted. I wanted factory defaults and a 'zero'd out' configuration as well.

I did not have any dedicated voicemail switches in this configuration so take that into consideration when zeroing out your gear.

Start with your favorite telnet client, I use Putty.

Set your com to the appropriate com port and baud rate to 19200. No other settings in putty needed changed.

Connect your serial cable (or usb to serial adapter, something like this: https://amzn.to/387ki1W).

Power on the switch, or powercycle it.

As it boots up you will be looking for "Hit any key to stop autoboot: <countdown>"

Press any key to enter a command line, which will have => as your prompt.

To zero out the config enter these commands sequentially (or if you're lucky, copy and paste everything and it will all go in, I wasn't).

setenv flags 0x0
setenv ipaddr 10.0.0.1
setenv gatewayip 10.0.0.1
setenv netmask 255.0.0.0
setenv serverip 10.0.0.1
setenv host 10.0.0.1
setenv cntrlsrv 10.0.0.1
setenv autoload FLASH
setenv dns1 10.0.0.1
setenv dns2 10.0.0.2
bootc static flash vxworks
saveenv
reset

This sets all ip variables you can set as the login account, but much faster than navigating the menu, even copying and pasting each line.

Once it reboots, I check to make sure its valid by logging in with the following credentials:

User: anonymous
Password: ShoreTel

The password is case sensitive.

Then selecting 2 to make sure it shows the configuration set above.

That's it, if you're e-wasting these like we were, put them in a pile!


Sources (none of these had an exact copy and paste of the above, mine is slightly customized from all of 3 of these combined):
https://www.facebook.com/178036116151911/posts/how-to-factory-reset-a-shoretel-switch-sg-220t1aconnect-to-the-switch-via-a-seri/319857388636449/
https://info.lantelligence.com/technical-blog/2013/05/15/changing-shoretel-switch-configuration-via-serial-cable
https://www.shoretelforums.com/forum/shoretel-tech/administrators/72217-factory-reset-shoregear-90-and-t1k

Prevent Excel from Refreshing Data When Copying and Pasting

Problem:

When copying dynamic data out of excel when pasting the value pasted changes.

Solution:

Change the setting in excel to perform automatic calculations:

File tab -> options -> Formulas side tab -> Under the calculation Options, workbook calculation, select manual. Optionally you can shut off recalculate workbook before saving depending on situation.

Source:
Co-worker and tested with my own application.

Recursively Reset Permissions in Windows Path Using iCacls

Situation:

Need folders and files under a specific folder to regain all inheritance from the specified folder.

Solution:

Run the icacls with the recursive and reset switches:

icacls <folder> /reset /t

/t = recursive
/reset removes any modifications from inheritance in the ACL. By default, folders will inherit their permissions from the folder above them.





The final step in this is to give the primary folder that you want to push inheritance from down through the folders the appropriate permissions, all child folders will then have access as intended.



Primary Source:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22327776/using-icacls-to-set-permissions-of-a-folder-to-inherit-recursively

Minecraft / MineOS End of Stream Issue

So I was recently working on a project to bring several servers into a single consolidated server that would allow my friends to join me, play on servers, but not have to have my desktop running 24/7 for that to happen. So I bought a server to run MineOS on but I want to run multiple versions of minecraft, including some serious changes in version (FTB/Tekkit) all the way to Vanilla. So during testing I was working with a vanilla server and a copy of the tekkit server. Once I finally got past the firewall issues (of which you can find the fix here) I ran into an issue with connecting to my vanilla server on a non-standard port (25564 and 25563). Well I found out something interesting, the tekkit game seems to be fine with connecting on the default port (25565) but not on alternate ports when connecting to a newer version of the game on those other ports. So I received an end of stream error from minecraft in tekkit while connecting.


SOLUTION:
Run Vanilla minecraft launcher with vanilla minecraft games and tekkit launcher for tekkit games.


Dumb... I know.... this took me a while to fix so I wanted to document it. There does seem to be multiple other possible issues with end of stream errors but this seemed to be the big one. Hope this helps someone else out.

d3dx9_43.dll is Missing

This is actually a two fold issue for my specific case.

My issue: Launching a game like World of Tanks or some other game that requires D3DX9_43.dll crashes with a cannot be found error

My sub-issue: When attempting to install DirectX Redistributible the error is given "directx an internal system error occurred"

How to fix it:

First you will need the DirectX redistributible: Get it here

Second, if you get the sub issue I had, you will need to modify the registry. Go to:

HKLM>Software>Microsoft>

IF a sub directory called DirectX does not exist, create it. If it already exists, modify the code called "version" to be anything other than what it is. I changed it to "installedversion" and re-ran the installer which then completed successfully. 

Windows Backup to ESXi Virtual (B2V)

My problem: 

I have a backup from Windows backup (Server 2012 in this case) that I wanted to restore to an ESXi virtual machine.

My Sub-Problem: 

I could not get an NTFS mounted drive to mount into ESXi for the windows recovery system to work properly.

How I solved it: 

I created a virtual machine within Hyper-V which allowed the backup drive to be direct mounted. Ran through the restoring backup solution, then ran the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone to convert the Hyper-V machine to a virtual on the ESXi Server.

Things to consider for this project:

Requires two physical servers, not including the downed server. One of which running ESXI the other running HyperV, this cannot be a virtual machine of a HyperV server unless you can raw map the backup drive into that virtual machine (if anyone has any way of doing this and not requiring the HyperV server please comment).

Requires having storage space on the HyperV larger than the total hard drive space of the downed server.

Requires upward of a day's worth of time to complete even on high end hardware. It can require more time if there is large amounts of data being restored and migrated. The more data involved the longer the process. The lag I was getting seemed to be related to how fast the storage drives are, since I was using backup disks on a simple Raid 1 on sata drives the performance was low. The disk creation time took 100% active time on the disk at 60-80MB/sec.


My in-process problems: 

•  The backup drive on the Hyper-V server must be "offline" to be mounted within the VM for cloning. 

    Solved by putting the drive offline through disk management.

• The restore would not function because the destination drive in BIOS is too small. 

    Solved by creating a fixed disk which exceeded the backup size instead of a dynamic disk in the virtual machine settings (I had to create a 250GB fixed disk which required a fair bit of time so if it goes fast (A minute or less) and you have a larger sized disk, you will need to go back, it created a fixed disk by deleting the disk you just created, which should take around 400k if you haven't installed anything, and making a new disk and be sure to select fixed size). Your description should look like this (I originally created a partition too small explained below):

I later found out the error code I was getting (shown below) means that the target drive is smaller than the original backup drive which is required to be bigger by microsoft's backup system.

I then expanded my drive from 200 to 250 since my original drive was 236 (240GB SSDs) and retried.

• When attempting the restore of the system, the search for a recovery file would take forever.

I was not able to find a "resolution" for this issue. I just bounced back and forth between find and refreshing the image searcher (Microsoft why can't we just target a file? Waiting is ridiculous for system admins, we know what we are doing (usually)). 

• When I first got the P2V conversion completed successfully I ended up accidentally creating a hardware version 10 virtual machine. 

When I did so and got reminded that 10 is not capable of being managed through the vsphere system, I ended up restarting the rebuild process after deleting the virtual machine due to hard drive size limitations on my destination server. It turns out that there are some pretty simple ways to fix this. Most of them are detailed here but the last one just blew me away in frustration: 

• Create a new virtual machine with required hardware version and attach the existing disk from the virtual machine.

So simple yet so frustrating after you already dedicate yourself to starting over from scratch. Yet again, lesson learned.

Fix Temporary User Profile Account or Missing Desktop Content

If you log in and get the following:

1. Run REGEDIT
2. Navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList"
3. You should find your profile key, with another named identically except for a ".bak" extension
4. Delete the "normally named" key
5. Rename the ".bak" named key to remove the ".bak" extension
6. Restart your machine

If you do not have administrative privileges, you will need to first sign on with a user ID that does.

This will allow you to preserve all of the customization you "lost" without having to recreate everything. I have to do this at home all of the time.

Full credit goes to Michael Paxton for his post that can be found here.

Exchange 2013 Attachment Size

So I had to increase an Exchange 2013 server the other day and could not find any definite "This is how you do this on Exchange 2013" but found plenty on Exchange 2010 and lower. Well I tried some commands and the following worked for my situation where a recipient of the specific domain needed to receive a larger file attachment and those who were sending the client attachments were getting the message:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:

<User>
This message is too large to send. To be able to send it, make the message smaller, for example, by removing attachments.



The fix to get this to work is to execute the following commands in Exchange command:

Set-TransportConfig -MaxReceiveSize (X)MB -MaxSendSize (X)MB

IE: Set-TransportConfig -MaxReceiveSize 30MB -MaxSendSize 30MB

In my situation I did not have to restart any services, just simply resent the previously denied email and the client received it.


My reference site:
https://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/increasing-email-size-limits-for-your-high-profile-users-in-exchange-2010/




I am in no way responsible for the actions you take with the information provided. Please note that this worked on my Exchange 2013 server but not necessarily with all servers. I provide this information on an educational basis and from educated experience only. If you are unsure about if this will work in your situation please continue researching it. 

ESXi 5.1 5.X Locks Up On megaraid_sas

I have to give HUGE props to twincarre on youtube for their post on the original fix that led me to the following fix:

It appears in the use of some LSI controllers will freeze up on install when attempting to load the megaraid drivers. This also includes Intel RS2WC040 controllers since they run the LSI 2008 controller.

The Fix is to disable legacy booting. This is either in the PCI configuration, or in the boot configuration, depending on BIOS configuration. Huge props to Twincarre for helping at least direct me toward this fix!

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6Kkr-Ba3rU

How to Install the Google Services Framework on Tablets and Other Devices (without rooting)

So you're eyeing a fancy tablet or other Android device in the store. It comes with nice nice features that entice you and you're seriously considering buying it... the only problem is that it does not come with the standard Google services that many Android phone users use and enjoy on a daily basis. This kills the deal for you and you walk away, saddened that such an appealing device does not support these services.

What?! No Market? What treachery!

Well turn around and go back to the store because there is a way to get the Google Services Framework up and running on the device, giving you the ability to sync your contacts, calendar, and any other Google services you would like to run. You will also have access to the latest version of the Android Market, giving you access to an unlimited amount of apps.

So how do you get started? Just follow these steps and in a few minutes your Android device will have all the appropriate services installed, unlocking the full potential of your device.

1. Download the apk files. You will first need to download the apk files that will install on your device and load it with the Google Services Framework. I found the file here: http://www.filestube.com/5ftB6eejpyHc7leyeUoB1j/gapps-hdpi-20101114-signed.html. I did this from my computer so I could find and extract the files easier, then upload it to the device via USB.
2. Transfer them to the device. Once the package has downloaded, transfer the extracted files to an easy-to-remember place on your device.
3. Install the apk files. apk installer apps will vary on devices - with some you can simply launch the app and it will locate apk files for you - other times you will need to manually browse to the files and launch them individually to allow the default apk installer program to install them. The critical service that you will need to install in order for all other services to work is the GoogleServicesFramework.apk. This, as the name suggests, is the framework that will tie your Google account into all the other services.
4. Choose services to install. From here, you can install any service you want to run on your device. They're all pretty straight-forward; GoogleContactsSyncAdapter.apk will sync your Google contacts to be used for email and other purposes, GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter.apk will sync your events in Google Calendar, etc.
5. Install the Market (updated 2/21/12). Unfortunately, the Vending.apk file that came with this package did not work for me, so I had the brilliant idea of just trying to install a different version of the market. Follow the instructions here to download and install the Android Market: http://nwteche.com/red7_blog/install-android-market-on-coby-kyros-mid7012-or-most-other-tablets-running-android-2-3-3/
6. Enjoy! At this point, you should be able to open any of the apps you installed. Upon opening the first app, you should be prompted to login to your Google account. If this is successful, it will log you in and begin syncing the services. This can usually be seen up in the tray as two arrows in a circle. When the services have synced you will be able to use any current and future Google Apps on your device!

Thanks to coyle1010 and photoweborama on Androidtablets.net for his research (http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/coby-generation-2-technical/21545-android-market-coby-kyros-mid8024-no-rooting-needed.html).

These steps have been tested and verified with multiple Android devices.

Please note that this information is provided on a informational basis. If you brick your device or need any further help, that is not what this blog is intended for. Please keep the "it didn't work for me" posts to yourself as this is not a one stop fix all solution. If it didn't work for you, go to google and ask it for your specific device. We aren't even the original developers. This is just a collection of easy to find information. Contact the source site for support.

Auto Run not working properly

OS: Windows 7

Issue: System does not auto run removable cards (IE: SD or XD cards)

Fix: Navigate to the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer


Change the value of the key "NoDriveTypeAutoRun" from whatever it is to decimal value of 145


Pulled this information from here.

Rename XP When Dual Booting With Windows 7

You will need to run this command from within Windows 7:

bcdedit /set {ntldr} description "Windows XP"

Thats really it, there is nothing more complicated than that.

Pulled from here.

How to Show/Hide the Administrator account on Windows Vista Welcome Screen

In Windows Vista, be default the Administrator account is disabled. However, if you use a password reset tool, there is a chance that you can enable this account and cause it to appear on the Welcome Screen. There is an easy way to fix this. From an elevated command prompt (right-click cmd and select "Run as Administrator"), type:

net user Administrator /active:no

If the forward-slash causes you problems, simply enter the same command without it. If you're successful some text should output indicating the command was issued successfully and the Administrator account should disappear form the Welcome Screen and return to its disabled state.

Narrator automatically starts up

OS: Vista

Go to control panel, then open ease of access, select use the computer without display, then uncheck turn on narrator.

Documents and desktop disappeared

Problem: Everything from the desktop and documents folders disappeared

Solution:
    In XP: Click start, click run, type in "CMD" then press enter. In the command window, type in cd \, then type in the command "attrib -h /s /d" Wait for this to complete. You should see all directories and files. If some are still hidden, such as the desktop contents. Restart the computer. Scan with your antivirus solution.
 
   In Vista: Open the windows globe, type in cmd, once it shows cmd (or command) right click on it and click run on administrator. In the command window, type in cd \, then type in the command "attrib -h /s /d" Wait for this to complete. You should see all directories and files. If some are still hidden, such as the desktop contents.  Restart the computer. Scan with your antivirus solution.

Some infections will hide the desktop. Make sure you scan with several good scanning utilities but not multiple antivirus products that scan the computer at the same time. This will cause you to not only slow down but to also potentially crash the computer.

Please comment if this post helped you.

Siverlight will not uninstall.

Original Problem: Silverlight updates would not install

Secondary Problem: Silverlight will not uninstall from Add/Remove programs in XP giving the error ""the installation source for this product is not available"

Fix: Run regedit. Use the search function to find anything containing silverlight and delete it. Restart the computer. Install the newest release of silverlight from here.

Please comment if this post helped you