Sony Bravia KDL-32D3000 and HDMI

It did not work initially but you need to check a few things and then you can connect your Sony Bravia TV with HDMI with your computer...

If you go to External Devices you see several AV channels (AV1-AV6), but no HDMI in the selection - and then somewhere in the menu I found HDMI settings and but 'no device could be found', despite being connected to the laptop.

I checked online and most forum threads someone asking about the same issue did not even get an answer. Is the cable too new for this 10 year old Sony TV from 2017? Is the port damaged?

I changed the resolution settings on two laptops - did not help.

It actually was way easier:

AV4 is the upper HD port and 
AV5 the lower one

(glad I found this somewhere !!!)

It did not work initially, but after turn the HD settings off and on - it worked as it should be.

After restarting the Sony Bravia KDL-32D3000 TV the settings were saved. Just selecting AV4 (in that case) and the screen from the laptop screen was visible on TV.

Pokémon GO 0.69.1: My surprising return after one year!

Around one year ago I played Pokémon GO the last time - apparently in September my account was banned - and could not play again. And now it works again - with the same account!

It did not really play that much last year, mostly in Las Vegas and a bit in Germany - when I was in Japan I could not really test it. A shame. From my old phone back then I used a workaround by installing the apk file manually, since the download via PlayStore did not work, but at one point the latest version at the time - 0.39 - stopped me from logging in.

That was the reason I stayed away from the game and asked to reactivate my account. Nothing happened. After switching from the Samsung Galaxy S3 mini to an LG K5 in June I tried to log in again - still did not work...

Suddenly working again!

Today I gave it another shot: Downloaded the current version 0.69.1 via Google PlayStore, installed the game, agreed to login with my Google Account and suddenly I could see the loading screen seeing the Pokémon Tyranitar from the second generation Johto! And the game opened with my old account. I can still see the history!

After catching my first Pokémon after one year and collecting some items my history looks a bit weird (see above). I am not too much

aware what happened during that year. I know they added the second generation of Pokémon and extending the possibility to catch more different Pokémon and being able to actually have battles which seemed not so easily possible at the beginning.

Therefore for me it´s now rediscovering the game again and increasing my Pokédex. Let's see how it's going to turn out the next few days. I'm currently in Spain and I don't know if there are any rare Pokémon here. Anyway, I could already level up from 5 to 6 which is nothing, but not surprising since I haven't played a lot. 

Feel free to comment on your experiences and what happened during that year! I'm now outside checking out the area.. ;)

Open pst files with Linux

Is it possible to open pst files with Linux? Yes. There's a way and I will give you a information how it worked last time for me.

It was a client who used Linux Mint and wanted to use his under Windows created pst backup to be used under his Linux operating system.

This way worked: Install the email client called 'Evolution' + install the pst add-in with which how can you import the pst file.

Copy the pst file to your Linux and start the importing process...

No more audio in taskbar?!

What to do if there's no more volume icon in the taskbar when you see that it's greyed out in the system notifications list?

In my recent case the following solution worked:

• stop the service 'Windows Audio'
• kill explorer.exe
• reopen explorer.exe 

And then the volume icon reappeared on the taskbar again.

I read other cases where reapplying the group polices through

gpupdate /force

within a domain controller based environment also helped to solve the issue. So anyway, there's at least one way...

Files on USB drive damaged through BitLocker

I recently got a case that a user put in a USB drive while starting the BitLocker of the hard encryption...
and put it out while the encryption was running and caused in interesting scenario...

Some folders were untouched, but other folders turned into files without appendix. BitLocker created now recovery key for these folders as I checked.

I gave it one attempt with TestDisk to recover these files, interestingly, the drive was splitted in three partitions - the user had only time for checking one - but as a result several chk files were visible. But looking at the file sizes it did not seemed like the files I was looking for.

Following that I found a tool called deCHK to convert these chk files into the correct files they were supposed to be. However the tool only find 2 txt files - not worth to mention.

The user gave up further attempts, but out of curiosity: Would it have been possible to recover such files? Or rather difficult? An extra BitLocker recovery tool needed? 

In case of certain experiences with similar cases, just let me know how your cases turned out. Would be interesting to know.

My TOP 5 MSDOS games

There were times where computer games were much simpler and still very fun to play. At these times you had MSDOS or the Windows versions 95 or 98. Let's take a look back at which games I played back then...

5. Cawado
It's a fun German game where you give your character text commands to get him or her through the day. From waking up, preparing for school, an after-school job at a gas station and ending the evening in a bar. You can get extra points for appropriate behavior. In general it's kind of fun to have such a game where you can control your character like this.

4. GO310
That game is kind of easy to explain: You have to fill a space with boxes and gain more than 56% while a weird object is flying around. Each time you hit that object you lose a live - so you are game over as soon as you go from 0 to -1. If you the fill the space enough you get to the next level, the object is getting faster each time and afterwards there are even more - plus you will have some mines you need to avoid. Caution: You can get addicted ;)



3. Riptide
A quite fun submarine game which full name was 'In Search of Dr. Riptide'. In the game you take control of the agent Nick who is in control of one bigger and a small submarine. You need to avoid getting damaged by weapons and sea animals, open gates to get to another level. You need to figure out how to open door which are locked by a key or by a button you should find somewhere around...

2. Heroes
Heroes (or it's full name: Heroes 1/4: The Tantalizing Trio) is a fun Jump'n'Run game where you are in control of three characters which have different abilities. It includes multiple level and you need to be cautious about the health of the characters. Once one of the 'heroes' is defeated he ends up in a bubble and can be collected by the next character in order to be saved to get to the next level. 

1. GPCGA 
That was the first Formula One game I have ever played! It covered the 1988 season with eight tracks and three cars to select (Ferrari, Williams, McLaren). As it was back in these days the track looked more or less the same, just the layouts were different. Even Monaco had no guardrails, but interestingly a tunnel where you could crash into. The background also changed a bit from track to track. In Suzuka they even included the Fujiyama!

As nowadays there were different difficulty settings - even with shifting included where you could blow your engine up if you forget it! Else a quite easy game which I played quite often back then, but now - oh dear!

Exchange Email authentification failure through enabled FACE RECOGNITION

If you weren´t aware about that, it sounds quite confusing, but it´s really an applied security measure from MS Exchange Active Sync...

The case was the following: I received a call from a user having issues configuring his email account with his newly acquired Samsung Galaxy S8. 

He got the error message 'Authentification failed' as soon as the user tried logging in with his credentials. I checked at that moment, there was neither an account locking in Active Directory nor a counted failed attempt.

I guided the user to check in OWA (Outlook Web Access) the list with connected phones. The S8 was listed with 'Access denied' and that the device isn´t within the applied security standards.

Interesting. But initially no idea since I needed more information and unfortunately I could not see the phone directly as the user was miles away. 

A few minutes after the call the user messaged that the figured out the issue himself: He disabled the 'face recognition' of his Samsung phone and the error message no longer occurred. Also, the entry 'Access denied' in OWA was also gone.

Quite surprising if you face that issue for the first time. But on the other hand companies need to apply some sort of policies nowadays with the usage of BYOD...