Categories
Browsers Internet Laptop Microsoft Softwares Web Trends

Find out the mail server without using any 3rd party tool

Myself being a mail/web solution provider, always juggles with various mail related queries. Infact fond of playing with mail servers. With more than 2 years in the EMAIL hosting business, I am ready to take any task related to Web solutions.
As I provide Push Email service(customized EMAIL solutions) to clients ranging from big Corporate and Multi-National Companies, Small retail vendors and even individuals, I’ve subscribed to various paid service to track down DNS related stuffs. Where i can get an idea whether Name server has been resolved or not. In short i am completely dependent on these 3rd party paid tools for NS, MX, A, CNAME, AAA, SOA, SRV DNS entries.
One late night i was in Sedan with my personal notebook, on the way to home. Suddenly one of my client pinged on BB Msgr, just to know whether his domain has been transferred to managed server or not. As s/he was in worry, of losing corporate mails during downtime. The moment s/he buzzed I switched on the machine, and clicked on small Internet Explorer icon from the taskbar. Unfortunately it got crashed, due to installation of some wrong unstable pluggin in last update. Err!!! As said earlier, it was my personal small notebook, so using Windows with having single default browser IE (which i hate most. Undoubtedly Mozilla Firefox is every open source lover’s 1st choice). Now I was in a situation to either tell my client blindly any thing(which i hate), or to find some really good stuff to let my-self know the exact current status of Name server/MX point status.
After putting lots of pressure and stress on me, I succeeded to recall few set of commands, which i had read couple of years earlier in one Hacking journal. This helped me to find out the mail server address for virtually any domain, without using any 3rd party tool. Here it goes(considering your are having Windows OS):
  • Open your command prompt (using win+R and type cmd)
  • Type nslookup
  • The prompt will change to >
  • Type set q=mx (for mail exchange)
  • Now type any domain name, you wish to find out server address for, e.g: swatantra.info
  • Now look for the MX preference lines.
  • These are the ones that list the various smtp/esmtp mail server addresses.. higher the preference no you choose the better.. because they’ll work smoother..
  • Once you get through, say exit to command prompt, to quit.
Huuh, till date i was using paid service.
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Categories
Keyboard Shortcuts Laptop Microsoft Softwares

Remove unwanted entries from the Right Click menu

A context menu is the little menu which pops up when you right click on files, folders or icons. e.g., right click on a desktop icon and if you have Anti-virus installed it will have ‘Scan with … Anti-virus’ as a choice.

 

The first step to getting rid of these entries
involves opening the programs in question and looking
through their
options to see if you can unselect any ‘integration’ or
‘context
menu’ options they have. If that fails, and the program
absolutely
insists on being an intimate part of your Windows, you can
edit
the registry as follows:

1. Before we make any changes in
the registry,
and even though you should have a full System Restore
and/or Registry
backup already, back up the registry keys which will be
affected
in this tweak:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder]

2. Do this by opening Regedit,
find the relevant
sub-folder, right-click on it and select Export. Make sure
the “Selected
Branch” option is selected under
Export Range, then enter a
descriptive name
and save it somewhere safe. Do that for each one of the
four sub-folders
above. If anything goes wrong, instead of firing up System
Restore
or restoring the entire registry you can double-click on
these files
and everything is quickly fixed.

3. Now, go to the following
sub-folders and
delete references to programs you know have set up
offending context
menu entries. For example, in my system under
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]
I found the key Symantec.Norton.Antivirus.IEContextMenu
which
I deleted. The first volley in the war against the
invasion of my
menus by Symantec. Here are all the places you should look
in:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\OpenWithList]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]
4. As you’re removing all the unwanted program
entries, you should see the effects immediately – no
reboot required.
Remove an entry from the
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers]
subfolder for example and open Explorer, then right click
on your
hard drive name and you should see the corresponding
program you
removed in the registry is gone from the context menu too.
When
you’re done, you should see the default context menus
devoid of
the added rubbish.

If any of the programs whose context menu
entries you’ve removed start displaying strange behaviour,
restore
the registry entries you backed up previously, or just
reinstall
the program. As long as you only delete program entries
and none
of the default Windows entries, all the normal context
menu items
will still remain.

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