I had to find the MAC address of a remote machine on my network this morning. Happily, WindowsXP (and above) make this easy.

They include a tool called getmac which does just that -- it gets the MAC address of any machine on the local network.

(This utility first made its appearance, it seems, as part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, and is available as a download from Microsoft.)

The tool couldn't be simpler to use, just open a command prompt and type:

getmac /s <computername>

It then spits back:

Physical Address Transport Name
=================== =========================================================
00-00-00-XX-XX-XX \Device\Tcpip_{0AB4C22A-1EEE-AAAA-XXXX-0X0X0X0X0X0X},
 \Device\NwlnkIpx

There are additional switches you can use to format the output or run the command under different credentials (from the TechNet article):

/u Domain \ User : Runs the command with the account permissions of the user specified by User or Domain\User. The default is the permissions of the current logged on user on the computer issuing the command.

/p Password : Specifies the password of the user account that is specified in the /u parameter.

/fo { TABLE | LIST | CSV } : Specifies the format to use for the query output. Valid values are TABLE, LIST, and CSV. The default format for output is TABLE.

/nh : Suppresses column header in output. Valid when the /fo parameter is set to TABLE or CSV.

/v : Specifies that the output display verbose information.

/? : Displays help at the command prompt.

That was the Keanu Reeves in the Matrix "Woah", in case you didn't recognize it.

Anyway - I'm Brian, and I am a Mac User.

("Hi, Brian")

It's true, I do not use a PC at home (except the occasional VMWare virtual PC session). So while I'm happy fixing PCs and offering PC advice, I'll occasionally dole out some Mac love.

For the Mac folks out there, do yourself a favor and download Minefield. They're PowerPC or Intel optimized builds of Firefox 3. The performance of the Intel optimized build makes me never want to go back to Camino again. Blazing fast startup and page views. Truly awesome. (They're named "Minefield" so as not to interfere with any Mozilla/Firefox trademarks.)

Firefox, the browser of choice for those of us running Windows at Jephens Tech., has built in spell checking for big text areas. That doesn't do us much good for these blog headlines and other one-line input fields... but the good folks at Mozilla HQ let us tweak Firefox to our hearts' content, so there's a very simple way to turn the spell-check on for single line input fields...

In your Firefox address bar, type

about:config

This will open the Pandora's Box of Firefoxy goodness. (I say it's Pandora's box because much evil and sadness can come to an errant entry... but much good can come of it as well, so tread carefully and don't change anything you don't understand.)

From here, you can enter into the filter screen the following bit:

layout.spell

This will filter the gigantic list into one entry:

layout.spellcheckDefault

Double-click on the entry there and change the value to 2. That will turn on spell-checking in all Firefox input forms.

Missspellinngs be gone!

On my laptop, every time I connect to a wireless network, the Intel software pops up a notification window telling me that I've connected, but it is accompanied by a loud BEEP -- even though my speaker is muted and I run the "No Sounds" sound scheme.

Turns out that BEEP is a service; but a service that's hidden from almost all user interfaces.

The easiest way to stop it (temporarily) is to open a command prompt (Click Start, Run and then type CMD and click OK or hit enter) and then type the following:

net stop beep

Easy enough. However, after a reboot, you'll need to do it again... which is a drag, so let's use a lesser known command, SC, to handle this for us.

From its help text:

DESCRIPTION:
SC is a command line program used for communicating with the
NT Service Controller and services.

In the command window, type

sc config beep start= disabled

There needs to be a space after the equals sign.

Once you do that, your computer should respond with:

[SC] ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS

You can also do this using the GUI, but I don't know why you would want to... it's a chore.

For an XP system (Win2K and Vista are similarly done). Instructions gacked from Windows IT Magazine:

1. Right-click My Computer and select Manage.
2. Expand System Tools and select Device Manager.
3. From the View menu, select Show hidden devices.
4. Expand Non-Plug and Play Drivers.
5. Right-click Beep, and select Properties.
6. Select the Drivers tab.
7. Click Stop. You can also change the start-up type to Disabled so the beep service never starts.

Enjoyyour new, quieter, life.

If you need to turn it back on, use this:

net start beep

On the off-chance you want to turn this back on forever, use the command:

sc config beep start= boot

Or using the GUI instructions, change step 7 to:

7. Click START

To have it restart forever:

7. Change the start-up type to Boot so the beep service starts at boot time.

There's some new malware floating around -- a variant of Trojan.ZLob --which asks you to install a new codec to see some videos... but what it really does is change your router settings so that all of your internet traffic gets routed thru their servers before going to its final destination.

If there is more than one computer behind the router, each machine will have its traffic redirected.

The malware attempts to use the default username and password of common routers to change its settings.

It's easy to change the default username and/or password of your router. Take a few moments and protect yourself.

Hats off to Brian Krebs of the Washington Post for bringing this to light (with an assist from Sunbelt Software.)