Error 691 when connecting through VPN on Windows 8 or Windows 10

After upgrading to Windows 8, I ran into an issue where I couldn’t VPN into my old Windows Server 2003 machine anymore. I kept getting this error:

Error: 691: The remote connection was denied because the user name and password combination you provided is not recognized, or the selected authentication protocol you selected is not permitted on the remote access server.

I know that my username and password is correct so I figured it must be something else. Turns out, it’s an easy fix.

  1. Open your VPN connections properties.
  2. Go to the security tab
  3. Check “Allow these protocols” and make sure “Microsoft CHAP Version 2” is checked

    Fixing VPN Error 691 in Windows 8

    Select the radio button for “Allow these protocols”

  4. That’s it

I’m guess this is a bug of some sort. Once you select one of the two radio buttons, you can’t deselect them which leads me to believe that it is a bug. Hopefully this will be fixed in an upcoming Windows update.

Java not working in Chrome on OS X (Lion)

If you have upgraded your browser to Lion, you have probably noticed that Java doesn’t run in your browser anymore. From what I can tell, it doesn’t run in any browser. It’s a pretty easy fix.

Open terminal and type:

/Applications/Utilities/Java\ Preferences.app/Contents/MacOS/Java\ Preferences
 This will downloading some files and do an installation. Once it is complete, the Java Preferences will appear. In Java preferences, check the box that says “Enable applet plug-in and Web Start applications.”
Click "Enable applet plug-in and Web Start application"

Click “Enable applet plug-in and Web Start application”

Once you do this, Java should be working in your browsers.

WordPress hack that only displays for Google

It took me a minute to figure out this one. I noticed when I searched for my blog in Google and it returned no results. So I searched for “site:www.keithslater.com” and it brought up my site however it was showing a lot of results for “Amoxicillin.” Obviously I don’t talk about amoxicilin so I figured it was hacked.

Amoxicillin results from Google

The interesting thing about this hack is, it only displays the amoxicillin results for Google. When I, or anyone else goes to the blog, it displays everything correctly.

Fixing this hack was really simple. All I had to do was upgrade WordPress to the newest version. Now I just have to wait for Google to re-crawl my site and it should be back to normal. Luckily this is just my personal blog and not a client’s site. On a client’s site I do make sure to upgrade WordPress as frequently as possible.

Protect yourself in case your laptop gets lost or stolen

Prey is a great program that you can install on a laptop just in case it gets lost or stolen one day. It’s very easy to install and use.

Once you notice that your laptop is missing all you have to do is login to their website and report your laptop as missing. It will at that point start trying to contact it and get the location of it. It not only gets the location of the laptop but it also gets other information such as IP addresses, WiFi info and it will even take a picture using the laptop’s camera every 20 minutes.

The best part about Prey is that it’s free for up to 3 devices so there is no excuse to not install it on your laptop.

http://preyproject.com/

How to synchronize an Exchange and Google Calendar to the iPhone

Edit 5-28-2012: I’ve been going through old posts to update them. There is a much easier way to do this now. Go to settings and create a new Exchange Mail account. Fill in your email and password. Enter m.google.com as the server name and that should be it. I will probably do a full write up on this at a later time.

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If you are like me, you like to keep your business calendar separate from your personal calendar.  That can be easy to do if you don’t need your second calendar to be synchronized, but if you do want both calendars synchronized, this is how you do it.

This is the way I found to be able to synchronize your Exchange calendar and your Google calendar on your iPhone at the same time.

1. Set up your Exchange account on your iPhone.

This is done just like normal.  Add all of your Exchange information under mail accounts.  I choose to only sync my Mail and Calendar but you can also sync your Contacts if you want.

Setup Exchange Account in iPhone

2. Add the Google calendar to your iPhone.

(This will work for GMail and for Google Apps for Business.)

Go to Settings.  Then to Mail, Contacts, Calendar.  Go to Add account and click on Other.  Once you are at other, click on “Add CalDAV Account.”

For server you will want to enter www.google.com.  Your username is your email address and then enter your password.  You can enter anything for Description.

Set up CalDAV account on iPhone for Google Calendar

If you are using GMail, you are done at this point and your second calendar should be synced.  If you are using Google Apps for Business, there is one more step.  Open the account that you created on your iPhone in Settings.  Click on the Advanced Settings for the account.  You will have to enter an Account URL which is:

https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[email protected]/user

Add Account URL if your are using Google Business Account

Once you do this, you are finished.

If you are using a mac, you can take this one step further and do the same thing with iCal.  Open iCal, go to Preferences, click Accounts and add a CalDAV account type.  Now your Google calendar will be synced on Google, your iPhone and in iCal automatically.