Ever seen this Windows feature?
So I’m trying to install some management software for our Toshiba phone system, and I keep getting this error:
>”Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.”
And stupid me, I assume it’s a permissions error (that’s what it looks like, right?), but it turns out it’s a security feature that Windows XP SP2 uses to protect the end user from a file they’ve copied from another location. Since I
copied said .exe file from a network share on the network, Server 2003 thought it was a dangerous file, so I couldn’t
get to it anymore. If you want even to execute the file, you have to right-click and go to the file properties and
select “Unblock” in order to stop the OS from stopping you. Kinda silly… I thought I would have seen this issue before.
psMonitor: Make PDFs without Adobe Acrobat
At every IT job I’ve worked, I’ve noticed that the ability to create PDF files in business today is nothing less than an absolute necessity. Even with the pricing of Adobe Acrobat skyrocketing (about $250 per seat), and PDF becoming an open standard, it’s still difficult to find a reliable, totally free method for creating PDF documents.
My father’s company, like most, ran into this issue a couple of years ago. So my brother, who was doing the network management at the time, developed a PostScript monitoring service to convert PostScript files to PDFs; a program he called psMonitor. After some coding and setup, anyone in the office could print to a PostScript file in a specific directory and have it automatically spit out a PDF file. Saved the company nearly $3,000 instantly. The savings in a larger firm could be even more astounding. The full version of Acrobat is still crucial for proper PDF editing and markup, but most of us don’t need that. We just need a simple way to convert files.
What follows here is my guide on how to set up your own psMonitor service so that you too may disown Acrobat!