Rosanne

The first inkling I had that my FTP process might be toes up was that I could connect to Adobe's student validation folder (username and password worked fine), but it would never reach the stage of listing the remote directory. Now, I can connect to my university's student server, and to my domain, but file transfers are limited to two 1460B packets. Everything then stops, and FileZilla times out and goes into a loop of "retry", with the destination file size never going above 2920B. Meanwhile, cPanel works just dandy for file transfer to and from my domain, but it's kind of important to my grade that I be able to move files to and from our student server... ~ Rosanne

I've got two of carbonize's recommendations running on the network I maintain for our church. Spybot Search & Destroy Just make sure you've got the latest version, because there's an increment (5.0 or 5.1, I believe) that has some serious slowdown issues. 5.2 fixed it. I've got it set to start up on Windows login, auto-update its definitions, then shut down the active process. I've got Internet Helper turned on, but not TeaTimer. Also make sure you're downloading it from a reputable source, like the author - safer-networking.net, C'Net's downloads.com, or majorgeeks.com. There are fakes out there. SpywareBlaster This one is static - you update the settings every couple of weeks or so, and the protections stay in place, even when the program isn't running. If you pay for it, you can set it to auto-update. I've got a couple more things running, as well: FireFox plus NoScript I'd feel naked, surfing without NoScript I like being able to decide who gets to run scripts on my computer, temporarily or permanently, on a case by case basis, with the option to allow everything or block everything. Sweet! Hosts File Manager plus eDexter The Hosts File Manager from Geosoft ( http://dundats.mvps.org/Software/Index.htm ) can be set to automatically go to the mvps.org home page, download their latest hosts file, and use it as your own. It's another static defense - it starts up, checks for hosts file updates, makes them if necessary, then closes. I run it with eDexter ( http://accs-net.com/hosts/eDexter.html ), to keep it fast and clean. At home, I've got all of the above, plus Kaspersky Antivirus on one machine (KAV rocks!), since I'm trying it out for the church. On the other, I've been trying out Threatfire. I'm going to either swap it out for KAV, or go to AVG Free on that machine, because Threatfire is just too twitchy for me. I tried it on a church computer, and it interpreted a Thunderbird update as a threat, and deleted the entire profile in response. Troubleshooting that little incident was fun... I switched her back to AVG (paid version, since "Free" is for personal use only). I'll never let just one company dictate my entire defensive profile. Just call me paranoid. ~ Rosanne

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but if you haven't already set your newly formatted drive to let you view common file extensions, hidden files, and system folders, make sure you do that before you start moving stuff around. Tom is dead on with the path info, and the formal way to create and restore backups (the one he's giving you) is here: http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile#backup I've had some success with letting T'bird generate the new profile, with its random 8-character folder name, then just copying all the files from the old backup into that folder, overwriting the ones created by the new profile. The only problem is if you're transferring the info with a CD, which makes everything read-only. If you're working off a backup drive, you shouldn't have any problems. The nice thing about Thunderbird is that it's experiment-friendly. As long as you've got the old email backed up, the worst that can happen is that your experiment on the new profile won't work. At which point, you can wipe the new one and start over. You haven't lost any data. Have I mentioned today, that I love T'Bird??? Good luck! ~ Rosanne

That would be great - thanks! ~ Rosanne

I see. Since I see that you prefer the text link, though, I'll go with that. Thanks! ~ Rosanne

May I crop your "Total Choice Hosting" logo to button size and hotlink that? It would be similar to what I have at the bottom of my computer page (sadly in need of updating, if I ever get far enough ahead on my homework to look at it! )

Thanks for the quick replies! As I said, it's not a mission-critical thing. I was just curious. UNIX is an awesome OS. I took a couple of "interested user" level classes in it, back when the network I was on ran it. My impression was that it was very powerful, but completely unintuitive. I mean, if I want to find something, the first thing that leaps into my head to try is not (and never has been) "grep"!!!! Ah, well... back to the homework. ~ Rosanne

I'm taking a pretty heavy-duty computer class right now. One week, we'll be manipulating XML with javascript, the next, beating our heads against XSLT, etc. This week, it's SOAP. And ASP. I was contemplating kicking open a work area in my account, versus running on the student server, but someone pointed out that y'all might not support ASP. I don't see it referenced anywhere on the site, but for all I knew, it could have been something that just runs, that you saw no need to list. It's not a life-or-death issue. I'm just curious. Thanks! ~ Rosanne

Okay. Using ports 995 and 465, with the "Use SSL" checked and "use secure authentication" NOT checked, with "server120.tchmachines.com" (my server) listed as the SMTP host, I was able to send from my domain mailserver securely via T'Bird. My attempts with "use TLS" failed, so I figured SSL was what was supported, and I should sit down, shut up and color I think I'm ready to finish setting up the church emails, now ... just as soon as I go find out the difference between TLS and SSL. All I know about them right now is that they're ways of securing email Thanks again! ~ Rosanne

Thanks! Gotta get to work, or I won't be able to afford my own domain... I'll practice setting everything tonight, and go take care of the church staff as soon as I've got it licked. ~ Rosanne

The name on the certificate was the serverxx name. That's why I was asking about changing the default "mail.domain.net" setting. Okay, I'll hunt for an option to permanently accept the certificate tonight, working with my own TCH domain. I think I didn't get the error on my own email because I configured T'Bird to receive from that address, but didn't bother with setting up the send feature. I also might not have been using the secure ports (BAD geek! ) Thanks! ~ Rosanne

That was fast! Thanks! But that page is the one that tells me "You have to setup the SMTP (outgoing) server manually if you want to use your domain to send." I did set it up with the "mydomain.net" - both for incoming and outgoing. That's where the problem starts. T'Bird seems to be able to tell that it's really "serverxx" handling the transaction, and thinks that someone's trying to hijack the email. There may be a security setting somewhere that I have to change... my feelings won't be hurt if someone tells me I missed a step or got something wrong. But if I can successfully set up Gmail for inbound and outbound on T'Bird, with its weird ports, I know there's got to be an alert-free way to tell T'Bird to send and receive tch domain mail. I'll play with it this evening, using my own domain. Any suggestions for things to try are welcome. I was already tired yesterday, when I was messing with it, so I may have missed something obvious. ~ Rosanne

I finally took the plunge and set up domain email addresses for some of the church staff. Most of the configuration was straightforward, and I did read the instructions (honest!), but the instructions just say SMTP will have to be set up by hand. That's fine, and I did so. But when T'Bird sees that the outbound server is something along the lines of "tch server385", instead of the "mail.mydomain.net" that I coded in, it throws an alert message. You have to confirm that you do indeed want to let the tch server handle the transaction. It works then, but there's got to be a way to turn that off... We've got folks that will call me at my real job to ask about it (I'm unpaid volunteer tech support ). Can I plug in the actual servername, versus mail.domainname? Will that work? If y'all have another solution for me, I'm all ears. Thanks!! ~ Rosanne