Lazybit

Fixed Dialing Number (FDN) is a feature of a phone's SIM card that can restrict outgoing calls only to a special list of numbers, or to numbers that match a certain template (like 0793519xx or 069xxx906). Incoming and emergency calls are not affected by this option, so 911 and 112 are always reachable.

As a parent, you can control the phone numbers your children can dial. For example, you can configure the SIM such that the kid can call only you, your spouse and your other child.
A business can use FDN as a security measure to prevent employees from dialing numbers outside the company from their corporate-paid account.

Fixed dialing is activated by entering PIN2. This prevents others from changing or disabling the FDN list. This number is usually distributed with the card itself. If you can’t find it, contact the mobile operator.

You can enable FDN on your phone, but editing the list of fixed dialing numbers can be cumbersome if you use the phone’s tiny keypad.


SIM reader with SIM Manager can enable FDN and edit the fixed dialing numbers much faster and easier.

1. The first thing you have to do is add the numbers you want to be able to dial. You can write them from scratch or copy them from your contacts.

   

2. Click Enable FDN feature in the option SIM menu:

   
3. Enter PIN2.
   
   

FDN is now enabled on your SIM card. No outgoing calls can be made to any numbers, other than those in the list of fixed dialing numbers, or emergency numbers. Even if the SIM card is plugged into a different phone - calls to numbers other than the allowed ones are not possible.

Things to keep in mind:

• If you enter an incorrect PIN2 three times in a row, it will be locked. You can unblock PIN2 if you know PUK2. If you’re not sure what these numbers are, contact your mobile operator.
• Even though not all SIM cards support FDN, practically any SIM card issued these days has it. If your card does not, see if your mobile operator can replace it.

If you use Google's two-step verification feature, you will stumble upon an authentication error with SIM Manager, when attempting to synchronize your SIM with the online phonebook.

Two-step authentication is something that can easily slip out of your mind, so you may think that the problem is with your password, or with the software. After repeated attempts to synchronize your phonebook, you just give up (and maybe blame it on SIM Manager)

To fix this, you have to create an application-specific password in your Google account settings, and use that password with SIM Manager.

1. Log onto your Gmail account and click account settings

   

2. Edit your two-step verification settings

   

3. Click Manage application-specific passwords

   

4. Generate a password for SIM Manager

   

5. Use this password with SIM Manager

   

That's it. Have fun synchronizing your contacts!

p.s. the password in the screenshot has been changed, don't try to use it ;-)

The SMSC stands for "SMS center", it is a system that manages the traffic of SMS (texts) in a mobile network. That's the place where the messages are kept for a while if they cannot be delivered instantly to the recipient.

Normally none of us has to be aware of it, because the SMSC is written to the SIM card by the mobile operator, so we don't have to configure anything.

On the file system of the SIM card, the SMS center is stored in EF SMSP (short message service parameters), the full path to the file is 7F10\6F42. The file can be read and updated, if you know PIN1.

The easiest way to change it is with SIM Explorer. It can display the file in a nice, human-readable form.

And if you prefer raw data - you can have that too:

If you're someone who checks the system logs every now and then, to make sure things are running smooth - you may have noticed some errors related to Private Disk:

The PRVDISKAMD64 service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.

The program works fine, despite these log entries.  The error is not critical and it has no impact on the program's functionality. But why is it there? And what does it mean?

Private Disk comes with several flavours of drivers - 32-bit and 64-bit. Upon installation, both driver types are registered, but only one of them is successfully loaded by the system.

The other type, which is not compatible with the platform, fails to load - hence the log entry is generated.

In other words, you can simply ignore these notifications.

This behaviour will be changed in the next release, so the system won't bother loading modules that are not designed for it. Until then, here is a simple solution:

1. download Autoruns from Sysinternals
2. run the program and switch to the Drivers tab
3. find the drivers the pubisher of which is Dekart
4. uncheck the versions that do not correspond to your system
5. the new settings will come into effect after a restart

On choosing the entries:

• if you have a 32-bit (x86) system, disable the ones ending with "amd64"
• for 64-bit platforms, disable the other ones (as in the example below)

What the modules mean:

• pdfilter - Disk Firewall, the application-layer access filter;
• prvdisk - virtual disk driver (the thing that makes the encrypted drive show up in My computer as a regular disk);
• prjndl - the disk encryption driver that implements AES-256 in CBC mode, our NIST-certified implementation of it.

The best way to gather detailed troubleshooting information about Windows is the built-in System information tool. It generates a report that contains details about the hardware and software configuration. Here's how it works:

1. Press Start\Run
2. Type msinfo32 and press Enter
3. Once the program is loaded, press File\Save
4. Send the generated NFO file to your geeky friend who knows what to do with it

Here's what the report will contain:

• exact version of Windows and service packs;
• installed software;
• currently running applications;
• start up programs;
• system services and their status;
• hardware and hardware drivers (and their versions);
• partition table (indicating the size and file system of each drive);
• users and user-groups.

The smart card service is a standard Windows component and it should be present on every system. However, in certain circumstances that is not the case - as a result, programs that depend on this service will fail.

I've previously discussed how to install the smart card service on Windows XP, and I've covered this procedure on Windows 2000. However, I had no solution for Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Fortunately, that is not the case anymore, a solution that works on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms was found, here is how it works.

Sometimes the smart card service is not in the list of services at all, but if you look for the files related to this service (ex: SCardSSP.dll) - they are present in the file system. So the problem is not in the fact that the modules are not there; they are - but they are not loaded.

Having had the opportunity to tinker with a problematic system, I was able to determine that the service is absent because some entries in the registry are different from their "normal system" counterparts.

In other words, the difference is only in the contents of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\SCardSvr.

If the service is not listed, open regedit and view that key, it will most likely be absent. If it is present - it means that some of its sub-entries are incorrect.

1. Backup the key (right-click\Export) to a REG file
2. Delete the key
3. Download and import this REG file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3258602/scard-vistax86x64.reg
4. Reboot the system

If the planets are aligned properly - the service will be back, and it will be running after the restart. Give your software a try, everything should work. The registry file above works with Vista x86 and Vista x64.

For Windows 7, use this one: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3258602/scardsvr-win7x64.reg (it should work on both types of platforms).

For Windows Server 2008, use the same file as for Windows 7; I tested it on x64 - it works.

I hope you'll find this helpful and that you will save all the time I've lost. Feel free to share your experience or ask any questions.

If the sky falls down and Dropbox doesn't work, here is the contents of the files.

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SIM Manager can retrieve the address-book and SMS from the iPhone, via iTunes' backups.

Depending on the firmware version of your iPhone, you can get lucky and recover deleted SMS as well. Take a look at this video for more details:

This procedure does not require a card reader, so technically you can try it out for free - since the trial version of SIM Manager is fully functional during the evaluation period.

Here is a download link for the current release candidate of version 3.0: dl.dropbox.com/u/3258602/DKbeta/SIMManager3-a.exe