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showing posts tagged with 'windows'
Unable to disable Java Update
by lunarg on October 8th 2010, at 11:16
There is a problem with disabling Java Update when you're running Vista/2008/7 with UAC enabled. Trying to disable automatic updates through the control panel does not work as the setting will not "stick"

The problem is caused by an oversight of Sun. Running the configuration applet from Control Panel means it gets started as a unprivileged user, and the automatic update setting cannot be changed by such a user.

Rather than simply kick out jusched.exe from the registry (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Run, there's another way. Open an Explorer and manually find the control p  ...
 
Configure Automatic Updates in a Non–Active Directory Environment
by lunarg on September 24th 2010, at 13:12

Some information about configuring WSUS without AD (and thus, without group policies):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708449%28WS.10%29.aspx

 
Slow XP boot after installation of .NET v4
by lunarg on September 21st 2010, at 15:35
With the push of .NET Framework v4 through Windows Update, I've noticed a problem with Windows XP clients. They all suddenly started to boot up slowly, i.e. it takes an abnormal long time before the network stack is started.

Logical deduction and analysis of the problem lead me to check which services were taking a long time to start, as this could be an indication of cause. After rebooting, then immediately digging into Services (services.msc) shows a service trying to start, called Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_X86.
As the users of the affected computers are not using any .NET 4   ...
 
Outlook 2007 constantly asking for password
by lunarg on September 20th 2010, at 16:51

If Outlook 2007 is constantly asking to enter your password, even though you've enabled Remember password, try the following:

  1. Close Outlook.
  2. Navigate to: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect (Vista/7), or %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Protect (XP).
  3. In that folder should be another folder named after a SID. Rename or delete the folder.
  4. Some people have reported a reboot is required before starting Outlook again. To be on the safe side, do this. After the reboot, start Outlook again. It should be fixed.
 
Microsoft announces Internet Explorer 9 beta
by lunarg on September 16th 2010, at 11:14

Microsoft has announced the release of the beta-version of the new Internet Explorer 9.

One of the highlights would be a better compliance with industry standards (HTML5, CSS3, etc.). Does this mean that the horrid problem of browser incompatibility (especially between IE and all other browsers) will finally be resolved? I sure hope so...

 
Installing Exchange 2007 SP2 on SBS 2008
by lunarg on September 15th 2010, at 11:31
Installing Exchange 2007 Service pack 2 on a Windows 2008 SBS generates an error, as detailed here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973862.

To resolve, you can either follow the instructions outlined in the KB, or you can download the installation tool, especially designed for SBS 2008.

First, download these: Exchange 2007 SP2 (64-bit edition):
- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4C4BD2A3-5E50-42B0-8BBB-2CC9AFE3216A Exchange 2007 SP2 installation tool for SBS 2008:
- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=FFD2FE61-927  ...
 
Shrink database of Symantec Endpoint Protection 11
by lunarg on September 15th 2010, at 10:24
Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 (short: SEP11) has a database in which it stocks everything from client properties, virus definitions and more. At the installation, you could either select to use an external data source, or its internal database format. When the database is in service for a while, it can grow very large, depending on the number of clients you've got. But it is possible to shrink (= compact) it, which, in certain cases, could save you several hundreds of MB.

Notice

The problem of a overly large database was addressed in Maintenance Release 2, where the compact operation is do  ...
 
Getting rid of unused/disconnected devices in Windows
by lunarg on September 14th 2010, at 11:56
Ever so often, when a hardware device fails or gets replaced by another, the old one still slumbers in the deep abyss that is Windows. Usually, this is not really a problem as the unused device only takes up disk space in the form of drivers and/or support software.
In case of network equipment, that's another story. Setting a static IP on a network adapter, replacing it with another, then setting the same static address on the replacement invokes a confusing warning message. In case of 2008 SBS, it gets even worse as running certain wizards will barf out errors about not being the primary ada  ...
 
Retrieve Microsoft product keys from your system
by lunarg on September 13th 2010, at 10:13
It all happened to us at least once: losing a Microsoft product key, either by carelesness, the cleaning corporation, or a sudden fireball in your drawer. It's not so much a problem if your system is still operational, but what to do when you have to reinstall your computer? One can't just buy expensive licenses all over again, now can we?

Fortunately, there are tools out there that allow the retrieval of product keys, as long as they are installed. ProduKey, created by Nirsoft is one such program. It quickly retrieves product keys from a working system for Windows, Office, SQL serv  ...
 
Beware of Google Chrome (on old computers)
by lunarg on September 6th 2010, at 09:19
Be careful of installing Google Chrome on a Windows XP computer with an Intel 915i graphics card on board. I ran into an odd problem at a client, who had recently installed it. Occassionally, the system would bail out with a BSOD, and a vague error code. At first, I suspected a hardware problem, but letting WinDbg loose on the minidump file revealed the true culprit.

Apparently, there's a conflict between the graphics driver of the Intel 915 and Chrome, causing the BSOD. A detailed analysis in WinDbg revealed the causing program as chrome.exe. See the attached text file for a full log o  ...
 
Make Cygwin's 'dig' work without errors
by lunarg on September 2nd 2010, at 13:41
In a default Cygwin installation, dig does not work properly out of the box. While resolving works when specifying a DNS server on the command line, a simple dig does not seem to work, and results in an error:

C:\cygwin\etc>dig www.google.be;; communications error: connection reset;; communications error: connection reset

The reason for this is because there are no DNS servers specified in Cygwin. Dig uses the same configuration as DNS would be on a linux system, the configuration file /etc/resolv.conf. By creating this file and adding your DNS servers (e.g. from Windows), dig will be a  ...
 
Batch processing with The GIMP
by lunarg on August 26th 2010, at 12:53
While batch processing was already possible using the rather complex Script-Fu, there's now a plug-in for GIMP allowing simple batch processing through a dialog.

DBP David's Batch Processor allows for automatic operations on a collection of image files. Operations such as colour correcting, resizing, cropping, sharpening, and even renaming can be performed with ease, saving them to a different location in a different image format. All operations (except loading and saving) are optional so you can use this for simple image format conversion as well.

DBP can be found here: http://me  ...
 
Disable Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage
by lunarg on August 24th 2010, at 09:55
Ran across a problem today where a legit Office 2003 got flagged as being not legitimate, displaying a nag screen each time an Office application got started. The Office Genuine Advantage update (short: OGA) is an update installed with Microsoft Update, similar to the Windows Genuine Advantage update (short: OWA). While Microsoft flags the update as not uninstallable, there are ways to get rid of the update anyway.

Uninstalling the update is your best bet, and can be done from a (elevated) command prompt.

Be sure all Office applications are closed. Open a Command prompt (cmd.exe). T  ...
 
Outlook sends out RTF mails despite HTML or plaintext setting
by lunarg on August 19th 2010, at 16:00
Had a nasty run-in with Outlook 2007 the other day: despite the internet message format being set to HTML, recipients not using Outlook would still receive mail with attachments as RTF with an unreadable winmail.dat file attached to it.



and



Clueless, I started poking around and finally resorted to Google to find out what was going on. Apparently, there is a separate setting per e-mail address in your contacts list, stating what format that recipient should be able to receive. By default, it is set to Let Outlook decide which basically tells to use the default in Outlook options (thu  ...
 
Screencast with Microsoft Expression Encoder
by lunarg on August 17th 2010, at 13:10

Microsoft has a free edition of Microsoft Expression, which has the basic functionality of creating screencasts. This way you can create screencasts, and encode them to WMV (or to Silverlight). The free edition is limited to 10 minutes per clip, but this should be adequate for simple short clips.

Microsoft Expression Encoder can be downloaded from the Expression website: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/; scroll to the bottom to find it.

 
Upgrade your (recent) Office 2007 to 2010 for free
by lunarg on August 6th 2010, at 14:30
Microsoft has introduced the technological guarantee, stating that if you have recently purchased a license of Office 2007, you are eligible for a free upgrade to Office 2010. Depending on which version of Office 2007 you purchased, you may upgrade to the 2010 counterpart, or possibly a higher one (e.g. Small Business 2007 upgrades to Professional 2010, neat!).

To be eligible, you need to have purchased, installed and activated Office 2007 between March 5, 2010 and September 30, 2010.
When you qualify, surf to http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/tech-guarantee/ and fill out the form. You can  ...
 
Slow or no video after installing LogMeIn
by lunarg on August 4th 2010, at 09:57

If you have an nVidia video card and are experiencing slow video performance or no video output at all, after installing LogMeIn, you should download and install the latest drivers from nVidia.

This solves a conflict between the LogMeIn mirror driver and older versions of the nVidia display driver.

 
Get rid of ads in Windows Live Messenger
by lunarg on August 3rd 2010, at 13:40

It never was easier to get rid of those pesky ads in Windows Live Messenger. Simply download A-patch: http://apatch.org/.

 
Turn on character overwrite in Word 2007
by lunarg on July 5th 2010, at 16:39
Apparently, Office 2007 no longer has character overwriting enabled by default. Pressing the Insert key on your keyboard does nothing at all. While most rarely use this function, a customer was blaming his keyboard from nothing working properly. A quick look around showed that, indeed, pressing Insert no longer enables the overwrite function in Office 2007 (Word in particular was tested).

Microsoft has decided some time ago to turn off this function by default, because it is indeed rarely used - it's the first time I noticed it was gone, and have never received a question up until now,   ...
 
Print spooler crashes with HP LJ 1020/1022
by lunarg on June 30th 2010, at 18:04
Ever so often, owners of a HP Laserjet 1020 or 1022 may run into a problem with the print spooler crashing over and over for no apparent reason. Restarting the spooler causes an immediate crash, and the only way to get rid of the problem is by removing (sometimes by force) all printers. The observant type has already noticed (the title of this post says it all) that the common dominator is indeed the 1020/1022 printer, and that the problem usually occurs upon attempting to print one or another PDF document.

In truth, the problem is caused by newer versions of the HP Host-based printer drive  ...
 
showing posts tagged with 'windows'
 
 
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