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showing posts tagged with 'windows'
Beware of Google Chrome (on old computers)
edited by 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 of the problem.

The client stopped using Chrome, and his odd BSODs went away.

 
Make Cygwin's 'dig' work without errors
edited by 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 able to resolve without each time manually specifying a DNS server.

Assuming you have installed Cyg  ...
 
Batch processing with The GIMP
edited by 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://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html.
It is mainly designed for linux version of The GIMP but pre  ...
 
Disable Microsoft Office Genuine Advantage
edited by 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).

Type in: msiexec /X {B2544A03-10D0-4E5E-BA69-0362FFC20D18}
This will invoke Windows Installer w  ...
 
Outlook sends out RTF mails despite HTML or plaintext setting
edited by 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 (thus, being HTML).
However, this is also the choice of Always use RTF, which basically forces Outlook   ...
 
Screencast with Microsoft Expression Encoder
edited by 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
edited by 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 choose to get the electronic download, or order a DVD for an additional fee. The license upgrade it  ...
 
Slow or no video after installing LogMeIn
edited by 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
edited by 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
edited by 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, and because there were complaints about users inadvertently turning on overwrite mode and overwritin  ...
 
Print spooler crashes with HP LJ 1020/1022
edited by 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 driver. For some reason, a part of the HP driver crashes upon parsing certain PDF documents (usually scan  ...
 
Fallout 3: notorious CTD upon saving
edited by on June 18th 2010, at 20:27
Ran into a problem with my Fallout 3 saving, oddly enough for the first time ever. Every time I tried saving my savegame, the game crashed with an access violation. As long as I did not save, there was no problem, but hey, what's the use about not saving your game...
The problem started appearing right after I started the Broken Steel quest line, but even outside the quest line, I have this problem.

As a member of Fallout Nexus, I was nosing around the mod repository when I stumbled upon an unusual post: Crash To Desktop Begone. It explained a plausible reason for the problem: upon saving a game, a conflict occurs with the animation sequences and saving, causing the crash. Considerin  ...
 
Advanced 7-Zip SFX creation
edited by on May 31st 2010, at 10:57

By default, 7-Zip SFX (self-extracting executable) creation only has basic configuration options. With 7-Zip SFX Maker, you can expand those options with a whole lot more.

This piece of software allows the creation of customized SFX, taking 7z files as input. Things like changing the icon, captions, default extraction path and more, are all implemented. This makes 7-Zip SFX Maker a handy tool when you require a little more than a standard SFX but less than a fully-fledged installer.

Download link: http://teejee2008.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/7-zip-sfx-maker-v20-2/.

 
Remote Desktop Connection: enable redirection of DOT4 printer
edited by on May 31st 2010, at 10:51
Printers that use ports that do not begin with COM, LPT or USB are not redirected in a remote desktop or terminal services session. To force all ports to be redirected, the filtering type has to be changed. This is done in the registry.

Do a Start, Run, type in regedit and press Enter. This starts the Registry Editor.

Navigate to the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Default\AddIns\RDPDR.

Right-click in the right pane, choose New, then DWORD value.

Name the value FilterQueueType, press Enter.

Double-click the newly created entry, and set the value to FFFFFFFF, click OK.

Restart the client, log in to your session, and all ports should be r  ...
 
McAfee's take on svchost.exe
edited by on April 23rd 2010, at 20:42
One of my clients at work was also a victim of the latest McAfee false-positive trouble. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, read the official statement (and remedy): https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?id=KB68780&page=content.
Basically the issue is that McAfee wipes svchost.exe from your system because it thinks there's a virus in it. And this file is in fact quite critical for Windows to function properly.

My client managed to skip by the worst part of the trouble, and only had this issue on two of their desktop computers (running Windows XP SP3). Their systems were not entirely crippled as they would still boot and log in, but they were otherwise unable to use networking, s  ...
 
Print server properties in Windows 7
edited by on April 20th 2010, at 13:36
The print server properties have been misplaced a bit in Windows 7. Before, you could right-click in the window showing your printers, then choose the dialog from the menu. In Windows 7, this no longer works, as they've kicked out that particular menu entry.

But all is not lost: it still exists, but is not directly accessible anywhere. You need to use MMC, add the right snap-in, and that one provides you with full acess to the server properties.

Start mmc (start -> run, type in mmc);

From the menu, choose File, then Add/remove Snap-ins

In the available snap-ins list, scroll down until you find Print Management, click the Add > button, then click OK.

In the following window, click   ...
 
Avast Internet Security trouble
edited by on April 16th 2010, at 10:52
Had a problem with an XP (SP2) computer and Avast Internet Security. Upon installing the product (and its subsequent reboot), the computer freezes right after startup. The mouse still moves, but keyboard does not respond, no applications get started.

After a search on the Avast forum, I came across this post, claiming there's a problem with certain applications and Avast on XP:

Quote
This is caused by a bug in Windows XP function ImageEnumerateCertificates( ) which is being called by firewall service when a process tries to access the net. This function (unpatched in all version of XP) hangs with certain corrupted files and LogitechDesktopManager.exe is one of them.

It will be fixed in th  ...
 
Change max message size in SBS 2008 POP3 connector
edited by on April 14th 2010, at 20:54

To change the maximum message size in SBS 2008's POP3 Connector, it is not enough to change the Exchange maximum send and receive limits. The POP3 Connector's limit is specified through the SBS Fax Sharepoint Receive. Setting the receive size of that specific connector will set the POP3 Connector's maximum allowed message size.

 
Get rid of sending winmail.dat attachments
edited by on April 14th 2010, at 20:31
When you yourself are sending out e-mail to others, your recipients might complain about them not being able to open this e-mail. This is because you're probably using Outlook (with Exchange) and are sending e-mail in RTF-format.
Using RTF in a mail is generally a bad idea, because it's not an internet standard for e-mail layouting. RTF was introduced a while back by Microsoft, but has since been superseded for the widely adopted HTML; even Outlook 2007 now defaults to HTML.

So, to get rid of the winmail.dat, simply set your mail format to HTML (instead of RTF).

In Outlook, on the Tools menu, click Options.

Click the Mail Format (or Send tab).

See the message format list. Change it to ei  ...
 
STOP 0x7E when inserting USB flash drive
edited by on March 30th 2010, at 11:53
Had a rather odd problem with a laptop of a client: upon inserting any USB storage media, his Windows XP bailed out with a BSOD with STOP code 0x7E.

A look with windbg revealed it may be related to an issue with the USB driver (usbport.sys), but as there were no real USB drivers available for it, and he already had the most recent Windows Updates, a "regular" solution would not be an option.

So I went for the more irregular option. I knew that there's probably another Windows Update which had replaced one or more of the USB driver files (in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers) - the problem only surfaces until a month or so ago, but was unable to quickly assertain which one. I didn't fee  ...
 
showing posts tagged with 'windows'
 
 
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