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Acer is also making laptops with no hard drive activity indicator lights. I guess this is the new wave of laptops. Maybe the manufactures think that no one looks at those lights, but we really do. If the laptop isn't working properly, all the indicators we can get help.

I also noted on this laptop, that Caps Lock and Num Lock flash an image up on the screen when it's depressed. This is not very useful when the screen isn't working or we're troubleshooting. 

I don't know what Dell was thinking. Perhaps LED indicator lights are the next thing is cost savings. This laptop only appears to have one LED and a power light in the power button. It doesn't even have a charging light. Frustrating to troubleshoot as there is no hard drive light to show there is any activity at all and no numlock light and no capslock light. 

I really never liked Vista, but I realize the reason it got such a bad rap was because vendors were selling Vista on machines made for Windows XP. Dell would sell Vista licenses and install Windows XP for you which is one of the main reasons I buy from Dell. However, Windows XP is getting past it's prime and installing it back on a scraped Dell machine is a problem without the media or a license key (product code). The certificate of authentication on the Dell box has the Windows Vista key and...

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New Windows 7 64 Bit installation and old programs. Excellent explanation on this web page http://www.vistax64.com/drivers/168477-installing-32-bit-odbc-drivers-vista-x64.htmlon why they don't show up. I read several accounts that said use c:\windows\sysWow64\odbc32.exe, which I didn't understand. I kept trying to find how to install it to run in the existing ODBC admin from the control panel, but didn't know I was already running that program and the problem is simply that both programs are named...

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Luckily the missing menu items get moved to a location in the user's temp directory under c:\Documents and Settings\<user>\local settings\temp\smtmp. They usually show up in subfolders numbered 1 and 2. Nothing was in my 2 folder, but 1 had all the menu items.Check this link:http://www.thecomputergroup.com/blog/how-to-restore-missing-desktop-icons-and-start-menu-items-after-malwarevirus-infection#comment-903

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This computer had several bugs and virus issues, but the problem wasn't a virus. The symptoms were a blank desktop no mouse but the task bar displayed with the start button and the start button would respond to keyboard commands, but all the programs that showed on the task bar did not show up on the screen. Therefore, screen properties (which doesn't show an icon on the task bar) wouldn't appear in the viewable area in order to make or view any changes. Safe mode worked fine however. All the...

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Brand new laptop right out of the box with Windows 7 Home Premium and we cannot connect to the remote PC. The message is connection refused in Chrome and IE 9 shows no information without expanding the details link. However, under that link, there is a message that states if your using an HTTPS connection, check out the security section in Internet options under the Advanced tab.Apparently, IE 9 new installs only have TLS 1.0 enabled and SSL 2.0 and 3.0. I don't know which is required for logmein...

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Recently had a server with a brand new drive upgrade. While the server was down, everyone continued using the internet through our Comcast business class router. Being the wonderful IT guy that I am, naturally I think I'm the only one who's right and installation teams are stupid and just do what they were taught in school, no matter how wrong it is.The server is a Windows 2000 Domain with only one domain controller. Active Directory Services installed, DNS and DHCP services also utilized (pretty...

Read More "Moving or Copying files too Server takes Forever or Network timeout"

Allway Sync is a (sort of) free program to synchronize the files on two hard drives. It, however; has a limit to it's free version. When doing a backup of your computer, the entire C drive, the software complains that you are synchronizing too many files to be for private use.So using it to schedule file synchronization is useless. There is no information on how many is too many. Just the iTunes directory should be plenty of many.So, I wanted to uninstall the product, but it kept complaining it...

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If you have Office 2000 installed and are using Clamwin for virus protection, this is a new false positive that just popped up today. I've already analyzed the file and submitted it to Clamwin for review.Check this site for both review and submission:http://www.clamwin.com/content/view/40/27/

Read More "CONVERT9.WIZ: BC.Exploit.CVE_2012_0142 "

MacBook Air and iPhone have serious WiFi connection issues when using Airprint. Both seem to work fine surfing the internet and getting email, but when you need to print, the printer just doesn't seem to be there. The MacBook Air can see the printer, but nothing ever comes out. It just sits and spins and spins. Some solutions that people try is to restart the printer. I have connected regular PCs to the wireless printer as well and they seem to work fine (but they aren't using Airprint). But the...

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Clamwin is reportingchrome.dll: W32.Virut.Gen.D-148 andchrome.7z:W32.Virut.Gen.D-148as virus' when they are not. Please see this link as it seems these two files keep going in and out. I monitor several PCs and find it way to frustrating to go in and filter this false positive out on every PC. But I get a report from each of PC that it has this virus which is quite annoying. It seems that the database admins for Clamwin are making an effort to fix this, but it still keeps appearing almost daily....

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We had one IE 8 browser that refused to show certain web sites in anything other than mobile mode. When the same site was tested against every other IE 8 browser in the office, the page showed fine. I found one site that suggested it might be the Creative Software Autoupdate program, which when uninstalled fixed the problem. The PC we had this problem on didn't have Creative Software Autoupdate or any Creative devices / software installed.Another site suggested that the headers might be overlong....

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Couldn't delete BackEnv folder from inside the QooBox file, which I understand is created by Combofix.I found several posts which suggests using some other application to delete the folder, but I found it was a simple windows security issue. Here's what I did:1. Right-click on BackEnv, select properties2. Select security Tab (won't work in home versions, but if you have the pro version OS and that tab is missing, change your folder options and clear Use Simple File Sharing under the View tab).3....

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Got several virus alerts from Clamwin in several old .xls files. Looking up the info, it appears that this was a false positive last year. See this post:http://forums.clamwin.com/viewtopic.php?t=3396. Did a little research and this particular file seems to be imbedded in publisher files and emailed to victims per NIST: (http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2011-3412). Not sure if the code executes in an excel file or not, but Clamwin is finding code that it believes to be this virus....

Read More "BC.Exploit.CVE_2011_3412 clamwin (false positive???)"

I lost the right side of the Windows 7 menu. All the program short cuts showed up, but Documents, Pictures, Music, Connect To, Control Panel, Devices and Printers, Default Programs and Help and Support didn't show. The %temp%\smtmp folder was present, but all the short cuts there were restored.I restored the right side menu by right clicking on the start button and selecting properties. Then Customize button on the Start Menu tab. On the bottom of the Customize Start Menu is a button Use Default...

Read More "Windows 7 Lost the Menus After Virus"

I have a windows 7 64bit laptop that had a virus, obviously as it hid all the icons on the desktop and files. I ran unhide and malwarbytes and tdskiller and thought I got rid of it. But a new virus popped up a couple of days later, so I knew there had to be a rootkit that wasn't discovered before. When I ran eset's online virus scanner, I didn't clear the check mark and it removed the virus infected file. Unfortunately, I can't get back into it. I'm certain the registry thinks that file is required...

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Recently had several clients with issues where the search provider selection site did not scroll. IE8's new search engine provider screen now alphabetically lists several search engines that you can select from. The error shows only the 2 top search engines and does not scroll. I recently had this problem when I downgraded from IE9 because that version seems to have issues with Java. After uninstalling IE9, IE8 would not allow me to select the search engine provider I wanted.I found a alternative...

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We just recently installed Peachtree 2012 on a PC that we use GotoMyPC for remote access. I'm not sure if the new Sage Peachtree Remote Access feature which uses GotoMyPC removed the gotomypc printer or not, but right after we installed Peachtree 2012, the gotomypc printer disappeared and we were unable to print remotely. The problem was fixed after I called GotoMyPC who directed me to be at the computer that is the GotoMyPC host and not in a remote session. Then to open the browser and got to...

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During a recent job, I created another user profile with the intent that the second profile would use Outlook with different email credentials. However, during the setup process, Office 2007 failed with several errors. Then when Irebooted and started Outlook again, I got an error that mapi was unable to load the information service mspst.dll.First off, there is no mspst.dll. The file that is causing the problem in my case was mspst32.dll. There are several links that suggests that it is in the...

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I just received a laptop that had a virus on it. At first it appeared to be the standard rogue virus that displayed a message Windows Antivirus 2012 has found 34 problems on your PC. This type of virus isn't hard to get rid of, but after removing that virus, I started getting pop up windows that said hello4 and blankwindow2. I could also tell a process was continually spawning new processes. When I looked in the taskmanager, I found several ILO.exe programs running and new ones spawning. I couldn't...

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I had to do an update on a Windows XP PC. The system was still running SP2 and IE6. My task was to install SP3 and then all of the updates. I was especially looking for IE8. I like to install SP3 before installing IE8.This time, when I finished with the updates, the Windows Update options were grayed out and automatic updates was enabled. Sometimes after a windows update the automatic updates gets set on, but t his time I couldn't modify that selection.When I finished the manual update, I had...

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I had a problem where several of my remote support clients unattended support suddenly shut down. They appeared in my list of unattended computers as being off line. Most of these issues occurred on Microsoft servers. I don't know if this might be part of the issue. On the server itself, the golden clover had a red X on it indicating that there was no connection to the internet. In order to fix this issue, I right-clicked the clover on the system tray and selected exit. Then started services.msc...

Read More "GOTOASSIST unattended services appears to be disconnected"

One of the big problems I get when trying to trouble shoot Vista is trying to run the CMD command as administrator. There are tons of ways to do it if everything is running okay, but I sometimes find myself locked out of the normal start button or menu and have to start programs from the task manager. When you do this by simply running CMD, certain programs such as chkdsk /f will not work as it requires administrator access, so how do you start CMD as administrator?If you can start the task manager...

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The error message from Peachtree Accounting stating You cannot use Peachtree right now because the serioal number(s) you have (###) are already in use by the maximum number of computers... Try logging on again. Which after running through the recommended steps by peachtree, i.e. deleting the lck files, 4 access .dat files (which I really don't get why they'd have anyone delete those) or the *.ptl files only resulted in a new error message. You cannot access Peachtree right now. Please reboot and...

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Just an update on the Peachtree SR5 update... After I installed the update, peachtree completely crashed. I don't know if it was SR5 that did it or not, but there was nothing I could do to get any peachtree product to work in the original workstation. I finally had to install Peachtree 2010 on a new PC in order to get back to work. The data was fine. I was able to bring that over from the corrupted PC and use it, but the tax calculations for SSN withholdings is still not correct. Peachtree 2010...

Read More "Update on SR5 update and corrected tax tables"

Just had an issue where Vista Home Premium could no longer connect to SQL 2005 on a remote server after a weekend Microsoft update. The error that kept coming back was that the server could not be found. I at first thought it was a firewall issue, but being told it that a recent Microsoft Windows update had been performed, I decided to look into that.The application that uses the SQL 2005 server is called AllOrders by NumberCruncher. However, there are many applications that connect to SQL, but...

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I'm getting this error with Event ID: 51 in the System Event log. It only comes up as a warning and the confusion is on what device is DR4. I just replaced the existing Dell Raid because it was soooo slow and appeared to have many errors when doing backups or other system checks. It was in a mirrored configuration but neither hard drive had actually failed. So I did some research. DR4 translates to Disk Removable. There is some inidcation that the 4 is the USB slot it is in, but I have some reservations...

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I had a customer who lost their DSL connection and knowing Verizon's usual troubleshooting techniques, I went through them myself before I called. Unfortunenately, the problem was that the customer had not paid for their service. The phone line worked for incoming calls just fine so that wasn't an indicator. The DSL line was the fax line. I did notice that when I connected to the DSL modem admin page, the public IP address was 10.xxx.xxx.xxx. Now that the service is running again, the IP address...

Read More "Verizon DSL Modem Reset Actiontek"

I followed the suggestions on this site:http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/BlackBerry-Desktop-Software/8830-Syncronization-Error-code-0x8004fceb/m-p/44843which recommended deleting the intellisync folder from the appsdata folder, however; those instructions were for a Windows 7 PC, possibly a Vista machine also. This is the path I used to fix the error on a Windows XP PC with Outlook 2007 installed...c:\documents and settings\<me>\application data\Research in Motion\Blackberry. The intellisync...

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Recently I had an issue with Peachtree. All the reports and forms disappeared based on the customer's report. I connected to their server and used Peachtree to check the symptoms. Every report in the reports window was missing. No custom reports and no standard reports.After searching the web, this link was most helpful. StephenC's entry about the difference between the custom reports and the standard reports pointed me in the right direction. In my case, it was both report groups and I didn't...

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I got a call today from a customer who uses Outlook 2007 to access his Gmail account which is branded to their domain name. He said that for some reason this morning, his Outlook stopped working. The error message said it was unable to connect to the server.I checked all the settings in Outlook and made one change to the outbound port number but that didn't fix the problem. Then I checked Google's Gmail settings and everything there was fine. I then took a look at the antivirus they were using,...

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I got this message when I triedto enter a web site addressin the internet explorer address bar: THE REQUEST LOOKUP KEY WAS NOT FOUND IN ANY ACTIVAITON CONTEXT which didn't makeany sense.Firefox worked fine. The initial home page worked fine, but I couldn't go to any of the links. Igoogled the issue and found that no one else seemed to have an answer either.After reading several posts, Inoticed that several people had tried to downgrade from IE7 or it appeared thatin an effortto correct the issue,...

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One of my issues with anti-virus software is their brute force removal of infected files regardless of that file's importance. In this situation, the cure is far worse that the illness. The computer I worked on today wouldn't start. It halted with a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) saying that windows shut down in order to prevent more damage to the system. AVG 9.0, found a virus in Explorer.exe and winlogon.exe and quarantined them without asking the user. I'll be the first to admit that most users...

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Due to the corrupted bkf files, the headers did not properly contain the drive letter designation required to use the -p option with ntbkup. I also had problems using the -d option. I got the prompt message like this:DIR Tree warning, 1st node not a VOLUME! Force '?:'This prompt lead me to believe that it wanted some info to replace the drive letter, so I tried a drive letter or enter Y, but to no avail. However, as of this writing, I discovered that it was working in the background. I was...

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