Blog: General

Libraries in Windows 7 and Server 2008 by default contain the Public Documents and My Documents location. I was working with a user who’s documents were set with a group policy. This user had an odd configuration, in that his documents were in a different location than the other users. After moving his documents to a new location, they still showed up in his Documents library. I decided to remove the old documents folder that points to the old network location. After removing the old documents folder and correcting the group policy that was applying the settings, his Music/Pictures/Movies were all pointed to the new location, but his Documents only showed the Public documents. [more]

After much searching, I decided to click “Restore Defaults”. This immediately fixed the problem.

The GotCha is that the My Documents Library is a single location for the files, no matter where the folder is pointed. When I hid the old documents location, it remained hidden until I restored the folder to defaults.

Often we are required to install programs or run applications under users logins that have restrictions in place. Many times right clicking and selecting “Run as administrator”, allows the application to run or prompts for credentials.  Other times the application tries to run and fails without prompting for credentials and the solution is to login as an administrator and run it. If you hold the “Shift” key and right click the application or install file, another option will appear “Run as a different user”. By selecting “Run as a different user” you are immediately prompted and can input the administrator credentials before the application even tries to run. This eliminates the need to logoff the users account and logon as an administrator.

By default Windows Explorer just searches file names and contents.  You can specify any field that can be displayed and follow it with a colon and what you want to search for.  For example name:, datetaken:, author:.  Boolean constructs like AND, OR, and NOT and be used.  There are several functions such as ~<, which means begins with.  If the options you want are not there, Windows may have guessed that the folder contains certain types of items.  You can change this by going to the properties on the folder, and on the Customize tab, change the “Optimize this folder for” dropdown.  There are other options under Organize, Folder and search options, on the Search tab.
 
Search help for "Advanced tips for searching in Windows" for more information.

I was working in the Command Processor to fix a BitLocker problem. I needed to enter a couple of commands which were posted in the CoNetrix blog. To be sure I didn’t make any typing mistakes, I copied the first command into Notepad where I verified the input and then copied and pasted into the Command Processor. Doing that I got an error, the command wouldn’t work. I retried several times, none were successful. Eventually I resorted to typing the command directly into the Command Processor and, surprise, surprise, it worked.

For the second command I committed the same error (not always a fast learner). I got errors when pasting the command and success when I typed the command directly. [more]

Since this happened to me twice I began to research the problem with pasting info into the Command Processor and discovered it was a problem with two different characters entered for the dash (-) character. While one character was entered by pasting, a different character was entered when manually typing. In testing I discovered this is true both in Notepad and the Command Processor. (If I retyped the dash in Notepad before copying and pasting into the Command Processor, the command worked.) The problem comes because there is no visible difference in the characters, both look the same in Notepad and Windows processor, but behind the scenes, in the code for the characters, there is a difference. While I haven’t researched this beyond the dash characters, I would imagine there could also be problems with other special characters as well.

The gotcha is not to assume characters are the same just because they appear the same.

Ran across this issue three different times; a user installs Adobe Reader update and Google Chrome gets installed. The user then uninstalls Chrome and when they try to access hyperlinks from any program, it fails. They would receive the error "This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator."  Going in and changing default browser settings did not fix the problem. It requires registry changes to fix the default browser.

Restore registry settings in the User Profile: [more]

1. Click Start, click Run, type Regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. Locate the following subkey:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.html
3. On the File menu, click Export.
4. In the Export Registry File dialog box, enter HKCU_Classes_HTML_Backup.reg and click Save.
   Note: This will create a backup of this registry key in the My Documents folder by default.
5. Right click the (Default) value for the .html key and select Modify...
6. Change the value from "ChromeHTML" to "htmlfile"  (or from FireFoxHTML to htmlfile)

Repeat steps 1-6 for .htm .shtml .xhtm and .xhtml k

I have read that you can change the default browser prior to uninstalling and this will not be a problem. However I have not tested this.

e recently had a client who was receiving the following error message in Microsoft Outlook: "Your automatic reply settings cannot be deployed because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later."

The reason this error message is displaying is because Outlook can’t see your Client Access Server. [more]

To get Out-of-Office to work you need to add a bypass to your proxy server for your CAS. To do this you need the name of your CAS (typically the exchange server).

Open up your Internet Options settings in Control Panel and click on the “Connections” tab.  Make sure that the “Bypass proxy server for local addresses” is ticked then click on “Advanced”.

In the “Exceptions” panel type in your CAS server name followed by .* then press OK->OK -> OK to close all of the windows.

Close and reopen Outlook and out of Office settings options should now work.

Typically, we run memory diagnostics from a bootable CD, but if you are trying to troubleshoot a computer in another city this is not always possible. Windows 7, Vista, Server 2008, and Server 2008 R2 have a built in utility called mdsched.exe. The utility can be started from a Windows session and will start automatically at the next reboot. The default is a simple memory diagnostic, but extended testing can be performed. Results will display during the test, on screen after the test, and in the Event Viewer under Applications and Services > Microsoft > Windows > MemoryDiagnostics-Results > Memory Diagnostic Tool  after the test is complete.
More detailed information can be found here: [more]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/715-memory-diagnostics-tool.html

Over the years, many people have asked me about backup for home machines.  Burning files to DVDs and carry them to a different location is problematic.  It's a lot of trouble to make frequent offsite backups.  I recently did some research and decided on using a program called Duplicati for backup and Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) for storage.  I think having the backup program and the storage separate is the best solution.  I can even back up to multiple providers in case one of them just goes away without warning.

Duplicati is free and open source and runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS.  It has a nice GUI interface plus a rich command line.  Duplicati has built-in AES-256 encryption, which means you hold the key and your backups are encrypted before leaving your network.  It creates normal zip files and then encrypts them with AES Crypt, so even if Duplicati breaks, you can still download, decrypt, and unzip your backups using other standard tools. [more]

Duplicati will back up to many different cloud providers (Amazon S3, Rackspace, Google Docs, SkyDrive, Tahoe-LAFS, WEBDAV, FTP, SSH) as well as file based locations.

I chose Amazon S3 for storage because of the history of reliability of Amazon.  The cost if not much either.  You get 5 GB free, and then it’s 12.5¢/GB/month after that.  So you can store 50GB for less than $6/month.  It is even cheaper if you choose the Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS).

Get Duplicati here http://www.duplicati.com/.

Sign up for Amazon S3 storage here http://aws.amazon.com/.

Recently I ran into a problem where I couldn't remove songs and podcasts from my iPhone.  iTunes showed the songs should be deleted but they remained on the phone and wouldn't delete.  After some research I found out how to remove them directly from the phone.

From a song or podcast list, swipe to the right on the item you want to delete, and a red delete button should appear. [more]