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Sometime back while I was out of the office, my system crashed with a blue screen message about a hard drive failure.   Fortunately, I was able to restart and save any essential files that weren't already backed up.  When I got back to the office I ran SpinRite on the hard drive, it didn't find any problems, and I have yet to have another crash.

But recently I launched a program which I had running during the crash.  The program appeared in the task bar but nothing happened.  When I clicked on the task bar icon it expanded to show a program instance, but nothing happened. When I right clicked on the task bar icon, it expanded to show the program, "Pin the program to the taskbar" and "Close Window."  I clicked on the program and got an error saying the program could not access a needed file and the program was terminating.  I tried several times to get the program to run and each time I couldn't see the program and eventually getting the same error.  I tried several fixes such as renaming the offending file, deleting the file, etc., but nothing worked.  Finally I restored to a virtual machine where I was able to run the application and finish my work.

Back in the office, I asked a coworker for some help to get a fresh pair of eyes on the problem.  I showed him what was happening and I was able to reproduced the error.  He sat for a moment and then said, "I wonder if it is running off the screen."  He right clicked on the task bar icon looking for the "Move" option and it wasn't there.  (In Windows7, you have to let the task bar item expand and them right click on the instance you desire in order to see the familiar options of "Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize and Close.") [more]

Once he selected "Move" he was able to move the application window (using the arrow keys) back onto the screen so it could be viewed.

I then realized I was getting the access error, because when I right clicked on the task bar and then left clicked on the program, it was attempting to launch a second instance of the program.  It couldn't do it because the program was already running and had locked the needed files.

"Moving" windows back on the screen is often required when you work with multiple monitors and then switch to work on only one monitor.  In this Gotcha, I hadn't been working on multiple monitors, but the crash must have mixed up the window location.  "Move" fixed the problem.  If you can see an application icon on the task bar, but not on the screen, assume it is running and you need to "Move" it onto the screen.

Adobe Reader 10.0 is installed in a protected mode. One of the features of the secure mode is:

• Cannot open PDF files whose source is DFS or NFS: PDF files in shared locations on a distributed  or networked file system (DFS/NFS) cannot be opened. Attempting to open such a file results in an error opening this document. Access denied."

The solution is to disable protected mode by completing the following steps: [more]

1. Within Adobe Reader, go to Edit > Preferences > General and deselect Enable Protected Mode at startup.
   
2. Restart Reader.

For more information, refer to the following Adobe KB article: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/860/cpsid_86063.html

When I am away from the office I often set Outlook to “Work Offline.”  This allows me to have Outlook open for access to the cached information and it doesn’t try to connect and update all the folders whenever I establish a VPN back to the office.

At some point, Outlook started resorting to Work Offline every time it started.  This was troublesome as I might go for hours at a time not realizing I was Working Offline and as a result, not receiving email messages.  Before this problem, Outlook would start in whatever state (Connected or Work Offline) it was in whenever it was shut down.

In researching the problem I found many references to this problem which go all the way back to Outlook 2003. [more]

Microsoft’s solution is to create a new Outlook profile, as the existing profile has somehow become corrupted.  I really wanted to find a “cause and effect” fix, but never did.  So ultimately, I created a new profile and the problem is solved.  It seems as though this is a work around rather than a solution, but I am now Online.

To create a new Outlook profile go to Mail (32 bit) in the Control Panel (Windows 7).

• Click on the Show Profiles button under Profiles.
• Click on the Add button.
• Give the new profile a different name from your existing profile.
• Follow the instructions and Outlook will connect to the Exchange server and automatically create a new profile.
• With a new profile, you can now have Outlook prompt you regarding which profile you want to use when Outlook starts.  You can also specify one of the profiles for Outlook to use automatically.
• If you specify a profile, be sure you specify the new one you just created.  This will ensure Outlook will start up and look for a connection to the Exchange server rather than ignore the Exchange server and Work Offline.

Windows 2008 terminal servers handle user profiles slightly differently than Windows 2003. 

1. Windows 2008 (and Windows 7) profiles use a different format from previous versions.  You will notice in the roaming profile folder that you get a new folder with a .v2 extension; this is to prevent the new format from being applied to older OS’s.  Essentially, the user has two different roaming profiles; one for older OS’s and one for Windows 2008 (and Windows 7).  (\\servername\profile_share\username\tsprofile for older machines, \\servername\profile_share\username\tsprofile.v2 for Windows 2008 terminal servers)
2. They finally manage to delete the user profile when the user logs off.  I’ve noticed two issues related to this.
   • The Users folder (formerly Documents and Settings) starts having multiple folders with the users name.  wcbtest, wcbtest.datacenter, wcb.datacenter.001, wcb.datacenter.002, etc.  The event log shows an error when trying to delete the profile folder, saying that it is not empty.  I have not looked in-depth yet; there may be a solution to this.
   • If you want to run the group policy results wizard, you have to do it while the user is logged in.
3. If the roaming profile location is unavailable, the user gets a temporary profile every time.  On Windows 2003, you would get an error saying the roaming profile location could not be contacted (if I remember correctly), but the local profile would be normal.

The Level Platforms Service Center website is probably not very standards-compliant.  We've know for some time that Firefox and Chrome browsers don’t render it properly, but I’ve recently seen more critical problems, such as the Site Management page showing a blank site-list in Chrome.  Some of the monitoring procedures require these pages, so using IE (or Firefox add-on like IE Tab) may be the only way to see everything properly.

In Microsoft Office 2007, Quick Access Toolbar definitions are stored in .QAT files that are stored in the c:\users\<username>\appdata\local\microsoft\office\ folder for each user.  For Office 2010, these are files that are formatted the same but have .officeUI extensions.  Actually, you can rename the extension of .QAT files and they'll work with 2010.

If you want to retain Quick Access Toolbars, keep a backup copy of your QAT or officeUI files and copy them to the user's appdata file on a new system.

For several months I would try to open Outlook 2010 and nothing would happen. When I checked the Task Manager I would see two Outlook.exe processes running. If I killed the process with the most memory, Outlook would open and all would be well.

One day I decided to fix the problem. My first guess was that Outlook was not starting correctly. When I searched for "Outlook startup problems", I didn't find anything useful. After a little research I found that when I closed Outlook, the process did not go away. A quick search for "Outlook shutdown problems" immediately returned the most common problem is a third party Add-Ins. When I checked the list of Outlook Add-Ins, the most likely suspect was "Outlook Change Notifier" that was in an Apple subdirectory. I removed the Add-In and Outlook would open and close like a champ.  [more]

I found a forum discussion, http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/32169731/itunes-outlook-addin.aspx, that said opening iTunes will reinstall the add-in. It tried it and iTunes acted like it was reinstalling and the Outlook Add-In was back.

Instead of removing the Add-In, just uncheck the box next to the Add-In to disable it. This will allow Outlook to close correctly and iTunes won't try to reinstall it. An alternative method is to rename the file that contains the Add-In: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3500. Although Apple claims it's not a problem with Outlook 2010, it is.

On any VMware virtual machine running Windows 2008 or 2008 R2 that was created using v4.1, the advanced configuration parameter disk.enableUUID is set to TRUE. Basically, this enables application-level quiescence in the VM. If the VM was created on ESX prior to v4.1, the advanced configuration setting does not exist. So, if you want to get application consistency on a VADP (vStorage API style) initiated backup, it won’t happen if that setting isn’t set to TRUE. This is a problem because a number of vendors (CommVault included) don’t support this feature yet. Since it is a default for new VMs, they won’t back up correctly.

The bottom line is... make sure you are absolutely sure you are getting application consistent backups by checking the app logs on the VM when doing the backup. You may not be getting as consistent of a backup as you think.

A while back I tried to use nbtstat on my 64bit Windows 7 machine and it seemed to not be installed.  Well, I did some more research into this.  After a while I figured out that if I launched a command prompt using the usual shortcut I had been using, nbtstat would not be found.  But if I launched cmd.exe from the start menu, it could be found.  When listing the contents of the system32 directory the files were different when depending how I launched the command line.

Here is a single screen shot of two command prompts.  The directory commands were executed within seconds of each other.  The top command prompt can see nbtstat.exe, but it cannot see audiodev.dll.  The bottom command prompt cannot see nbtstat.exe, but can see audiodev.dll. [more]

Looking at these closely, did you notice that the times on the files displayed on both command prompts were different?

The gotcha here is how Windows handles launching 32 bit programs on a 64 bit system.  Many of us have probably noticed the “Program Files” directory is for 64 bit programs and the “Program Files (x86)” directory is for the 32 bit programs.  The system32 directory is for 64 bit programs and DLLs and there is a sysWOW64 directory for the 32 bit system32 files.  But instead of the operating system just activating the correct DLL when a program needs it, it does some sneaky root kit like work.  Here is what is really going on: 

When running a 32 bit program, the sysWOW64 directory looks like the system32 directory so no matter what the program does, it cannot try to load a 64 bit DLL.  Or it cannot even load a 64 bit executable.  I was launching the command prompt by using a shortcut.  But I was launching it from a 32 bit program launcher.  A 32 bit program can launch a 64 bit program if it can find it.  But when my 32 bit program launcher went looking for cmd.exe in the system32 directory, it actually found the 32 bit cmd.exe in the sysWOW64 directory and just didn’t know it.  So Windows 7 does not come with a 32 bit nbtstat, only the 64 bit version.  So that is why I could not find nbtstat.