Mitch Tulloch, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and lead author of the just-published (and hot-selling) Windows 7 Resource Kit (Microsoft Press, 2010; ISBN: 9780735627000; 1760 pages), has created a short e-book called “What You Can Do Before You Call Tech Support.” Here are the opening paragraphs:
Your sound card has stopped working, your computer seems sluggish, the network is down, your hard drive is clicking, you can’t view a website, your monitor is hard to read, your new webcam isn’t working, your favorite program won’t run, and a funny burning smell is coming from your computer. What can you do on your own to try to troubleshoot the issue before you pick up the phone to call tech support?
If you’re running Windows 7, quite a lot. Microsoft has included a lot of self-support tools in Windows 7 that you can try using before you seek the help of others, and we’ll examine these in a moment….
You can download the e-book in XPS format here and in PDF format here.
Anyone ever had difficulties with small font size when browsing some web pages (this happens to me especially when I browse TechNet) with Mozilla FireFox and noticed that some parts of text are extremely small like in the bellow image?
This can be easily fixed in FireFox as follows:
- Select Tools => Options
- Click on ‘Content’ tab => Advanced
- Now change the minimum font size to a desired value.
When you pass to Windows 7 from Windows XP you will notice that the Windows Explorer doesn’t explode by default the folder you’re currently browsing in the left pane.
To bring back this functionality you can do the following:
- Click ALT button on your keyboard to bring the menu.
- Click Tools => Folder options…
- Enable ‘Show all folders’ and ‘Automatically expand to current folder’.
- Enjoy!
When you install XP Mode on Windows 7 by default all the virtual machine files are saved under “%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\”. The file that has *.vhd extension is a virtual hard disk file. Recently, I had to move the vhd file to another drive and I accomplished it this way:
1) Run Windows XP Mode virtual machine and go to Tools –> Settings
2) Then select Close and in the right side click “Prompt for action”
3) Click OK and close virtual machine. This time when you close it the following window will appear:
4) Select Shut down and click OK. The virtual machine will shutdown.
5) Now, click Start button, enter the following path:“%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\” without quotation marks and hit Enter.
6) This will open the folder where the virtual machine file reside. Move the vhd file to desired location by cutting and pasting.
7) Once done moving the file, open the ‘vmc’ file with Notepad, which is a configuration file of the virtual machine. VMC file is an xml formatted file containing configuration of the virtual machine. Find the line that refers to vhd file location. For example “XP Mode.vhd” with the full path in front of it. Modify the path accordingly to point to a new location:
Now you may start the XP mode virtual machine.
Problem: After installing Internet Explorer 7 or 8 the web management interface of HP LaserJet 2600n printer is no more accessible.
Solution: Install latest firmware. Firmware download.
See the entire thread on HP support:
http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1212128&admit=109447627+1252318317348+28353475
Today I have received a call from one of our users saying that she can’t open an application published on our Citrix MetaFrame Server. I’ve connected to this user’s PC and noticed the following error:
| For search engines: |
Cannot connect to the Citrix MetaFrame server.
An I/O (Input/Output) error occurred while your request was being processed.
Try to connect again. If you continue to receive this message, contact your Citrix administrator. |
The problem seems to be related to the old network card (NIC). I’ve opened the network connections window and “repaired” the network connection.
The error didn’t occur after that and I could open the published application without any problem.
This script detects and tries to fix the error related to start up of Automatic Updates and BITS services on network computers. Such error is related to security identifier (EventID 7023 and EventID 7024). This problem is usually observed on network computers after applying changes to group policies. In such cases the script will reset a security identifier as per Microsoft KB 555336 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555336) and start Automatic Updates and BITS. Can be usefull for networks where Windows Server Update Services 3.0 (WSUS) is used.
Script is taken from: http://forum.vingrad.ru/forum/topic-154708/view-all.html
Read more…
Script for remote reboot/shutdown, power off, etc. You must have proper rights on a remote computer for this script to work.
Read more…
