Windows 7 Installation Setup stuck on “starting windows”

Recently I was trying to install Windows 7 on a custom built system with an asus m2n-sli deluxe motherboard. When running through the Windows 7 Setup , the screen would stay on the “Starting Windows” screen and then eventually come back with a Blue Screen with the Error machine check exception. I tried different power supplys , windows disks and memory. Eventually I found machine check exception is in fact an issue with the processor speaking to the memory. I increased the CPU voltage from 1.41 volts to 1.51 and increased the DDR2 memory to 1.9v and Windows 7 setup went through fine!

Tags: asus m2n-sli deluxe, Windows 7 Installation Setup stuck on "starting windows", windows 7 machine check exception

Iphone or Mobile Device only recieves email read through WebAccess or Outlook Open

Recently a user synced his iphone to an SBS 2003 box , however email would only come through when their Outlook was open recieving mail , or the user would read the email in Web Access. This is an issue to do with Active sync and Trend Antivirus that the below registry entry fixes :

Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\MSExchangeIS\VirusScan via regedit

Change the value of “ProactiveScanning” to 1 and close.

Restart IIS and Exchange services to make sure it gets applied.

Tags: new emails unless Outlook is open, Outlook Open for Iphone Recieve Emails, Read emails webacess come through on iphone

Windows 7/XP Install Printer Without Being Local Administrator

If you run a “locked down” group policy model and need users to add new network and local printers to their machine without being Local Administrators you will need to configure the below group policy. This will stop the  UAC Box in Windows 7 coming up and asking to administrator permissions to run “C:\windows\system32\NtPrint.exe”. This can be applied through a domain controller via a networked group policy or locally using gpedit.msc

In Windows XP this setting is configured in

User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Printers

However in Windows 7 this setting is configured in

Computer Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Printers : Point and Print Restrictions

N.B. If you want to deploy the below group policy you will need to have your Domain Controllers up to the 2008 R2 Schema or use this tool to Modify the Windows 7 Policy

http://blogs.technet.com/b/iftekhar/archive/2009/08/13/remote-server-admin-tools-rsat-for-windows-7-now-available.aspx

You need to set Point and Print Restrictions to DISABLED

Tags: C:\windows\system32\NtPrint.exe, Install Printer Without Being Local Administrator, PSetupElevatedInstallDownloadLegacyDriverW, User Account Control Adding Printer

Before proceeding you must first launch Adobe Acrobat and accept the End User License Agreement

When a user tried to open a PDF Document via Adobe Reader X after an Adobe Reader Update it produced the following error message “Before proceeding you must first launch Adobe Acrobat and accept the End User License Agreement” I thought this related to the End User License Agreement of Adobe Reader , so I tried to open it standalone but it did not bring the terms and conditions. The machine previously had Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Installed as a trial , but this was unistalled so Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Licensed copy could be installed. I tried to open adobe acrobat 6.0 however there was no End User License Agreement either. It looks like Adobe leaves some old registry information , so a complete unistall of Adobe Products on the machine and reinstall should fix the problem. However an easy fix, is to open up Adobe Ready , Go to Edit / Preferences / General Then tick the box to “Enable Protected Mode”

Tags: Adobe Acrobat 6.0, Adobe Acrobat 8.0, Adobe Reader X Protected Mode, Before proceeding you must first launch Adobe Acrobat and accept the End User License Agreement

Excel 2003 Slow Opening From Network Share

Recently a user was having issues opening excel files , were by a 600kb file could take around 20 seconds to open. When you copied this file locally to the computer it opened it straight away , and other computers accessing the file had no problem. What I did notice was when you opened the file , the network usage would spike to 7mb/s for the entire time while only retrieving a 600kb file. Opening .pdf / .doc files around double or triple the size would open instantly A bit of research online only proved the fault/fix with a Windows 7 setup accessing office 2003 documents http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982860 I tried the “Under the registry entry, disable these two registry keys: Right-click Enablesecuritysignature, and then click Modify. Type 0 in the Value data box and then click OK. Right-click Requiresecuritysignature, and then click Modify. Type 0 in the Value data box and then click OK.” However no success , my setup however was Windows XP and Office 2003. After much searching the fix was actually pretty recent from microsft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2570623 “reduces performance due to the network traffic when reading in the parts of the workbook” So upgrade to 2007/2010 or disable OFV!

You can perform the below fix manually , or I have create a .re file which does it http://www.pariswells.com/upload/fix.zip

You can use the EnableOnLoad registry entry to configure how you want Excel to handle opening workbooks for the OFV. By default, the EnableOnLoad entry is not present in the Windows registry. To add the EnableOnLoadentry to the Windows registry, follow these steps:

1. Exit Excel.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click to select the following registry key: **EDIT** Thanks to Frank in the comments , the proper key is ” HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0″ Old key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\”
4. After you select the key that is specified in step 3, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
5. Type Excel, and then press ENTER.
6. Select Excel, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
7. Type Security, and then press ENTER.
8. Select Security, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
9. Type FileValidation, and then press ENTER.
10. Select FileValidation, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value.
11. Type EnableOnLoad, and then press ENTER. Note: The default value is 0 which disables the validation.
12. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

Tags: .xls slow from network share, 2570623, Excel 2003 slow to open network, Excel Slow Opening From Network Share, High Network Usage Office 2003, OFV, The Office File Validation, Windows XP Excel 2003 slow opening

WordPress WP-Admin Folder Not Parsing PHP

I moved an existing wordpress site from one server to another. After initial complications of getting the “White Screen of Death” of nothing showing this was caused by the MySQL being on another server instead of localhost. It should of given me a SQL error but for some reason it didn’t show!

Next issue was when I tried to get into the admin control panel on domain.com/wp-admin/ the webserver started serving pages as the raw php files for me to download instead of parsing them in the browser. I checked the folder permissions which the same as the server before. I tried copying a phpinfo.php file ( to check if it was a wordpress issue) but it wouldn’t even parse that! I created another folder and copied the phpinfo.php into there to try and it worked. I then copied all the wp-admin files into the new folder , renamed it to wp-admin after deleting the old folder and it worked!

Tags: wordpress not parsing wp-admin folder, wordpress white screen, wp-admin

IIS Windows 7 AppOffline DefaultAppPool

After installing IIS 7 on a windows 7 SP1 machine , upon trying to view http;//localhost/ default ISS7 page the following error popped up :

“service unavailable 503″

After logging into IIS Manager , the DefaultAppPool was in a stopped start. I renabled this and tried again , however upon trying to view the localhost default IIS webpage again , the DefaultAppPool went back to Stopped state.

Checking the event log brought back the following error

“The Windows Process Activation Service failed to create a worker process for the application pool ‘DefaultAppPool’. The data field contains the error number.”

I right clicked on the DefaultAppPool in the Application Pool menu, under advanced settings/process model changed the Identity to “LocalSystem”. I started the DefaultAppPool up again and it worked

 

Tags: DefaultAppPool, ISS 7, service unavailable 503, The Windows Process Activation Service failed to create a worker process for the application pool 'DefaultAppPool'. The data field contains the error number.

WinWord 2010 Opening Document usp10.dll Crash

Upon opening a document with Word ,  Winword crashes straight away.

I tried the main fixes of resetting the Normal.dot + normal.dotm files and opened the Winword in safe mode ( Winword /a). But the problem still continued. After further investigation usp10.dll was the DLL causing the issue , and some online research it stated Helvettica Font was to blame. I removed the problem font from C:\Windows\Fonts and Word opened straight away. It looks like this problem also exists in Outlook

Microsofts Post on the Problem : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2119612

Tags: usp10.dll Crash

Windows 7 Date Format Showing as US MM/DD/YYYY instead of UK DD/MM/YYYY

A new Asus computer out the box had been setup with the region settings of English (United Kingdom) , however in some .net programs the date format still showed as English (United States)

This looks like a common problem with some Windows 7 Sysprepped Machines. To reset the date do the following

• Control Panel
• Region and Language
• Change the Format to anything else but English (United Kingdom)
• Click Apply
• Change the Format back to English (United Kingdom)

This should fix the problem

Tags: Windows 7 Date Format, Windows 7 Date Format UK, Windows 7 Date Format US

DYMO Label Software has stopped working

I had a Dymo 400 Label Machine which was working fine on a Windows 2008 Terminal server using the 7.8 Software. A Dymo Label 450 Turbo label machine was purchased which needed installing on the same terminal server. 7.8 Version of the software does require an update for it to work with a 450 Turbo Printer which is here After installing the version 8.3 software on the server , upon launching the program the following message was displayed “DYMO Label Software has stopped working” To install the 8.3 software on a 2008 Terminal Server you need 3.5  .Net Framework instructions here . After installing this the program ran fine.

Tags: Dymo 400 Label Machine, Dymo Label 450 Turbo, Windows 2008 Terminal