Archive for the 'Troubleshooting' Category
It’s an Admin’s worst nightmare (well one of them).
A server’s system disk is quickly running out of space for no apparent reason. You know that when the system drive fills the server is going to shut down and you’re going to have a lot of unhappy users. You need to find out what [...]
Please follow this email chain between myself and our friend Karl AKA ATA.
—————————————ME
Here’s the scenario….
Backed up info off old laptop to external HD.
During XP install I saw two identical drives…nuked the first partition and tried to install. XP said no. Nuked the 2nd one…XP allowed the install. JOY!!!
You know where this is going [...]
MJ writes to us that her machine runs updates around lunch time and she keeps getting the prompt do you want to restart now?
Not only is it annoying – sometimes she clicks yes by accident and her whole world comes crashing down. (See the fix for this at the bottom of the post – not [...]
We have all been stuck between a rock and a hard place at one time or another… Stuck staring blankly at a Windows machine that just won’t boot. I have been recommending this re-branded toolkit left and right recently so here is a little more information on it for you guys:
This nifty tool allows you [...]
Adam Pash covered this tiny app on LifeHacker a while back. This Resizeable goodness is ever so cleverly called resizeenable and it lets you resize system windows that you normally could not. You guys always seem to find what I am looking for before I’m looking for it! Thanks LifeHacker…
Some of you may wonder why [...]
From AtA’s earlier days:
Reader Elizabeth (who knew we had so many female readers!) wrote to us that she moved her Word document off the screen so she can only see the bottom half of it.
She didn’t save it and can not move or close it. We have all done this before, moving windows around willey [...]
Windows 2000 and XP produces a blue-screen of 0×7b after you transfer a Disk from one motherboard to another. The reason for it, is the difference in the IDE Disk controller.
Windows will only boot successfully using the same IDE controller of the same manufacturer (i.e. Intel, VIA etc..). It’s not that the Windows plug’n’play mechanism [...]
Jodi writes in:
I wasn’t sure who I should contact about this, so i am sending this to you. As of late, word attachments coming from my friend on a Windows XP Machine appear as “winmail.dat” files.
When I try to open these, the text runs about 150pp long, (it’s a 4page doc) and the [...]
At first I thought this was a joke. You know dude please show me how to be l33t. But then after a little bit of clarification our junior admin Adam in PA is troubleshooting a connectivity issue across his VPN to a single server and intermittently the network. Adam wants to do so from the [...]
We get a lot of emails from people about why their new office 2007 files end in a X. People have sent in questions asking about why their files are in the archive format or formated for Mac OS X…
Microsoft has introduced new file types in 2007 (The X Stands for XML) if all you [...]
Please follow this email chain between myself and our friend Karl AKA ATA.
—————————————ME
Here’s the scenario….
Backed up info off old laptop to external HD.
During XP install I saw two identical drives…nuked the first partition and tried to install. XP said no. Nuked the 2nd one…XP allowed the install. JOY!!!
You know where this is going [...]
Adam Pash covered this tiny app on this wonderful Thanksgiving morning. It is called resizeenable and it lets you resize system windows that you normally could not. You guys always seem to find what I am looking for before I’m looking for it! Thanks LifeHacker…
Some of you may wonder why we are so anal-retentive that [...]
Reader Joanne wrote to us that she moved her Word document off the screen so she can only see the bottom half of it. She didn’t save it and can not move or close it. We have all done this before, moving windows around willey nilley to see whats behind it or just for fun [...]
MJ writes to us that her machine runs updates around lunch time and she keeps getting the prompt do you want to restart now?
Not only is it annoying – sometimes she clicks yes by accident and her whole world comes crashing down. (See the fix for this at the bottom of the post – not [...]
Hello Boys and Girls,
Commodore 64 here to bring you another horror story from binary-land. Lord knows I’ve been through hell and back with computers. Overheating CPUs, which were fixed by the cold of the winter outside my apt; crashing hard drives which were fixed or accessed by various means; faulty power supplies, which had me [...]
It’s an Admin’s worst nightmare (well one of them).
A server’s system disk is quickly running out of space for no apparent reason. You know that when the system drive fills the server is going to shut down and you’re going to have a lot of unhappy users. You need to find out what [...]
I brought this one From Guest Blogger El Di Pablo back up for you guys to outline some of the other issues with Wi-Fi that people have been writing in about. I guess the WiFi rush came from this article on how I have grown to hate wi-fi. Hit us up in the comments if [...]
Windows 2000 and XP produces a blue-screen of 0×7b after you transfer a Disk from one motherboard to another. The reason for it, is the difference in the IDE Disk controller.
Windows will only boot successfully using the same IDE controller of the same manufacturer (i.e. Intel, VIA etc..). It’s not that the Windows plug’n’play mechanism [...]
Jodi writes in:
I wasn’t sure who I should contact about this, so i am sending this to you. As of late, word attachments coming from my friend on a Windows XP Machine appear as “winmail.dat” files.
When I try to open these, the text runs about 150pp long, (it’s a 4page doc) and the [...]
In Part 1 we’ve seen what can cause a BSOD and what information we can collect after it happens, so we could investigate the problem.
Well, Microsoft gives us the Debugging Tools for Windows toolkit.
Go to the link, and download the latest version that is appropriate to your system (i.e. x86/64bit).
This toolkit allows us [...]
We’ve all seen it before… Suddenley the screen turns blue and an error appears saying something like “it appears you won’t be going to sleep early tonight…”
Luckily there are easy ways to make some sense of that technical jargon MS gives us in a case of a BSOD.
First lets TRY and understand what can cause [...]
This tool allows you to boot from a CD into a special diagnostics environment which enables you to:
- Fix boot problems (boot.ini/Chkdsk)
- Edit the Registry offline
- Change Services/Drivers startup state
- Restore to an earlier Restore Point even if Windows fails to start in Safe-Mode
- Reset the administrator password (or any other account)
- Easily remove [...]
Hi Ladies and Gents,Commodore here to bring you a quick tip. I know I haven’t written in a while, but I haven’t forgotten about aTa, just been working on some back-end stuff here if anything at all. But this is a tip I’m sure will benefit lots of users of WM5 devices who have trouble [...]
Big John from Westbury writes to us:
I have a dell machine that will not boot up there are no beeps no nothing. It was working yesterday. It just ran out of warranty. I checked the hard drive in another machine its good. The power supply seems to be good as well. any other ideas? Can [...]
I just saw a Washington Post reporter who accidentally dropped his Blackberry in the toilet was able to retrieve it and dry it out to working order again: by leaving it turned off in a bowl of uncooked rice.
One of the commenters said:
for a better desiccant, it’d be a good idea to store all those [...]
So it looks like Microsoft has heard us belly aching and now has released a fix. I will not be applying it until I either see more issues or read otherwise. Here is the information – you decide:
You receive an access violation error and the system may appear to become unresponsive when you try to [...]
SpyDawn at first glance may look like a legitimate application for the removal of spyware, but it’s really a malicious program that issues fake warnings in an attempt to trick you into buying SpyDawn. SpyDawn may secretly install and automatically download itself onto your computer.
>> For SpyDawn Manual Removal, continue on reading. (Some technical knowledge [...]
SpyDawn at first glance may look like a legitimate application for the removal of spyware, but it’s really a malicious program that issues fake warnings in an attempt to trick you into buying SpyDawn. SpyDawn may secretly install and automatically download itself onto your computer.
>> For SpyDawn Manual Removal, continue on reading. (Some technical knowledge [...]
I love using Experts Exchange: an online forum to find technical information that is usually buried elsewhere. I have never purchased a login from them and have a free account. If you search they will sometimes give you an answer without paying, but as soon as you click a link BANG pay up.
Check out this [...]
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