Paychex Preview Upgrade to Mapped Drive
This was actually too simple, but unless you speak with support, how is one to know?
I was recently tasked with upgrading a server installation of Paychex Preview software, which according to documentation cannot be done on the host server, it has to be upgraded from one of the workstations via mapped drive. It seemed simple enough, [...]
HP tc4400 and Windows 7 Boot Failure
I’ve been using an HP tc4400 Tablet PC with Windows Vista for quite some time now and thought it was about time I started using Windows 7 for work and not just home.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like Vista (I think I may be only one of eight people), but as an IT professional [...]
Vista – Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 — 0% Complete
Last Friday I came upon a frustrating problem with a Windows Vista system that had applied updates during shutdown, but could not finish the process. This resulted in many reboots and an unusable computer; too bad it held the company’s only copy of QuickBooks.
Typically the simplest fix is to boot from the Vista install media and [...]
Network Printer Offline
Yesterday I was at a client site where everyone prints directly to the printers, rather than sharing via a print server. One of the PCs kept showing a printer as offline, even though everyone else was printing to it. From the PC you could ping the printer and even browse to the builtin web server [...]
God Mode in Windows Vista or 7
Following Paul Thurrott’s blog such as I do, today’s post listed a way to see a hidden GUI. There is quite a list, some of which are not normally exposed but via the Registry.
This is really a pretty simple hack:
Create a New Folder, rename it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
You can actually name it whatever you want before the [...]
Control Panel Applets from Command Line
One of my customers doesn’t allow user accounts to be in the local Administrators group, something I wish more companies would do. In fact over 90% of infections could be stopped by not logging in as an administrator; but I’ll save that “soapbox” topic for another post.
Many times I need to change settings or install/remove [...]
Vista and Windows 2008 SP2 Now Available!
The latest service pack for the unified kernel was released yesterday. For the early adopters, get it here!
I’m installing it on my test system, but will be waiting a few weeks to deploy this on my work and home systems. I’d prefer to see what the tech sites and blogosphere have to say about possible [...]
Three Free Utilities
Everyone carries around a USB drive these days with a variety of utilities, these three have been very useful in the recent past.
CPU-Z – A great utility to find out what kind of memory is installed in a system. This is especially useful when a system is a plain box with out a service tag [...]
Internet Explorer 8 Released
Internet Explorer 8 was released today. I’m sure it’s already been downloaded a billion times already, but you can get it here.
My first impressions have been favorable. I’ve been using Slim Browser for quite some time, but it still uses the IE7 engine and the performance has been lackluster as of late. I’ve stuck with [...]
Lose the Shutdown Event Tracker
This tip has been around for a while, but I think it’s still worth sharing due to its possibly high annoyance factor.
On a production machine, I consider the Shutdown Event Tracker worthwhile, especially in environments with multiple administrators. When in a lab situation or testing environment, this prompt before shutdown gets old quickly.
To change the [...]