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While cleaning up a client computer I found an issue with Internet Explorer where the proxy seeting could not be changed with out it automatically reverting back to its original setting. This persistant issue seemed related to a typical group policy setting but this was not possible because the system was running Windows 7 Home. Many others on the Internet had reported the issue with only one resolution, editing the registry.

The registry changes didn't seem to be long lasting until I found an article by Philip Turner that provided some additional registry keys that I was missing in my search.

Gateway One GZ7108

If you are experiencing issues with your wireless keyboard and mouse not working properly, perform the following steps to troubleshoot the wireless keyboard and mouse.

The Windows 7 update "System Update Readiness Tool for Windows 7 (KB947821) [May 2014]" will appear hung or stuck during the update process. It will get to about 80 to 90% and just the hard drive activity is all that will indicate that it is still working on the update process. Many have noted it to take several hours. In our own install of this for a client it took almost 6 hours to complete on a system that failed the SFC scan test.

If you are installing the System Update Readiness Tool for Windows 7 (KB947821) besure to allow for a long period of time to install. Do not stop this install or you may corrupt the system to a point where it will not boot and you will be required to reload Windows from scratch.

​Issues with the QuickBooks database server used to be a fairly rare occurrence. But since 2019, many of the servers running QuickBooks have been updated to new versions of the Windows Server OS and the QuickBooksDB##. The end user will typically get the following error when attempting to connect to the server in a multiuser setting. "Error Code: H...

Epson seems to have discontinued support for the TM-T88ii receipt printer. The only available drivers for this printer by Epson is for 32-bit operating systems up to Windows XP. The POS58 Driver for another branded printer has been found to work both with Windows 7 x64 and the Epson TM-T88ii printer.

The printer driver might be found at the following location.

After upgrading a vSphere vCenter appliance to v5.1 Update 2 we found the the vSphere client installed on a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 host machine would fail to connect to the vCenter Server 5.1 due to an unknown error.

vSphere Client could not connect to {vcenter_server}.

When performing test on a Microsoft Exchange server, some tests will return a transaction time warning. For the most part this is not an issue and nothing needs to be done. This delay is intentional on the part of Microsoft Exchange to help prevent spam. The warnings are typically given when it takes more than 1 second for the SMTP connector to respond to the request. This process of delaying multiple mail requests is called tarpitting.

If this warning bothers you, there is a change that you can make that will fix the Transaction time warnings for Exchange 2007 and 2010.

After upgrading to QuickBooks 2014 Enterprise one of the workstations started having issues saving estimate reports as a PDF or e-mailing the reports. The user would see this error from QuickBooks:

Intuit Printer Library Message: The form you are about to print does not fit on the page. You may wish to modify your print settings such as portrait/landscape. Click OK to print anyways, or Cancel to skip printing this form.

In our constant battle to clean up consumer systems and get them running like new again, we often have to remove a number applications we classify as "garbageware". The number of malware and garbage applications that willl install as a result of downloading something from the Internet is growing exponentially. If you think you found a free application on the Internet, think again before you download and install it. 

There is a large varience of what this term garbageware is by various IT professionals, but here is how we define it.

There will come a time when the Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) database gets very large and you will want to reclaim the space. Hopefully you have already relocated your WSUS update files to another drive on your server using the SBS Console wizard. If not, you may want to visit the TechNet site for an easy to follow process to complete that.

This process will take an extended amount of time, maybe 24+ hours. One of our clients had only 19 GB of update content and a 14 GB database to clean up and the process ran well over 2 hours. So we recommend you schedule this process to be performed after hours and when no other significant server task might take place, such as backup.

We have seen that Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3038314) fails frequently when it is installed on a freshly installed system using the standard Windows Update process.

The error code 80092004 seems to indicate that the "object or property cannot be found" and in our case that would be true because the install process fails to download the update completely.

After upgrading a Windows 2003 Server to Windows 2012 Server for a client, the Canon iR C2550 would not scan to the new folder which was configured in the same way as the original server. Now the server name was different and so that should have been the only change needed. So why didn't it work. So this is what we did to troubleshoot the issue.

1. DNS - In this case we had to go back to the original DNS configuration and update the DNS to point to the new server since its IP address had changed.

One of our users mistakenly installed Google Chrome when installing an Adobe update and then uninstalled it. However the uninstall did not restore all of the Internet Explorer setting causing multiple problems. One issue was that the user could not use Windows Explorer to view an ftp site.

When the user logged into an ftp site and went to "View" and then "Open ftp site in Windows Explorer" nothing would happen. After searching for this issue we found others had a similar problem and were able to export the registry key [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ftp] and then import it into the computer that was having issues. In our case the [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ftp] registry key was missing entirely from the user's computer and needed to be recreated.

On day the Send To option lost the Mail Recipient option from a clients Windows 7 system. The client was using Outlook 2010 and the typical solutions posted that suggested creating a new Mail Recipient didn't work.

The following solution did work for our client.

When attempting to configure an older HP LaserJet 4000n printer using the Web Admin feature, several messages appear stating, "Your security settings have blocked an untrusted application..." and the Java application shows an error on the web page. Under normal circumstances Java is preventing an application that could be harmful to your computer. In this case we know this older Java application on the HP JetDirect card is likely safe and we want to allow it to run.

Follow these steps to add the website to the Exceptions Site List:

The following error message appears when opening a company file on a Windows computer that is hosted on a Windows Server:

QuickBooks was unable to open the file [path\filename] on the host computer [host name]. Try opening the file with QuickBooks on the host computer or run the QuickBooks Database Server Manager on the host computer and then try opening the file on your computer.

I our case the server was inadvertently rebooted while one or more client systems had their QuickBooks open and connected to the server causing the database to be disconnect improperly. The client was using QuickBooks Enterprise 2013 installed on a Windows Small Business Server 2011. We followed these steps and were able to get the database to open.

While working on several home computer systems that had corrupt user profiles I needed a way to get a valid login. Windows XP, Vista, and 7 all have a default Administrator account that is disabled and hidden from normal use. This account sometimes will become available in Windows XP systems in Safemode, however you may need this available in normal mode.

We fix system regularly and so we have a recovery CD that we typically use, Hiren's Boot CD, to enable the local Administrator account. The Hiren's Boot CD has an application that will both reset the passwords and enable the Administrator's account. However at the end of the repair process we need to hide that local Administrator account again to protect it in case it is needed again later. The simple solution to this is to use the following steps.

The .NET Framework cleanup tool is designed to automatically perform a set of steps to remove selected versions of the .NET Framework from a computer.  It will remove files, directories, registry keys and values and Windows Installer product registration information for the .NET Framework.  The tool is intended primarily to return your system to a known (relatively clean) state in case you are encountering .NET Framework installation, uninstallation, repair or patching errors so that you can try to install again.

There are a couple of very important caveats that you should review before using this tool to remove any version of the .NET Framework from your system:

After setting up a new laptop computer with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, I found that I was unable to access any of my workgroup servers or access my Windows XP workstations. Each time I would attempt to make a connection either using the UNC name and path or using the IP address I would get an error indicating that the spelling was incorrect or that it could not find the location specified. One of the errors I receive is as follows:

Windows cannot access \\{ComputerName}

After working several days of cleaning up a system that was infected by the Zbot trojan and others, I found that the client's computer would start the Windows Security Center or display the dependancies for any of the services. The message that would be displayed in the Service Dependencies dialog box was "Win32: The specified service does not exist as an installed service." Microsoft knowledge base had no answers so I started comparing the registry of a working Windows 7 system to the one that was failing.

I found that the Windows Management Instrumentation service (Winmgmt) was a dependancy of the Security Center service, but the Winmgmt was not starting because some of the information in its registry keys was missing. Below is what the registry key should have contained.