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 A frequently posted issue about printers and Windows 10 is not being able to print using the WSD port or the printer reverts to WSD from an IP setting. This appears to be a bug in the WSD port provider in Windows 10. After reading many commonly described issues where Windows 10 says the printer is offline when it isn't and the vendor software...

Upgrading to Intuit's QuickBooks Enterprise 2013 seemed to be an easy task at first, even though the step by step documentation was next to impossible to find on Intuit's web site. However, it took several hours to track down what seemed to be a simple issue, getting the multi-user mode working again.

Here are some steps to follow for upgrading QuickBooks Enterprise 2013:

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011 requires that you use the http://connect in Internet Explorer on all Windows systems. After upgrading a SBS 2003 system to SBS 2011 I needed to rejoin a Windows XP system to the new server, however, when I attempt to run the utility, I received several different message indicating the I could not connect.

One thing that was not mentioned in many of the other technical articles written about this issue is that this particular system was configured with a static IP address and no default domain. After setting the default domain, the http://connect process worked. Normally this would not be an issue if the workstation had been configured with a DHCP address.

Client's HP Pavilion M9400t was reported as having a noisy fan and then would not boot any longer. The power supply was the primary reason for the system not powering but after replacing the power supply the system would continually reboot. Using the F8 key while booting we were able to force the system to stop on the error and not reboot. This allowed the error message STOP 0x0000007B to be displayed. This error most often is reported when there is a hardware issue.

After backing up the hard drive using Norton Ghost, we went through a series of tests by removing hardware. In this case the video card was an add-in so it was removed but the problem still persisted. Next we checked the BIOS settings and noted the default for the SATA drive was set to RAID. We changed this to IDE and rebooted the system. The system booted normally.

We had a situation where we wanted to setup an Intuit QuickBooks POS system in a locked down configuration so that it was more like a kiosk for the register attendants. There are several ways to go about this but most will lock down every user, but in our case we only wanted to affect the POS users to prevent unnecessary changes to the system.

The process we came up with uses a combination of parental rights, registry hacks, and user menu modifications. You will also need to make sure you create a special local user account that you will assign these changes to. Before attempting this process, make sure you have a backup of your system in the event something doesn't work as expected.

Most boot sector viruses detected by some of the best commercial antivirus software such as Symantec's Norton Antivirus, Microsoft's Security Essentials, or Kapersky's Antivirus can not be removed by these applications. And in many cases a boot sector virus is capable of alluding these applications unless the drive is connected to a clean system that has the AV software actively running.

What is a boot sector virus? This is a computer virus that infects a diskette or hard drive in the area which contains information about the configuration of the disk. The boot sector is used by many computer operating systems to determine how to access the diskette or drive. These viruses replace the critical boot sector program used to start the computer with their own malicious program often causing frequent computer crashes, allowing other malware infections, and performance issues.

A client attempted to install an upgrade to Kaspersky Anti-virus, but the install was interrupted and so the system was left in an unstable state. Continued use of the computer frequently resulted in the following Blue Screen of Death.

One of the side effects from this issue was that the hard drive was constantly getting corrupted and several drivers would fail to load. In order to get the system to boot we had to go into safe mode, run a check disk on reboot, and then the system would finally boot and run for a short period of time, which was all we needed.

When using the recovery CD for various eMachines (T2080, T2792, T3065) with Windows XP, the computer hangs or freezes at the Name My Computer stage of the process. After spending some time researching the issue, other technicians have noted that the system is stuck trying to configure the video.

The easiest way around this is to shutdown and reboot in VGA mode as follows. If your not sure how to shutdown the computer at this point, just press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds until the computer powers off.

Repair Process

The process for upgrading QuickBooks Enterprise 2012 to QuickBooks Enterprise 2013 is fairly easy, but it may take some time depending on the number of workstations and the size of the database file.

In our client's environment, we run QuickBooks Enterprise on a Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011, which runs as a Virtual Machine (VM) within VMware vSphere 4.1. The first step in any upgrade is to make sure you have a good back up before proceeding.

After reinstalling Windows 7 and then tried to install the network driver for the computer the driver installation application displayed the following error "The procedure entry point AddDLLDirectory could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll." This error occurred because the driver installation was ...

We often have found with many of the new routers and Windows 7 and later will default to IPv6 for all their Internet lookups when browsing the web. The issue is that seen by many is that the resolution of names in the URL are delayed until an IPv4 is used to complete the lookup. This problem started after an update by Microsoft that caused IPv6 to be preferred over IPv4.

Microsoft released a Knowledge Base article on this issue, KB2533454 - Resolving Internet connectivity issues after World IPv6 Launch (June 6, 2012). This KB article contains a Microsoft FixIt tool to change the preferred IP version from IPv6 back to IPv4

The Search Protect malware is often inadvertently installed with other freeware applications. We won't go into the details of this application, there is plenty of information published already. These days you don't get anything for free, it seems many of these free applications come with malware bundled with them, Search Protect being one of them.

We see this application often on client computers and removing it can be difficult. The application is constantly changing so these steps might work or they might not. But it won't hurt to give it a try.

There are times that you may have a web site that you frequent often that gets updated which causes the site to function in unusual ways or may not work at all. Most likely the reason is that some of the files that are related to the site didn't update on your local computer. To resolve this issue you need to flush or clear the cache files from your browser. The steps below are for Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 but are similar for older versions.

1. Open Internet Explorer or IE as it is often referred to.
2. Select Tools from the menu or the gear icon.
3. Select Internet options which will open a dialog box defaulting to the General tab.
4.  Click the Delete... button under the Browsing History section.
5.  Click the OK button at the bottom and the close Internet Explorer
6.  Reopen Internet Explorer and go to the web site that was having issues.

If the cache of older incompatible files was the issue, then the site should be working now. If this was not the issue, it might be a compatibility issue with Internet Explorer and may need the Compatibility View option enabled for the site. 

While working with a client system we found that the Internet Explorer or any other browser application kept having issues with accessing the Internet. Reseting the browser settings would temporarily resolve the problem but it would quickly return the moment we would leave the client.

It turns out the client was using Juno as their e-mail application. As the user would review their mail they would occasionally get a message that had a hyperlink in the message to a web site. When clicking the link Juno would automatically open by change the proxy settings to force the browsing through their system.  

The success of a deployment of new computers in a business environment has allot to do with the process and being consistent with that process. Getting the steps out of order may cause some issue that were not expected nor will you know why one computer works fine and another doesn't.

Below is a list of steps that we often follow for deploying new computers in a business environment that has a Windows domain controller.

A very frustrating situation for our business clients is when they send an e-mail message to a client that has hyperlinks embedded in the message and the link doesn't open in the client's web browser. The issue is typically caused when Google Chrome or another web browser is installed and then later removed. But malware applications will also cause this issue too.

To fix the web links in your Microsoft Outlook application so that they will open, follow these steps.

In the business realm there is often a need to run applications from a remote system or through a terminal services connection on a remote server. This works great in most cases except when you are attempting to use a local USB device with that remote session. There are several products available that can be used to help make the use of remote devices that use the local USB port and one of them is from RDS Tools.

We have not tested this product but are currently posting this article for notification purposes in the event others may be looking for this type of product. At some point we will likely implement this with one or more of our clients and then write a review. If you are reading this post and have used the USB for RDP tool from RDS Tools, feel free to leave a comment on your experience.

The End of Life for the Windows Server 2003 was on July 14, 2015.  It was reported that as many as 8 million licenses were still active at the time of the expiration for support. All support for Windows Server 2003 including R2 have ceased unless special paid support has been arranged with Microsoft.  Now is a good time to begin making plans to upgrade your old servers that may be running Windows Server 2003 and the applications you have running on them.

Not sure how this will impact your business? Then let us help you review your current install base and provide you with the man options available. This might be a great opportunity migrate applications to one of our Cloud Services like Microsoft Exchange, Nebula Data Online Backup, or VMware Cloud Air.

After spending years supporting the Microsoft platform you find those special tools that help you overcome specific situations that seem monumental at first because you have to manually work your way through it. If you are lucky you will find some administration tool that eases that pain because someone before you had it to and had the skill to develop a tool to make it easier.

The purpose of this page is to help point others to some great web sites that offer free tools for administrating a Microsoft environment. Since we are unaffiliated with any of these sites, use these tools with caution. We don't advocate piracy so if there is a licensing fee, please pay up. The only things free are viruses and malware - and eventually you will pay the cost for that too.

When attempting to connect a vCenter server to Active Directory I got an error that I had to enter a fully qualified domain name in the Domain field, which I had done. So why the error. I started checking the following areas.

Domain Resolution - does the domain resolve back to one of the domain controllers. In my case I could ping and perform an nslookup on the domain and it resolved fine.