All Microsoft Products (Exchange, SQL, Windows, Server)
One of the biggest problems with Vista I found was the “shutdown button” would always put the computer into hibernate mode. Who would ever use hibernate mode anyway? I mean, come on, it’d be better to use sleep mode at that point. Jerks!
So anyway, here’s the quick fix:
Go into Power Options control panel
Under advanced settings find the “Power buttons and lid” option
Then look for “Start menu power button”
Now you’ll have different options to choose from. I personally picked Shut down.
The error of “Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Mapi32.dll is corrupt or the wrong version. This could have been caused by installing other messaging software. Please re-install office.” is a painful reminder that not all software pieces work well together. Quick fix:
1.) Close outlook
2.) Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033
3.) Rename MSMAPI32.DLL to MSMAPI32.DLL.OLD
4.) Reopen outlook – outlook should then “fix” this dll file
I know, I know… why would anyone still be using Windows 2000? You’d be surprised at that answer. At my place of business, all of our servers are Windows 2003 or Linux based with the exception of one key group: the Cisco Call Managers group.
DST changed a year or so ago, and all major operating systems were already patched by then. Unfortunately, Microsoft has labeled Windows 2000 under its EOL (end of life) software suite. Unless there’s a major security patch, all hot fixes are only for paying customers.
But Microsoft has a program called “TZEDIT.EXE” (found here) that allows you to manually edit the Time Zone configuration files.
1.) download the TZEDIT.EXE application
2.) Run the application, it will extract to C:\program files\tzedit
3.) Run the application in the \tzedit folder
4.) Click on your time zone and then hit the Edit button
5.) Starts 2nd Sunday of March @ 2 AM, Ends 1st Sunday of November @ 2 AM
6.) Now, double click on your time clock/calendar
7.) Select a different time zone and hit apply
8.) Select your edited time zone and hit apply
9.) All set!
Usually when you receive this error it means your HD is going bad. If your computer keeps rebooting and then asks to start in safe mode, that’s a good sign. Keep hitting the usual F8 button at startup to deselect the option of reboot on system failure. We don’t like that option anyway. Endless loops of reboots help no one.
If then on the giant blue screen of death you see this message:
“STOP 0x000000ED UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME”, then try this simple repair step before calling it a day.
1.) Put in your Windows XP CD
2.) Boot off your Windows XP CD (usually hit F12 to bring up the boot menu)
3.) When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press the “R” key to start the recovery console
4.) If you’re prompted, enter the administrator password (on Home edition it’s usually blank)
5.) At the command prompt type “chkdsk /r” and press enter – this will find and repair most issues found
6.) After Checkdisk has finished running, you can type “exit” and hit enter to reboot the machine
I had a fellow employee at my work complain that every now and then his IE would crash. After several failed attempts to figure out when this was happening (and why), he finally told me it was an error with Flash. The error is as follows:
So I was looking around trying to figure out why this was happening. I know – the easiest way to find out how to stop it would be to have the fellow employee let me know what site he was at when it was happening. But I digress, here’s how I “fixed” it.
1.) Go to \windows\system32\macromed\flash\
2.) Duplicate flash9b.ocx (Copy/Paste)
3.) Rename the file flash9b.ocx to flash9b.ocx.old
4.) Rename the file Copy of flash9b.ocx to flash9b.ocx
5.) Duplicate flash9b.ocx (Copy/Paste)
6.) Rename flash.ocx to flash.ocx.old
7.) Rename the file Copy of flash9b.ocx to flash.ocx
8.) Duplicate flash9b.ocx (Copy/Paste)
9.) Rename the file Copy of flash9b.ocx to flash9.ocx
You will need to close out of all active IE windows to make the changes stick. You may also need to reboot just to be sure. This seems to only affect flash 9b.ocx files when the system also has ATI video drivers.
Windows updates were failing to install on a computer. Here’s the steps I did to correct the issue:
1.) Reboot. This didn’t do anything but waste 4 minutes of time.
2.) Erase C:\WINDOWS\system32\SoftwareDistribution folder. Redownloaded Update Files but didn’t help.
3.) Download the Windows WGA and try to install. Failed on installation.
4.) Start off the Windows Disk and do a repair. Ended up in the same boat as before, but the computer starts up quicker now.
5.) Re-Register DLL files for windows update. This ended up working.
How to register DLL files:
1.) Open the command line (Start >> Run >> CMD)
2.) regsvr32 wuapi.dll, regsrv32 wuaueng.dll, regsrv32 wuaueng1.dll, regsrv32 wucltui.dll, regsrv32 wups.dll, regsrv32 wups2.dll, regsvr32 wuweb.dll
3.) Reopen the Windows Update window and try to update again
[edit: I had “regsrv32” instead of “regsvr32”. This has been fixed.]
At the office, we run MAIA MailGuard for our SPAM filter front end, and Exchange 2007 for our End-User mail server. It’s a great combination of free software and Microsoft software.
Maia worked great with Exchange 2003 because of the default “on” setting Exchange had for IMAP services. This default is no longer the case in 2007 – it’s off unless you specify otherwise. Obviously I had to get this working, otherwise no one could log into their SPAM filter page and check things out. Even I, the administrator, could not log into the Maia page. Harsh.
Maia uses IMAP to authenticate with the Exchange server. IMAP has to be turned on in order for authentication to work (I’m hearing reports that SP1 of Exchange2007 has a GUI for these settings, but here’s how I did it anyway):
1.) Open up the PowerShell on your exchange server
2.) Start-Service -Name msexchangeimap4
3.) Set-Service msexchangeimap4 -StartupType automatic
4.) Set-imapsettings -LoginType PlainTextLogin
5.) Restart the Microsoft IMAP Service
Basically this turns the IMAP protocol on, then sets the service to automatically start on bootup, and then changes the IMAP settings to allow unencrypted (non-TLS and non-SSL) passwords. IMAP service MUST BE restarted for this to work. I guess you could also reboot the server, but why do that if you don’t have to? You can change the “IMAP” to “POP” for any of these commands. Also, other IMAP settings include “PlainTextAuthentication” which turns off TLS but still requires a Secure Client or “SecureLogin” which is the default TLS and SSL authentication. And if you’re learning without reading the manual (like me), Set and Get commands can be interchanged for the most part.