Tech Support
 

Maybe we can just have a catch-all thread for stupid questions like this one.

Using Vista. The Date and Time Control Panel used to an "Automatically Sync Time" function (it was a check-box and you could choose which time-server to use). However, that seems to have disappeared. Was there a change as to its location, a problem isolated to my computer or another Microsoft "upgrade"?

Anyone know?

Looking at the vista install I have at work, there is an "Internet Time" tab in the control panel. That's where the sync option and server entry dialog are located.

The only two tabs in the "Date and Time" control panel are "Date and Time" and "Additional Clocks". On the former, when you click on the "Change Date and Time..." button, I believe the Time Sync option was in the window that opened (that also let you set the date and time). However, it ain't there no mo.

Are you logged into a domain?

Apparently when logged into a domain, Vista expects the domain to handle it. Log out and log in using a local account on they system. The tab should be back.

ETA: Or - start an elevated command line (right click on "command prompt" in the start menu and choose "run as administrator", then enter "net time /setsntp:[time server]"

That's the difference: thank you!

Do I want to install Service Pack 2 for Vista? Apparently it has been available since 6/30/09 but my computer never installed it (even though it has installed every other update since that time).

I am hesitant only because I remember all of the issues with VP Service Pack 2.

Bump - anyone have their $0.02?

I have Vista SP2 and have not experienced any issues with it.

Another question. As I have mentioned, I am going to be on a week-long business trip. We bought a laptop for me to use on the road: this will be my sole computer for the week, but I will be returning to my desktop when I return.

One of the things I am trying to negotiate is email. We do not use an Exchange Server; rather, POP3 (Go Daddy is our host, but with our own domain). I would like to use Outlook on the notebook as I normally would at the office on my desktop. Is there a way for me to copy my PST file to the notebook before I leave, retrieve and send messages as normal using the notebook and then return the PST file to my desktop upon my return?

The reason I would like to be able to do this is 1) that I file emails into folders by client and/or project, and 2) I want to be able to have my sent email in the Sent folder in Outlook (if I just use Go Daddy's online interface, the messages won't be saved in my Outlook sent folder - I am trying to avoid the inelegant 'solution' of just copying myself on all emails and filing them when I get home).

I have poked around the interwebs looking for a solution, and I think this page on the Microsponge site will help me load the PST file into Outlook on the notebook, I just can't confirm:

1. Is there a specific way to "Back up" my PST file, or can I just copy the file/files?
2. Are there other files that I need to be bringing over as well? I am not going bring the Archive.pst (it's 17.1 GB), but what about some of the other files such as ~last~.sharing.xml.obi, extend.dat, Outlook.log, Outlook.sharing.xml.obi, and spscoll.dat as well as the hidden file ~Outlook.pst.tmp
3. I am not too worried about moving the PST file from Outlook 2007 to Outlook 2010 (from what I've read, this can be done), but what about going back from 2010 to 2007?
4. Anything else I am not thinking of :eek:

I have no problem with configuring Outlook for mail (I am the one who usually does that for everyone else), I am just not sure how to handle the PST issue. I asked our IT people and, well, they just reinforced why I think we are wasting our money with them :rolleyes:

Some particulars:
Desktop machine: running Vista with Office 2007
Laptop: running Windows 7 with Office 2010
Everything is up-to-date

Any help would be appreciated!

1) I would suggest creating a new .pst file - 17GB is beyond huge. They start destabilizing around 2GB.

2) You can create a separate archive .pst file with just the emails you need but it's a manual process.

It is the Archive file that is that large. I keep my main PST file under 5 GB. In Outlook 2003, 2 GB was the defacto maximum but Outlook 2007 can handle up to about 5 GB without problem (at least according to a couple of people I have talked to and according to my own experience - my main PST file regularly gets up close to 10 GB and I have never had a stability issue with Outlook 2007).Yeah, that's what I am trying to avoid.

You can do an "automatic" archive (I do not mean an "auto-archive") into the .pst file of your choice. You just need to specify it in the dialog.

Check your PMs Kevy.

I have an I WILL be calling you tomorrow.

Thank you for offering - you rock!

He likes you better :p

(I'm so burned out on tech support that my advice was half-assed. I'm sorry).

This one had us stumped. Anyone know what this is and why it keeps popping up? It is on a Mac, but this pops up in Parallels (a PC environment on the Mac). It seems to have appeared about the time we set up our Exchange server and put this person on Outlook 2010 on the PC side.

I can't read the text of the bottom message.

Kevy has PMS? Well that explains a lot.

What's unusual? That's my standard experience with Firefox when I download a file. Is this coming up when you're not downloading something? Or did it not used to come up when downloading?

On the Outlook issue, you can just copy the data file (pst file) and transfer it to the laptop. Go, in outlook, to tool, account settings, data file and then set it as the default. If you keep the file name the same, you should be able to transfer it back and forth pretty easily.

You can also do export and import of it but it seems to take forever.

He is not downloading anything - that message just pops up about every 30 seconds. Continuously. Methinks virus.

That was an old message from September and this is what I ended up doing.

Becomes a moot point now that we are on Exchange - I will be using the Outlook remote log-in via a browser interface. Much simpler.

This threw me off (until I realized the date of SM's message) as I didn't have any Private Messages. Or PMS.

And it was SM who did help me on the issue back then - thank you again for your assistance!

In Outlook Exchange 2003, does anyone know of the Out of Office Auto Responder replies to each sender only once per Day or once completely. We just tested by sending three messages and only the first was responded to so obviously it only does at most once per day. However, I cannot wait until tomorrow to find out if I send another message if it will respond to that one.

The text in the dialog box under Tools > Out of Office Assistant just says "AutoReply only once to each sender with the following message" (and you can enter text in that box of course).

Yes, I know that I can manage that better with Exchange 2007, but I don't see that getting installed today.

I may just look at setting up a rule to autorespond to all messages, but I don't think it would catch an infinite loop (I experienced one of those many years ago and came back to several thousand messages).

Well, here at work (we run Outlook 2003) and if someone it out, I get an autoresponder once. This is only for emails within the firm.

It's been a while but that is my recollection as well. Once per person per time the Out of Office has been turned on.

Argh - that is what I am afraid of

I am worried about using a rule for the Auto Responder because of the infinite loop concern*


The situation I had a few years ago was when I had my AutoReponder on and someone I was corresponding with had HIS auto responder on. One of us sent the other a message right around the time we turned our auto responder. Our emails kept exchanging "Out of Office" emails every few minutes (I believe I was on a POP server at the time and had my email set to check every five minutes or so). I came back to an inbox with a thousand or so Out of Office messages from him.

Why is that an argh? Aren't we saying that what you fear won't happen?

I don't want just one email response per time the Out of Office AutoResponder is turned on. The boss is going to be gone for over two weeks and if someone sends him an email today and then another one again next Monday, that person won't receive another response and may not remember that the boss is out of the office (and won't get a response).

I found a way to use a rule to auto respond which included a "Don't reply to Auto Reply emails (negating the infinite loop), but it too appears to have a setting (not adjustable) which prevents multiple responses to the same person - I don't know if that limit is once per day or once per startup.

Also, it is a local rule, so his machine would need to stay on with Outlook running (not a big deal).

The entire corporate world lives with that risk when people go on long vacations, I'd just tell whoever is worried about it to suck it up and pound sand.

I handle our website and I can set up an auto responder through our control panel to send out auto responses. It does one for every email it receives. If you have any backend access to your mail, you might look to that.

Who is hosting your email? Are you using a self-hosted Exchange server or is it a web-based host?

When we had Go Daddy hosting our email, I could easily go the online control panel for Auto Responses and that would respond to every incoming message. Exchange 2003 does not allows that (though I believe that Exchange 2007 does).

We use e-business express using a pop 3 web based account. (not exchange)

This is just the dumbest ass thing: I did some cleanup work on my Outlook address book, including adding address, phone, fax, etc. I exported the database to a .CSV file and deleted all contacts in my Outlook Address Book (archiving the original file before deleting of course!), did all the work in Excel, re-saved to .CSV, and imported back in to Outlook. It was a great way to make wholesale updates.

However, after I did this, fax numbers kept showing up as email addresses when I was entering addresses in an email. After some digging on the internets, I found this:

There are ways around it (I am just going to add an "F" before the fax number which should prevent it from being thought of as a valid email. But this is just plain silly!

Not necessarily silly but with the general death of fax machines certainly so generally obsolete that they should add a option toggle to control it.

Having fax numbers recognized as the equivalent routing possibility to email addresses was quite useful to me back in my administrative assistant days.

But what I wonder is, this shouldn't be new is it? If you had fax numbers in there before they should have been behaving the same way.

While Fax is a dying technology, it is far from dead (heck: I had to work with someone recently who was still using DOS). It is silly to have the information in a numeric telephonic field automatically default to an email format without benefit of being able to switch that automatic conversion off. If it were on an option to turn that auto-conversion ON, that would be fine. But not being able to use the field for its intended and labeled purpose is absurd.

I only recently discovered this as I had previously had very few fax numbers entered and had probably never noticed it.

Any specific tricks that I should relay to my dad removing a virus/spyware from his laptop? It's Windows Scan. I have this info, but just want to make sure there aren't any special bits that might hide.

Wow, I thought I'd written a response to your post.

If it has been identified as, the info in the link you gave should have done the trick. Did it work?



Now my question. I don't really expect anyone to know the answer to this, it's rather esoteric, but I'm hoping for one of those moments of, 'Oh fvck, while writing it out I realized the key thing I've been missing.' Because this is driving me nuts.

I'm using a python library (_winreg) to read values from the windows registry on Windows 2008 R2. It's a very straight forward thing to do. Basically, open a connection to the registry [e.g. reg=Connect(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)], then open a connection to a specific key [e.g. key=(reg,'SOFTWARE\\Emulex)]

So, here's what's driving me bonkers.

I am trying to reference a key that's under the HKLM\SOFTWARE key. as in my example above. It won't let me. It says it doesn't exist. But when I look at regedit, it's there. Here's the crazy part. If I look at regedit, I see the following:

HKLM
-SOFTWARE
--ATI Technologies
--Classes
--Clients
--Emulex
--Microsoft
--ODBC
--Policies
--RegisteredApplications
--Tarma Installer
--Wow6432Node

But, if, using the python library I connect to HKLM\\SOFTWARE, list all of the keys that are under it, all I get is:

'Microsoft'
'ODBC'
'Python'
'Classes'
'Clients'
'Policies'

WTF? Why can I only see those 6?! Where the fvck are the other 10??

Also pissing me off is the fact that this works just fine on 6 other systems, including another Windows 2008 R2 system.

And, of course, the one person here that I know could help me is out for Tet until Monday. Grrrrr.

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Well, technically the moment happened AFTER I wrote it out, not while, but :D still applies

MalwareBytes. You may need to install it onto a flash drive, rename the .exe from mbam.exe to something else and then run it to get around the virus.

go to start > run > msconfig > start up and make sure that the virus isn't in the menu to run when the machine starts up. Reboot the computer and run malwarebytes. If you have trouble installing it check the start up files.

And use task manager to close the virus windows if they pop up.

Sorry, but this is about as much of your question that I read before I realized that I had nothing to offer:

Like I said, unlikely anyone could have offered much. Even someone who IS familiar with Python and Windows registry might not have been able to do much without seeing the system in front of them.

Although the clue was right there in what I posted. "Wow6432node". Under that was exactly the abbreviated list that the function was returning to me. That's when it dawned on me...Windows 2008 R2 is a 64 bit operating system, and I didn't remember downloading the 64 bit Python package. Which means I must have installed the 32 bit version, so it could only read the 32 bit portions of the registry.

Which I'm sure clears everything right up for you.

Do you know if there is a way in Outlook 2007 to have a default send FROM address for certain people. i.e. If I email Jane Doe I send from my gmail addy by default. If I email John Flannigan I send from my yahoo addy by default.

Do you know if there is a way in Outlook 2007 to have a default send FROM address for certain people. i.e. If I email Jane Doe I send from my gmail addy by default. If I email John Flannigan I send from my yahoo addy by default.

Here is one that so far has our IT stumped. Before they take the computer out of the office (rendering the user, well, useless), I wanted to throw this out to the community here.

One of the machines has a message that keeps popping up (see screen shot below). Clicking any of the three buttons or the close window button in the upper right corner does nothing - the window remains. If he reboots, it is still there.

I ran Task Manager and was able to force quite the application once. But after rebooting, this trick did not work a second time :(

I looked on the interwebs and did not see anything (other than a couple of other peeps asking about the same thing with no answer).

The computer is running Windows 7 Professional.

Any ideas?



ETA: found this link and gonna try tomorrow: http://www.webuser.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=86786

Did you Google for "coodinator.exe"? What you got there is a Trojan and not the good kind you can use on a date that goes well. Download Malwarebytes (the free version) and let it have a go at the PC.

I just got through doing that (Malwarebytes). It found nothing - log below :(

However, as I was writing this, I realized that I did not reboot after it updated itself after installation. Not sure if this makes a difference, but I will run a Quick Scan after it reboots and still nothing is found, I will run a Full Scan.

Well, the after-boot Quick Scan didn't turn up anything. The Full Scan gave one item that I am not sure if it is connected or not (see screen shot below).

I am giving up for tonight and I will discuss further with our IT people tomorrow.

Our IT people ran multiple different virus and malware programs to no avail - they could FIND it, but couldn't get rid of it. They backup up and wiped the drive and are restoring.

Since it was the person I had to let go last week, it is not as big of a rush thankfully.

I''m having a mystery issue with a computer connected too our TV via HDMI.

Had another computer connected to the same TV input, same HDMI cable, same settings on the TV input. Worked perfectly.

With this new one, everything works fine, until I change inputs on the tv. Once I change inputs, then come back to the input with the computer, it just displays a flashing staticy screen. I have to either disconnect and reconnect the HDMI cable or cycle power on the TV. Doesn't seem to make any difference whether the computer has timed out the display or not.

Any ideas? Samsung tv, graphics chip is Intel on-board G4/G5 express.

Worst case I can scavenge the display adapter from the old system, but I'd rather not for a variety of reasons.

As stupid as it sounds, I have seen several general suggestions to simply reverse the HDMI cable. It didn't help on my issues, but it was somthing I securred from two separate sources over the weekend.

Other than that, I got nothing.

Now that you mention it, I have seen other issues in the past disappear by doing just that. Definitely worth a try.

No dice.

One thing to note, I AM working with a bunny-compromised cable (chewed through a small section of housing and shielding. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the new comp's graphic chip is more sensitive to noise during link establishment and the dodgy cablle just enough to create that noise. The only other HDMI cable I have is routed annoyingly. Grrr.

Ha! FINALLY the computing gods give me a break this week. It's 10:05. 5 minutes ago the new Woot.com deal posted...2x3ft HDMI cables, $3.99 ($5s/h)! (three feet is plenty for this use).

Nice.

Do a search for HDMI in this thread. It might help.

Hmm, after browsing that thread it could be an EDID issue*. I'll try the new HDMI cable when it comes in first. If it's still a problem I'll try the HDMION utility. If that solves it, I may still go ahead and put the other graphics card in anyway. HDMION will require a keyboard press every time we switch inputs to the computer. I'd rather not have to reach for the keyboard every time.



*Might also explain the weird line of pixels that occasionally appears at the top of the screen while viewing the PC and persists across TV inputs until the tv is turned off then on. Sigh, don't I deal with enough crap about poor standardization of handshaking protocols at work?!

Well, that thread Moonie posted seems to have lead me to the cause. And a semi-acceptable workaround. But only semi-acceptable. I could spend some time with some trial and error to get a more acceptable workaround...or I could just install the perfectly functional graphics adapter from the old system (which is a better adapter anyway). Probably going to be the latter.

I hope you apologized to bunny.

Hell no. My rabbit's a jerk. I love her, but she's a jerk.

Have you tried spraying things with pepper sauce in water?

I've got rabbits in my yard and wondered just how effective that was.

Rabbits aren't particularly deterred by bad tastes like that. Smells can be effective, like cheap perfume...but then our house would have to smell like cheap perfume. No thanks.

We've compensated by keeping the temptations out of their reach, I just got sloppy with the HDMI cable.

But even if she weren't chewing cables, Lito would still be a jerk.

FYI, I discovered that the semi-acceptable workaround doesn't work if the user is logged out. Was it supposed to be logged out this morning?

Oh, I haven't gotten around to turning on auto-logon. Once I do that it shouldn't be an issue.

You know, we're always talking about babies today will be amazed to learn that once upon a time there were only three networks and if you wanted to watch a show you had to watch it when the TV decided to show it to you and not the other way around.

They'll also be amazed that there was once a time when if you wanted to watch TV all you had to do was turn it on.

They will also be amazed that you had to actually get off your ass to change channels.

Frankly, even at my age I'm still almost amazed at that.

A week or so ago I called my parents. They had to call me back because the show they were watching was in a really exciting part. It took me a few seconds to realize they couldn't pause live TV.

I keep trying to pawn off my TIVO series 2 with lifetime on them but mom is afraid she won't understand how to use it and dad is convinced they have no use for it anyway. :rolleyes:

My parents finally bought a TiVo. They (meaning my mom) use it exactly as if it were a VCR.

What isn't VCR-like about a DVR? Am I missing out on some wonderful DVR feature?

Live TV pausing. Ability to watch one show while recording another. On screen guide (they don't have a cable box so that's not otherwise available to them).

Well, my parents have had their VCR set up to record one thing and watch something else since VCRs came out. But the pausing LIVE TV would be helpful and the season pass so they don't have to rush home when they forget to record a show.

Before TiVo was even invented, we kept three VCRs in our living room: two dedicated to recording and one to playback. For the most part, we would watch them sequentially, but it was an ongoing task to go through each tape as it was finished to note the time of the beginning of each show to go with the list of shows on each tape.

We all think we don't need DVR until we get it. That sh*t will change your life :)

Anyone know why the pointer on my screen keeps switching from an arrow to a circle like really fast? Did Virus/malware checks. Nothing. Any ideas?

Windows 7? It sounds like some process running wild. Start task manager (ctrl-alt-del) click on "processes s" and then CPU. See if some task keeps coming and going.

Hmmm, it stopped. Ive got Windows Vista. Next time it starts I'll see what's running in Task Manager.

Thanks!

Actually, ctrl-shift-esc takes you right into Task Manager. ctrl-alt-del requires an extra step.

This is my learning something new today moment. How could I not know this already?

new trick!

Didn't know it either. Thanks for sharing!

Wow - I actually contributed something useful for a change.

Happy to help

I knew about it! Do I get brownie points?

Epilogue to the computer video problem I was having: The new hdmi cable predictably did nothing. So I was going to install the other video adapter I had. But the huge heat sink it's got wouldn't fit in the new box, which is a slim-line case. Sigh. So I found a good price on another adapter that had a smaller heat sink and came with a bracket to fit in a slim case. Awesome. That showed up yesterday...and the bracket for the slim case mounts 180 degrees from the way I need it to mount to fit in this case :mad: So I just installed it without the bracket. Not ideal, but it works. And the problem I was having is solved. Hooray.

Meanwhile...

Twitter is doing weird sh*t to me.

Every 4th or 5th time I load the home page, there's a bunch of random crap in the timeline from people I don't follow (most often it seems to be a bunch of Spanish-language soccer related stuff, but I've also seen random celeb account sh*t like snooki, KimKardashian, JustiBieber show up). They are not retweets from people I am following, they go away if I refresh the page, and I don't see them from my mobile app, just the home page from a web browser (both firefox and IE).

This is a screenshot, the last few tweets you can see on the bottom are supposed to be there, everything above that is crap, and went away after I refreshed the page.

Really annoying.

Felicia Day tweeted something similar earlier today about random stuff in her timeline. Haven't seen it myself but must be a Twitter bug.

Twitter was down for a while, now it's back and it doesn't seem to be happening anymore. I guess Felicia Day and I have some pull.

So it's doing it again. Seems I have 93 process's going on. Any idea how to weed these?

Like Moonie said, click on the "CPU" column in task manager. It will give you a continual update of what process is using the most CPU at any moment. Watch it for a while and see if you can spot a particular process or two that regularly pops to the top of the list (other than the "System Idle Process" which goes to the top when nothing is using the processor).

I have this speaker system. The right rear speaker is broken (clip to hold the speaker wires in place snapped. I cannot find a replacement for the exact model. However, I found this speaker that looks identical.

Question is: will it work?

While I can't be 100% certain, I feel 99% certain that it will work. There is nothing spcial about either one that would be a barrier to success.

Thanks. That is what I was seeing as well. The system is old and nothing fancy either. I think the difference in the two models are in the receiver since all the speakers look the same.

Or you could just get a pair of these

Okay, I just got this second email and need to check.

Last week I received an email with the subject of "For Kevin" and the name that showed as the sender was my sister. The body of the email said "Hey Kevin" and included a link. Stupid me clicked the link and it was just a spam of course (I have run one virus scan and am running another right now to confirm). The email address from last week was a Yahoo address that I do not know.

I received a second email today with the same basic format (showing as coming from a friend, but with a Yahoo UK email address). Since this is now the second one, I am wondering if I am infected somehow that isn't showing up on scans. The reason I am wondering about this is that it is showing as coming from people I know.

DSLExtreme (the email account this is coming through) uses GMail as the email service, but I do not keep an address book online (and the names are being populated before it arrives in my inbox).

Any ideas out there?

Sounds like the same thing I commented on awhile back.

Does it match someone scavenging relationship data from your facebook page?

And no, I don't think you are infected. But by clicking on that link you let the spammy scammers know your are a chowder head and now they will probably hammer you like crazy for awhile.

I forgot about that post of yours. Definitely appears to be the same phishing scam - both persons are on my FB Friends list. To the best of my knowledge (and I just checked again), my email address isn't available in my timeline, but I just saw that it was set to show to my friends (which I have since changed*).

* Go to your home page, click on the "Update Info" Button, scroll down to the "Contact Info" box and click "Edit", for each email, there are two drop-down menus for each email address (I have the FB assigned one and my log-in one). The drop-down menu on the left lets you control who sees your email (mine WAS set to "Friends", but I changed it to "Only Me"), and the one on the right determines whether you want your email to show on your timeline (obviously I set it to NOT show).

There has been a rash of yahoo email hacking lately that's spamming people in the hacked address book. Old skool.

You will find that one of your friends has fallen for the "Apple is giving away free iPads" or similar ads, and clicked and filled in the details. There's lots of stuff like this happening, and some people fall for it. It gives the spammer the right to access your friends address book.

My sister maybe, but the one friend wouldn't have.

Sure? Not even one of those "see who's stalking you online" offers? (I nearly fell for that one, once.)