To me, there are few things worse than an intermittent computer problem…yea I know that’s a first world problem, but the occasional listing delay on the Download folder in Windows 7 definitely qualifies as one of those annoyances for me. I’ve just never had enough time to really analyze the problem and figure out what’s going on. Well last week work was slow, so here it is: The problem is that the Downloads folder in Windows 7 is a Picture items folder.

Picture folders in Windows 7 have a special thumbnail cache that gets refreshed every so often…the process involves looking at each file in the folder and quickly generating a thumbnail image on the fly. I guess if you were downloading mostly images from the web, then having your downloads folder be a Picture folder this setup would make sense, but for me it’s just an annoyance because I’ve applied the detail view to my downloads folder so I’d never even see a thumbnail in that view.

Here’s a quick demonstration video of the problem:

To eliminate the delay caused by thumbnail generating, simply change the custom properties of the downloads folder. Here’s how:

[step 1] Right-click the downloads folder and select Properties.

[step 2] Click the Customize tab and change option under Optimize this folder for from Pictures to General Items in the drop down.

[step 3] Click Apply or OK to save the changes.

That’s it.

With ever more complex business process software, the bugs are often deeply embedded within a process or sequence of steps. Unless you perform the sequence precisely, chances of reproducing the error, bug or crash are slim to none. This makes it difficult for developers and support staff to troubleshoot an issue and escalate it properly.

Often times, what happens is an infinite loop of customer reporting an issue and support staff not being able to reproduce it. The problem is almost always one of communication. Unless the support staff member can see the entire sequence of steps taken to arrive at the problem, there is little he can do for the customer. And development/quality control can’t do much to patch bugs without a defined procedure that contradicts expected behavior.

This is where SCREENR comes in handy. It is one of the fastest and easiest ways to record the aforementioned sequence or process…you know the steps the customer took to produce the crash or error.

It’s easy to share the recorded recordings with support and development staff so problems can be reproduced and hopefully patched faster. Once a screencast is recorded, you’ll be able to publish it publicly for anyone to see via a screenr short link.

Limitations of SCREENR include a set amount of time you can record or capture a screen for free.

• System requirements – Java Run Time
• Screencast duration – The maximum length of screencasts is five minutes per screencast.
• Webcam & Microphone support – SCREENR supports audio recording, but not webcam recording in addition to screencasting.

Here’s a sample screencast where I demonstrate how SageTV works on a client computer:

If you’re like most businesses, you’ve got a few aging servers in your infrastructure. They are probably running legacy applications you can’t afford to upgrade right now and as long as things still work, you’ve taken the “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” approach to them. Problem is that the hardware these servers are running on is really getting old now and you worry about a crash when you should be sleeping…so what do you do? You virtualize it, that’s what! Here’s how:

[The Problem]

Say you’ve got an old server…perhaps even some ancient whitebox running Windows 2000 or Windows 2003. Let’s say it’s running MAS90 because that’s a good example of a nightmare to upgrade. Well, then you can use the steps below to see if Virtualizing the server is going to be an option. Best of all, it won’t take very long to find out.

If it works you’ll be able to run the server as-is on newer hardware which is still be covered under warranty/service contracts. As an example, my test system is a workstation with a Core I3 3.0Ghz CPU and 8GB of RAM. Running VirtualBox and my virtualized Windows 2003 server in the background causes no noticeable slowdown on my machine.

[The Solution]

[Requirements]

1. A fast server/workstation with lots of RAM and for best performance multiple Network Interface Cards (NIC’s).
2. VMware Player or VirtualBox software (both available for free).
3. VMware vCenter Converter (available for free).

[step 1] Be sure that your fast server/workstation is connected to the same network as the server we are going to virtualize (i.e. you can ping and access it through the network).

[step 2] Install VMware vCenter Converter and VMware Player or VirtualBox on your fast server. NOTE: VMware products require you to create an account before you can download them. Both VMware Converter and Player are free, however.

[step 3] Open VMware vCenter Converter (I installed v4.3, but the latest version should work the same way) and click Convert Machine

[step 4] Enter the IP address or name of the server you want to convert. You’ll also need to specify a valid username and password for it and finally, be sure to select Windows from the OS Family. Then click Next.

[step 5] Enter a name for your virtual machine, then select a network path where to store the converted machine. NOTE: the Virtual Machine will take the same amount of disk space as the server you are trying to convert is utilizing, so pick a location with plenty of room. Then click Next.

[step 6] Leave the options set to default on the Options screen and click Next. Then click Finish.

[troubleshooting] If you’ve run into errors so far, they’re probably related to gaining access to system you’re trying to virtualize or storing the virtualized machine. If you cannot overcome these issues, you can try installing the VMware vCenter Converter directly on the system you are trying to convert and then in [step 4] pick This local machine instead of A remote machine.

[step 7] When the VMware vCenter Converter process has been completed and a Virtual Machine has been generated, you’ll have two files:

2k3svr.vmdk
2k3svr.vmx

I decided to use VirtualBox to run this Virtual Machine because it has a smaller footprint than VMware Player, but both should work. Here is how to run the Virtual Machine we have created in [steps 1-7]:

[step 1] Copy both files created in [step 7] to a directory on your fast computer running VMware Player or VirtualBox.

[step 2] Open VirtualBox and create a new Virtual Machine.

[step 3] Give it a name (i.e. 2k3svr) and change the version to 2003 or whatever matches your old server’s operating system. Then click Next.

[step 4] I specify 2GB of ram for 2003 servers (that should be plenty for x86 systems). Then click Next.

[step 5] Select Use existing hard disk and browse to the location of your VMDK file generated in [step 1] above. Then click Next.

[step 6] Now click Create. You are now ready to run your newly created Virtual Machine.

[step 7] If the virtual machine hangs upon starting, power it off and then start it again fresh. This happens sometimes with newly created Virtual Machines in VirtualBox. Once your Virtual Machine is running, you can log in just like any other system.

EXAMPLE – Windows 2003 Server with MAS90 and Terminal Services running in VirtualBox. Users can connect via Remote Desktop Connection and use the new virtual machine just like they used the physical old server before. For the end user, nothing has changed.

Here are some additional changes I would make to my Virtual Machine if the conversion from Physical to Virtual (P2V) was successful:

1. Change the Virtual Machine network adapter to Bridged mode (however be careful to change the IP address first if your old server is still on the same network with a static IP).

2. Install the VirtualBox addon’s. This will help with mouse, keyboard control and display issues.

3. Make a backup of your VMDK and VMX files.

If the above steps worked and you have a fully functional virtual machine and are planning on utilizing the Virtual Machine in a live Enterprise environment, I recommend VMware vCenter ESXi (which is free) over VirtualBox or VMware Player.

So I ran into an issue the other day where a system would take up to 30 seconds to display a print dialog on any installed printer. Almost as if the system was encountering some kind of timeout when trying to render the print dialog. Turns out the problem manifested itself only in applications like Adobe Acrobat, WordPad, and QuickBooks, but not in Microsoft Office 2010 applications. After some digging, I found the issue is with the PrintDocument .NET method. It enumerates the available printers, so if one of these printers is a network printer that can’t be reached the system will search for it for up to 20 seconds. Here’s how to resolve the issue:

[Problem] Print dialog is extremely slow to come up in some applications on Windows XP/Windows 7.

[Solution]

[step 1] Click Start->Devices and Printers.

[step 2] Find any printer that are greyed out and delete them from the system. Note if the printer states deleting but will not go away, double click it and cancel any pending print jobs in the queue.

[step 3] Double click each remaining printer to make sure that it brings up a print queue. If any printer hangs or does not bring up a print queue, delete it or re-install it. Chances are it is a network printer that is no longer online.

[step 4] Test printing from Adobe Acrobat and check if the print dialog still takes a long time to come up.

[step 5] If printing is still slow, you’ll need to troubleshoot each remaining network printer by looking up its port and pinging its IP address to make sure it is online.

That’s it.

When printing scanned PDF documents to a Xerox WorkCentre 5665/5675/5687 from Windows 7 x64 the printout may appear cut off or seem as if the document margins have been changed. Said documents appear fine in print preview and even if the option Fit to Printable Area or Shrink to Printable Area is invoked, the printout does not appear as it should. Apparently this is a known issue within the Xerox community and a driver update has been pending for nearly a year but has not passed quality control. Here is how to resolve the issue until that driver update is released:

NOTE: If you are sharing this printer in a network environment, you may want to give the Print Operators group permissions to modify the printers.

[step 1] On the affected systems right click the Xerox printer and select Printer Properties.

[step 2] On the Advanced tab click the Print Processor button and in the dialog ensure that winprint->RAW is selected instead of XeroxV5Print->Raw.

[step 3] Click OK then Apply and then OK.

That’s it.

In a Windows 2003 Active Directory forest with group policies disabling offline files, Windows 7 systems can have issues if you’ve redirected folders via GPO. In my experience new Windows 7 systems joined to the AD domain would automatically start syncing re-directed folders such as My Documents and Desktop as if they were made available offline.

When checking the offline files control panel options though, all options were grayed out due to the group policy setting inherited by the domain policy (GPO). So disabling offline files is disabled, but offline files are enabled on redirected folders…awesome huh?

Here’s how to really turn offline files off so that users with re-directed folders don’t start syncing those files and eventually run into the problems that come with offline files sync.

[step 1] Open a Command Prompt window as Administrator.

[step 2] Type or paste the following command:

wmic path win32_offlinefilescache call enable false

Hit enter and you should see the following result:

[step 3] Reboot, that’s it.

So apparently Dell’s new Latitude E6400 series notebooks come with optional built-in Dell Wireless® 375 Bluetooth (BT) Modules. Unfortunately when the notebook arrives from the factory, the generic Windows BT driver is installed. Although everything looks clean in the device manager, the generic Windows driver is incompatible and you’ll notice this when you try to pair a BT device with your computer.

Besides not being able to pair BT devices, you’ll find a number of peripheral devices with exclamation marks in the device manager. So how do you fix this? A normal person would head on over to the dell support site, enter your service tag and download the drivers for the Dell Wireless 375 Bluetooth device and install it…right? NOPE! the driver available on Dell’s site (download HERE) will not execute properly on the E6410 Core i7. When you execute the single Setup.exe file in Windows 7 x64, you’ll notice a dos prompt flash and that’s all she wrote. The setup application never starts. Here’s how to get the driver for Dell Wireless® 375 Bluetooth module installed properly:

[step 1] Download the driver HERE.

[step 2] Extract the downloaded file R285455.exe to the default location C:\Dell\Drivers\R285455.

[step 3] Navigate to C:\Dell\Drivers\R285455\ using Explorer and find the Setup.exe file. Right-click setup.exe and choose Troubleshoot Compatibility.

[step 4] Select the Recommended settings in the wizard that pops up then click Start the Program…

[step 5] Now the installation wizard for the Dell Wireless 375 Bluetooth adapter should execute properly and upon completion all drivers will be installed properly and up-to-date.

That’s it.

So you’ve got a bunch of duplicate contacts in outlook, huh? I know how it happens…you’re out and about and quickly added a contact to your synced iPhone/Blackberry not realizing that he/she already existed. Now you’ve got two of ‘em one with an address and one with a couple of phone numbers and an email. Here’s how to merge them into a single contact.

[requirements]

1. A Gmail account (free to sign up)
2. Microsoft Outlook

[step 1] In Outlook, export your contacts. Be sure to export your suggested contacts as well, these are duplicates but they may contain information that is more up-to-date.

File->Open->Import->Export to a file->Comma Separated File (Windows)->Select contacts folder

Specify a name and location for the CSV file for each contacts folder you export.

[step 2] Log into your Gmail account.

NOTE: I used a new freshly created Gmail account without any contacts in it (as to not get my work contacts and personal contacts mixed, but that’s not required – see imported contact groups below).

[step 3] Click Mail and select Contacts. Then click Import Contacts…

[step 4] Select Browse and navigate to the CSV files you created in [step 1]. Repeat as necessary for all other CSV files you created.

NOTE: for each import operation a new contact group will be created for easy access later.

[step 5] After you’ve imported all of your CSV files, click the Find & merge duplicates link.

[step 6] Optionally verify your contacts to be merged and deselect any erroneous entries. Then click Merge.

[step 7] Export your merged contacts as a CSV file for Outlook.

In Gmail, click More->Export…

NOTE: the location and file name of your exported merged Gmail contacts CSV file.

[step 8] Import the merged exported Gmail contacts back into Outlook.

NOTE: You may want to delete your existing outlook contacts or move them to a sub folder before importing to avoid creating more duplicates by importing the merged contacts.

That’s it.