Windows

To set the Microsoft Outlook default startup folder:

In Outlook 2007:

  • From the Tools drop-down list, select Options…
  • Select the Other tab
  • Click the Advanced Options… button
  • Click the Browse… button
  • Under Start in this folder:, select your preferred start folder
  • Click OK
  • Click OK
  • in the Options window, click OK.

In Outlook 2010/2013:

  • Select the File tab.
  • In the left column, select Options.
  • In the left column, select Advanced.
  • Under Outlook start and exit, click the Browse… button.
  • Under Start in this folder:, select your preferred start folder.
  • Click OK.
  • Click OK.
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Windows

Error message
AppleSyncNotifier,exe Error message

Today I had a Windows 7 computer with the following error every time when the computer was logging in:

AppleSyncNotifier.exe Entry Point Not Found
“The procedure entry point sqlite3_wal_checkpoint could not be located in the dynamic link library SQLite3.dll”

Turns out this error is because the SQLite3.dll file is missing out of the “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support” folder and when Windows starts it loads a bunch of Apple software(one of them being  AppleSyncNotifier.exe). I’m not sure why it goes missing, might be because of a virus but I couldn’t find any viruses or any in the virus chest/logs.

Fix the AppleSyncNotifier.exe Entry Point Not Found Error

To fix the error it is quite easy. You need to go to the folder that contains the apple support files:

  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Apple Application Support

Then you will need to copy the following files:

  • libxml2.dll
  • SQLite3.dll

Now navigate to the folder:

  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support

And paste those two files in the “Mobile Device Support” folder and reboot your computer. Now when you log on the AppleSyncNotifier error will not pop up.

 

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Windows

I got a Windows 8.1 workstation computer in the other day, sometimes when it was shutting down it would get an error message pop up saying:

AcStBmhE.exe

The application failed to start correctly 0xc0000142

I ended up tracking it down to a faulty NVidia Quadro driver.

To fix this just download the latest NVidia ODE driver which is the official driver for NVidia Quadro 600K(that is the GPU installed).

Make sure you download the driver from the official NVidia support site in the driver downloads section. http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspxNVidia quadro driver
Not sure if this fix will work for you but it did work for me.

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Windows

This error is can happen when opening a file in Excel 2013, Word 2013, Publisher 2013, Access 2013, Visio 2013 or PowerPoint 2013. It makes it so you cannot open any of your office software, when you double click on the icon it will just hang and nothing comes up.

All that will appear is:

“There was a problem sending the command to the program”

To fix this error you need to open a run box (windows key + R) and run the following command:

winword.exe /R

Or which ever executable is not responding correctly. The /R parameter will re-register the program to the registry.

If this error happens with another program you will need to see if you can re-register that program or you may need to do repair installation.

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Windows

So I had just finished and installation of a server and a bunch of workstations and then one of the computers Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013 installations just all of a sudden went corrupted.

Office 2013 executable files(winword.exe, outlook.exe, excel.exe, ect.) just disappeared from the C:\Programs\Office15\root\Office15 folder. I couldn’t figure out why. I tried to even recover the product key of Office 2013, but couldn’t.

I ended up reinstalling the Microsoft Office 2013 software, but even doing that I had to use the office removal tool to be able to re-install.

After that outlook held all of the same email profile and settings so it all looked good.

Two days later the same problem with Microsoft Office 2013 appeared on another computer. Now I was really scratching my head so I started digging deeper. I tried built in fix in Programs and Features but that didn’t fix it. So I thought I’d check the Event Viewer and see if I could find anything.

And there it was a little cryptic event saying:

Office Software Protection Platform Service: 1029
Unable to get detailed error information during license consumption. Last error 0xC004F015.

So I started researching this event id 1029 and couldn’t find any answers, all the forums just said to do the troubleshooting that I had already done.

Then I was looking at all thier information and it turned out they had 8 Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013 licenses and 9 computers…. BINGO. I realised one of the computers wasn’t meant to have office on it. So I found the culprite and proceeded to recover the product key off of it using produkey.

All produkey would show was the windows 7 product key and the internet explorer product key (which is the same as windows 7 one). I could not recover the Office 2013 key.

I searched the registry for it but couldn’t find the Microsoft Office product key.

Then I found a command to get the Office Product key:

cscript “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\OSPP.VBS” /dstatus

This only gave me the last five characters of the product key. That was enough I then matched it to the correct product key card and uninstalled Microsoft Office from the PC that it wasn’t meant to be on and installed it on the computer that had the files missing.

 

Related Posts:

There was a problem sending the command to the program In Office 2013

Disable Office Start Screen

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Windows

I was trying to install the Autodesk Design Review 2013 (ADR) version on a clients computer today and got the following error:

The following failed to install: Visual Studio C++  SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) (0x2 Failed downloading component)

So I thought just download it manually and install. So i installed the Visual Studio C++ SP1 Redistributable Package, then downloaded and ran the installer again and got the following error:

The following failed to install: Autodesk Design Review 2013  (0x2 Failed downloading component)

After this one  I thought there must be a problem with the way ADR downloads the installation packages so I went searching for an offline installer and found it.

I downloaded and installed the ADR offline installer and it worked.

Autodesk Design Review 2013 offline installer download here. On that page select the language you want and it will start the download of the Autodesk Design Review 2013 bundle installation as they call it. It should be about 750mb

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Windows

So you may be reading up on PowerShell and be starting to think “really what is a cmdlet?”

Well a cmdlet is pronounced command-let and it is a lightweight PowerShell script that performs one function. PowerShell comes with over 200 core cmdlets included but you can write your own or download and use ones that other people have written. Cmdlets execute code out of the .NET framework(as PowerShell is built of the .NET framework) and return an object to the next command in the pipeline.

Cmdlets are written in a verb-noun format to help describe what they do. This does make it easier in identifying what the cmdlet is used for and easier to search for the cmdlet that you need.

A cmdlet has the extension .ps1 so if you do write one you need to save it with the .ps1 extension.

If you need to access the help file for a cmdlet you can do it by typing the command Get-Help cmdletName-detailed then pressing enter to execute the command.

Some key PowerShell cmdlet terms

  • Parameter set: This is a set of parameters that are used in a command to perform an action. You can have lots of parameter sets in a cmdlet but each set must have a unique parameter.
  • Dynamic parameter: A dynamic parameter that is added to the cmdlet at runtime usually this is a parameter based on another the value of a different parameter.
  • ShouldProcess feature: The ShouldProcess feature is to prompt the user running the PowerShell script for feedback before the script makes changes to the system, (eg. Are you sure you want to change your IP address?) . To use this the ShouldProcess feature, the cmdlet must declare that it has support for the ShouldProcess feature when the cmdlet attribute is declared.
  • Transaction: A transaction is a group of commands that is treated as one single task. The task will automatically fail if any command in the sequence fails. Also when using transactions the user can finalise or undo the actions performed in the transaction, so if the sequence of commands fail the transaction will return everything to the state that it was before the transaction started. To participate in a transaction, the cmdlet must declare that it supports transactions when the Cmdlet attribute is declared.  PowerShell 2.0 was when Microsoft brought out support for transactions.

 

 

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Windows

Scripting has changed. A new player has come into the works and added more functionality to the Microsoft scripting world, PowerShell.

You can map a network drive via script in a few different ways this post will show you how to do it using batch script, VBScript and PowerShell.

Map a network drive Batch script

Batch script is the most basic way to map a network drive with a script and is pretty easy to do.

net use F: \\fileserver\share /Persistant:yes

Now I will explain this the “net use” command it connects a Windows computer to a shared resource or shows information about shared resources. For more information go to your command prompt and type “net use /?” without the talking marks.

The “F:” part is allocating the drive letter, so when you go to My Computer it will be called drive F.

The “\\fileserver\share” part is specifying the full path to the network resource that you want to map, so in this example the hostname is “fileserver” and the shared folder is “share”

“/Persistan:yes” means that it is to stay there after a reboot. If you do not use the “/Persistant:yes” switch you may not have the shared folder there next time you go to access it.

Map a network drive VBScript

Once you move into VBScript you can add a bit more functionality like looking up groups or Organizational Units and then map different drives for users that are members of the different groups. A good example of this is on thinkpond.net. The basic command is:

WSHNetwork.MapNetworkDrive F: \\fileserver\share

“WHSNetwork.MapNetworkDrive” can be broken up into two parts. “WHSNetwork” which is an object for accessing shared network resources and “MapNetworkDrive” which is the command stating you want to map a network drive.

“F:” is specifying the drive letter

The “\\fileserver\share” part is once again specifying the full path to the network resource that you want to map the drive to.

Map a network drive PowerShell

With PowerShell you can add even more functionality than the VBScript within your scripting because of the power in PowerShell (yes thats right power in PowerShell 😉 ) you can do all the things that VBScript can do and more funky stuff like get network credentials automatically like Greg Caporale’s blog outlines.

New-PSDrive –Name “F” –PSProvider FileSystem –Root “\\fileserver\share” –Persist

“New-PSDrive” is a PowerShell cmdlet that is used for mapping network drives(Syntax available here)

“-Name “F”” is the part that specifies the network drive letter

“-PSProvider FileSystem” specifies the provider of the service which in this case is the FileSystem which is saying it is associated with a network share

“-Root “\\fileserver\share”” is saying where the network drive is going to be mapped to

“-Persist” this switch makes the drive persistent so after a reboot it will still be there

If you make a PowerShell script to do this and you want to run it you can run into some problems if you have not enabled PowerShell scripts to be able to run. To find out how to allow PowerShell scripts to run read this post.

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Networking

I keep seeing this question asked in forums “I updated to windows 8.1 now I cannot connect to my WiFi“.

Sometimes the wireless will say limited or no access

This is a common issue particularly with laptops with Atheros Wi-fi cards.

Now to fix this it is usually a pretty simple fix, go to the manufacturers website and download the correct drivers for your model of laptop and Windows 8.1. Once you have downloaded the latest driver install it.

This is caused because you are using a driver that is not compatible with Windows 8.1.

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Windows

So I was trying to upgrade windows 8 to 8.1 using the Windows Store and I got the following error:

Your Windows 8.1 installation couldn’t be completed
Something happened and the installation of Windows 8.1 can’t be completed.

This error seems to be because Windows likes you to install all the updates before upgrading(which realistically is kind of silly because it downloads the full installation package anyway) and as it turns out even though it was in the store already I still had more updates that needed to be installed. I installed the updates (through control panel because I find that easier) and then rebooted the Windows 8 PC.

Now I opened the Windows Store and was able to download windows 8.1

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