Windows 7 – Can’t See Specific Bluetooth Device
I ran into a problem on a co-worker’s Windows 7 computer yesterday when his bluetooth keyboard just stopped working. It was an Apple bluetooth keyboard, but it had been working fine for a couple of days so there shouldn’t have been an issue.
We started with some standard troubleshooting:
- Turned keyboard off, then back on in “discovery” mode. – Didn’t work, the computer wouldn’t see the device, but 3 other computers could see it and pair with it successfully…this told us nothing was wrong with the bluetooth module on the keyboard.
- Tried to discover and pair my Apple bluetooth keyboard with his Windows 7 computer. – My device was immediately discovered and pairing was not a problem…this told us there must be some glitch/corruption with the computer or bluetooth stack that is directly related to the hardware profile of his specific keyboard.
Once we were able to make this determination, we knew we had to find where the computer might be holding some information about this device. Our belief was that we could restore connectivity to the device by removing this information and allowing it to be regenerated. In our quest to find and remove this data, we went to:
> Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Devices and Printers
Sure enough, the keyboard was listed as a device. So we highlighted it and hit the delete key. As soon as we did this, his keyboard was “discovered” by the computer and it paired successfully.
I’m not sure if this was just a freak thing or if it might prove to be a more widespread issue, but if you have a similar problem perhaps this will give you a starting point. Please leave a comment if you experience an issue like this, if this fixed your problem, or if you found a different way to solve the issue.
In: general, windows, work
Make base-software installation a breeze with ‘Ninite’
Ninite was brought to my attention by a co-worker a couple of days ago. Since I’m always wiping hard drives and re-installing operating systems, I’m always spending tons of time installing what I like to call “base-software” so the client’s machine is mostly usable when I return it.
In my case, installing Firefox, Adobe Reader, Flash, Java, CCleaner, 7-zip, WinRAR, WinSCP, Putty isn’t necessarily time consuming…but it DOES save time being able to install all the latest versions at once. Plus the apps are silently installed in the background, with all the defaults, and NO toolbars or search-assistants are installed!
It also saves me from having to periodically update a local repository I maintain. In addition, I’ve also found Ninite’s offerings of AVG, Audacity, and Eclipse useful in specific cases.
In: general, windows, work
Thunderbird Won’t Open…
I use the Mozilla Thunderbird client to check our departmental e-mail account. This morning, it hung on me and I had to Force-Quit the application. Every time I tried to re-open the application after that, I kept getting the following message:
Close Thunderbird. A copy of Thunderbird is already open. Only one copy of Thunderbird can be open at a time.
Not wanting to restart my iMac – because of other tasks I had running and also because I was uncertain this would even help – I searched around and found this MozillaZine Knowledge Base Article. If you aren’t into all the technical stuff, here’s what it boiled down to for me…
My profile was locked and I had to unlock it. Depending on your OS, the lock may have the following file name:
- Windows – “parent.lock”
- Mac OS X – “.parentlock”
- Linux – “lock” and “.parentlock”
Once you know the file you are seeking, go to your Profile Folder and delete the lock file.
Please note that file names beginning with a “.” are considered hidden files and may not be viewable through a file/folder browser. On a Mac or Linux OS, the easiest way to remove the lock file is to use a Terminal application. Here’s how I did it:
rm /User/myusername/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/myprofilestring.default/.parentlock
Of course I’m using a Mac, but the command in Linux will be similar just with a different location for the file.
In: apple, general, linux, windows, work
Mount Time Capsule in Linux
I recently decided to swap my home file-server from OpenSuse to FreeNAS. I needed to temporarily copy all the data somewhere, and my Time Capsule seemed to make sense. Only problem was, I’d never mounted it on my Linux box before. It turns out to be really simple though, here’s how:
- Create a mount point on your Linux box:
sudo mkdir /mnt/time_capsule - Mount the Time Capsule to the mount point:
sudo mount.cifs //IP address/"Time Capsule name"/ /mnt/time_capsule -o pass=password
In my case, the command looked like this:
sudo mount.cifs //192.168.1.10/"Clay's Time Capsule"/ /mnt/time_capsule -o pass=password
I hope this helps and I really recommend FreeNAS…you should check it out.
In: apple, general, linux
Symantec Endpoint prevents iPhone/iTunes sync – Windows
I just came across this issue this afternoon with one of our administrative employees. He decided to contact me after having attended my iPhone training course that is offered quarterly to our faculty/staff. He was unable to sync his iPhone 3G with his laptop because iTunes would lock up for several minutes after connecting the device and then pop up this error message:
The message: “iTunes was unable to load data class information from sync services” was quite cryptic and not very descriptive, but I was able to find an Apple Support Article – TS2690 Outlining 3 possible causes/fixes:
1. Ensure that you have the latest version of iTunes.
2. Outdated versions of Symantec Endpoint Protection may cause this issue. If Symantec Endpoint Protection is installed on your system, confirm that it has been updated to Manufacturer Release 3 or later.
3. If you have third-party Bricopacks like Vista Ultimate Inspirat 2 installed on this system, remove them to resolve this issue.
So we made an appointment and I stopped by his office to take a look and see what could be done. This specific issue was caused by a combination of #1 and #2. After updating to the latest version of iTunes and rebooting, I discovered the problem was still there. Then I discovered his machine was running Symantec Endpoint Protection MR1. After upgrading him to MR4, we were able to download/install iPhone OS 3.0 and perform a sync to pull in his contacts, calendar, and bookmarks.
KSOD Fix – blacK Screen of Death, Vista
This info was provided by Eric Jernigan of http://www.omrebels.com:
The blacK Screen Of Death is where you can boot up and only your mouse is showing…nothing else. Its caused by a bad log file and on boot up it tries to read the log file and just gets hung up.
REN C:\Windows\System32\Winevt\Logs Logs_Badmkdir C:\Windows\System32\Winevt\LogsDIR C:\Windows\System32\Winevt\Logs (just to check)
Dell Latitude E6400/E6500 Won’t Sleep
We have had a number of Latitude E6400/E6500 laptops that would not sleep, standby, hibernate, or whatever else when the lid was closed. To make things worse, opening the lid would result in the display not turning back on. Pressing keys, mouse buttons, track-pad, power button would not help.
It turns out this problem occurs if you have XP SP3 installed instead of Vista. Windows Update for XP includes a driver update for the integrated webcam called “Creative Technology – Streaming Media and Broadcast – Integrated Webcam”. Installing this driver causes the problem. To fix the issue, roll-back the driver to version 1.3.2.919:
If you don’t find this screenshot helpful, do the following:
- Right-Click on ‘My Computer’
- Click ‘Properties’
- Go to the ‘Hardware’ tab
- Click the ‘Device Manager’ button
- Click the ‘+’ beside ‘Imaging Devices’
- Right-Click on ‘Integrated Webcam’ and click ‘Properties’
- Select the ‘Driver’ tab and click the ‘Roll Back Driver’ button
- The driver version should be changed to 1.3.2.919
- Restart your computer if prompted and then you should be able sleep, standby, or hibernate the computer
Explorer.exe won’t execute after running Malware Bytes
While cleaning some EXTREMELY infected computers lately, I’ve run into a couple of machines that wouldn’t start explorer.exe. This always happened after a MalwareBytes scan followed by a reboot. Trying to run explorer manually would tell me windows could not find the file, even though I could see it. After a lot of trial and error, here’s a fix that seems to work:
1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL
2. Click on File > New Task (run)
3. Type regedit in the Run Box and press ENTER
4. Browse to:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ImageFileExecutionOptions
5. Delete the keys explorer.exe and iexplore.exe (only one, or both, may exist)
6. Close Regedit and Restart
Word 2007 “Not Responding” in Vista
I ran into a problem on a faculty member’s laptop yesterday afternoon where Microsoft Word 2007 would lock up and say “Not Responding” every time it was launched. Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint did not have this problem – only Word. After uninstalling/reinstalling Office 2007 and doing some other general troubleshooting, it became obvious that some settings directly related to this application alone were corrupt and needed to be fixed. While this problem seems to only affect machines running Windows Vista, it may work on other versions of Windows as well. Here’s what I did to fix the issue:
1. Click on Start and type “regedit” in the search field and press enter.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
3. Right mouse click on the “Data” folder and delete it.
4. The next time you open Microsoft Word 2007, this information will be re-created and won’t be corrupt.
In: general, windows, work
8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast
Firefox has been outperforming IE in every department for years, and version 3 is speedier than ever.But tweak the right settings and you could make it faster still, more than doubling your speed in some situations.