Archive for the ‘windows’ Category

Error Code 0×80096001 – Windows Vista

This morning, a co-worker asked me to help them with a computer they couldn’t fix. It was a laptop running Windows Vista Home Basic and it had NEVER checked for nor installed any Windows Updates. Every time the computer attempted to check for updates, it gave error 0×80096001. Thinking I would be [...]

Intel ProSET – Wrong Language or Localization

I just had an employee bring his laptop to me and it was unable to see any wireless networks using the Windows Wireless Zero Config app. Everything seemed OK with the Intel wireless adapter so I decided to see if the PROset software utility would work instead. The problem was, the employee had [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.
How to fix:
1. Get a Vista CD that has [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]