Had a weird issue with a Palm device using Activesync. The device would not synchronise when the laptop pc was working offline. This functionality was fixed/improved in Activesync 4.5 but unfortunately the device was already at this version.
Eventually we found that going to the device and selecting Start > Settings > Connections > USB to PC and remove “Enable advanced network functionality” and then doing a sync worked fine.
Had a weird error today with a machine only showing numbers instead of descriptions in the performance counters. Thanks to maximum asp this is solved by exporting the registry entries from hklm\ Software\ Microsoft\ WindowsNT\ CurrentVersion\ Perflib\ 009 from another machine and importing back into the affected machine. This kind of solution is great if you have another machine that you can export from – not too great if this is the only machine you have access too. If you don’t have access then “You could check the strings in the 009 key under the key described below and look for any garbled entries, entries that have two numbers, or entries that have two strings in succession (you should see ### string ### string, and so on in the multi-sz editor). This may not explain the different behavior between the local and remote cases because they both access the same registry values. (KB152153). Good luck with that!
I got the 0x84b30001 error when trying to install the latest Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool (MAP) this evening. Taking a look through the error logs gave me the message “A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file: c:\e….0\x86\setup\x86\sqlncli10.msi”, each time the directory name was different. I tried running the SQL2008 express installation manually and got the same message. However double clicking on the sqlncli10.msi file from the log file would work – or seem to. Trying to do a repair gave me the same message. I then chose to delete the 2008 native client installation (the sqlncli10.msi package) as I knew that a successful installation would result in the client being installed again. The uninstall was successful so I then reran the sql2008 installation with no problems. MAP then installed successfully. I posted a note on the technet forums here in case anyone else has some follow up comments/questions. Now that I’m home I can’t actually run the assessment tool, but I’ll be able to do this tomorrow – hopefully it will give me the results I am after.
I have been using Live Mesh on the home computer and work computer for a couple of weeks and the synching of data between the two computers has been very useful. The synch process works the same that foldershare does and copies files between the machines (and the web site) well. The only issue I have had so far is if I move the location of the data files by hand. The default location for a new Live Mesh folder is on the Desktop. As I don’t want this location I used explorer to cut and paste the folder from the desktop and put it in a different location such as c:\andy\livemesh. However, going to My Computer/Live Mesh folders then shows the folder as not synched on this computer and in the original location. By double clicking on the folder a browse dialog box appears and the new folder location can be selected. If the new folder is the new location a merge data prompt will be given. Selecting yes will then set the folder up to be synchronised again.
Well the upgrade seems borked somehow – the comment links are broken. I thought I would use the refresh template option to restore the templates back to the factory default (and then edit my changes back in again but when I try to use the Refresh Template option I get the message “Error creating new template: Template with the same name already exists in this blog.”
Unfortunately it doesn’t mention which template has the problem and I can’t see any of the templates that it is trying to replace. A bit of troubleshooting guidance to mention which template would not have gone amiss in the software.
In the end I had to use the “Delete all templates” option, but it was able to backup the templates for me. Doing the refresh option did not work.
Thanks to the post from Danalive on the sql msdn forums by adding the characters ReportServer between the ReportServerVirtualDirectory tags in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportManager\RSWebApplication.config the error message of “The reportservervirtualdirectory element is missing” disappeared and I could access the Reporting Services homepage.
This weekend I had to rename the server as part of the GoLive procedure with this server. Sure enough, the rename of the server caused a lot more errors. There are a couple of pages on the MSDN site with instructions – Basic overview and instructions for renaming SQL2005 and Renaming a Report Server.
So far I’ve had several issues with this server – SQL2005 seems to have the buggiest and most unstable installation routine I’ve ever seen.
I downloaded the new Windows Live Installer program yesterday which provides the ability to install Messenger, writer, mail and photo gallery from one “easy to use integrated installer”. There are two downsides to this – one is that the installer is really a stub that doesn’t contain the full product – this is normally fairly annoying as it means that you can’t download the full install copy for offline (or multiple) installs – instead you have to be connected to the network each time the software is installed.
The other downside is that in my case, the installation of Photo Gallery (the only piece of software that I actually wanted from this bundle as I already have the rest) doesn’t work. Instead I get the error message “Install failed with error code 0x80240022” – a google search yesterday only came up with details for Windows Defender which didn’t help me much. Also, for those of you who are not aware, you need to hover the mouse over the error message in order for the full message to be displayed on screen in a tool tip. This means that there is no copy/paste functionality of the error message into google – instead you have to type it in manually. The link to “More about this error” only goes to a generic web page which tells you about the mouse tip.
The software also keeps checking the toolbar each time it is run – even though I don’t want it to be installed but oddly enough doesn’t check the Family Safety checkbox. It should be consistent to check both or leave both unchecked.
Finally found a solution/explanation to the Event ID 5050, Source IAS that reads “The description for Event ID ( 5050 ) in source ( IAS ) cannot be found. Apparently this is A LDAP connection with domain controller <domain controller name> for domain <domain name> is established. and therefore nothing to worry about. It’s taken ages to track this down – I wasn’t able to find it on eventid for quite a while, but this morning it was there.
I had a remote user, working behind a vpn connection to the office log onto the pc for the first time (which was a hard job in itself – I had to use the dial up networking login to authenticate to the domain and cache credentials to the workstation). This user was having problems running outlook with the software prompting him to provide the location for the office source files with the error message “Error 1706. Setup cannot find the required files. Check your connection to the network, or CD-ROM drive. For other potential solutions to this problem, see C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\1033\Setup.hlp”
Entering the network installation location did not work. This issue is documented in KB Article 297834 which didn’t help what so ever, the setup /fvm took forever to run but didn’t work.
However, if I logged on as the administrator user outlook would run successfully. So I added the user to the administrators group and I still got the same error message.
Looking in the eventlog I got the generic error 1004, but I did get the message “Detection of product ‘{90110409-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9}’, feature ‘OutlookUserData’, component ‘{8ADD2C9C-C8B7-11D1-9C67-0000F81F1B38}’ failed. The resource ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Office\ 11.0\ Outlook\ UserData’ does not exist.
Copying the registry entries for the admin user for the Office\11.0 tree didn’t work either.
A search on google for 11.0\Outlook\UserData came up with the article kb0106250 on rangersuite. I modified the text file to only include the version 11 entries, ran it and outlook ran through the first time wizard and the user (and I) was very happy.
For completeness sake, the registry entries to fix this problem are in the extended entry.
We had a customer who had a new installation of Sema4 (accounting and timesheets package) installed on a new pc and the performance of the software was abysmal in some cases. It was reported to me that if they opened the package and selected timesheets and then selected the employee drop down list, there would be a long wait for the dropdown box to appear and the program would appear to hang. I timed it and it took 7 minutes (for about 50 users) for the dropdown box to appear after it was clicked when the timesheet screen was first loaded.
The very strange solution is posted in the extended entry….