Tuesday, November 8, 2011

HP Laserjet won't print multiple copies from Windows 7

Problem: Our HP Laserjets stopped printing multiple copies when we switched from Windows XP to Windows 7. The Laserjet 4600's would actually print another error page after the first print.

Solution: go into the printer properties either on the print server (for networked installations) or the local printer properties (for local usb or parallel port installations), choose the "Device Settings" tab, then scroll down to "Job Storage" set this to disabled, then set "Mopier Mode" also to disabled.  Click ok.

Thanks to the HP support forums and user Sjtracey for this!

Monday, November 7, 2011

Windows 7 slow to open folder on Server 2008 R2

We redirect "My Documents" folders and add a departmental drive share at our site.

Problem: Some users reported very slow speeds opening remote folders.  The bar across the top would go for minutes before the folder was accessible.

Solution: On the server, right click the folder in question, select properties then the Customize tab, change the "optimize this folder for:" to "General Items", also check "apply this template to all subfolders" if applicable. Choose "ok".

credit goes to Joema on sevenforums.com

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

SQL 2008 R2 Express, psclientprint activex continually prompts for install

Problem:  Every time a user clicks print (when hosted by a SQL 2008 R2 Express server using Reporting services), the rsclientprint activex control tries to install.  This isn't such a problem for local machine admins, but for general users it's unacceptable. I tried installing this control as an admin but it still prompts for install.  This is a known problem with the default rsclientprint cab files on the SQL server. The express edition has not been updated to fix this as of 11/2/2011.

Solution:  Install SQL Server 2008 R2 Full edition (on a different server), update with SP1, then CU3 (cumulative update 3) from Microsoft. Or ask a colleague already running an up-to-date SQL server.  This will update the reporting client files, rsclientprint-ia64.cab, rsclientprint-x64.cab and rsclientprint-x86.cab. Note: the files need to come from an R2 server, not a 2008 server.  The FileVersion needs to start with 2009 and be a build greater than 1600.

Copy these files from
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10.MSSQLSERVER\Reporting Services\ReportServer\bin into the SQL Express server folder,
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS10_50.SQLEXPRESS\Reporting Services\ReportServer\bin.
On the client machine, log in as a local admin, click print and install the activex control as normal, then when regular users login they won't be prompted to install it over and over again.

If you open one of the cab files, then the inf file you'll notice on the very bottom FileVersion=2009,100,1600,1.  On the new files it will be FileVersion=2009,100,2789,0

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Copying file from windows 7 to server 2008 stalls with Symantec Endpoint Protection v11 build 6100 installed

Problem: Copying file from windows 7 to server 2008 stalls with Symantec Endpoint Protection v11 build 6100 installed

Solution: This is a known bug with all Symantec Endpoint Protection clients v11 before build 6300 using SMB 2.0 protocol to transfer files.  This affects Vista and Windows 7 operating systems only.

It's noted in this Knowledge base article;
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH139768

The solution is to update to build 6300 or newer.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Intel PCI 100 network card, no driver for Windows 7

We were trying to install a Pro 100 pci nic into an older Windows 7 machine without any luck.  All sources say the nic is compatible and should work with "in the box" drivers.  That wasn't the case.

The solution;
Grab the inf file here or google "netefe32.inf"
In device manager, browse for the driver file but tell windows you want to choose the device yourself.  Select the Intel Pro 100 driver and it works like a charm.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Filemaker 8 or 9 can't see remote hosts on windows 7

Two of the files that are installed by default by Filemaker 8 or 9 are not compatible with Windows 7.  This prevents you from browsing remote hosts.  Although local files still open.  The solution is to download the Filemaker 11 (or newer) trial, install it and in the main programs directory copy out the server.pem and root.pem files.  Overwrite these two files in your older installation of Filemaker.

Restart Filemaker and you'll have access to your remote hosts again!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Server 2008 Remote Desktop Services and mandatory profiles

When setting up mandatory profiles for server 2008, the profile stored on the server needs to have .v2 on the end. However, when you make your group policy configurations you leave off the .v2 and server 2008 auto-magically makes it work.

This was designed to prevent accidental loading of profiles from older versions of windows which would be incompatible.

This info was taken from here.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Error "The file AdobePDF.dll is needed" installing CS3 on 64-bit Windows

This came up when installing Adobe CS3 on Windows 7 64-bit.

The fix is here. Thanks to Adobe for providing this.

Solution

Windows Vista 64-bit

In order for Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional to be supported, the application will need to be updated after installation.
  1. When the error occurs, click Cancel to exit the dialog and continue with the installation.
  2. Install the Microsoft has Hot Fix as documented in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article #930627 available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930627.
  3. Update Acrobat to version 8.1 or later. The Acrobat update is available on the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/support/downloads/.

Windows 7 64-bit

Manually extract the file "adobepdf.dll_64" from the data1.cab file before installing Acrobat. When the prompt appears, navigate to this file and select it.
  1. Navigate to the folder that contains the setup.exe file for your Acrobat 8 installation.
  2. Locate the file "data1.cab" and open it (this may require a third party compression utility, such as WinZip).
  3. Inside the content listings, locate the file "adobepdf.dll_64" and copy it to your desktop.
  4. Run the installer setup.exe and when the prompt appears, choose browse and select the file you copied to the desktop.
    Note: If the file cannot be selected, change the file type drown down in the dialog box to "Files of All Types", or rename the file to "adobepdf.dll" by removing "_64" from the end of the file extension.

PDF Preview Handler for Vista, error

After installing Windows 7 64-bit and Adobe Creative Suite CS3 we ran into this error:
"PDF Preview Handler for Vista"

The ability to preview pdf's in windows wasn't functioning. This has been fixed in newer versions of Creative Suite, but not CS3.

The Fix can be found here. Thank you to Leo Davidson at Pretentiousname.com.

Or you can fix it yourself using the registry editor:

Open RegEdit and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}

If it doesn't exist then you may not have Adobe Reader installed in the first place. Or Adobe may have changed the way they install it. Or you may be on 32-bit Windows. Or you may be on 64-bit Windows but have run the 32-bit version of RegEdit.exe by mistake.

There should be an existing AppID value, incorrectly set to {6d2b5079-2f0b-48dd-ab7f-97cec514d30b}

Change the AppID value to {534A1E02-D58F-44f0-B58B-36CBED287C7C}

Now see if the same registry path exists but without the Wow6432Node part. If it does exist, make the same change as before. If it doesn't exist then that's fine and you can skip this part.

(This second area will exist if Adobe Reader was installed on Windows Vista. That includes Vista machines which were later upgraded to Windows 7. I think it's due to changes in the way 32-bit registry redirection works in Windows 7. If you have both values you need to change both; if you only have one you only need to change that one.)

If you are using 64-bit Office 2010 beta then the second area (without the Wow6432Node) must exist for the preview handler to work. Copy the registry keys/values there if it doesn't exist. Or just use the automated tool above as it will do this for you. This extra step is not required for the retail (RTM) version of Office 2010; only for the beta.

If you have/had another PDF preview handler installed, such as FoxIt or PDF-XChange, then whichever handler was installed last will usually be the one which is used. Uninstalling preview handlers does not always put back the previous ones; instead, do a repair install or a re-install of the preview handler you wish to use so that it takes over the PDF preview handler registration. You can also do this by editing the PDF file-type in the registry. The tool above takes care of this and all the other issues so use that if you get stuck.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Enabling remote server management in Windows Server 2008 R2

I thought this would be easier to figure out, but it's been plaguing me for weeks.

"Server Manager cannot connect to xxx. Click Retry to try to connect again"

First, on the server, open a command prompt as Administrator. Run winrm quickconfig and answer "y" when prompted.

Next you need to configure a listener. I did this via Group Policy as instructed here;

Specifically this paragraph pointed me in the right direction;

"Look for the Windows Remote Management and Windows Remote Shell Group Policy Objects (GPO) under Administrative Templates and Windows Components."

Find the WinRM Service settings in Group Policy, under "Windows Remote Management (WinRM)"

Enable "Allow automatic configuration of listeners", then place an asterisk in the IPv4 and IPv6 filter boxes. voila!

run gpupdate /force to speed up the change to the server.

to test this change, from command line type "winrm e winrm/config/listener" and press enter. You should get a "listener" entry back such as this;

Listener [Source="GPO"]
Address = *
Transport = HTTP
Port = 5985
Hostname
Enabled = true
URLPrefix = wsman
CertificateThumbprint
ListeningOn = 127.0.0.1, xxxxxxxxx

If not, go back to troubleshooting.

Dale

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Windows 7 interprets redirected user folder as "My Documents" instead of username

So, we noticed after firing up a bunch of Windows 7 machines and applying the same My Documents redirection we did before, that many of the Users directories on the server changed from the username (joe.schmoe) to “My Documents”. Now, they didn’t really get renamed, they just “appear” that way to a Windows 7 computer.

Windows 7 will read the desktop.ini file inside the users directory and make the folder appear to be named differently. Way to go Microsoft!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947222

Another solution we found is that when you browse the folder with all your campuses “my docs”, add a custom column called “filename” and it will show you who’s folder really exists in the directory.

Have a great day!