14 June 2013 | Computers |
You get Windows Backup all set up, and it’s working fine.
You are happy.
Then one day, you get to your puter and you have a lovely error message that reads, “Windows backup failed while trying to read from shadow copy on one of the volumes being backed up.”
You try everything, and it just won’t back up your stuff any more. It keeps giving some error about a failure because it cannot read a shadow copy on one particular volume.
Not to worry, because the solution is pretty simple…
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11 April 2013 | Computers |
Oh boy, this one was a humdinger.
Of 12 computers running either Windows 7 or Windows 8, every single one of them was experiencing one of the following problems:
- Static, stuttering, and variations in playback speed when listening to MP3 or other audio files
- When typing, there would be a huge delay between when a series of characters was typed, and when they actually appeared on the screen. This happened in numerous applications, including Firefox, Word, and Thunderbird.
- YouTube videos would either not load at all, or the connection would crap out frequently and just sit there while “buffering”
- Skype! Oh boy, Skype was a real pain to use, if it worked at all
So how do you solve all these problems? It’s easy! Your turn off real-time web protection in MalwareBytes.
And if that doesn’t work, read on for more useful tips…
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25 October 2012 | Computers |
NOTE: If you like PDF thumbnails, DO NOT install Acrobat Reader DC! See note at the end…
Okay, this one is VEEEERY annoying.
You have the 64-bit flavor of Windows 7 or Windows 8. You install Adobe Acrobat Reader.
You expect that on your desktop and in Explorer, you will see a thumbnail preview image of the first page of each PDF document.
Instead, you get nothing. NOSSING!
So, you search Google, and you find a bunch of tricks, fixes, and paid software that doesn’t work.
Well, after trying a million things, here’s what worked for me in both 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows 8…
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1 September 2012 | Computers |
Windows 8 will be released to the masses in October of this year. As a developer, I’m lucky enough to get Windows 8 RTM a bit earlier.
Despite what everyone is saying, the new Start Screen really isn’t that bad. In fact, it will be very nice once all your apps are updated to take full advantage of it. And contrary to popular belief, the desktop is still around, and everything works pretty much like it did in Windows 7.
Still, I have a few gripes: There are no more gadgets. Instead, there are live tiles on the Start Screen. That’s lame.
Worse yet, I have experienced the infamous hanging/freezing issue that was supposedly fixed during the testing phases of Windows 8.
In short, every 30 minutes or so, my puter would lock up for about 30 seconds, the hard drive would be pegged to 100%, and then everything would go back to normal.
Like I said, Microsoft supposedly fixed this in the test versions of Windows 8 – but it seems they didn’t, really.
There are many solutions to be found on Google, but there is only 1 that worked for me…
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10 June 2012 | Computers |
This one is a really, really fun problem: You dutifully let Windows download updates. It tries to install them, but fails with some kind of “0x800*****” error code.
Great, what now?
Well, normally you’d just click the button and try to install them again. You’d think that since Windows knows it can’t install the updates, it would try to download them again…
But no! I just sits there and tries to install the corrupted update packages again, and again, and again.
There is a very simple fix for this problem, and you don’t have download anything, or edit the registry, or perform any other gymnastics!
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5 May 2012 | Computers |
Every now and then, you’ll probably come across some program on Windows that you simply cannot uninstall from the “Uninstall a Program” page in Control Panel.
Normally, it will give you some kind of error that makes no sense whatsoever.
I recently ran across this very issue when I accidentally installed the wrong WiFi driver package. It was an Intel Pro WiFi driver/software set. Only problem was, the puter didn’t have an Intel WiFi card – oops!
Worse yet, I couldn’t uninstall the software because the uninstaller first looked for the hardware. When it couldn’t find the hardware, it bombed with an error saying (you’ll love this): “Please install hardware first.”
I wish I was kidding.
Then I discovered a really handy tool to make everything all better.
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31 December 2010 | Computers, Networking |
If you’ve ever installed multiple operating systems on your computer, you know what a severe pain it can be when something goes wrong. Even removing one of your multiple OSes can be a hassle when bootloaders get all screwed up.
For me, the answer to these problems is VirtualBox. VirtualBox is a simple, cross-platform virtualization solution that lets you set aside a chunk of hard disk space, give it a name, and then you just tell it, “I want to install linux here”, pop in your install disc (or whatever), and VirtualBox takes care of the rest. Voila, linux running in a window – inside Windows itself. It’s really handy!
Only one problem: Sometimes when VirtualBox is installed (but not even running), your Windows networking may get REEEEALLY slow. You may not even be able to see other machines on your local network.
Fortunately, there is a very quick and easy way to fix it!
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2 December 2010 | Computers |
Let’s say you’ve got Windows 7, and you install a second hard drive. Perhaps you have an SSD as your primary drive, and you want to store your GB’s of MP3s, videos, and documents on your second data drive.
Well, you could just copy the data into a new folder the old fashioned way. Doing this tends to break Windows 7’s “libraries” feature, and suddenly you have to tell Windows where to find all your files. That’s kind of annoying.
Fortunately, there is a built-in feature for moving your My Documents, My Music, My Videos, My Pictures, and even your Downloads folder automagically – and Windows will still keep track of everything for you!
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21 September 2010 | Computers |
Let’s say you’re running Windows 7 on a computer connected to a local network. There is a shared printer running on a different machine on the network. The drivers for the printer are installed on the remote machine, and the printer is shared.
You think that you’ll just sit down at your puter, use the Add Printer feature, connect to the remote printer, the driver will be copied over to your machine automagically, and you’ll be off and running. But then you see this:
Windows cannot connect to the printer. Operation could not be completed (error 0x0000007e).
There is a common solution you can find on the web involving creating a new local port and inserting the network path to the remote printer, but you may find that doesn’t work either!
The solution to your problem is very simple, and is even available as a Hotfix from Microsoft. You don’t really even need the hotfix, though. Here’s how you “fix the glitch”.
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14 May 2010 | Computers |
What happens when you discover your copy of Windows is invalid? You probably will get a Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) notification informing you that you’re illegal, and you need to purchase a legal license.
This can happen for a number of reasons, and not simply piracy. Perhaps you bought a computer second-hand and were told your Windows install was valid, only to find out later that it wasn’t. That’s a pretty common scenario, and a darn annoying one. If you search the net and Microsoft’s web site for a way to activate your copy with a legal key you purchased, you may find yourself in a bit of a mess.
You see, it isn’t terribly obvious that you CAN in fact simply activate Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 with a new legal key – and without reinstalling anything at all. Finding the information on how to do this is rather difficult, and I’m not sure why.
Not to worry though – it’s a piece of cake!
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