How to: multiple monitor setup for Dell Optiplex 790

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I currently am recommending the Dell Optiplex 790 minitower. (This will work for the desktop configuration as well.) It took me a lot of time and multiple returns to figure out the best way to do dual monitor, triple monitor and quadruple monitor setups (two monitors, three  monitors and four monitors). Here is what I found works the best:

Dual monitors: The simplest and cleanest way to do it is to buy a DisplayPort to DVI (male to male) 6 foot or 10 foot cable. The 790 has the capability of using the DisplayPort jack in the back as a second monitor without buying another video card. Here is an example of the cable. Note: this will only work for you if one of your two monitors has a DVI (white) jack. I have also used a DisplayPort to VGA adapter successfully over the last month (this is the exact adapter). You are able to choose either a cloned view or independent screens using either Windows’s Display settings or Intel Graphics settings (click here for Intel’s instructions) Related Site.

Triple/quad monitors: I found that I couldn’t use my trusty Radeon 7000 PCI cards in Windows 7 machines, so I chose to go with the ASUS Radeon HD 5450 PCI-Express (I’ve since switched to this newer card – the ASUS Radeon HD6450).  I chose this video card because it is reasonably priced (with no need for gaming) and that there is no fan to reduce the chance of failures. In the 790, you can actually buy two of these PCI Express video cards and put them both in! (See this PDF for motherboard card slot info.) I’ve done it and it truly works with three monitors and I’m sure it would for four.

Please comment with your own experiments and successes on the 790 or similar models.

[SOLUTION] Canon D1120 duplex jamming

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A client of mine has a Canon imageCLASS D1120 copier that would jam each time they tried to copy or print any double sided. I looked and looked for a jam, but couldn’t find any. It would print the one side and suck it back in and jam. I took a flashlight in the back and finally figured out what was happening — there was paper inside that was causing the jam.как сделать хороший проект здания.

Remove the paper tray and look for this green lever (as is shown in the diagram #1 in the picture below). Pull it down and remove the jam!

[SOLUTION] Lenovo 3000 H210 won’t boot

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I had a Lenovo 3000 H210 desktop computer come in that wouldn’t boot — it would just spin up the fan and do nothing. I found that by removing one stick of RAM at a time, I would try to boot. With the left one out, it would boot, so I replaced it with another stick and things worked just fine! Incidently, the brand of the RAM was Sharetronic — I’ve been doing this a long time and never heard of them before.

If you need to buy more RAM, here is a good place:

http://www you can try here.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Lenovo%20H210%20(5355)

[SOLUTION] Office 2010 not activated: error 0xc004f074

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I had a user that had a corporate version of Office 2010 installed for over one month and all of a sudden it said it wasn’t activated. The company help desk worked on it for hours and hours and told her to reimage the computer.sports74.ru

I investigated and ran the registry fix and KMS.exe they have internally, but it didn’t work. I found that the date was one month behind. I changed the computer’s date to the current date and it was activated!!!

SUMMARY: Check the computer’s date and time.

[SOLUTION] Cannot uninstall Corel Digital Studio 2010

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I tested Corel’s Digital Studio 2010. I found it to be rather awful, so I wanted to remove it. When I asked it to uninstall, it just did nothing. I dug and dug and finally found a removal tool from Corel here:

http://corel.force.com/index/articles/en_US/Master_Article/764252-How-to-remove-Corel-Digital-Studio-Suite-2010-on-Windows-XP-using-CleanUp-utility

 

AppleMobileDeviceService.exe stays at high CPU – reason is LSPs

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[UPDATE 11/21/2011] Apple has a very good page explaining how to work around this problem, albeit while not acknowledging that it is their problem.

Here is the original post:

My Intel Core2Duo Windows 7 64-bit computer started having this problem with the AppleMobileDeviceService.exe taking 50% of the CPU usage continuously, whether iTunes was open or not. Some may see 100% of the CPU in use.

Apple’s support recommended a painful “uninstall everything in this exact order and reinstall everything.” I generally hate that approach because they just aren’t trying to figure out what’s wrong, plus many users were saying it just came back immediately or a week later.

This sounded like a more reasonable solution (downgrading the Apple Application Support from 2.0.1 to 1.5.2), but it made me nervous that it might affect functionality with the iPhone 4S or iPad2. I assume that when Apple included this update is when the problem started for me.

Then, I found this blog that recommended a “netsh winsock reset” which sounds like a true fix to me. I did that and my Bsecure/Bsafe CloudCare (internet filtering software) popped up a notice that it had repaired itself. After restarting, the problem still persisted. I then uninstalled Bsecure CloudCare and the problem was gone! [Clarification: I do not recommend the “netsh winsock reset” because of the risk to messing up the computer!]

On that blog the author says, “Apparently the Windows TCP/IP stack can get corrupted and this will reset the Winsock Catalog to its default state – i.e. one that works properly.” I think he is correct, except for the “corrupted” part. According to Wikipedia, “a Layered Service Provider is a DLL that uses Winsock APIs to insert itself into the TCP/IP protocol stack.” Bsecure CloudCare and other webfiltering solutions use LSPs to do the filtering. Some malware/adware in the past insert LSPs, as well. I bet that there are a heck of a lot of computer users out there with a non-standard TCP/IP protocol stack that are suffering badly from this software bug of Apple’s making.

I’m not 100% certain on this, but with my own experience and seeing how doing the “netsh winsock reset” fixes the problem, it makes sense.

If you are thinking of trying the “netsh winsock reset,” be aware that it could be fixing a problem, or creating a worse problem than Apple’s bug.

[UPDATE 10/17/11] Based on Matt McLaughlin’s comment, I’m feeling more confident about my theory. He looked at his “Winsock Providers” tab in Sysinternals’s Autoruns. Check it out to see if there is anything there if you have this problem. I will not recommend what to do about it.

[UPDATE 11/21/11] SO, it looks like Apple has endorsed my conclusion about what it causing this problem (link to Apple’s support document about this very problem). And their solution to this problem: REMOVE ANY SOFTWARE THAT USES LSPs. Yep, these vendors use LSPs for 10 years or more and Apple’s software has a bug that causes our computers to malfunction and we must remove the other vendors’ software, not get an update from Apple to fix the bug…

[UPDATE 12/18/11] Here is a list of software that is rendered unusable and needs to be removed because of this problem:

  • Bsecure CloudCare/Bsafe
  • CA Antivirus Suite (Computer Associates, free with Time Warner cable)
  • PC Tools Antivirus (not the newest version)
  • Alienware’s Xeno Power Suite
  • Kaseya – remote management
  • Integard from Race River – filtering
  • SafeEyes – filtering
  • Filternet – filtering
  • Apple’s list:
    • Bigfoot Networks
    • ByteMobile, Inc.
    • Covenant Eyes
    • SpeedBit Video Accelerator
    • VMWare

[UPDATE 1/21/2012] Bsecure has somehow released a “fix” that allows CloudCare and iTunes to both work fine together. Here are their instructions:

  1. In order to run the iTunes fix we will need to determine if you are on a 32 bit or 64 bit system.  You can do this here:
    http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/find-out-32-or-64-bit
  2. Now click on the link for your system
    32 bit computers – CLICK HERE
    64 bit computers – CLICK HERE
  3. Run itunesfix32.exe OR itunesfix64.exe
  4. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, it is possible that you may have to ‘download’ the file first, and then double click on it in the downloads list.
    Note:
    Internet explorer may require you to click keep, and then run.
  5. You will know the fix has finished when you see a black box appear on your screen for a moment, and then disappears.
  6. After this happens, reboot your computer one last time.

iTunes store should now work properly & the mobile device service will no longer conflict.

 

 

How to: Yahoo! Small Business email on iPhone/iPad IMAP!

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Yahoo! has done well with integrating personal Yahoo! Mail with the iPhone, but has been terrible with making Yahoo! Small Business email work with the iPhone very well — until now. They have made the Small Business email accounts IMAP-ready!

Here are their instructions: http://help.yahoo.com//l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/bizmail/pop/pop-39.html

Hello? Where are the rest of the instructions for the iPhone?? Well, here they are:

1. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account…

2. Other > Add Mail Account > type your name (what you want others to see in the From line), your full Yahoo! email address, your Yahoo! password for that account and a description (for the iPhone to display to you).

3. Choose IMAP, Incoming Mail Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com, type in your full email address and password again.

4. Outgoing Mail Server: smtp.bizmail.yahoo.com, type in your full email address and password yet again, click Next. (if I’m missing a step here, please comment about it)

5. In the Mail, Contacts, Calendar settings, click the new account you just created, click on the email address, scroll down and click on Advanced.

6. Match up the iPhone’s Drafts, Sent and Deleted mailboxes with Yahoo!’s matching mailboxes.

7. You’re done! You can even view all your subfolders in your Yahoo! email. (In your iPhone click in the top left “Mailboxes,” at this point you’ll see your folders, or scroll down and choose your Yahoo! account’s name)

5.

No icons on desktop, can’t right click [FIX]

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After being infected with malware (Windows XP Pro SP3), I scanned this hard drive from another computer, cleaned the MBR trojan with TDSSKiller, but there were no icons on the Desktop anymore and I couldn’t right-click on the Desktop, although the Start Menu works just fine.

Here is what I found:

Click Start > Run > regedit to get here. Then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Notice the key “NoDesktop” set to 1. Right-click on “NoDesktop” and delete it and restart. There may be other keys in the “Policies” section that you should review, also.

[UPDATE 2/15/12 : Here is a support page from ESET that has a utility that might fix this easily. If you try it, please comment.]

Canon imageRUNNER default system password

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One of my clients has a Canon Color imageRUNNER c1030iF and I needed to enter some static IP info, but I couldn’t find the System Password. In the CD manual, I finally was able to find the password since I couldn’t find it anywhere online. You also need to set the System Manager ID linked here.

System Manager ID default: 7654321

System Password default: 7654321

Excel or Word files open very slowly, but fast from within program

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PROBLEM: A user double-clicks an Excel file or Word document from Windows Explorer or the Desktop and it opens Excel or Word, but the file doesn’t open for a minute or multiple minutes, even if it on the local hard drive. If you open the file from within Word or Excel, it opens up perfectly fine and quick. My users are using Office 2007 currently with this problem.

I’ve run into this problem a handful of times now, and I dug for hours looking for a good solution. I found many with the problem, but not much good information on a good solution. HOWEVER, I found something that works. I found it Joel Clermont’s blog from 2004! (Thanks, Joel!) I have modified his instructions and added screenshots.

1. First, open any folder in Windows XP (Start > My Computer).

2. Click on the Tools menu, and choose Folder Options.

3. From the dialog that pops up, click the File Types tab. You will now be presented with a list of all document types recognized by your computer.

4. Scroll down to XLS, select it, and click the Advanced button.

5. Now you’ll see several “Actions” registered for Excel worksheets. Usually, Open is the default (indicated by being in bold). Select “Open” and click the Edit button.

6. The main piece of data in here is the field labeled “Application used to perform action.” This should point to your Excel executable, followed by some command-line arguments. Here’s how it modify it to fix the problem:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1” (see below for how I fixed Word)

It is very important to make sure that the %1 is surrounded by quotes. %1 is the variable representing the full path and file name of the document you are opening. If it contains any spaces, and this is not surrounded by quotes you will get a flurry of weird errors.

7. “Use DDE” is normally checked. Now, make sure that “DDE Message” is empty. Click OK. (Although this will re-enable automatically,Play Store Download since the fields are blank it doesn’t seem to matter.)

8. Click OK back at the Edit File Type dialog. Click Close on the Folder Options dialog.

9. Now try to open a file directly again.

10. Repeat from Step 4 for any other file types that aren’t working well — for my latest computer it was XLS, XLSX, DOCX (not DOC for some reason). If you modify the setting for XLS and it doesn’t fix your problem, try changing XLSX, also (same for DOC and DOCX).

For Word, here was how I modified it:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE” /n “%1”

I don’t know why this happens, but I suspect that these modifications we have to make are because something else got corrupted or modified (I consider this a workaround, not a fix).