My Technical solutions page

Disclaimer:

These are personal solutions that have worked for me over the years.

I thought it would be useful to record them here for future reference. They are not necessarily going to work on your system - they happen to work on mine :-)

Tip 1 Search and ask

If “F1” on your desktop doesn’t help, there are many helpful forums out there, mostly accessible directly or through Google searches. I particularly recommend

D-A-L Computer Help

for their friendly advice on all levels of expertise.

Tip 2 Uninstall and reinstall those pesky drivers...

My Zen Vision M (30 MB) mp3 player suddenly stopped being recognised by Windows Vista (home premium 64 bit).

I went to start - control panel - device manager - portable devices and right-clicked the link for the player (which had an exclamation mark by it - i.e. Vista knew something was there but couldn’t connect with it).

I tried to update the driver but Vista kept telling me that the drivers were indeed up to date.  Not very helpful!

So, on a hunch, I right-clicked again and instructed Vista to uninstall the driver. Then I unplugged the player's usb connection, plugged it back in again and Vista re-installed the driver automatically.  It now works and the Zen is merrily recharging.

Note: This problem seems likely to recur, whenever certain updates are applied to the operating system or to Windows Media Player, but the solution is neat and simple, so no worries :-).

Tip 2 contact MS helpdesk

The most intransigent problem I had recently was the failure of Windows Updater (error 80070424).

It turned out that the cause in my case was a sudden (and unexplained) deletion or corruption of TrustedInstaller.exe.

It wasn’t simply a question of obtaining a new exe file: the registry needed to be edited and the servicing folder needed to be given a “change of ownership”.

Now, I could copy the whole of the instructions and provide a link to the fix.zip file that Windows Helpdesk emailed me, but, for copyright reasons and also taking account of possible changes in their methodology, I recommend contacting the Microsoft helpdesk yourself, since there could be a whole host of causes for this problem.

Tip 3 Recommended software

Now of course, there is so much out there that a list of recommendations can only be “personal”, but these are the system and security software products that I currently use and appreciate:

Antivirus and antimalware

On my laptop I currently use the recently released and relatively untested Microsoft Security Essentials, since I rarely go online on that computer and security is not of too much concern.  

However, for my main computer I currently use VIPRE, mainly because it is (apparently) all inclusive and has a small memory footprint.

I did use PC Guard for a while, but there was no way to report false positives and it crippled an important piece of software. The software worked again after uninstalling that malformed programme suite.

Boo to PC Guard!

Encryption

I use TrueCrypt to ensure that any thieves who manage to get their mitts on my hardware cannot go on to get my passwords and other sensitive data.

The encryption process is clean, transparent and very flexible.

Backing up

I now use Easeus ToDo  for occasional disk image backups.  Acronis is simply too complicated and subject to failure, and it so often claims files are corrupted.  

As regards regular data backup I now use Karen’s Replicator - also much simpler and (therefore) less prone to failure than Acronis.

Uninstaller

Well now, the programme you wanted to uninstall is not on the list in Control Panel?

Maybe it is included in the “View installed updates” link on the top left of the “add remove programmes” window.... But be careful! Some installed updates are best left as they are - eg mediaplayer in Vista ....

Or else it is on the list but it cannot be uninstalled because the previous install became corrupted (and Vista says it cannot find the msi file)?

Again, be very careful, but it’s worth considering Microsoft’s own “install cleanup”

It worked for me....in Vista....

Update - well it didn’t work on my new Windows 7 computer after I had confused the poor thing by uninstalling a trial version of Office 2007 that came bundle with it and installed Office 2003....

(Uninstalling Office 2007 does not remove the registry entries so Office 2003’s entries made everything go haywire)

When all else fails, backup your data, serial numbers and passwords and reinstall Windows!

Various other recent solutions found

Embedded videos cover links or text (links or text go behind embedded videos)

Assuming you are using a YouTube, Vimeo or similar embed code add the following:

1. After the opening object tag add <param name=”wmode” value=”opaque” />

2. Inside the embed tag add <wmode=”opaque”>

Failure to update virus definitions

If you are using Vipre antivirus and antimalware and the risk definitions fail to be updated, you can do it manually (with the latest definitions) directly from their site, on this page:

http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Home-Home-Office/VIPRE/Definitions/

Purging the cache

Wiki pages including CPDL may require you to purge you cache to see the latest version. Although F5 (or control-F5) clears the cache, this doesn't always do the trick on wiki pages.

So, to get the most up to date version of any page simple type “?action=purge” at the end of the URL.

For example, to get a fresh copy of the CPDL Main Page without using the cache, direct your browser to

http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page?action=purge