Macintosh Network Settings

Problem: I was asked to configure some Macintosh laptops with static IP addresses and a proxy server. This wouldn't normally be a problem except they asked ME to do it. After the configuration the network dialog showed a green light indicating that the machine was connected via the Airport*, but I wasn't getting to the internet.

Solution: Apparently, a reboot is required for the machine to recognize the proxy server. At any rate, I rebooted and it worked.

* For you PC bigots, "Airport" is the cute little name the Apple people give to their wireless routers .... :o)

Security SNAFU

Problem: My newphew asked me to recover his machine this week. He had that dreaded recursive F8 screen on which none of the choices work (Safe Mode, Last Known Good, Normal Startup, etc), and the computer either hangs or reboots over and over again; (Mother of God.....)

Solution: As you probably know, running setup and chosing the repair option is the best way to get back in business. Or in some cases, like when you don't have a CD for the same OS, you can just install another OS in a different directory, in a dual boot arrangement. Either way you don't lose any data. However if you end up doing the dual boot option, you'll have some security issues to deal with. Specifically, the new profile you create when you install the new OS on the system doesn't automatically have access to the old directories and files, even though the new guy has administrative access. What I did to remedy this is have the new userid take ownership of the entire C: drive and then grant himself full control of everything.
Tip: If the machine is not in a domain you will not automatically have the Security tab showing on the directory and file properties dialogs. To show the Security tab:

1. My Computer
2. Tools
3. Folder Options
4. View tab
5. Scroll to the bottom of the 'Advanced Settings'
6. Uncheck the box entitled Use simple file sharing (Recommended)

Server Out Of Disk Space

Problem: We had a Windows 2000 Server that wouldn't finish initializing due to lack of disk space. While the services were starting, Active Directory issued a message saying that it was unable to allocate enough disk space. Unfortunately, answering OK to that message took the system down and restarted the boot sequence.

Solution: We were able to bring the server up in Safe Mode to take a look at the disk space. The System drive has 5 GB of space. We ran the standard Disk Cleanup dialog and got rid of some junk and compressed some old files but didn't really get back much space. We noted that the directories and files at the root of the System drive only accounted for about 2.5 GB of the space. We then showed the hidden files but found that this didn't account for much more of the space. Finally we showed the hidden Operating System files and found that the pagefile.sys file was a whopping 2 GB in size!

This server had been used for an application that required a lot of paging space. Since it was no longer running that application, we determined that the server no longer needed a large page file, and adjusted it down: Control Panel ==> System Properties ==> Advanced tab ==> Performance Settings button ==> Performance Options Advanced tab ==> Virtual Memory Change button ==> Virtual Memory dialog. We noted that the Initial Size of the page file was set to 2000 MB and the Max was set to 3000 MB. We reset the Initial Size down to 500 MB and the Max to 1000 MB. And OH YES, we hit the Set button to impelment the change (easy to miss ... :o)

After a reboot we were back in business....

Winsock Fix

Problem: The user reported that her email had stopped working and that she could no longer get to the internet. Initial network trouble shooting determined that the machine could ping beyond the default gateway but could not get to the internet or to other network resources.

Solution: This is a known Winsock problem that can happen on machines (Win9x,NT,W2K,XP) that have had spyware removed. There is a fix available at the TACKtech site: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=257

1. Download and unzip the file
2. Run the extracted executable
3. The dialog has an option to save the registry. Run this first.
4. After the registry is saved, run the fix
5. Reboot

Thanks, Travis!

Brand-X Hardware

Problem: A user reported that one of his machines would not start up. Investigation showed that the machine was repetitively going through the boot cycle, but never completing initialization.

Solution: The first thing to try is reseating the memory. In this case it worked so it was worth the few minutes it took. This was one of those brand-X machines that someone built from components they got at a computer fair. I guess they do this thinking they'll save a lot of money. What I find is that these machines frequently have problems with things like the memory shaking loose. I always cringe when I'm called to work on one because they usually mean trouble. If reseating the memory didn't work in this case, I would have probably had to rebuild it. When this happens, lots of luck finding the drivers for all the weird components. I'm not plugging any particular hardware here, but I'd really rather work on machines with manufacturers names I've heard at least once before.

Peer-to-Peer Print Sharing

Problem: A user reported that her laptop couldn't access her printer. I found that the printer was directly connected to another machine which was serving the printer to 2 other machines in a peer-to-peer relationship. The print "server" and the 2 other machines were all running XP. The laptop in question was running Win 98.

Solution: I don't see many machines running Win 98 anymore and the longer I'm away from these wonderful relics the less I remember about them. So there was a lot of head scratching and fumbling around while trying to make this work. I finally got it to work by checking/adjusting 3 things:

1. I made sure the share name was short enough. Win 9x can handle up to 12 character share names. I used 8 characters.
2. I set the Win 98 workgroup name to the domain name used by the other 3 machines. Before I did this, the Win 98 machine couldn't even locate the printer on the network.
3. I set the Win 98 Client for Microsoft Networks properties to logon to the same domain. I then instructed the user to always logon to the domain with the Win 98 machine. This is the only way the print "server" will let the Win 98 machine use the printer without entering a password every time.

Editorial Comment: I hate peer-to-peer print sharing. For one thing, average users don't seem to understand that the print "server" has to be up and running so their peers can print. They just turn the machine off and go home for the day. Even when the sharing is working it's often very slow. And worst of all, trouble shooting the problems can be extremely time consuming. In the above case, if the user didn't have to pay me to get it working, she could have easily bought another printer for exclusive use by the laptop, and let me get some much needed sleep.

Speak of the Devil......

Problem: I had a power surge at my house over the weekend. As I was checking out some of the electrical problems in my house, I noticed that my monitor had that ugly message: WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM file missing or corrupt.....
I have a surge protector, too! Scary, eh?

The reason I bring this up is to re-emphasize my entry of a few days ago, entitled Gambling With Your Data. Please read that one. If you think it will never happen to you, believe me, it will.

Solution: My hard drive was not damaged, it just had corrupted data. So, I ran XP setup but didn't delete the existing partition. After reinstalling XP I was able to get to all the other data. It's a little messy since the reinstallation gives you a new registry and user profile, but it's better than wiping the system and then restoring everything from backups most of the time. I then did some application reinstalls to re-establish the registry entries.

Luckily, I also had my important stuff backed up on CDs, as well. I didn't need the backups this time, but next time who knows.....

MS Access 97 Issue

Problem: I installed MS Access 97* on a machine today at the request of a user. When I launched the application for an initial test, I got the following message: "Microsoft access cannot start because there is no license for it on this machine".

Solution: This is apparently a known problem caused by a font file, of all things!! Thank God for my IT colleagues who are nice enough to document these things on the internet. Because there isn't any way in HELL that I would have ever figured it out. When I keyed in the message to do a search for the problem, the first hit on the list was: http://www.howtodothings.com/showarticle.asp?article=624 , documented by Peter Morris.

Peter's solution:

1. Find the font named Hatten.TTF in your {windows}\fonts folder (usually c:\windows\fonts).
2. Rename the file to Hatten.TTFX
3. Reinstall MS ACCESS
4. Rename the font file back to Hatten.TTF

The location of the font file was C:\winnt\fonts in my case, but the solution was the same. THANK YOU Peter!!! (If you're not the one who originally found the answer to this, I apologize to him or her; at least thanks to you for documenting it).
*NOTE: If anyone else in the world is still using Access 97, get off of it!! It's 7 years old........ Please!

Synchronizing With Outlook

Problem: The user reported that she was no longer able to synchronize her Palm Tungston E with her Outlook Calendar.

Solution: As it turns out, the handheld was actually synchronizing with Outlook, but with the wrong calendar. This is one of those situations where the handheld belongs to someone else but is being synched on an Admin Assistant's machine. She has no less than 5 calendars in her Outlook profile. It took some searching but we found the calendar that was synching with the handheld and verified that all calendar items were actually matching after a synch. We then opened the Hotsynch Mananger and selected the entry for the Outlook Calendar. We were then able to open the settings for that entry and browse to the correct calendar and selected it for the synchronization.

Note: The Palm One site has a lot of good debugging information.