Posts filed under ‘Tips’

While I agree that spreading the word about SOPA and PIPA is a great idea, I definitely do not agree with a complete blackout of the most widely used reference site. If I were running Wikipedia, I would have made it so users would have to click a button to continue to their information. Wikipedia itself has said that this is not a total blackout, as they are still making the site completely accessible to mobile users. Of course, who wants to look up that information on a tiny screen? (Unless you have a tablet of some sort.) Sort of changing information in Firefox to access the mobile version, I stumbled across a much easier way. I found it on a Dropbox users page and the site is HERE. However, here is the jist of it. Wikipedia is just using some CSS to cover the page you need. With a little javascript, that CSS can be blocked. So you just drag the javascript link on the DropBox site into your booklet or bookmarks on Firefox, and when you get to the wiki with a SOPA/PIPA blackout, just click it and it takes care of the hard work for you!
Enjoy, but do not forget the dreadful, evil thing that is hanging over our heads.

So it came to pass that I had to do another G450 install on a Windows 7 machine, and when I went to Matrox’s web site, I still did not see drivers listed specifically for Windows 7. I did do some digging however, and found that this non-WHQL driver package works perfectly. It was listed as supporting “Windows Server 2003 x64, Windows XP x64, Windows Vista x64, Windows Server 2008 x64″. If it supports Server Win2k8 R2, it should also support Windows 7.

As luck would have it, the install went smoothly and I have a pair of the cards working in a brand new Core i5 machine as I type this.




Good luck!

I came across an odd problem just the other day that caused the visual editor to go haywire on a brand new WordPress installation.

Whenever I tried to write a post, the visual editor would load, but then the buttons would disappear. On top of that, none of the text I typed would show up either. A “select all” showed that my text did in fact exist, but it was displayed as white text on the visual editor’s white background. Stranger still, the HTML editor worked just fine.

I tried working through all sorts of solutions offered up online including a reinstall of WordPress, troubleshooting plugins, and even checking file permissions on the wp-includes and wp-admin directories.

None of these solutions worked, but as I dug through the blog’s admin pages, I saw something strange. As you can see in the picture below (click to enlarge), the WordPress and Site Address fields both show a colon appended to the URL. The problem is a strange result of how WordPress was installed as well as how the web host has configured our account. Removing the colons fixed the problem immediately, and will likely remedy your issues as well.

As a final note, this fix works on WordPress 3.2.1 but should apply to any past or future releases of the software.

Last year I upgraded form a Gigabyte board that Jim sent me the previous year, to a Biostar G31-M7 TE.  Along with that, I threw in two larger pieces of memory.  For a long time, I had a mysterious problem with the system.  Every time I would reboot the system, it would only display a blank screen and require the CMOS to be reset in order for it to boot once again. I found this odd, as I had an Asus P4 system that exhibited similar symptoms, only it was fixed by power cycling. Not so in this case. Several months passed with me accepting this error as a daily challenge in life to avoid system reboots. Max uptime was my goal. Most searches into the problem led to video errors or motherboard errors, but as I had a working system after I cleared the BIOS settings, I knew something else was at fault here. I even considered building an external switch to clear the CMOS, I was resetting it so often.

Continue reading “Fixing Mysterious Motherboard Issue” »

I recently installed SQL Express 2008 and ran into an annoying issue when I later tried to alter the installation.

The initial SQL install went off without a hitch, but the problems began when I tried to add my application. During the installation process, I was prompted to enable full-text indexing on my SQL server. I had no idea this was a prerequisite…shame on me for not reading the application requirements! To add insult to injury, I was not aware that version of SQL Express I was using did not come with full-text indexing as an installable option.

Back to the Internet I went, searching for a copy of SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services. A 500 MB download later, and I was well on my way to getting things running, or so I thought.

I began my SQL installation, choosing to add or change features to my existing install. Everything seemed to be pretty straightforward and painless until I tried to select which SQL installation to upgrade. Each and every time I tried to select the one and only instance on this particular server, I was greeted with the message, “The instance id is required but it is missing”.

I double-checked the installation options I had selected, I ensured that all of the proper services were up and running, plus I even rebooted the server and tried the installation again. However, no matter what I tried, I received the same error each time I attempted to select my SQL instance.

I poked around for awhile, then finally found a solution. First, I went to the Control Panel and selected the Add/Remove Programs console. There, I located the SQL express install and clicked the Change/Remove button. This brought up a slightly different version of the installer interface, from which I could choose an Add option.

Going through the paces, this installer found my existing SQL instance without any issues and I had my SQL Server, complete with full-text indexing in no time!

You can find an update to this post here

While working on a co-worker’s computer today, I came across a curious problem. The computer in question was being upgraded to Windows 7, and was configured to support four monitors via two Matrox G450 PCI video cards. These cards have been around quite awhile and have been supported from Windows 2000 through Server 2008 R2, so I figured I would have no issue installing the new OS.

When all was said and done, Windows could not locate the drivers for the video cards on the installation DVD, nor could it install them via Windows Update. So, I did what any normal person would do, and headed straight for Matrox’s web site.

Much to my dismay they did not seem to have any drivers listed for these cards for Windows 7. The closest I could come to the proper drivers was this set of WHQL drivers meant for Windows Server 2008 x64 and Server 2008 R2. When I tried installing the drivers, my video cards were detected properly, but the installer simply could not finish the job. Each time I tried, the installer would fail.

I went through the standard procedure of attempting to update the driver via the Device Manager, only to be told that no better driver could be found. Even when I selected to locate the driver myself and picked the folder where the Matrox installer had extracted all of its files, I simply could not install the driver.

I returned to the Device Manager and selected to update my drivers once again. I chose to locate the driver on my own, but instead of simply picking the folder this time around, I clicked “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”. From that dialog window, I clicked the “Have Disk” button and again browsed to the folder where the Matrox installer extracted its files. I looked through the list of .inf files in the directory and one caught my eye – it was named W7G4G5.inf. I opened the file in a text editor to take a look around, and after poking around for a few moments, I knew I had the file I wanted. The file’s name signified that it was meant for all G4XX and G5XX Matrox cards running under Windows 7.

I selected the file and clicked OK. The Windows Hardware wizard presented a box asking me to pick between the Matrox G450 PCI card and the Matrox G450 PCI card. Decisions, decisions. In the end, I picked the first card in the list and let Windows do its thing. Everything installed properly and I was on my way.

The whole process is actually quite simple, but for the uninitiated, it can be a daunting problem. I imagine that most people would end up digging around online looking for a driver pack that does not exist, so hopefully this saves somebody a bit of hair pulling and a lot of time. I really have no idea why the installer comes packaged with the proper Windows 7 drivers, but is unable to actually install the software. Either way, it’s an easy fix.

A friend of mine was shopping Walmart looking for a new laptop.  This is something I recommend people do so they don’t have to come to me to find one.  Walmart is cheap and as long as you recognize the brand you’re buying, you should be getting something that is going to work and get done what you need it to.  What happens, though, when you find two laptops so similar, you have trouble telling the difference?  You’ll do what she did and send me the web links for the specifications.

Continue reading “Laptop Shopping – Scoping the Similarities” »

In configuring a new XenApp 6 server on Windows 2008 R2, I found that users could no longer authenticate to the server, even with the Secure Gateway disabled.  I also discovered that I was unable to start the Citrix XTE Server service, which manages passwords for XenApp.

When I tried to manually start the service, I received the following error:

Windows could not start the Citrix XTE Server on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to service-specific error code 1.

These sorts of nondescript errors pop up all the time when trying to troubleshoot Citrix services, which makes it tough to do any real troubleshooting.

I dug around in the registry and found a strange entry in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\XTEConfig key.  The ServerRootPath was set to C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Secure Gateway.  It struck me as odd that this problem popped up only after I had installed the Secure Gateway service, and that the path to the XTEServer was suddenly pointing to the directory where the Secure Gateway binaries were stored.

I did some reading online and found that when installing older versions of the Secure Gateway service, this registry misconfiguration took place, preventing the XTE service from starting.  One would think that Citrix would have fixed this problem already, but I guess not.

So, I simply changed the ServerRootPath registry entry to reflect the proper root directory of the XTEServer, which fixed the issue.  The proper entry for that registry value is C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\XTE.

All you should need to do to fix the problem is change that value and reboot the server.  After that, you are good to go.

While configuring a new server with Citrix XenApp 6 on Windows Server 2008 R2, I came across an annoying issue. The Citrix Secure Gateway service refused to start automatically when the server was rebooted. Attempting to manually start the service would result in the following error:

Windows could not start the Citrix Secure Gateway on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to service-specific error code 1.

Clearly this is not very descriptive, nor very helpful.

Digging around more in Windows Event Viewer, I came across Event ID 7024 in the Windows System log. This error contained the same detail message shown above. I was still going nowhere fast.

As I continued to look through the logs, I expanded the Applications and Services logs portion of the Event Viewer and found a set of log files solely dedicated to the Citrix Secure Gateway service. Here, I found two errors repeated over and over.

The first was Event ID 176:

Unable to bind to IP interface [<ipv6 address here>:443]

Followed by Event ID 144:

No listening sockets available, shutting down. (Hint: Port might be in use by another process)

After ensuring that no other process on the machine was tying up port 443, I tried disabling IPv6 on the server to see if that would remedy the issue. The Secure Gateway service still could not bind properly, as disabling IPv6 did not remove the IP address shown in Event ID 176.

I ran ipconfig to see what adapter was using that particular address and found that it was assigned to Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface, which is a Windows IPv6 component. I decided to re-run the Secure Gateway Configuration wizard to change the IP address that the Secure Gateway was monitoring.

You can see below that by default, the gateway service monitors all IPv4 and all IPv6 addresses.

I unchecked both boxes and used the Add button to configure the listener on the single IPv4 address my server was actually using, as seen below:

Once I made that change, I was able to reboot the server and have the Secure Gateway service start without issue.

As a side note, some people have recommended editing the registry to force the Secure Gateway Service to rely on the IISAdmin service. I tried this during one of many attempts to rectify the problems I was having with the Secure Gateway, but found that it did not help. In fact, after changing the IP addresses to which the Secure Gateway attempts to bind, I removed that dependency and the Secure Gateway sill ran without issues.

I have been having issues with my keyboard for as long as I can remember. The Shift, Control, Windows, and Alt keys were not functioning properly at all and were becoming quite the annoyance. It seemed as if while held down, the keys were randomly toggling themselves on and off while I pressed other keys.

For instance, I would end up replacing whole lines of text with a ‘c’ while trying to press Ctrl-C to copy the line. Similarly, the paste shortcut Ctrl-V would wipe out text in a single swoop as well. Trying to quickly save usually left random ‘s’ characters in my documents, and many words were left lower case due to my malfunctioning Shift key.

I originally chalked it up to my keyboard itself. It was a cheap PS/2 keyboard that came with my computer, so I decided to swap it out for a new, USB keyboard. I figured the problem was with the hardware, so I would be good to go once I replaced it.

Not so.

My problems continued to persist until one day I had an idea. Perhaps it wasn’t the keyboard, perhaps it wasn’t some odd Windows issue. Perhaps it was the drivers loaded by Windows for my keyboard.

I did some digging in Windows’ Device Manager and decided that the best course of action would be to see if I could remove and re-add my keyboard from the system. I removed both keyboards listed there and then rebooted. Suddenly all my problems were gone, and your can be too if you do the following:

1. Open the Device Manager – it’s under Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> System in Vista
2. Navigate to the Keyboards section as shown below
3. Right-click on any entries there and select Uninstall
4. Wait for Windows to remove the hardware and then reboot

Windows should now re-detect the keyboard and you should be all set. Now, this doesn’t work for all keyboard issues as some of them are indeed hardware-related, but it worked to fix the issue I have been struggling with for months!