Firefox not picking up the wpad auto config file

I've decided to setup firefox on the new Windows image but it turns out it doesn't like the options:

• Use system proxy settings
• this is the one I prefer as I can set it using group policy/workgroup manager
• Auto-detect proxy settings for this network

Whenever either of these are ticked you cannot browse the internet.

Had a quick search and think I've found the problem. The browser looks for the file:

http://wpad/wpad.dat

Now when I typed this in the address bar of; Safari, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome; they all downloaded the wpad.dat file. But Firefox was the odd one out as it just displayed the "Unable to connect" and "Problem loading page" errors.

Did a quick search and found this Knowledge Base Article describing how all other browser now use DHCP to help find this address, but Firefox only uses DNS. Also found it here in a blog and more importantly in Mozillas bug reports here (takes a while to load).

The fix apparently is to put a "DNS record for the WPAD server" (described here under 7.2.2)

Imaging Windows XP on a Mac - filling (expanding) the partition

So, came to a machine today which I'd just re-imaged with windows XP using DeployStudio. Windows thought the partition was only 30Gb's  but was actually 110GB's. I had seen this before but never written down how to fix it.

First thing I tried was the Disk Checking utility. This did not fix the problem.

After this I didn't know what to do. I turned to google and found this forum answer. Turns out when re-imaging there is an option to "Auto Expand" windows to fill the partition but sometimes does not work. To fix, use WinClone. Unfortunately the latest version of WinClone now costs $19.99, but the older V2.2 was free. I eventually found WinClone V2.2 here.

You also need NTFSProgs so OS X can understand NTFS partitions. WinClone downloads them automatically, here is the link it uses.

Here's a screenshot of it in action:

WinClone Expanding windows file system

Go to Tools > Expand Windows file system.

Takes around 8 mins.

Worked. Cheers.

Getting VirtualBox to use Bootcamp partitioned Windows XP on a Mac

So, I really wanted VirtualBox to use the Bootcamp partitioned windows XP. After a bit of trauling I found this but had a slight error "resource_busy" and found this with a reply sorting it out. Turns out you have to unmount the disk to create the .vmkd file.

1. make a new machine
2. when asked about disks, load up the terminal
3. find the disk and partition with windows installed
1. diskutil list
4. unmount it
1. I did this in disk utility
5. change permissions on it
1. chmod 777 /dev/diskXsY  (replace X and Y with numbers)
6. go into the folder where your new VirtualBox machine is
1. cd ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/VirtualComputerName
7. make the .vmkd file
1. sudo vboxmanage internalcommands createrawvmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0 -filename "winXP.vmdk" -partitions 3
2. you have to find out how many partitions are on the harddrive. I've got 3
8. change permissions of the files created
1. chmod 777 winXP*
9. in VirtualBox, select the disk file you created.

Sorted.

Turns out the error I got was from not reading the bit where you have to unmount it.

What to do if your windows computer is running ridiculously slow (only applies to Microsoft Windows)

So, I get a lot of people coming to me with Windows PC's and laptops which are running ridiculously slow. As I'm fixing one this very moment, I thought I'd document what I have found to be the easiest ways to get them running to their original speed (when they were first purchased).

I will run through it in a chronological order.

1. First things first, you need to be able to get the system to a 'usable' state, meaning you can click on stuff and something happens, and also you can install stuff. Here's how I do it in worst case scenarios:
1. Boot up into safe mode (continuously press F8 when the computer is booting up)
2. Enable the "Windows Installer" in safe mode.
1. Heres a link to an article where I describe how to do this.
3. A part from safe mode, you can always:
1. open the task manager and end processes of anything which is taking up the CPU, but this is a little frustrating.
2. delete startup items in the Start > Programs > Startup menu.
3. Go to  Start > Run -> msconfig and click "disable startups" described here
4. If you're still having problems, run hijackthis
1. It's a very good program and helps you delete entries in Windows linked with Malicious Programs. Here's the home page
2. When you run it you can make a text file. Paste this text file on the home page and it'll analyse it and tell you which things you'll want to remove.
3. Tick the right boxes and bingo.
2. Install and run a free anti-virus.
1. At the moment the top runners for free anti-virus are AVG and AntiVir
2. I have found that  in the past a lot of anti-virus programs are the things that actually slow your machine down. This is one of the reasons AVG and AntiVir have such good ratings.
3. Install and run a free anti-malware application
1. At the moment the top runner is MalwareBytes
4. Install and run TuneUp Utilities 30 day free trial, currently on version 2012.
1. You get a free 30 day trial, but I've found you really only need a 1 hour trial to fix all the problems. Luckily it doesn't "unfix" the problems once it has expired.
2. The main part to run is "one-click-maintanance"
1. It runs through your system and tells you how many things it can 'fix'.
2. Click the fix button
3. Keep running this program until it does not fix anything anymore.

If these basic steps aren't going to fix it, you're best option is to re-install Windows a-fresh and make a nice new start. Possibly consider installing the operating system it came with to begin with? Or even think about another operating system (i.e. not windows). Ubuntu, OS X?

At the end of the day, your computer will at best run at the speed it was running when you first bought it. If you upgrade the operating system you will notice a slow down.

Also, programs which run at startup are going to slow your machine down. I only have 3 running on my startup; DropBox, Carbonite and MAMP. I suggest you really think about how you want to use your computer. It's all about compromise. 

Any suggestions are welcome, especially if it's easier than this list of 'things to do'.

Number Lock (numlock) at login screen in Windows XP

After re-imaging a MacBook Pro with Windows XP, I noticed (annoyingly) that the num lock was always switched on upon boot up at the login screen! After googling it I found this post, which describes how to change it on startup in the registry. Simply change:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=3
to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=1


This turns num lock off. Unfortunately, I think this just applies to whoever's logged in at the time, and doesn't apply to the login screen. Simple enough though, and is described at the bottom of the post in a reply (although for some reason he used some weird code - "2147483650" (string value)). I did this:


HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard\InitialKeyboardIndicators=1


and it worked.

VLC media player displaying filenames

Whilst setting up some exhibition spaces a student didn't want her video to have the filename displayed whenever it was played/repeated. I looked it up on google and found this interesting opton:

if you go to "start > run" and type the command:

vlc.exe video1.mov --no-video-title

then vlc opens without displaying the title.

Also, looks like it's in

Tools/Preferences/Subtitles & OSD.

There's a checkbox labelled "show media title on video start"

MacBook Pro Trackpad "not working properly" in Windows XP

Whenever I reimage MacBook Pro's with Windows XP I always have the same problem with the trackpad.

When you boot up, the trackpad does not function. Logging in and going to device manager you see that there is an exclamation mark over the trackpad. It simply says something like:

This device is not working properly. Error 16

Uninstalling, reinstalling, disabling, enabling does not fix it.

I reinstalled Bootcamp 3.0 drivers which did not help.

I found this forum quite interesting. Seems to mention about uninstalling some Windows Apple things in "Add/Remove Programs". But I didn't try this.

I next updated to Bootcamp 3.1 drivers and rebooted. Worked a treat!


.............
Update - 24/09/2012

Well, just reimaged a macbook pro and the same problem occurred. Installed Bootcamp 3.1 and it didn't work!

Finally had a look at the forum mentioned above and the solution they gave worked. More specifically:

1. go to Device Manager and update the driver for the trackpad.
2. click "No, not this time" for internet update.
3. Click, "install from a list or specific location".
4. click, "Don't search, I will choose a driver to install"
5. Choose the generic driver.
6. Click finish

The trackpad starts to work but no multitouch facilities. This is the point you install/reinstall bootcamp 3 and 3.1.

After this it works a treat.

Windows Installer Service under safe mode

Well, it's always been a great problem not being able to install things under safe mode. I think they're paranoid of viruses installing with no antivirus running. But I always need to install little 'fix it' programs to get the comptuer up and running.

Anyway, I looked into it and found a microsoft article (right down the bottom) on how to enable the Windows Installer Service, but it doesn't work in Safe Mode.

To get it running in Safe Mode, I found this good article

Basically, in the command line in safe mode (networked) type this:

REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"

net start msiserver 

PaperCut print quotas for staff and students on different domains

We're now implementing a print quota for both Students and Staff. The only real issue we have come across is how to seperate the staff from the students.

We initially had the system so that whenever anyone printed to the system, it would add their account to PaperCut, setting their credit to £2.00 and limiting them to that quota. For staff we simply went through the list and unticked "limit account".

Now we are giving students £1.00 per week and Staff £2.00 per week. It was a while ago so I can't remember specifically, but I remember having to set up a group in the staff domain with staff members from the department in, and a group in the student domain which had the group in the staff domain in it. I think this was because with PaperCut NG you couldn't import groups from different domains.

I didn't have access to staff domain to add new members so computer services have added me as some sort of read/write user. I am writing here how I can add members to the group so as to not forget:

1. Load up outlook
2. search for users and groups
3. Open ArtDesignStaff group
4. Modify Members
5. Then click the Add button

Sorted!

Now, every week I simply:

1. Click Bulk User Actions
2. Click:
1. All Users
2. Whose balance is less than £1.00
3. Set credit to
4. £1.00
5. Apply
3. Click Bulk User Actions
4. Click:
1. ArtStaffPrintList
2. Whose balance is less than £1.00
3. Set credit to
4. £2.00
5. Apply

It appears that PaperCut does update the groups. I checked it 18 hours later (the next day) and the new users were registered as being in the ArtStaffPrintList group.

Cheers

CD and DVD drives "Device cannot start" error 10 in device manger - Windows

A member of staff brought in their PC today saying that the DVD drives (there are two) don't work.

Looking in Device manager I found that both DVD drives were down as CD drives and in the details it says something along the lines of:
The device cannot start error 10

My first idea was to do with Master and Slave jumper switches on the back of the DVD drives. Tried all the combinations. For some the drives came up as their actual names, but still came up with the error message.

After this I did a system restore to its' earliest point. Still no luck.

I finally thought it had to do with iTunes. I've experienced it before, when installing iTunes the CD drive stops working in Windows. I had a search around on google and found this forum. It seemed promising and pointed towards this Microsoft troubleshooting guide.

Also, another tutorial is here from Apple who admit the problem.

Although this was to do with Windows XP and error 31 I found other forums mentioning the registry and "Upper Filters" and "Lower Filters". I deleted the UpperFilter registry entry mentioned and it worked a treat.

Basically:

1. load up Regedit by going to Start > Run > Regedit
2. go to:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
3. delete the UpperFilter, usually at the bottom
4. Reboot the machine

Done

Internet Explorer desktop icon makes more Internet Explorer shortcuts on the desktop!

An interesting problem occured today. I was just going to browse the internet on an XP laptop using Internet Explorer when I noticed that whenever I clicked on the desktop shortcut for IE, IE wouldn't load up but a new "Shortcut to Internet Explorer" would pop up on the desktop. Clicking on the shortcut in the Start menu did not do the same, but would come up with the "Don't Send" option because IE had crashed.

I looked up the problem on the internet and found this. At the bottom it describes the fix for it. Which is some Regedit stuff plus a bit more.

I decided that it was worth trying to update IE first. Updated from IE 6 to IE 8 and worked a treat.

Blogger autosave feature crashes in IE 8

I've noticed that with the version of Internet Explorer 8 we have installed, Blogger consistently crashes when importing images.

It took a lot of time (20 mins) but finally worked out that it was the "Autosave" feature in the newer editors which crashes it. I had to go to the settings and tick the "Use Old Editor" tick box. Of course this might be phased out any time soon.


........


So, we've now moved over to a different proxy server system called Bloxx and the error has slightly changed.


Upon making a new post and putting in an image it managed to autosave (which is where it was crashing before). On clicking "Publish Now" the tab crashes as before, but reloads the editing page with the picture gone. 

Also on clicking the "Preview" button it comes up with an error message and crashes the preview tab. 

ie error when inserting a picture in a new post on Blogger (BlogSpot)

I've found if you click on "save now" (even though it has autosaved) then it will let you click the "Publish Now" button and publish it. 

So, to conclude, this has 'sort of' fixed the problem. I think is a sufficient work-around. At least now they only have to click one other button. 

Missing font Adobe CS 5 - Arno Pro

Just had a request to install Arno Pro. Of course I'd never heard of it, and doubted whether it had been installed as a default.

But, upon further investigation (Wiki) I found that it did actually come with Adobe CS3. With all the machines in college being re-imaged. Adobe CS 5 and the whole of Windows had probably been installed from scratch and hence Arno Pro would have been lost.

Thankfully I found the Adobe CS3 premium disk and found the fonts dmg file:

Adobe\ CS3\ Design\ Premium/Adobe\ CS3\ Design\ Premium/payloads/AdobeFontsAll/AdobeFontsAll.dmg

and within found the Arno Pro font family. odt. Sorted!

Bootpicker rebooting back into OS X i.e. not Windows

I have many computer suites which are set up as "Dual Boot". I install bootpicker through ARD and set the plist file settings through ARD also. I had a little trouble with some MacBook Pro's I set up in this way. It all appeared to work, what with the bootpicker screen coming up. But upon clicking "Windows" it rebooted the machine straight back into OS X.

This takes quite some time to realise if your busy multitasking, as you think: Oh, whoops, forgot to click Windows, better click it!

So I thought I'd best look into it. After a minute I figured out that all you need to do was a PRAM reset. i.e. hold down "cmd + alt + p + r" for at least one beep (maybe up to three)

After doing this it all worked beautifully. I guess there must be some setting in the PRAM which needs refreshing?

Wacom Bamboo pen not working

I've just tried to use a Bamboo tablet in Windows XP and only the 'Rubber' end of the pen seems to work. This suggests either something is wrong with the 'nib' end of the pen, or something wrong with the installation of the software (drivers).

The easiest thing to do was to have a look at the installation, and the preferences for the device. So, under Start > Programs > Bamboo > there were two preference shortcuts. I loaded up the basic one, fiddled with it but no solutions. The other preference shortcut let you have two choices:

1. Delete preferences for the user
2. Delete preferences for all users

Having seen this option my initial conclusion was that a lot of users have some problems with the preferences, and hence the need for these options. It was quite convincing that this might be related to my problems and so I went for option 2! Alas, pointless. These options also point to poorly made software. Users should not have to deal with these sort of problems!

My next thing to do would be to rule out the drivers by trying it on a machine that it used to work on (mac OS X) but the staff member was too busy so I thought I could look up anyone else who might have the same problem.

I found one particular person with a very nicely written blog post! He refers inspiration from this post. He had the exact symptoms as described above and found the problem lay with a broken electromagnet inside the nib end of the pen. He then goes into the particulars of fixing it. There are also a lot of comments below of thankful users.

I shall try the tablet on a machine which it definitely worked on before, and if the symptoms persist, I shall refer back to this article.

printing on the HP Designjet 500

Printing on the designjet 500 has proved a little problematic as we are constantly coming up with "printer out of memory" errors. It has been mentioned that the "maximum detail" tick box fixes the issue but doesn't seem to fix ours. The print driver we're using is the "HP DesignJet 500PS42+HPGL2 Card"

After a few trials and errors I found there to be a limit on the physical size of the document you want to print. I have a 42" roll installed, for which there are no preset sizes so "Custom" size has to be made. When trying to print 42" by 58" it comes up with the error. But when printing the exact same document at 42" by 31" it works fine. I think the biggest successful print so far is 42" by 45". Here's a screenshot of the settings.

I've first tried changing the "print quality" settings but none seemed to fix the error. I did notice a slight difference in file size sent to the printer though.

After a few days, I set up the printer on another computer, still going through the print server, but this printer preferences looked different. It had an "avoid out of Memory" tick box, which upon clicking notified that processing would be done on the computer and may take a little longer. But, it worked! Here's a screenshot:

The only drawback was that when we tried sending a queue, they seem to all disappear! This could have been down to the Print Management system - PaperCut as I set up a release station for this printer (so no-one can print on our nice paper)

-Note 05/11/2012

Just a quick note. I noticed if I set it to Maximum Detail and unticked "autorotate" it seemed to print without problems.

Adobe Actobat pro silent installer

After uninstalling Adobe CS4 and installing CS5, I noticed no Acrobat Pro. I do remember that it did have a seperate disk. So after speaking with computer services there is a silent installer on Marks test2 computer, in Applications/Adobe CS5/setup.exe.  I'm not exactly sure if it installs the whole thing or just Acrobat Pro, but I did have trouble trying to run it.

Mark emailed me and suggested Mapping his distribution share as a drive letter. This worked.

Copying printers from one computer to another - windows

I've currently got a PC running windows server 2000 acting as a print server. It's essentially just sharing it's printers, but all computers in the department use the shared printers on this computer. It runs very well even though the computer is about 8 years old. We've also got PaperCut NG install with unlimited user license which gives each user £2 credit each week and deletes any jobs costing more then what the user has in credit. It's saved a lot of money down to wasted prints!

Just one problem we have now is that if this old computer fails, no one can print in the department. My plan is to copy the printers from this computer to another and if the server fails, simply rename the new computer to the old computers name and everything should go quite smoothly. The only thing which won't work is the print quotas, but this wouldn't take too long to fix.

So, after reading up on how other people do it (and also trying your simple copy and paste and other menu's on the computer) I found this where they talk about Print Migration Utility. Works like a dream. Load it up on the original computer, backup the printers to a cab file. Load the program on the new computer and restore it from the cab file. Takes a while as it installs all the correct printer drivers, but what amazed me was that it was from windows server 2000 to windows xp. Perfect.

MacBook Pro 17" fsck error EXITED WITH SIGNAL 8

Rob brought in his 17" MacBook which wouldn't get past the white screen with a gray apple and spinning dotty thing. I tried resetting the PR RAM. Next I tried single user mode with /sbin/fsck -yf. Results as shown:

Rebuilding B-Tree
could not repair volume
/dev/rdisk1s2 (hfs) EXITED WITH SIGNAL 8

Looked this up and found quite a few people with MacBook Pro's having the same error, looked to be related just with the file system and probably not a hard drive fault (hopefully). As Rob needed stuff off the HD I found only one command which might fix it, found it here:

1. Boot off the OS X CD (reboot, hold C while booting).
2. The installer will load up, go to Utilities in the menu and run Terminal.
3. Type df and look for the drive that has your Mac system mounted---you'll have to unmount this. On my MacBook Pro, it was /dev/disk0s2.
4. Type umount /dev/disk0s2, replacing disk0s2 with whatever disk your OS lives on.
5. Type fsck_hfs -r /dev/disk0s2. If you umounted the wrong thing, it will complain that you can't repair a mounted drive. Go back and umount the right thing and repeat this step.

I found netbooting to a deploy studio image had the same results as using the install disk. Coinsidence or not it, it was disk0s2 that was the OS X partition.

Anyway, it came up with another error, saying volume could not be repaired. I put it in target disk mode and mounted it on another MacBook Pro. It came up saying that there are serious issues with the volume which cannot be repaired, it is only being mounted to retrieve files which should be backed up immediately.

I used Migration Assistant to get the user account across, and copied other erroneous files. I re-partitioned and re-imaged the macbook pro and all is well.

 

Creatures - the game - fixes and docking station

Well, Jakeh has remembered the creatures game he played many years ago, and how much he enjoyed it. So I decided (he made me promise) to install the game on Windows 7. Doh! That was a mistake, doesn't seem to like Windows 7 as it was originally built for Windows 95. Even tried in compatibility mode!! Found this website which is the games development website involved in Creatures. They've got all the downloads. I tried one of the patches but something goes wrong with unzipping it.

I did find a free game download called "Creatures Docking Station" which looks like it'll work in newer versions. I installed it and it comes up with the game in the background, but in the foreground a username and password is required. The link for registering doesn't work. Only found out  a day later the registration website has moved to this. But after filling in the form it doesn't let me log in! So I've emailed them to sort it out. I did find some fixes for this common problem here. Although someone does say in the forum that it does work!!! I've not tried the fixes yet. I've also found there is a patch (crack) for the docking station.

I shall add to this blog when I find out more