How-to

How-to

Add All Online Account Plug-ins to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Do you only have Facebook, Flickr, and Google listed in Online Accounts like I did? Why not go for broke and install them all. Execute the following line in the

How-to

Removing devices from Orion NPM and NCM

My team and I ran into a little snag when administering our SolarWinds Orion installation today. We have Orion Network Performance Monitor as well as Orion Network The problem came up when we deleted a node from Orion NPM two days ago. For some

Advise

A List of How-To’s for Windows 8 on the Spiceworks Community

Now that Windows 8 has been officially released, there are plenty of how-to articles on the Accessing “God Mode” Using Windows 8 on a non-touch device Shortcuts and Hot-Keys System Management Tools built into Windows 8 (for IT Pros) and more http://community.spiceworks.

Activation

How to activate Windows 8 Enterprise using a MAK key

I was surprised to find that the “Change Product Key” link in the System applet in Windows 8 had been removed, so I needed to find a different way to activate Windows 8 Enterprise on my work laptop. Thankfully, Here is some background info

How-to

Unable to Mount .ISO Disk Image File in Windows 8 File Explorer

One of the great features in Windows 8 is built-in support to mount ISO image files in File Explorer. You still have the option of installing a 3rd party app to handle ISO mounting if you wish (such as Virtual CloneDrive) but Windows can

Administrative Tools

The Foundation of Windows 7 and Windows 8 Application Compatibility - Shims

The message says “SolarWinds Orion Network Atlas requires Windows XP/2003/2008/Vista/7 to run.” Believe it or not, this is extremely easy to work around. Right-click the installer and choose properties. From the Compatibility tab, enable compatibility mode for Windows 7 and

How-to

How-To Solve Printer Redirection Issues with the RDC Client in Windows XP

Windows XP just won’t go away. It is still one of the most widely used operating systems in business so I still find myself having to go back and remember certain things I had to support. For example, there was one little known

Encryption

Enable BitLocker without TPM in Windows 7 and Windows 8

I like BitLocker Drive Encryption in Windows since it is relatively easy to set up. However, I ran into a snag the other night when trying to set up BitLocker on one of my customer’s computers. The problem? No TPM chipset is on

F5

How to renew an SSL certificate for F5 BIG-IP v11.x

F5 Network's BIG-IP appliances are insanely complicated things that are designed to Today's article will address a task that should have been documented more simply than shown in F5's knowledgebase. F5 assumes that you are already familiar with various SSL certificate types, the certificate

Blog

Blog writing on a Mac OS X computer

One of my favorite apps on Windows is Windows Live Writer. It is a 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' (a.k.a. WYSIWYG) blog editor for Windows and integrates well with Wordpress, Blogger, and other blogging services. However, Live Writer is not available for Mac OS X and

How-to

How to remote control Mac OS X from a Windows computer using RealVNC

This is now my second blog post that is Mac related. Yes, I do own a Mac. Specifically, it is a late 2006 white Macbook with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0ghz CPU and 2GB of RAM. It isn’t the biggest and

How-to

Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

One of my favorite PC games is still the original release of Rollercoaster Tycoon created by Chris Sawyer. Unfortunately, the game will NOT run in Windows 7 or Windows 8 properly (keeps crashing, won’t load saved games, etc.). In order to properly run

Beta

Fixing the Infinite Boot Loop Issue with Windows

I have been helping some of my family friends as of late with their computer troubles and I would like to share this tech support story with you today… Our family friend dropped off her old, but still capable, Windows XP computer to me

Advise

Improve your internet surfing speed with Google Public DNS

**The instructions in this post are for your home computer(s) only. If your computer is owned by a business or is managed by a Systems Administrator or I.T. department, then I do NOT recommend changing your DNS settings on your computer. Please

How-to

How to Change File Associations in Windows 7/8

How-To Video on My YouTube Channel! Have you ever tried to open a file, such as a PDF document, and Windows opens a completely different program than what you would normally expect? The reason why this may happen is because the file type is

Administrative Tools

Advanced Format Hard Drives and OS Deployment with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit or SCCM

After about a week, I finally figured out how to resolve a problem that we were experiencing with the Dell Latitude E6420 laptops when trying to re-image them with a custom Windows XP image in our MDT environment. The WIM image deploys normally to

How-to

How to change the text of “My Computer” to something else

Have you ever wanted to change the text of the My Computer desktop icon in Windows Here is how to make the change in Windows XP: Open REGEDIT Navigate to [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}] Change the LocalizedString value to your desired text string.

Administrative Tools

Help fix family and friends’ computer issues using TeamViewer

One of the things that I truly enjoy is donating my time to family and friends to help them fix a problem with their computer (only as long as they don’t abuse this free service ). The problem is that I live in Florida

Administrative Tools

Get Your Windows Computer Running Faster Again

I got to thinking about a question the other day simply because of the fact that someone that I was helping over the phone with their computer issues asked me a similar question. It went a little something like this, “So this computer is

How-to

Unable to view a person’s calendar free\busy information when trying to add them to a New Meeting or New Appointment in Outlook

This was an interesting one. My superior came to me the other day saying that people were unable to add her to a meeting from Outlook because all they could see were slashes. Basically, this person’s free\busy information was unavailable to everyone.

Boot Disc

Performing a Windows Vista or Windows 7 “miracle” system restore on PC that still has the recovery partition intact

Here is an interesting case…. Over the weekend, a good friend came to me asking if I could help him with his Acer laptop. He was attempting to perform a system restore using the built in Acer support tools. The laptop re-installed Windows 7

Advise

Virus, Spyware, & Malware Removal Guides at BleepingComputer.com

One of the things that is a complete waste of time is fixing computers that have been infected with malware and\or viruses. Luckily, there are several different guides on how to remove malware fast and efficiently on ! These guides have helped me fix

Advise

Microsoft Outlook giving you issues? Here Are A Few Things to Try….

Today, I would like to share some tips for troubleshooting issues with Microsoft Outlook. These tips will resolve 95% of all issues a person is having with Outlook. This article talks about issues with the Outlook offline cache, corrupt email signatures, and how to

Administrative Tools

USB Boot Disk Edition #4 – Using the Windows USB DVD Download Tool

The from Microsoft is an incredibly useful piece of But this is not the only magic of this tool. Using the , any WinPE based image can be made into a bootable USB stick! This includes: Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 Windows Server

Advise

Where can I find training information on how to work with Microsoft Office applications?

If you are used to using Office 2003, and you upgrade to Office 2007 or Office 2010, you will notice a big visual change. If you need help figuring out how to use this new interface called the “Ribbon”, look no further than the