Author: John

USB XP Woes

Having been involved in a few Windows XP/2003 suite installations now – there seems to be a reoccurring problem with people and their USB devices.

Simply put – if you’re not an admin user of any sort, then the machine will not allow you to add or remove USB devices.

As a security issue, this is fine – especially when you don’t want people faffing around with your systems on a corporate level. In a school where you’ve just installed 30 computers – half of which don’t have floppy or CD drives in – USB is quite desired.

I finally got around to carrying out a serch on the web and found someone mention KB 823732. A jolly helpful article on how to disable a users ability to remove the said privilege. I haven’t tried it yet – but I imagine that the opposite is true to allow users. I’ll put up an additional note if it works.

Files Be Gone

I noticed that some files were disappearing on one of the Servers the other day. A few people had noticed. And it finally happened to me. I was roaming through my ‘My Documents’ folder when I noticed that folders that shouldn’t be empty were.

Checking out the KnowledgeBase, I discovered that if your profile folder is the same as your home directory, then the server sometimes decides that the best thing to do is delete the files.

Although it turns out that if you use a subfolder in the home folder this resolves the problem.

I certainly hope so. I don’t think too many people will be impressed with files randomly disappearing…

Server 2003 Doesn’t Like My Tally

I’ve been having problems with the Tally 8006e and 8024 running on Windows Server 2003. On a couple of systems I’ve found that the drivers seem to knock out the Windows spool. Whenever it tries to print, an error message pops up saying Unable to create print job.

The fact that it doesn’t even seem to try was quite frustrating. Luckily I was fixing another problem on one particular server and needed to reboot. On startup I had a more useful message Spooler subsystem app has encountered a problem and needs to close. I should have really checked the system log, but this problem had been around for such a long time, I wasn’t sure if it would actually still be there.

So it was with some fortune that I managed to find this new message on the KB article 810894.
Follow the instructions and it will remove the printer drivers and allow you to add new printers afresh.

I Nest My (Documents) Case

An odd problem popped up today. Every time I attempted to save or open a file in my network area, I’d get the following error:

Invalid Page Fault in module Kernel32.dll

It turns out that it’s because I have a folder called ‘My Documents’ in the My Documents folder. Every time I clicked on it, Word 2000 would throw its toys out of the pram and crash and burn, taking my work with it.

The solution was found on in KB304504. Apparently it only affects Office 2000 thankfully.

Needless to say, my punning has pleased me no end today 🙂

I watched her as she walked across the poles…

So I ordered Jon Collins’ Seperated Out for Helter Skelter Books last week.

They’re a London-based bookstore that specialise in musical books.

A couple of days after I ordered the book, it turned up. In POLISH no less! I e-mailed the store and they promtply replied admitting that they had cocked up and would send me out a nice English copy.

So it turned up this week. I’m a happy shopper and the e-mails I received were always prompt and friendly.
These people show how to put service into customer service.

Highly recommended.

As a side note – If anyone gets the lyrical reference I’ll give them a prize 🙂

Philly’s Farewell

Went to see Phil Collins last night. Pretty good show, played the hits that everybody wanted to hear (sans any material from ‘Both Sides’), had a good light show, and was on top form.

I wouldn’t mind knowing where he gets his boundless energy from. I could do with some of that. Especially as I’m walking around today coughing and spluttering like an old man with a croaky voice like I should be on a ‘give up smoking’ ad.

The only downer (and I’m not sure who’s fault it was), is that either the PA was totally screwed or the acoustics in Wembley Arena are awful. There was about a half-second delay coming from the back wall which carried all the high-end sounds. This meant that throughout the various songs it sounded like either someone was whispering in my ear, an AM radio was being piped through the PA, or there was such a mish-mash of sound that it was tough to pick out the mish-mash that I wanted to hear!

Oh, and Wembley’s staff dealing with the merchandise stands were terrible! That was a fiasco worthy of another story.

Nevertheless, it takes more than minor things to get me down, and a great night was had by all.