IT Troubleshooters

Microsoft has released a technical preview of Office 2010. This is a pre-beta release intended for feedback, as well as promotion, so it’s not feature-complete and may change before the final release planned for the first half of 2010.

It does offers a rough guide to what Microsoft is planning for its ubiquitous office suite. The short summary is ‘more of the same’ more of the controversial Office Ribbon UI, more features for products that arguably have too many already, and more integration with SharePoint so that users are drawn deeper into Microsoft’s platform.

At the same time, the company is looking perhaps nervously at web-based Office suites from Google, Zoho, Adobe, and others and responding with Office web applications of its own, while carefully avoiding any suggestion that they might replace the desk-bound versions.

The big themes of Office 2007 were new XML-based document formats, which sparked a ferocious standards war, and the disappearance of menus in favour of a fat-tabbed toolbar called the Ribbon. Web apps aside, there is nothing so radical here. Office 2010 feels more like a refinement of the earlier version. The Ribbon is now extended to Outlook and Publisher. One crumb of comfort for Ribbon-haters: a “customise the Ribbon” option has appeared, letting you add and remove tabs, groups, and individual commands.

As for Open XML, it’s notable that Microsoft neglects to mention it at all in its Reviewer’s Guide, even though this is supposedly the release that will fully implement ISO/IEC 29500. To be fair, few users ever cared about XML formats themselves it is only when documents get scrambled or fail to open that such things become important.

So what is new here? 64-bit versions for a start. They’re now an option throughout. The most obvious use is gigabyte-size Excel spreadsheets, though working with any large document should now be easier. Excel also gets a new single-cell chart type called a Sparkline and a new Slicer tool for filtering data. Some features turn up throughout the product. The 64-bit version is the Office 2010 Professional plus version.

The Office Button – really a file menu, and one which some new users find hard to discover in Office 2007 – has been replaced by a Backstage view, combining file, preview, and document options into one full-window dialog. It sounds odd, but it works well. Paste Preview is another new feature, showing an instant preview of Paste actions.

Ideal for product reviewers, a screenshot button lets you insert an image of any open window into the current document. Several Office applications now support simultaneous multi-user editing, provided the document is hosted on SharePoint or Windows Live.

I have been trying to remove the SMS Advanced Client from a Windows XP machine using Ccmclean tool (Ccmclean tool can be found in SMS toolkit). But unfortunately, it failed to remove the client by using Ccmclean.

There is another method to remove the SMS Advanced Client from the machine which is msiexec /x command.

Before executing that command, you must know what is the GUID for the SMS Advanced Client, the GUID value can be found inside the Registry editor under following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

The correct GUID has SMS Advanced Client as the Display Name value.

After you get the SMS Advanced Client GUID value, execute the msiexec /x command at command prompt.

Msiexec /x {D8EF2D11-47CF-45E5-B423-47B29706DE12}
(the value behind Msiexec /x indicate the GUID of SMS Advanced Client)

After you execute the Msiexec /x on the machine, you may need to manually remove the VPCache folder for SMS Advanced Client. Below is the step by step how to complete the task:

1. Locate the following registry key in registry editor:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SMS\VPCache

2. The Path value for VPCache is the location of the VPCache folder on the system drive. For example, %Windir%\System32\VPCache.

3. Locate the VPCache folder and then delete it from the hard drive.

4. Lastly, delete VPCache registry key from the registry editor.

Although this method need to spend more time to complete it, but it is a alternative for you to remove the SMS Advanced Client from the machine.

The Blue Screen of Death, or more properly the ‘Windows stop message’ occurs when Windows detects a problem or error from which it cannot recover. The operating system halts and diagnostic information is displayed on a blue screen. In newer versions of the operating system, the contents of the PC’s memory are dumped to a file for later analysis.

All Windows XP stop errors are numbered according to the circumstances that caused the error, which assists enormously in troubleshooting them.

A typical Windows XP stop message, is divided into four parts, and actually does display some helpful clues as to what caused its appearance. Reading a BSOD is not an everyday task, but if we take a moment to dissect it, you’ll see it can help us to resolve the conflict which is stopping Windows from operating correctly.

The bugcheck information shows the number of the stop error (in hexadecimal format), information on why the system has stopped and the friendly (text-based) name for the stop error. A typical one is DRIVER_IRQI_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

The second section, ‘recommended user action,’ is pretty generic and contains advice for the user on possible troubleshooting steps. This tends to be the same for just about every stop error, though the main advice ‘try restarting your computer’ is the best possible first step to take.

The third section, ‘driver information,’ may contain vital info. If an actual driver file is associated with the blue screen, it will be listed here. This can give you something to work on in the case of a reoccurring error.

The final part of the stop error screen is the ‘debug port and status information’ section. Windows XP will attempt to dump the contents of system memory either to a file on the hard drive or to one of the COM ports in the case of a stop error.

There is a number of ways to trouble shoots this common issue on the blackberry and can sometimes be an easy fix and other times it can take a few troubleshooting steps.
When the BlackBerry user attempts to send a Messageing message it fails immediately. A red X appears and the following error is received. Some times it can be that you are not able to send or receive emails and no error shows.
The error could be caused by one of the following:
The BlackBerry user is attempting to send a message without having a data plan.
The service book is currupt.

Resolution
To correct this issue follow the steps below:
Some times perfoming a hard rest of the device can solve this issue.
Verify that the BlackBerry has a Data Plan.
Delete and resend the Desktop CMIME service books in Options > Advanced Options > Service Book.
Perform a hard reset on the BlackBerry.

Non Delivery Reports)
(Non Delivery Reports) are usually an invalid address.

The entries under Public Folder are not synchronize
Symptom: after moving the Public Folders from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 server, the users can see the Public Folder but the entries or sub-folders under each folder.
Cause: The Replication under Public Folder Properties is setup as Never Run

You do not have the permission to send on behalf of the specific user
Cause: You haven’t grant Send on behalf permission.

Troubleshoot SMTP communication problems.
If you have problems sending email over SMTP, you may test the SMTP connectivity by using Telnet on the sending server to connect to port 25 on the destination server.

Exchange Troubleshooting Tools
1. Diagnostics Logging,; 2. vent Viewer; 3. Services Logs; 4. Dump Files; 5. Performance Monitor; 6. Network Monitor; 7. Messaging logs.

WINS is a service run on Windows NT servers to provide Windows clients a way to find other Windows computers. WINS (Windows Internet Naming Service) resolves Windows network computer names (also known as NetBIOS names) to Internet IP addresses, allowing Windows computers on a network to easily find and communicate with each other.

DHCP provides a framework for passing configuration information to hosts on a TCP/IP network. DHCP consists of two components: a protocol for delivering host-specific configuration parameters from a DHCP server to a host and a mechanism for allocation of network address to hosts.

DNS is used to resolve the names of websites into the IP addresses of the web servers on which the site is hosted. Without DNS we would have had to type the IP address of the website we wanted to visit, rather than it’s Fully Qualified Domain Name.

The printer spooler service SPOOLSS.EXE (SPOOLSV in Windows 2000/2003) manages jobs sent to printers connected to Windows NT and Windows 2000/2003 machines. (If you’re printing to a remote or networked printer, the Spooler service on the machine which the remote printer is attached to will handle the job.)

On occasion, a print job may refuse to work correctly and may jam the print queue. Worse, it may be impossible to delete the print job through conventional means, i.e., by right-clicking on the job and selecting Cancel, or by selecting Cancel All Documents from the Printer menu. If this happens, it usually means the job itself is corrupt and must be deleted manually.

If you’re trying to delete a stuck print job, take note of the job’s approximate time and date. Then:

Close all open Printers folders.
Stop the Spooler service. In Windows 2000, this is done through the Services icon in Administrative Tools (found in the Control Panel); in Windows NT 4.0, it’s done through the Services icon in the Control Panel. You can also stop the Spooler by typing NET STOP SPOOLER at a command prompt. If you’re using TCP/IP Printing Services, you’ll need to stop that service as well.
Open the %Winroot%\System32\SpoolPrinters directory (same in both operating systems). Make sure Explorer is set to view hidden and system files.
Delete all *.SPL and *.SHD files in that directory that match the time/date stamp of the job you’re trying to kill. If you’re trying to purge everything, delete all files with those extensions.
Close the Printers folder and restart the stopped services. You can restart the Spooler from the command line by typing NET START SPOOLER