Category: Bugs and Fixes

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Office 2013 Installer Failure | “not supported upgrading from a preview version”

Well you are likely here because you are the adventurous type who had Office 2013 Preview installed and then tried to uninstall and install the full release.

Microsoft Office 2013 does not support upgrading from a preview version of Microsoft Office 2013. You must first uninstall these preview versions of Microsoft Office 2013 products and associated technologies:

Microsoft Office 2013 Professional Plus 2013

Some may advise you to go into control panel and remove all Office items from the programs list. However if you are like me then that will not be enough.

If you are still having issues after reviewing the programs list in the control panel then go ahead and delete the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products0005102110000000100000000F01FEC

If for some reason that isn’t enough, then delete these as well:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Patches\D5360E4B109548941BFB078A144B11D5
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Patches\D5360E4B109548941BFB078A144B11D5
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\

if that still doesn’t do it, then search for the phrase “2013” at the root of the registry and start wacking keys that look office 2013 related. However I am pretty sure that first one will take care of you.

Hey if I helped ya, or you can add something to the conversation then please let me know in the comments belooooooow! I take payment in the form of “thanks” in the comments 😉

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Installing Windows 8 RTM to Apple Macbook Air (Boot Camp)

Hey everyone, I wanted to make a few notes to help others get Windows 8 running on their Macbook Air without it locking, freezing, or poor network performance.

First we should stop that whole freezing problem or you will get very upset in the middle of a driver install (been there.)

You need to open a command prompt as administrator. You can do this by clicking start, then typing “cmd” right clicking on the cmd icon and selecting “Run as Administrator’”

Once open run this command:

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes

For those who want to know what this does please check out this great post: http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/06/28/workaround-for-windows-8-freezing-issues/

Once installed you will need reboot then install the boot camp drivers. This is done by making the install disk in Apple OS (Mountain Kitty). THERE IS NO DOWNLOAD LINK FOR THIS! DARN YOU APPLE!!! WHAT A PAIN! /RANT OFF

Once you have the Boot Camp disk, copy the contents to a folder on your desktop. Right click on the setup.exe, go to the compatibility tab, then click “Change settings for all users” button on the bottom.

On the next screen change the  “run this program in compatibility mode for:” to Windows 7. Additionally check off the bottom box for “run this program as an administrator”.

Then click OK, then OK again, then run the setup.exe

Once installed go ahead and reboot. This should get you part of the way.

Don’t delete that BootCamp Install folder just yet, deep in there we need the following folder. Just be aware, we will use it soon.

\Drivers\NVidia\NVidiaChipset64

Now lets click the start button, type “device manager” and click the settings “thing” on the top right to discover the “device manager” icon from the remains of the control panel.

Once device manager is open we have a few things to do. First lets take care of those two peskey un-drivered devices “coprocessor” and “SM Bus”.

Right click on one at a time and update the driver. Direct Windows to that folder on the desktop for \Drivers\NVidia\NVidiaChipset64 (or 32 if you are running x86). This folder should be able to updated both missing drivers.

NEXT lets go ahead and change the WiFi driver back to the native Windows 8 driver (Bootcamp had replaced it with a lesser driver that has some issues only in windows 8.)

Simply find the Wireless Network Adapter, its something like “Boardcom 802.11n” right click then “update driver software”, then Search Automaticly for updated drivers.

Thank should do it. Go ahead and reboot one last time for good measure.

Hopefully that saves some of you some time. IF I have helped you all I ask in return is leave a comment and say so. I get a great kick out of it.

Cheers!

-Eric

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Windows NPS Stops Authenticating Wireless Users

Had a funny issue raised from the helpdesk today. All of a sudden all of our Wireless users were no longer to connect to the internal wifi network that was protected by 802.11x PEAP via Merkai -> RADIUS -> NPS (Network Policy Server) -> Active Directory.

We had errors like this:

“Network Policy Server discarded the request for a user.”

“An internal error occurred. Check the system event log for additional information.”

And of course the logs at c:\windows\system32\logfiles had nothing of value in them.

Another thing was that Event Logging from NPS stopped although the service was still running.

CAUSE:

It turns out it was just because the certificate NPS uses was renewed automatically thanks to GPO / AD. NPS doesn’t handle the transition well.

FIX:

All you have to do is change the certificate to another certificate and back to the one that was auto renewed. if you only have one then create another, change it to that, then swap back to the correct auto renewed on.

If you don’t know where to select it, it is under Policies -> Network Policies -> <your policy that grants users access) -> Constraints tab -> Authentication Mode -> Microsoft: Protected EAP (PEAP) [EDIT]

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Fix: Lync Client for Mac OSX disconnects within 1 minute of connecting.

This comes second hand from a work college but I figured I should post it since there is nothing on the web about this issue.

Basically as it is described to me, Lync client for Mac OSX (10.6 and 10.7) will connect, show presence, but within one minute it blanks out and disconnects with an error.

Here is a sample error log from a TechNet Forums post where I got the solution from:

2011/12/22 10:46:04.328 [o365] process server certificate from input token failed

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ocsclients/thread/af8935f3-e1a0-47bc-9792-536c07e0ecf2 

So there isn’t a fix just yet however there is a work around. This seemed to resolve the issue, thanks to "Jonathanpisarczyk" on the forums:

Open Lync Control Panel -> security
in the right pane we can find the authentication methods
Double click on the global setting so that we can edit that.
Uncheck the Enable Certificate Authentication.
Commit the changes.
User will need to signoff and back on.

If you have any other details on resolutions please leave them below in the comments.

 

UPDATE: Ok here some new info. This fixed us only for a few days then we had the problem again. We then fixed it by re-enabling the certificate based authentication. Some posts claim post CU4 you should keep it enabled. Perhaps turning it off and back on fixes it? My college likes to say "jiggle the toilet handle"

-Eric

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Fix: None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient.

So I am a huge fan of these odd ball issues. When one of my users called me telling me they couldn’t send a “few” messages to people I told the helpdesk I was going to look into it myself.

They got this NDR back:

“None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient.”

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Now I have never seen that error before, and what really got my interest was there was no x.x.x error code. This lead me to think it was a local issue with the client.

Some Google searching lead me to think it had to do with missing message connectors (like fax, etc..) but this user didn’t have any of that.

Some times it really helps to just talk to the end user. After speaking to her we discovered this only happened when clicking a mailto: hyperlink from a forwarded email down in the thread.

image

When I went back to my desk I noticed that my FROM: tags were not hyperlinked like the ones from my user.

After comparing the differences I finally noticed that she had the SalesForce.com plug-in installed. What it is doing is actually sending outlook a email type of “MAILTO” instead of SMTP.

After pressing ALT+K you can double click the resolved address and see what the email type is. If its set to MAILTO it will not work. You can however press the internet type button and it will change it to SMTP (which will allow it to send).

image

So there is no real solution right now, I am going to check with SF.com enterprise support but I have a feeling they wont do anything about it. After showing the end user what not to do and showing how to correct it she was happy enough with the solution.

If you find the same problem or any other add-on causing this please let me know so I can add it to the list.

UPDATE: Thanks to Andrew down there in the comments Outlook 2007 has been patched by MS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2475888/en-us

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Tom, we now know MS is hopefully rolling out a patch for Outlook 2010 sometime this month (fingers crossed).

UPDATE 3: I just saw there might be a fix for 2010 you can test out this hotfix from MS. If it works let me know in the comments: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2475888/en-us or possibly http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2597052.

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Fix: Microsoft Exchange 2007 | “The system cannot find the file specified”

In my rush to get a demo network setup for a customer I was trying to install Microsoft Exchange 2007 onto a Windows 2008 R2 Server and got this error: “the system cannot find the file specified”.

Fix: All you need to do is install the RSAT tools for the OS you are installing it to. For Windows 2008 R2 just go to server manager, features, add features, then add the remote administration tools.

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Fix: Facebook for BlackBerry contact and calendar sync disabled | Options Grayed out

So with Facebook for Blackberry in version 1.5 they introduced three new options.

  • BlackBerry Calendar Application
  • BlackBerry Message Application
  • BlackBerry Contacts Application

They are really cool features. The Contacts Application sync’ed all my Facebook profile images with my contacts in BlackBerry. When someone calls, their profile photo shows on the caller ID.

Anyways, when I upgraded to 1.6 and beyond, the Calendar and Contacts options grayed out and were no longer able to be selected.


To fix this you need to have access to your BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

If you are using 4.x then follow the directions here: Facebook for BlackBerry contact and calendar sync disabled in 1.6

If you are using 5.x of BES Server then you need to follow the directions here: BlackBerry 5.0 Applications Not Working | Permissions Issues

Enjoy!

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Fix: Amazon Kindle App for BlackBerry Not Working | Permissions Issue

Finally! Amazon releases the Kindle application. Thank you Amazon!

Unfortunately with the default policies enforced by a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 5.0 I was unable to open the application.

I have created directions for fixing the issue here: BlackBerry 5.0 Applications Not Working | Permissions Issues

Few other disappointing things on the Kindle application for BlackBerry:

  • Lack of support for the BlackBerry Storm 1 or 2. It will only go portrait, won’t turn to landscape view. | iPhone version has this
  • No inverted colors (white text on black), Blackberries have really bad brightness controls, trying to read a book in the dark burns your eyeballs out when the background is white and the brightness is set too high. It also wastes the battery. | iPhone version has this

Other than that it does work as advertised. Amazon if you are out there please make a revision with these two basic and simple things in it. While you are at it please add inverted colors to the desktop version too. Please?

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Fix: BlackBerry 5.0 Applications Not Working | Permissions Issues

Since BlackBerry Device 5.0 OS and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) 5.0 a lot of applications no longer work by default. They prompt you for the permissions that the app would like to have. However if you are on a corporate BES server you may not be able to select “allowed”, you may only have the “Prompt” and “Deny”.

If this is the case have no fear. I have already called T-Support and been told its not their problem and I should see the app vendor. Thanks RIM again for that really awesome level 1 support. However this is in fact not the case, it is a BES server issue. RIM should really have level one technical reps that at least know all the corners of the BES application or they shouldn’t be supporting it.

I was able to find the “Application Control Polices” causing the issue. To get this fixed you need to have admin rights to the BES server or get your Admin to do it for you.

Configuring “Application Control Polices”

1) Logon to the BES Server

2) Click on the “Manage Application Control Policies for unlisted Applications” under BlackBerry Solution Management -> Software (on the left had side).

3) Then click on the “Standard Unlisted Optional” link on the right had side

4) Next click the “Edit Application Control Policy” and then “Access Settings” Tab.

5) Finally change the needed permission here. Unfortunately they don’t map name for name on OS and BES so you will have to do some trial and error. Also I have found updating the policy then doing a battery pull on the device and waiting 5 minutes generally tends to get the new policy down to the device.

DISCLAIMER TIME: I have no idea how unsecure this makes your deployment. Use these directions at your own risk. I have set all to “allowed” for the purpose of this screenshot only, I do not recommend doing this unless you know what you are doing. I would love to see some comments on what you find as some of this still doesn’t make total sense to me.