Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) on Windows 7 is fucked (and for the love of Pete I can’t fix it)

Posted in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Windows on February 2, 2010 by dublinranch

Been a while since I’ve provided a tale of computer woe.  Picture this – Windows 7 – trying to use Sharepoint with credentials for work only to be badgered every time the screen refreshes with (count them) 10 credential challenges.  One day Sharepoint is working – the next day it isn’t – not reproducible on other computers – and nothing (I mean it nothing) changed on my computer.  That means seeing this dialogue box 10 times and clearing it 10 times for page of Sharepoint:

Ok – fine.  Let’s call in IT – they’ll know what to do. “Have you tried rebooting?” (yes). Back to the drawing board.

How about reseting Internet Explorer 8 (on Windows 7 64-bit for those that are interested).  Fine – in the Advanced options of Internet Settings there is a Reset option.  I go ahead and do that only to see this error:

“IE 7.0 unattended install utility has stopped working (ieunatt.exe).”  That’s helpful.  And why is an IE 7 utility participating in the reset of IE 8? And why is a built-in Windows utility crashing in the first place (a utility intended to solve problems).

Needless to say no problem solved.  Still fucked.  Anyone have suggestions (and I’ve tried these suggestions: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/faa79f99-cb42-4354-bc20-7601233d6eec)?

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Microsoft Outlook – can you please be a little less fucked?

Posted in Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows, Smartphone with tags , , , on January 15, 2010 by dublinranch

Has this happened to you:

  • Accept Outlook meeting organized by someone else
  • Later try to decline Outlook meeting
  • Outlook won’t let you – claiming you are the organizer of the meeting
  • If you delete the meeting everyone gets a meeting cancelled notice… even though you never owned the meeting!

That is fucked.  I have a theory it is due to Microsoft Outlook not doing a good job of handling the combination of access via the client, via a browser and/or via a smart phone (through Microsoft ActiveSync).  I could be completely wrong but the symptom of the problem is very annoying.

Here is my work around solution: when a meeting that I didn’t create claims I’m the owner I switch from the Outlook client to the web-based version of Outlook… and everything works.  Whatever was confused gets un-confused.

I’d call Microsoft support for help… but that would be akin to dipping myself in boiling acid (meaning painful and pointless).

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Virgin America and Computers – Definitely Not Fucked

Posted in Smartphone, WiFi with tags , , on January 8, 2010 by dublinranch

That’s right – you are about to read a positive article on ReallyFuckedComputer.com.  It had to happen.  It will hopefully happen again.

Just back from a vacation from west coast to east coast - air travel not avoidable (any volunteers to author ReallyFuckedAirTravel.com?).  For the first time our family gave Virgin America a go.  We’re never looking back.

Here are the “not fucked” elements:

  • AC power at every seat.  That’s right every seat.  Emirates (another ReallyFuckedComputer.com favorite airline) has power on some airplanes and some seats.  Virgin America offers AC power on every airplane and every seat. (Note: only slightly fucked is the challenge of finding the outlet – hard to see unless you are a contortionist).  That means I was on my notebook PC getting some work done.  My older daughter was watching Glee on her notebook PC.  My younger daughter was surfing on her new iPod Touch (thanks Santa) and … my wife was asleep (but she had the option of geeking out).  ReallyFuckedComputer.com also recommends SeatGuru.com to get a view of features – by seat – on just about every airline.
  • WiFi on every flight.  That’s right every flight.  Are you going to experience online gaming friendly low latency cable broadband speeds? No – of course not.  Are you going to be connected to the Internet and therefore removed from the mind-numbing boredom that air travel has become? Yes.
  • Satellite TV.  If your computer (or WiFi connected smart phone or iPod Touch) isn’t enough to distract you for a flight, there is always satellite TV and all the pay per view content.
  • On demand food – from your seat.  Is the food free? No.  Is the food crap (which is usually the case with “free” airline food)? Not so much.  You order and pay from the entertainment system at your seat and a minute or two later your food arrives.
  • Slightly more legroom.  All airlines – unless you swing an upgrade – are in the fucked category for legroom.  Virgin America is slightly less fucked.
  • There might be positives about the built-in gaming but I didn’t try that… so feel free to comment.

(p.s., I am not a paid spokesperson for Virgin America – but if they’d like to send me a thank you gift I’ll take it.)

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Yet another wireless router disappoints

Posted in Uncategorized on December 22, 2009 by dublinranch

Ah fuck.  At the in-laws over Christmas fighting with their no-name wireless router.  Consistently having DNS problems.  So when I should be goofing off I’m futzing with technology.

Ok you say perhaps I could just live without Internet access for a week.  Sure.  Why not.  What’s the worst thing that could happen?

Happy Holidays from ReallyFuckedComputer.com.  Signing off until 2010.

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Shouldn’ve paid $100 for a used work computer

Posted in Microsoft Windows with tags on December 3, 2009 by dublinranch

Fuck.  Shoulda known.  You get what you pay for.  Buyer beware.  Any other cliches to add?

My employer offered a cheap used computer due to upgrades – slimline Dell for $100.  Not too speedy (but not bad), onboard video (crappy), medium size hard disk.  I have several serious computers at home and went for this used computer to replace an even older crappier computer that had to be ditched.  Used for some basic stuff.

Mistake – never upgrade a crappy computer with a slightly less crappy computer.  After going to the trouble of:

  • upgrading the used computer from Windows Vista to Windows 7
  • adding a real video card… and struggling to find a slimline suitable video card (slimline computer buyer beware – great look, painful if you want to extend / upgrade)
  • moving over a couple of hard drives from the older computer – and getting power and other adapters to make it fit

Worked great… for a month… then died – possibly power supply? Something hardware related.

So I end up buying a new tower after all – Black Friday pricing slighly reducing the pain of the wasted $100.  (No refund policy when you buy a used castaway computer from your company’s IT staff.)

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Windows 7 – still not completely secure

Posted in Viruses and Scams, Windows Vista with tags , on November 26, 2009 by dublinranch

For my job I need to sometimes deliberately infect a computer (that’s right – deliberately).  There are test viruses out there – and that’s fine – but this time I needed the real deal to test some virus removal services.  Since I’ve upgraded a number of computers to Windows 7 I decided to take a run at infecting Windows 7.

First I removed the installed anti-virus software (not that I completely believe in AV software – AV works except when it doesn’t).

Then I installed some P2P torrent software and started downloading some “content”.  Then I installed some particularly obnoxious toolbars.  Nothing.  Day 1 ends with a computer stuffed up with crap, but no viruses.

Day 2 – I really want to avoid visiting salacious sites (but I was prepared to do so, if necessary, to support the cause).  Having recently read about nasty scam-ads tied to social gaming sites I decided to give that a whirl.  I registered for a social gaming site and started poking about.  Sure enough a suspicious ad appeared, offering a video for me to view… the link to that site presented me with a page to update Flash.  Since I wasn’t anywhere near the Flash site and the link smelled wrong I hoped for the best and…

…bingo! Trying to run the bogus Flash update application caused Windows 7 to fucking blue screen.  You heard that – the all-mighty Windows 7 (which I do like, so no offense) fucking BLUE SCREENED.

After a reboot everything seemed ok, but I decided to let the computer fester a bit while I headed out to dinner with the family.

Upon my return a joyous sight awaited me.  Pop-ups! Warnings of infections (from bogus AV software)! Multiple browsers opened with ads galore!

The moral of the story – Windows is Windows even if it has a “7″ in the title.

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Note to Outlook – Stopping Fucking with my Meetings!

Posted in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows, Smartphone with tags , , on November 10, 2009 by dublinranch

I have a theory – buggy Microsoft ActiveSync code combined with the out of control use of smartphones for corporate email (ok, I’m part of the problem) has resulted in meeting madness.  Madness I say.   MADNESS.  Here is one example of how Outlook gets confused: I accept a meeting, sometimes on my smartphone, sometimes on my PC.  Everything is fine until I want to delete the meeting from my calendar later on… but I can’t – I’ve somehow become the meeting owner and if I delete the meeting I delete it for everyone.  And I can’t decline the meeting because somehow I own it!  This lands in the fingerpointing deadzone of tech support.  Very hard to reproduce – seemingly random (but nothing digital is actually random – everything digital is deterministic even if the root cause is hard to find).  Sprint can’t help – not fair to expect they could help.  Palm (I’m a Pre owner) can’t help – perhaps it is their implementation of ActiveSync… except iPhone and BlackBerry users have experienced the same problem.

So I have to point the finger squarely at Microsoft – Outlook should be able to handle and prevent situtations like this – ActiveSync is the gatekeeper to 3rd parties accessing Outlook.

And when you point the finger at Microsoft… well, I guess I’ll just have to live with the problem.

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NetNanny… kinda fucked (and likely would filter this blog)

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , on November 6, 2009 by dublinranch

I have two daughters – one a teenager – so protecting them from Internet predators and other Internet nasties is a real concern.  I’m tech savvy and have done things like blocking some sites (like www.myspace.com – or the red light district of the Internet in my opionion) right at the router.  Well, my tech savvy older daughter got around that by latching on to a neighbor’s insecure hotspot (not to do anything really bad but to read MySpace pages on her favorite bands).  Parental controls is a landscape, I’ve found, littered with fancy promises and lousy delivery.

So I tried a trial of NetNanny (glad I didn’t pay) to perform web filtering and IM traffic capture.  At least in my experience with NetNanny the software was a nuisance to truly configure and filled my inbox with bogus alerts.  With the web filter turned on my daughter couldn’t get to legit websites like www.cnn.com sometimes because, in one example, an article on the dangers of smoking contained the word cigarette!

The feature I most wanted – IM message capture – never seemed to work… and the thought of tracking down NetNanny tech support to try and fix the problem… well, we all know what tech support is like.

So now I’m trying out Microsoft’s Windows Live Family Safety option (free) that can be bolted on to Windows 7.  I already tossed out our existing AV/AS for Microsoft Security Essentials (free, small download).

You are likely thinking – hey – why are you replacing NetNanny’s fucked software with Microsoft’s likely fucked software?  The answer is easy – I need more material for this blog…

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Hello, it’s a notebook, it shouldn’t lock just because I plugged it in…

Posted in Microsoft Windows with tags , , , on October 30, 2009 by dublinranch

I have a Dell Latitude E6500 running Windows 7 64-bit with 8GB of RAM.  Window Experience Index is 5.4 – 6.1 across all categories except (alas) the graphics card which pulls it down to a 4.3.  Still, other than being a bit heavy and chewing through batteries it is a fast PC.  I need that for the business analytics I do at work (this is a work PC).

You think I’d be anything but fucked with such a sweet PC ride at work.  You’d think.

Unfortunately, this PC has provided me several reasons to blog – one of which I’d love a cure for (I’ve Google’d and Google’d to no avail).  All three are annoying given this is a notebook computer.

1. Randomly – no warning – no pattern – when I hook my notebook up to power the computer locks – freezes – dead.  No solution but to yank the power and the battery for a hard reset.  Seems like a hardware issue with the power connector / socket.  Solution? Paranoia and saving before I mess with the notebook’s power adapter.

2. The Dell Latitude E6500 docking station can handle a hot remove… but I can’t hot dock which means hibernating or suspending before I dock the computer.  Annoying.

3. This is the problem I could use help with ’cause I don’ t think there is anything to be done about 1 & 2.  When I use sleep (instead of hibernate) my computer will wake-up in my computer back overnight, completely draining the battery (and getting very hot in the process) and ending up dead in the water in the morning.  As a result I avoid sleep mode – annoying.  I’ve looked for network adapters that wake up, scheduled tasks, power settings – anything that could wake up the PC.  Nothing.  My wife and daughter’s HP notebooks don’t act this way.  Help?

There you go – three tales of notebook woe courtesy of Dell’s minions.

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Windows 7 really is excellent (and just a little fucked)

Posted in Microsoft Windows on October 21, 2009 by dublinranch

I haven’t posted in a while… why? Because I’ve upgraded most of my computers to Windows 7 and the positive buzz on Windows 7 is justified.  Features like Aero Snap and Aero Peek plus the new Taskbar are useful and productivity boosting.  I haven’t really noticed the battery life improvement (rumored at 20% for notebooks), but do see a faster boot time.  There is a “can’t have your cake and eat it too” caveat on boot time – it appears stuff not loaded during book gets loaded… later and can slow down other apps initial launch (Outlook 2007 starts up much slower right after booting into Windows – I suspect due to pre-reqs not loaded in the shortened Windows 7 boot process that are loaded on demand with Outlook 2007).

It was a relief, for the tone of this blog, to have something slightly fucked about Windows 7 appear… after a Windows Update the following error message appeared:

Windows 7 Update Error

Windows 7 Update Error

Ah the infamous “Code 80070020 Windows Update encountered an unknown error” error.  And is that really an “unknown error” if the definition of 80070020 is “unknown error”? That’s beside the point.

It appears the problem is with updating the NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT device driver (a tasty 108 MB update).  Alas – until this point Windows 7’s track record with device drivers had been so clean.  It was too good to be true.

Windows is, after all, still Windows and therefore slightly fucked.

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