Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
I couldn't help butt laugh...
I use Google News to keep up with daily stories, and one of the sections is Health. I lost it when this listing came up...
Friday, January 16, 2009
Outlook Gets My Goat
Since yesterday's blog was such a smashing hit, let's do another exciting tech entry...
Last week I get a call from our packaging manager telling me his email is bombing out so I go out to have a look. The basics: Windows XP Pro, MS Outlook 2003 pulling email from an ISP through POP3... pretty basic...
So, I check out the computer. Sure enough, Outlook starts up, downloads a few emails, then bombs out. My first thought is the PST file. I run the repair routine on it and check it to make sure it hasn't gotten too big. That all checks out. Maybe there is something corrupted in one of the emails causing Outlook to crash, which I've seen before. I download the emails to a different computer with no problems, so the emails themselves aren't causing it. Time to check Outlook itself...
It's kinda cheesy, but I figured I'd try Outlook's 'Detect and Repair' function, because its actually worked for me (once). That resulted in the following message...
No valid sequence could be found for the set of patches
Ugh... This kinda tells me that fixing this problem is gonna take a while, and I didn't have time right then to dig into it. So, I set up our packaging manager with a Gmail account for him to use temporarily which would access his work emails (Gmail is awesome by the way).
Fast forward to today. Packaging is closed up for the day so I get undisturbed access to the computer. The last error message referred to patches, so my next guess is to try updating the MS Office patches. (Yes, most of my job, and my life by the way, revolves around guessing). I was hoping that would at least clear the error and let 'Detect and Repair' run. That's when I get this little gem from Microsoft...
You can't really see it, but it says...
Windows Installer patch files (.MSP files) from previously applied Office updates are missing from the \Windows\Installer hidden directory on your computer.
Nice, so not only is there a problem, but Microsoft is also telling me I cant uninstall. In addition, they don't mention anywhere HOW TO FIX IT. They do give a link to their tech support though... which locked up my browser when I clicked on it. GRRRRR... Like tech support would have been of any help anyways. So of course the next step it to try and tempt fate and uninstall MS Office... but guess what, there's that familiar error message again...
No valid sequence could be found for the set of patches
So instead of uninstalling, I try reinstalling over the existing files. Same error message. Hey, they told me it wasn't gonna work, so they got that part right.
You've got to be kidding me. I'm not reformatting the hard drive just to fix this problem. I spent way too much time trying to figure out ways to fix this including messing with .NLS files, .MSP files in the hidden Installer directory, and even registry edits (which I hate to do). I'm GONNA find a way to get MS Office uninstalled. At this point I'm really kinda starting to get pissed...
Finally I stumbled across this link...
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301
Which leads to an installation clean up program called msicuu2.exe. I downloaded it and ran it, and I only selected MS Office to be repaired from the list. After that I tried to run 'Detect and Repair'. It actually ran through the process!!!... but it didn't fix the problem. I'm making progress though. At this point I decided to try running the uninstall one more time. Either it would work, or the computer would be launched into the nearest snow bank. Thankfully for all involved it uninstalled. Then I was able to reinstall successfully. Five hours later email works again and no computers went airborne in the process. You gotta love computers. I wonder if I could make a living as a goat herder...
Last week I get a call from our packaging manager telling me his email is bombing out so I go out to have a look. The basics: Windows XP Pro, MS Outlook 2003 pulling email from an ISP through POP3... pretty basic...
So, I check out the computer. Sure enough, Outlook starts up, downloads a few emails, then bombs out. My first thought is the PST file. I run the repair routine on it and check it to make sure it hasn't gotten too big. That all checks out. Maybe there is something corrupted in one of the emails causing Outlook to crash, which I've seen before. I download the emails to a different computer with no problems, so the emails themselves aren't causing it. Time to check Outlook itself...
It's kinda cheesy, but I figured I'd try Outlook's 'Detect and Repair' function, because its actually worked for me (once). That resulted in the following message...
No valid sequence could be found for the set of patches
Ugh... This kinda tells me that fixing this problem is gonna take a while, and I didn't have time right then to dig into it. So, I set up our packaging manager with a Gmail account for him to use temporarily which would access his work emails (Gmail is awesome by the way).
Fast forward to today. Packaging is closed up for the day so I get undisturbed access to the computer. The last error message referred to patches, so my next guess is to try updating the MS Office patches. (Yes, most of my job, and my life by the way, revolves around guessing). I was hoping that would at least clear the error and let 'Detect and Repair' run. That's when I get this little gem from Microsoft...
You can't really see it, but it says...Windows Installer patch files (.MSP files) from previously applied Office updates are missing from the \Windows\Installer hidden directory on your computer.
Nice, so not only is there a problem, but Microsoft is also telling me I cant uninstall. In addition, they don't mention anywhere HOW TO FIX IT. They do give a link to their tech support though... which locked up my browser when I clicked on it. GRRRRR... Like tech support would have been of any help anyways. So of course the next step it to try and tempt fate and uninstall MS Office... but guess what, there's that familiar error message again...
No valid sequence could be found for the set of patches
So instead of uninstalling, I try reinstalling over the existing files. Same error message. Hey, they told me it wasn't gonna work, so they got that part right.
You've got to be kidding me. I'm not reformatting the hard drive just to fix this problem. I spent way too much time trying to figure out ways to fix this including messing with .NLS files, .MSP files in the hidden Installer directory, and even registry edits (which I hate to do). I'm GONNA find a way to get MS Office uninstalled. At this point I'm really kinda starting to get pissed...
Finally I stumbled across this link...
http://support.microsoft.com/
Which leads to an installation clean up program called msicuu2.exe. I downloaded it and ran it, and I only selected MS Office to be repaired from the list. After that I tried to run 'Detect and Repair'. It actually ran through the process!!!... but it didn't fix the problem. I'm making progress though. At this point I decided to try running the uninstall one more time. Either it would work, or the computer would be launched into the nearest snow bank. Thankfully for all involved it uninstalled. Then I was able to reinstall successfully. Five hours later email works again and no computers went airborne in the process. You gotta love computers. I wonder if I could make a living as a goat herder...
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Hard Drive Hard Times
As you've noticed, I haven't posted much here lately... Well, ok, since (almost) no one reads this blog, I'm sure no one has noticed ;-) There are a few entries here that I refer back to from time to time regarding tech info, so I'm gonna use this entry to record future reference information for myself. I'm sure it will be completely boring for everyone else, but oh well...
Yesterday a computer in the accounting department died. Blue Screen Of Death... Hard drive failure... Ugh. It's a Dell GX280 going on four years old. I've had hard drive problems with these systems before. I actually preemptively replaced all of these hard drives once and haven't had too many problems since. Anyways, I wanna record my repair procedure in case I have to do this again because I know I'll forget the little nuances...
1. Boot from the Dell Recovery (Blue) CD
2. Exit Setup and go to the Recovery Console
3. Run chkdsk /R at the prompt
4. Get lucky and have this actually fix the problem
5. Realize the problem is actually the hard drive failing so I'm not done
6. Do the rest of these steps to replace the hard drive
7. Boot to Windows (XP Pro for me)
8. Load Ghost 9.0
9. Shut Down
10. Install 2nd (Blank) hard drive
11. Turn on machine and go into BIOS
12. Enable new hard drive so the system recognizes it
12.5 Log in as Admin
14. Run Ghost to duplicate hard drive
15. Set the following switches in Ghost...
- Check Source for file system errors
- Resize drive to fill
- Set drive active
- Copy MBR
16. Run it, wait for it to finish
17. Try to boot from new hard drive
18. It doesn't work... probably get something like...
"windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem"
19. Boot to old hard drive with new hard drive hooked up as 2nd drive
20. Log in as Admin
21. Start Menu - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management
22. Right click new drive
23. Change Drive Letter & Paths
24. Add - F:
25. Shut down computer
26. Set up system with new hard drive as the only hard drive
27. Boot from the Dell Recovery (Blue) CD
28. Exit Setup and go to the Recovery Console
29. Run bootcfg /rebuild at prompt
30. It will ask a few questions after it rebuilds for a while
- Add installation to boot list?... Answer Y
- Enter Load Identifier... Answer Windows XP Professional
- Enter Load Options... Leave blank, just hit Enter
31. Reboot
32. The option of two installs to boot from comes up
33. Select the top one... Windows XP Professional
34. Log in as Admin
35. Right click My Computer and select Properties
36. Go into Advanced, Startup & Recovery, Settings, System Startup
37. Click the Edit button
38. Delete the bottom line to get rid of the faulty boot option
39. Save and exit
40. Reboot - Login as Admin - Unload Ghost
This same procedure has actually worked on two separate machines for me. I still have to reload the accounting software on the pc that I fixed yesterday, but other than that... so far so good (knock on wood)
Yesterday a computer in the accounting department died. Blue Screen Of Death... Hard drive failure... Ugh. It's a Dell GX280 going on four years old. I've had hard drive problems with these systems before. I actually preemptively replaced all of these hard drives once and haven't had too many problems since. Anyways, I wanna record my repair procedure in case I have to do this again because I know I'll forget the little nuances...
1. Boot from the Dell Recovery (Blue) CD
2. Exit Setup and go to the Recovery Console
3. Run chkdsk /R at the prompt
4. Get lucky and have this actually fix the problem
5. Realize the problem is actually the hard drive failing so I'm not done
6. Do the rest of these steps to replace the hard drive
7. Boot to Windows (XP Pro for me)
8. Load Ghost 9.0
9. Shut Down
10. Install 2nd (Blank) hard drive
11. Turn on machine and go into BIOS
12. Enable new hard drive so the system recognizes it
12.5 Log in as Admin
14. Run Ghost to duplicate hard drive
15. Set the following switches in Ghost...
- Check Source for file system errors
- Resize drive to fill
- Set drive active
- Copy MBR
16. Run it, wait for it to finish
17. Try to boot from new hard drive
18. It doesn't work... probably get something like...
"windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem"
19. Boot to old hard drive with new hard drive hooked up as 2nd drive
20. Log in as Admin
21. Start Menu - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management
22. Right click new drive
23. Change Drive Letter & Paths
24. Add - F:
25. Shut down computer
26. Set up system with new hard drive as the only hard drive
27. Boot from the Dell Recovery (Blue) CD
28. Exit Setup and go to the Recovery Console
29. Run bootcfg /rebuild at prompt
30. It will ask a few questions after it rebuilds for a while
- Add installation to boot list?... Answer Y
- Enter Load Identifier... Answer Windows XP Professional
- Enter Load Options... Leave blank, just hit Enter
31. Reboot
32. The option of two installs to boot from comes up
33. Select the top one... Windows XP Professional
34. Log in as Admin
35. Right click My Computer and select Properties
36. Go into Advanced, Startup & Recovery, Settings, System Startup
37. Click the Edit button
38. Delete the bottom line to get rid of the faulty boot option
39. Save and exit
40. Reboot - Login as Admin - Unload Ghost
This same procedure has actually worked on two separate machines for me. I still have to reload the accounting software on the pc that I fixed yesterday, but other than that... so far so good (knock on wood)
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