Larry’s Things .net

Had a problem where Internet Explorer does not work properly but Firefox works fine.   Researching on Google does not find anything of use.   However, I did stumble on a solution that wasn’t mentioned anywhere…  I had a hunch that there was some sort of internet security software installed, but looking around on the computer revealed nothing, except for an empty folder link to “Norton Internet Security” .   So the theory is that there still may be some components installed by Norton that was interfering with Internet Explorer… knowing which components was going to take too much work.   Luckily , Norton has written a program called “Norton Removal Tool”, which will remove all traces of Norton software.   Google searching “Norton Removal Tool” ,  download and run the tool - it may require that you uninstall some other norton software first.   Note - IE will still not work after running the tool, but if you reboot your computer, IE will magically work again.

Problem:   Typing in the first few characters in the To: field should bring up a list of recently used email addresses from the outlook nickname file nk2.   Suddenly stops working and only shows small number of suggestions.   Adding subsequent addresses seems to show up, but previous ones do not.

Solution:  In a command prompt - cmd - go to:  “C:\ Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook”

- Rename outlook.nk2 to something else, i.e.  outlookbackup.nk2

- Close all Outlook instances.

- start Outlook again

- in my case - Outlook crashed after creating a new email message - kill the Outlook process if it crashes

- if outlook is still open - close all instances

- go back to the command line and into the same folder as the first step

- rename outlook.nk2 to something else (this is a very small file probably 0 kb - and can be deleted later on)

- rename that first file outlooknk2.backup to outlook.nk2

- start Outlook again and the autocomplete should be working agian.

I had a case where I converted a physical linux machine (pentium III with ide drives) to vmware (both vmware server and vmware esxi) , and it modified the virtual drive type to scsi.    Unfortunately, this caused the virtualized linux machine to not boot, as it’s looking to boot via /dev/hda , not /dev/sda.  The virtual systems didn’t allow to mount a scsi virtual drive as an ide drive - will give an error like “scsi drive geometry not usable in ide” .   A possible fix is to modify the linux boot to look for /dev/sda instead of /dev/hda.   I took the alternate route instead by

1) creating a  blank IDE hard drive in the virtual machine with the same size as the original hard drive

2) mounting the virtual machine to an ISO image of KNOPPIX or any other type of linux livecd.

3) turn on the virtual linux machine and get it to boot the ISO cd.

4)  I like to boot knoppix/linux into text mode, so I usually type in    knoppix 2 dma  at the boot prompt

5) onced booted,  check to see which drives are which,   I use   dmesg | grep sd   and    dmesg | grep hd     .    For my case, /dev/sda was the unbootable scsi drive, and /dev/hda was the blank ide drive I just created.

6)  use the command to image sda to hda :       dd if=/dev/sda  of=/dev/hda  

7)   you could also add  bs=16M  or whatever blocksize to use, depends on how much memory you have available in the virtual machine.

8)  after completion, shut down the virtual machine, then disable the original scsi drive,  or just change the boot order in the bios to make sure the ide drive boots first.

9)  that’s it, you’re done.

I’ve had this problem several times already.  The symptoms are that after importing a physical machine to a virtual machine using the vmware converter software, the resulting virtual machine boot is just a black screen with a flashing cursor.   The problem stems with the converter software keeping the disk controller the same (Preserve Source option) …  however, when using the vSphere import, or cold converter cd, it doesn’t give an option to change the Disk Controller.   The way to do it is to use the windows based VMware Converter Standalone, to convert a physical machine or an existing non-booting virtual machine.   Point the converter software to your non-booting virtual machine and go through all the steps until you hit step #3 View/Edit Options .   Click on EDIT next to Devices,  you will then see the “Disk Controller” drop down, then change the setting from “Preserve Source” to SCSI LSI Logic.   This will force the converter software to go into the virtual machine image Windows configuration and make the necessary changes from an IDE system to an SCSI LSI Logic system.

Why does this problem happen?   I suspect that the converter software, when set to Preserve Source, keeps all the disk drivers intact during  the conversion.   However, different servers use different IDE drivers, so if it deviates from the standard IDE drivers, then the converted virtual machine chokes.   Changing to a SCSI disk controller, does not mean that it is better or more reliable in the virtual machine, but instead just means that you forced the converter to change the drivers within the Windows OS to use SCSI instead of IDE, thus avoiding the non-matching IDE drivers.

On physical console, press ctrl-alt-F1 .   Type in:

unsupported

(enter)

password is the same as the root password.

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Symptoms : After installing sp3 and restarting…  the windows boot screen starts for a short while, turns black, then returns with a blue screen of death.

Cause:  SP3 installs two updated usb drivers that causes Windows to crash, the files are  windows\system32\drivers\usbehci.sys and windows\system32\drivers\usbport.sys

Fix:

1st - you have to get into windows somehow - if you have a ps2 keyboard port, then disconnect all usb devices and connect a ps2 keyboard, and then boot the computer.   Computer will boot with no problems, and you can replace those 2 files with older versions.  

If that’s not possible, then you’ll need to transplant the drive to another computer and access the drive to change those 2 files.   

Alternatively - use a BartPE disk, or Linux CD to access the drive.

Allows backup to almost any media, and full bare metal recovery.

Mondo Rescue

http://www.mondorescue.org/

Tried to observe the supposed solar tsunami that was supposed to occur this week.  Went to Sutton, Ontario - southern edge of Lake Simcoe at around 12:30 am Wednesday and observed completely clear skies.  Observed sky for around 1 hour and saw no aurora displays at all.   However, I saw 3 shooting stars.   No aurora, but still a beautiful clear night.

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Excerpts from Adrian Chung - senior manager J.D. Power -

last place - Conservatory Group

2nd last - Fieldgate Homes

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