Wednesday
Feb292012

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview today

Today Microsoft has released the Consumer Preview of it's highly anticipated Windows 8 OS.  You can download the setup exe here or if you prefer to get an ISO version of it, you can get it here.

I'll be installing it in Vmware Player on top of Windows 7. Happy OSing!

Tuesday
Feb142012

Error message: "User Profile Service service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded.''

This is the dreaded error message you might get for reasons unknown to you.  Maybe you've been hit with malware or somehow deleted your profile without knowing it.  The former is more likely than the latter.  Until you fix it you will not have access to your profile.  I've seen this error ALOT so I would classify it as common.

Click to read more ...

Friday
Feb102012

Internet Explorer keeps resetting default zoom level

The title to this post is misleading. Why? Because Internet Explorer, while it does have its inherent flaws, doesn’t typically cause issues like this. What’s causing this issue is a toolbar. Queue the horror music! What you’ll come to find out about me is that I’m a browser minimalist, I can’t stand toolbars or unnecessary add-ons, extensions, etc.

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Monday
Feb062012

Windows user account management at the Command Line

One thing I do pretty frequently is add and delete user accounts and going through the GUI can be time consuming especially if your dealing with a slow or unresponsive computer. So, what I opt for is using Windows Command line.

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Thursday
Feb022012

Printer driver errors and conflicts

There are some specific problems that can happen if you have a defective print driver or a conflict from having multiple copies of one printer.  Having multiple copies doesn't always result in problems but it's not a good practice and on occasion it will create issues.  For instance your trying to print and you just keep getting an error within the print queue or worse you receive the "Printer spooler service fails" no matter how many times you stop and start it within Services. You've varified that communication to the printer is successful and even reinstalling the driver doesn't fix it. What you need to do is COMPLETELY remove the current printer and all of it's driver files and reinstall it and also delete any duplicate files.  There are couple of different ways to do this depending on what version of Windows your running.

Click to read more ...