Tag Archives: microsoft

everything is related to Microsoft

Onenote printer missing after updating Office SP1

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image I don’t know this sort of problem happening really; but it’s really suck since this virtual printer is so valuable.

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If you do update this, you will suddenly find that you are not able to print anything to OneNote again and it’s not just easy adding printer, and you will get it. :-P

Unfortunately, the solution is much easier–repair the program via add/remove programs.

  1. Control Panel >> Add/remove program (or Program and features in Vista)
  2. Choose Microsoft Office 2007, then click change
  3. Click next, next, …, until it’s done.
  4. after all, you have your OneNote printer back, easy?

:-P it’s easy to fix; nonetheless, the truth is this shouldn’t happen ever :-X

Popularity: 4% [?]

Vista eating up your hard drive, good or bad?

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image Okay this was my problem with my new tablet since I have it only 2 weeks or so. But with 120GB it has really is left only 29-31GB which means I used about 70 GB already (5.5GB is being separated to another partition). All my programs are like 20 programs or so, including heavy-weight stuffs like Microsoft Office 2007 (625MB), Thunderbird DB (600MB), Eclipse (330MB), Photoshop CS2(210MB), PC-Doctor-5(130MB)–bundled with my tablet–I’m not quite sure what is really is :-P I’ll give it a shot first. However, all these programs, including Vista business, and my data, are only 30GB. So where the heck is another 30G?

Let’s see; I had tried with all my common sense and it came up with nothing; I felt like when I was finding the photos in my treo in FileZ; you couldn’t see whether they are in memory at all! (if you are using Palm NVFS-based device, try by yourself; you’ll see what I’m talking about) What I did is using Disk Cleanup, deleting all temp files, checking all the program that might related with backup/restore, turning off UAC, getting into safemode with admin account to find where that file is, and restarting many times. I still found no clue. You may see 2 figures below. That really conflicts with what my computer shown above!

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I hadn’t known what the hidden 30GB file is until I googled it. I found that Vista has a whole new system of system restore, including new strange name–shadow copy storage. For Vista you couldn’t adjust how large the storage for system restore is by GUI anymore. It shows only a bit information, and a check box to turn on/off. So what does the system restore differ to the old one on XP? I can say that they are practically the same but, on Vista, it’s much more elegant and powerful (or too powerful, I guess)

“In Windows XP, System Restore uses a file system filter to keep track of system file changes. In Windows Vista, System Restore uses Volume Shadow Copy Service to keep track of block-level changes over the selected volumes.”

shadow copy service was introduced in Windows Server 2003, I believe. It uses for keep tracking all the data and copy in this backup disk (which is invisible) This service is totally automatically–meaning that you can do nothing about this. However, the maximum shadow storage will be set based on the actual volume or the free space after setting up. It’s usually up to 30% of free space or 15% the overall size of the volume. I found the typical computer has a maximum shadow storage about 15GB, but, frankly, my Thinkpad X61T doesn’t have the maximum value, how odd!!? UNBOUNDED–that’s what it set to mine. :-/

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Anyway, you could check the used, allocated, and maximum shadow copy storage by run elevated command prompt (start | type “cmd” | right-click on cmd.exe and tap Run as administrator)

vssadmin list shadowstorage

In case you want to change the maximum shadow storage, you could use the command

VSSAdmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=15GB

While For is the volume you want to backup, On is the where the shadow space is, MaxSize is a maximum size you want. If you are shrinking the volume, you may lose your previous backup as well, just to beware.

Now you know what shadow copy storage is. Then you will know how you can take the advantage of this service and you’ll know how great this is. Practically, shadow will copy everything in every period you have changed anything to the disk. Thus, you will be able to restore what files/folders you want to be the way they were by easily right-click on that file/folder, then tap on “Restore previous versions”

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then you will see tons of file/folder you want to restore in many points of time.

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For me, with UNBOUNDED setting, I can roll up to the first day I got this tablet. The process is quite intuitive. I can’t wait to try Time Machine in Leopard to see how good it is though.

All in all, this is such a great feature but it can’t be great with *unbounded* setting for sure. You may try to find out how much shadow eating up your hard drive, then resize it. I have no idea why this happened, but, without this problem, I won’t know that there is something running underneath and duplicating all my stuffs. I have about 3 computers with Vista now, I haven’t found this bother me, perhaps it was set correctly. Therefore, I haven’t noticed this invisible volume. Finally, I can think of many situation that found this really great tool, like accidentally delete the important file, or a file was intentionally deleted, but I need that file back. As long as it doesn’t waste much space, it’s a fantastic feature.

ps. I don’t know if this bundled in Vista Home basic or premium or not, since these 2 don’t have restore/backup capability. I’ll let you know when I found out. But for Vista Business and Ultimate, you expect to have this :-)

Edited on Jan 23, 2008: Vista Home Premium does have Shadow Storage feature. Thus I think there is no reason why Home Basic would not include this useful feature as well.

reference: How Volume Shadow Copy Service Works, Volume Shadow Copy Service Overview, Windows Vista Backup Technology

Popularity: 9% [?]

Network problem??

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This is just the case I still wonder now what the cause really is. By the fact that there is 5 clients and 1 server in the network behind a router. All of clients are running Windows XP professional and the server runs Windows Server 2003 for file backing up and file server.

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The problem is only one-pair of them has a problem. The computer x1 rarely sees the x3 one and sometimes x3 is accessible but with very sluggish speed–almost 2 minutes waiting just to browse the file in explorer. Nonetheless x1 is accessible on x3 perfectly.

You may want to know that any other pairs don’t have this problem. Even though x1 and server or with x5 or x3 with anyone. ping is good, time is less than 3 ms with anyone except the problem pair.

To alleviate the random problem like this, I really have no idea much. So, I have tried to change the file sharing to be more advanced and add the user ‘everyone’ and ‘administrator’ into the share permission. I forget to let you know that every single computer on the network uses ‘administrator’ as a login and they have the same password but the x3 one which normally use another user name as a login and administrator doesn’t have any password. However, I have changed the password of administrator to be the same as others already. For you guys who wonder about firewall on x3, it’s installed Norton Firewall and I did turn off to prevent a problem but frankly the problem was not gone.

But, then, it still has the same problem. I really frustrate with the windows network for the first time, not because it’s working or not working, but because the symptom happens randomly so I couldn’t figure out why it really is. When I go fixing, it seems works just fine. Nonetheless I use the alternative–set the x3 as a fixed IP–to solve this and it seems help.

After that, I haven’t heard they have a problem again which could mean two things: the problem was solved or they don’t believe me fixing that again :-/ ha ha ha if anyone passing by has any idea or else, please let me know. Thanks!

Popularity: 3% [?]

Windows Live Writer 2008

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Oh, I’m posting from Windows Live Writer, one of the Windows Live Product. I found that it’s quite good, giving me first impression easily. From what I see recently–since Office 2007 or more specifically OneNote, I think Microsoft have done really good job about usability of their software; even though, Vista is what all folks complained about–I will talk about that later though.

Windows Live Writer is for writing. I doubt that what it’s really for. At first I thought is sort of OneNote but it’s actually, Windows Live Blogger! It will help anyone posting a blog very easy from your Windows PC. Whatever blog you have from Windows Live Space, SharePoint Webblog, Blogger, or even your WordPress; this program will recognize by itself, damned easy!! what I have to know is my blog address, user, and password. And I mean that’s it. Windows Live Writer will find anything in a minute for ready to post! I can do almost everything I should have to do–setting category, inserting any object, adding plug-ins, setting publish date, editing the post that publishing via the program itself or adding tag for any tag providers you like. I don’t know what else to say; it’s better than posting on blogger via Picasa for sure.

windows live writer

What I really like is I can save draft on my PC for publishing later or preview like it already published on your blog. You’ve got to see it for real.

However, why it’s version 2008 I have no idea :-P but newbies products from Microsoft are really changing the way they were before. It’s clean and easy but still tweakable. Maybe Microsoft is trying to show that it’s still far superior than its opponents; who knows? wait for Leopard hits the shelves and see if it still is.

Popularity: 3% [?]

What is so good and bad of Windows Home Server

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home serverAbout several months ago, I have participated Windows Home Server Beta Test. It’s a Windows 2003 tweaked for home use as its name. It works pretty well–duplicating data, organizing, and backing up all PCs in home network. However I don’t know if it’s worth $199 or more–as rumors. $150 should be very interesting price point for this OS though. Yet what I really like in Home Server is:-

1. Automatically backup all of your PCs in the network: automatically means truly automatic, you don’t have to do anything–just leave the computer on, the home server will communicate with all PCs and synchonize the hard drive to its storage–all data really. If you are one of the fan of Norton Ghost, I bet you will love this Home Server because not only backup automatically, but also restore pretty easy and fast too–using Windows Home Server CD and boot it in the program. Then choose which partition is the one. After 20-25mins, it’s like time machine.

2. Remote access to any computer in home network; this feature is really useful not only sharing the file over the Internet but also making the remote connection to *any* PC on home network too. This really makes people so convenient to do whatever they want like they sit in front of their own computer at home. Kudos to Microsoft for livenode.com domain (eventually changing to homeserver.com for RTM version and later) to synchronize the home network IP intelligently, so we don’t have to use DynDns or No-IP anymore :-P

These two features above are what I really like about WHS; however, there are what I don’t like as well–maybe it’s what it should included in WHS.

1. Backing-up-over-network really makes other works get slowly and waste a lot of time. I don’t know whether I am exaggerate or not but I really feel it. So I set WHS to back up other computer around 1am – 3am which is not effecting my work. There is still a problem left which is you have to pay your electrical bill more a bit :-P If WHS can wake other computers and shut them down automatically, it should be ideal. Just to wake up it should not be a problem much but to shut them down after finished backing up might be a bit hard. I hope there will be a solution for this soon.

2. Requiring such a complex password. This is what I really hate about WHS. Since it requires all computers to use the same user and password as the ones in WHS, all users in desktop and laptop have to have complex password as well. That’s really suck idea for home network! I don’t care about security much in home network because I want all my family to use computers easily–I don’t think my mom will try to remember such that complex. This rule is just not suitable for most ordinary people :-P I don’t think everyone at home is computer geek though.

note: there is a way to trick this as well but it’s just not practical >> link here

3. I really like WHS included Media Center!! The thing is I don’t want to leave all my PCs on, so this solution should be great idea; maybe it’s just only working on recording by schedule; it doesn’t have to broadcast live TV on this machine. Therefore, it will not handle that much load. Media Extender will come to play another rule Oh, please I really like to have this.

note: there is SageTV 6.26 RC – Stream Digital Media from WHS now; I will try and tell about it soon

All in all, there is a place for Add-in programs, I hope there will be programs that fulfill the lacking features very soon! So far so great, Windows Home Sever! This is really nice idea of organizing computers in your home. While I’m using RC right now, I always check and hope for OEM to hit NewEgg at the right price! Another thing is Home server products from any vendor should be really interesting, I can’t wait to see it!’

check out more info at http://mswhs.com/

Popularity: 3% [?]