News Articles

Articles posted here are for the use of our clients to get quick self help answers to questions and simple solutions to problems. News reports are not necessarily the opion of our company but for reference only. We don't provide any guarantee that solutions posted or referenced will work for your situation and that you should use them at your own risk. None of the information posted should be used for illegal practices.

Windows 7 update KB947821 appears to be stuck updating

The Windows 7 update "System Update Readiness Tool for Windows 7 (KB947821) [May 2014]" will appear hung or stuck during the update process. It will get to about 80 to 90% and just the hard drive activity is all that will indicate that it is still working on the update process. Many have noted it to take several hours. In our own install of this for a client it took almost 6 hours to complete on a system that failed the SFC scan test.

If you are installing the System Update Readiness Tool for Windows 7 (KB947821) besure to allow for a long period of time to install. Do not stop this install or you may corrupt the system to a point where it will not boot and you will be required to reload Windows from scratch.

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Windows 7 unable to access UNC or SMB shares 0x80070035

After setting up a new laptop computer with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, I found that I was unable to access any of my workgroup servers or access my Windows XP workstations. Each time I would attempt to make a connection either using the UNC name and path or using the IP address I would get an error indicating that the spelling was incorrect or that it could not find the location specified. One of the errors I receive is as follows:

Windows cannot access \\{ComputerName}

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Windows 7 IPv4 Issues Resolving Names

We often have found with many of the new routers and Windows 7 and later will default to IPv6 for all their Internet lookups when browsing the web. The issue is that seen by many is that the resolution of names in the URL are delayed until an IPv4 is used to complete the lookup. This problem started after an update by Microsoft that caused IPv6 to be preferred over IPv4.

Microsoft released a Knowledge Base article on this issue, KB2533454 - Resolving Internet connectivity issues after World IPv6 Launch (June 6, 2012). This KB article contains a Microsoft FixIt tool to change the preferred IP version from IPv6 back to IPv4

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Windows 7 cannot access a shared folder located on a Windows 2000 server

After upgrading several workstations for a client, who still has a Windows 2000 server, the Windows 7 workstations would no longer connect to the shares on the Win2K server. To resolve this issue we made several attempts.

System Time

The first thing we looked at was the system time on the server. It was off by about 15 minutes. Normally this is not the cause, but to be sure we updated the server time to be in sync with our workstations.

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Windows 7 can't resolve DNS

While working on a client’s Gateway LT2030u netbook running Windows 7, I ran into an issue resolving dns names to IP addresses. The computer had been infected with a number of malware applications, including some Trojans and a large number of adware entries in the registry. But those were all cleaned up.

Despite several attempts to clear out everything, including:

  • IPCONFIG release and renew
  • removing NIC adapters and rebooting
  • correcting the etc/hosts file

The computer still would not resolve a simple address like www.apple.com. IPCONFIG /ALL indicated that everything was configured correctly but Windows 7 still would not resolve the dns name.

Yes, a standard PING test to a physical IP address worked fine.

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Windows 7 AddDLLDirectory Error

After reinstalling Windows 7 and then tried to install the network driver for the computer the driver installation application displayed the following error "The procedure entry point AddDLLDirectory could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll." This error occurred because the driver installation was ...
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Windows 10 Error Printing with the WSD Port driver

 A frequently posted issue about printers and Windows 10 is not being able to print using the WSD port or the printer reverts to WSD from an IP setting. This appears to be a bug in the WSD port provider in Windows 10. After reading many commonly described issues where Windows 10 says the printer is offline when it isn't and the vendor software...
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Windows 10 device joined to Azure AD crash after reboot

After joining a Dell Latitude 5520 Windows 10 system to Azure AD and then rebooting the system, the boot process fails to complete. Every attempt made to resolve the issue failed. We were unable to boot the system in to Safe mode. The Azure AD information indicated that the system was successfully joined. The system would not complete the boot proc...
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WatchGuard Web UI doesn't allow a login with Internet Explorer

After a recent update on a WatchGuard XTM 5 series we were unable to login using Internet Explorer 10 and the WatchGuard Web UI. The only way to connect to the WatchGuard XTM firewall was to use the WatchGuard System Manager. For us this a bit of a handicap in several ways and we refuse to use Chrome or Firefox since they tend to be less secure.

We finally were able to fix it with a suggestion from WatchGuard support.

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vSphere Client fails to connect to vCenter Server 5

After upgrading a vSphere vCenter appliance to v5.1 Update 2 we found the the vSphere client installed on a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 host machine would fail to connect to the vCenter Server 5.1 due to an unknown error.

vSphere Client could not connect to {vcenter_server}.

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VMware vCenter Server Appliance with embedded database fails due to full database partition

vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded vPostgres database may stop running with out any warning. After logging into the web user interface (web UI) of the appliance you may notice that, in the Storage Usage on the Summary tab, the database statistics are showing 100%. Attempting to start the vCenter Server services at this point will result in the service running for a brief moment before is automatically shuts down again. This occurs because a disk partition on the vPostgres database contains no free space.

VMware doesn't have any recommended preventative maintenance tasks at this time but it doesn't hurt to establish your own in order to prevent this sort of issue in the first place. There is a retention policy for the database and we will look at why that may not be adequate for some installations.

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USB for RDP and Terminal Sessions

In the business realm there is often a need to run applications from a remote system or through a terminal services connection on a remote server. This works great in most cases except when you are attempting to use a local USB device with that remote session. There are several products available that can be used to help make the use of remote devices that use the local USB port and one of them is from RDS Tools.

We have not tested this product but are currently posting this article for notification purposes in the event others may be looking for this type of product. At some point we will likely implement this with one or more of our clients and then write a review. If you are reading this post and have used the USB for RDP tool from RDS Tools, feel free to leave a comment on your experience.

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SMTP Server Connection Diagnostics Tool

The SMTP Server Connection Diagnostics Tool is a free utility will enable you to troubleshoot SMTP Server issues more easily than using telnet. It supports both open and SSL connections and contains a built-in library of commands such as EHLO, DATA, RCPT TO, etc.. Nothing to install, just run the executable and step through your commands.

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Server or workstation does not appear under network

On occasions a client's network is missing the server or one or more workstations when browsing the network. Typically this is noticed when our tech company takes over support from another MSP. This is frustrating to both an IT tech that is not familiar enough with the environment and the end users that may need to access the server directly. The l...
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SEO - Get Listed, Get Noticed

Just Say NO

Promoting your business with as little expense as possible is a top priority for any business startup. Keeping the overhead costs of marketing to a minimum can be difficult when so many solicitors are telling you how they can get you noticed in printed materials, radio, TV, or the Internet for a small fee. The temptations they offer sound good, but the return on your investment (ROI) might not be as good as promised. You need to learn to say "NO" early on. Practice that a few times, go ahead and just say "NO".

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SBS 2011 Connect Computer program doesn’t work

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011 requires that you use the http://connect in Internet Explorer on all Windows systems. After upgrading a SBS 2003 system to SBS 2011 I needed to rejoin a Windows XP system to the new server, however, when I attempt to run the utility, I received several different message indicating the I could not connect.

One thing that was not mentioned in many of the other technical articles written about this issue is that this particular system was configured with a static IP address and no default domain. After setting the default domain, the http://connect process worked. Normally this would not be an issue if the workstation had been configured with a DHCP address.

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Quickbooks Error: Intuit Printer Library The form you are about to print does not fit on the page

Quickbooks Error: Intuit Printer Library The form you are about to print does not fit on the page
Intuit Printer Library

After upgrading to QuickBooks 2014 Enterprise one of the workstations started having issues saving estimate reports as a PDF or e-mailing the reports. The user would see this error from QuickBooks:

Intuit Printer Library Message: The form you are about to print does not fit on the page. You may wish to modify your print settings such as portrait/landscape. Click OK to print anyways, or Cancel to skip printing this form.

 

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Guest — Brian Wright
Recently we upgraded a client to QuickBooks Enterprise 15 and we had the same issue as we did when upgrading to the previous versi... Read More
Monday, 05 January 2015 16:39
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QuickBooks Error -6190, -816 or -6190, -85: unable to open the company file

QuickBooks Error -6190, -816 or -6190, -85: unable to open the company file

The following error message appears when opening a company file on a Windows computer that is hosted on a Windows Server:

QuickBooks was unable to open the file [path\filename] on the host computer [host name]. Try opening the file with QuickBooks on the host computer or run the QuickBooks Database Server Manager on the host computer and then try opening the file on your computer.

I our case the server was inadvertently rebooted while one or more client systems had their QuickBooks open and connected to the server causing the database to be disconnect improperly. The client was using QuickBooks Enterprise 2013 installed on a Windows Small Business Server 2011. We followed these steps and were able to get the database to open.

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Quickbooks Enterprise Upgrade 2012 to 2013

Quickbooks Enterprise Upgrade 2012 to 2013

The process for upgrading QuickBooks Enterprise 2012 to QuickBooks Enterprise 2013 is fairly easy, but it may take some time depending on the number of workstations and the size of the database file.

In our client's environment, we run QuickBooks Enterprise on a Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011, which runs as a Virtual Machine (VM) within VMware vSphere 4.1. The first step in any upgrade is to make sure you have a good back up before proceeding.

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QuickBooks database server will not start - SQLANY 17.0 cannot be found

​Issues with the QuickBooks database server used to be a fairly rare occurrence. But since 2019, many of the servers running QuickBooks have been updated to new versions of the Windows Server OS and the QuickBooksDB##. The end user will typically get the following error when attempting to connect to the server in a multiuser setting. "Error Code: H...
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