|
| Home RSS Directory F.A.Q Try Custom Feed Sonneries Portable |
Latest Flows from this sub-category: data recovery blog, hard drive recovery utility,access repair tips, data recovery software resources random selection from this sub-category: |
Today, I installed the pre-release copy of Microsoft Windows 7. Instead of totally screwing up my own PC, I decided to attempt the install on a Microsoft Virtual PC lab. By the way, this is what Virtual PC is supposed to be used for.....testing beta software. At least that is what I use it for.
A couple of things to know if you decide to try out Windows 7: 1) You must already have a copy of Windows Vista SP1 installed in order to upgrade to the pre-release version of Windows 7. 2) If you have an actual DVD in ISO format, that would be best. But for those of you who "obtained" a copy like I did....with a setup file and the rest of the files just in folders on the DVD. I had to copy the entire contents of the DVD to the desktop first and then run setup.exe from there. 3) Supposedly, you will need the Windows Vista RC1 key or Vista beta key from last year if you wish to activate Windows 7. I personally do not care to do this, I just wanted to see how it works and how it looks. There are ways around activation....but I do not recommend doing it since its against Microsoft TOS. After the installation was finished....Windows 7 looks almost exactly like Windows Vista. It did seem to load faster than Vista but I was running it on Virtual PC which makes all versions of operating systems faster. I will follow up with another post about Windows 7 and its features sometime this week. Read more about Windows 7 here: Windows 7 news Microsoft has unveiled Windows Azure - its new cloud computing operating system, writes Barry Collins in Los Angeles.
The company claims Azure will allow anyone from hobbyists to enterprises to write and host applications on the software giant's data centres. "We've been working for some years now on a platform for computing in the cloud," said chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, announcing Windows Azure. "We're setting the stage for the next 50 years of systems." read the rest of the article: Cloud Computing Could I work from home?
I probably could....but how many days in a row that would work is a different story. Eventually, I would need to come in to work to fix a PC problem that I was unable to fix remotely. All one needs to work from home is a PC with a highspeed internet connection and a work PC with remote desktop enabled. Both PCs could be Windows XP or Windows Vista or a combination of the two. And since I have my work PC setup with SMS 2003, I remotely connect to our clients PCs anyway to fix an issue for them instead of going to their office. I probably can do this about 95% of the time with success. So I figured, why not just do it from home and not even commute to the office? I am going to inquire about "testing" this scenario out but I have a feeling that my boss will not go for it. Oh well, a guy can dream right? If you could work from home would you? How would you do it? I have another "testimony" of using Microsoft Virtual PC. A few months ago, I wrote about one reason to use a Virtual PC on your desktop/laptop. Well, just recently, one of our network administrators purchased a fiber optic cable inspector. Besides installing the drivers for the cable inspector on to Windows XP, he also needed software to be able to view inside the cable. Well, he found out that the old application called Imaging for Windows that worked with this type of cable inspector on Windows 95/98/2000 did NOT work on Windows XP. Why, you say? The answer is the company that created the Imaging for Windows software did not include their software with Windows XP for free. You would need to dish out about $200 for a license. At the time, he said he could not find another free application to use and our department was not going to spend money on something that is not used too often.
So I suggested that we install Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007 on his laptop, setup a virtual machine with Windows 2000 and then he could use the cable inspector. Without delay, he told me to go ahead. About an hour later, he had his Windows XP laptop with a virtual copy of Windows 2000! I really do love this application! It definitely can save a business or even a home user some money if you know what you are doing. How have you used Virtual PC, or any other Virtual Machine applications? Computer manufacturers such as Dell, HP, IBM, etc, have come a long way in providing consumers with a number of options in building a custom computer system. These computers can be quite good for the typical user but if you really want a system that you can use for years after you buy it then you really need to consider a custom-built PC.
Most manufacturers use proprietary hardware with their PCs and this can make it extremely difficult to upgrade your PC as the various components become obsolete or are not compatible. Examples include the CPUs, RAM, network adapter, sound and video adapters. While some of these components can be upgraded after the initial purchase, you will often find that you are very limited with what you are able to upgrade. Building your own PC allows you the most flexibility and when you look at the quality of the components used in the system, the cost is often less than buying a pre-built system of the same specifications. Another advantage of a custom-built PC is that you can start with a very basic system with a low end CPU combined with maybe a mid-range system board and minimal memory. You may also want to just start out with a generic sound card and video card or you could purchase a system board that has on board sound and video (not recommended unless you are totally broke or short on cash at the time of purchase). You can always upgrade to a better sound & video card later. You will want to do this if you decide to play some graphic intensive games on your PC. Now you have a basic custom-built PC. When you have some more money, you can then install more RAM which is one of the best ways to enhance PC performance. Eventually, you may decide to upgrade your CPU and you may be able to do this once or twice depending on how much you are willing to spend. Best practice is to just upgrade the CPU to the best one that the system board will support. A custom PC like this would probably last you 1-2 yrs before it "feels" like its outdated. So, instead of going out and buying a whole new PC, you would only need to at most swap out the system board and processor. You can still use the same sound card, video card, computer case, RAM, CD/DVD drive, hard drive and of course keyboard/mouse. The only thing you will have to do though is probably reinstall your operating system and applications. The reason for this is that the current setup may or may not support the changing out of a system board which can cause the OS (either Windows XP or Windows Vista) to crash. Best practice, is to back up all important data to a CD/DVD, and then swap out the system board and reinstall your OS. Once that is back up and running, you can then restore your data. Do you have a custom-built PC? What are your thoughts about them? Destroy it!
Just because a hard drive will no longer boot an OS or the computer BIOS says its DOA, that does not mean the data is. There are utilities out there that will destroy hard drives (also called writing 1s & 0s to the disk). There are military standard DOD wipe programs as well. And then there is the Verity Systems VS7000 manual hard drive destroyer which crushes the hard drive with the turn of a handle. The destroyer warps the hard drive platter so any data on it can never be read again. I've never seen anything like this!  Check out the other ways to destroy hard drive data Microsoft recently released a free e-book called Windows Vista Performance and Tuning. I just downloaded the 14 page e-book and it is definitely something that all Windows Vista users can benefit from reading it. Microsoft claims that Windows Vista along with the recent release of SP1 provide major advancements in usability, reliability, connectivity and security.
The following areas are covered in this e-book: 1) Improve PC responsiveness 2) Improve speed by using external hardware 3) Improve PC start-up time 4) Improve PC performance 5) Maintain & Monitor PC performance to help stop small issues from becoming big ones. The article focuses on performance improvements for a single computer but there is a section that includes ways to use tools for enterprise environments as well. Right from the start, it mentions having at least 2GB of RAM for PCs that use Windows Vista. I wrote an earlier post about RAM and how Windows Vista would barely boot-up with less than 1GB of RAM. You can never have too much RAM installed in your PC. That is the summary of the free e-book titled Windows Vista Performance and Tuning which you can download here: E-book download Today I've been playing around with a Citrix XenServer and my Microsoft Virtual PC environment. I just learned about XenServer last week at a CDWG sponsored event. Basically, it just a Virtual Machine (VM) environment that can be used as server to host VM desktops or servers or both. I already had a Virtual PC lab I was testing with 3 Windows XP VMs. So I decided to see if I could successfully move one of the VMs to the XenServer. After scratching my head for a few seconds, I realized that there is going to have to be some type of conversion process because the file formats are not the same.
Virtual PC hard disks are called .VHD XenServer VMs are called .XVA Here is a log of what I did to get the VHD converted: (by the way, this took all day for me to learn from scratch) C:\converter>v2xva /verbose:loud /config:"c:\documents and settings\cha13299\doc uments\my virtual machines\new virtual machine\Windows XP SP2.vmc" /output:"c:\t emp\new virtual machine" Virtual Disk Migration Utility Version 1.2: A V2V tool to convert VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server/Virtual PC virtual machines (with Microsoft Windows VMs installed) to the Xen Virtual Appliance (XVA) format. [XVA] Parsing configuration file c:\documents and settings\cha13299\documents\my virtual machines\new virtual machine\Windows XP SP2.vmc: [XVA] Path for config file = c:\documents and settings\cha13299\documents\my vir tual machines\new virtual machine\ [XVA] Parsing wide character MSVS configuration file [XVA] Amount of RAM in configuration file = 512 [XVA] Getting information for disk 0 [XVA] Disk file name = C:\Users\cha13299\Documents\My Virtual Machines\New Vir tual Machine\New Virtual Machine Hard Disk.vhd [XVA] Number of vCPUs in configuration file = 2 [XVA] Display name for MSVS VM being used is Windows XP SP2 [XVA] Information extracted from config file c:\documents and settings\cha13299\ documents\my virtual machines\new virtual machine\Windows XP SP2.vmc [XVA] Number of vCPUs - 2 [XVA] RAM size - 512 [XVA] Display name - Windows XP SP2 [XVA] Number of virtual disks - 1 [XVA] Disk 0 - C:\Users\cha13299\Documents\My Virtual Machines\New Vir tual Machine\New Virtual Machine Hard Disk.vhd Convert VHD virtual disk image to XVA... Total disks to convert: 1 Converting Disk 0... [XVA] Reading VHD file C:\Users\cha13299\Documents\My Virtual Machines\New Virtu al Machine\New Virtual Machine Hard Disk.vhd [XVA] Found VHD footer at begining of file [XVA] VHD Footer Summary: [XVA] ------------------- [XVA] Features : (0x00000002) [XVA] File format version : Major: 1, Minor: 0 [XVA] Data offset : 512 [XVA] Creator Application : 'vpc ' [XVA] Creator version : Major: 5, Minor: 3 [XVA] Creator OS : Windows [XVA] Original disk size : 65536 MB (68719476736 Bytes) [XVA] Current disk size : 65536 MB (68719476736 Bytes) [XVA] Geometry : Cyl: 32896, Hds: 0, Sctrs: 16 : = 65535 MB (68718428160 Bytes) [XVA] Disk type : Dynamic hard disk [XVA] Checksum : 0xffffee4d|0xffffee4d (Good!) [XVA] Saved state : No [XVA] Read header for VHD file [XVA] VHD Header Summary: [XVA] ------------------- [XVA] Data offset (unusd) : -1 [XVA] Table offset : 1536 [XVA] Header version : 0x00010000 [XVA] Max BAT size : 32768 [XVA] Block size : 0x200000 (2MB) [XVA] Checksum : 0xfffff3f7|0xfffff3f7 (Good!) [XVA] Read BAT for VHD [XVA] Block size = 2097152 [XVA] Capacity = 68719476736 [XVA] Writing to directory c:\temp\new virtual machine\hda [XVA] Writing chunk c:\temp\new virtual machine\hda\chunk-000000000.gz [XVA] Writing chunk c:\temp\new virtual machine\hda\chunk-000000001.gz [XVA] Writing chunk c:\temp\new virtual machine\hda\chunk-000000068.gz [XVA] Write out ova.xml [XVA] Write out XVA configration file c:\temp\new virtual machine\ova.xml [XVA] Wrote display name to ova.xml - Windows XP SP2 [XVA] Wrote memory as 536870912 and number of vcpus as 2 to ova.xml [XVA] Wrote VDI vdi_hda size as 68719476736 to ova.xml Done. ( At the time of this post, the import is about 50% complete. I will write again after its finished. Which Virtual PC/Server software do you use? As some of you may know, there is a tropical storm/hurricane on its way to Florida. I am one of the chosen IT support guys to be available after the storm is over. In our Emergency Operations Center, I will be supporting all of the PCs/laptops making sure they continue to run as expected when our EOC goes to Level 1 activation 12pm on Tuesday. There are close to 60 PCs inside the EOC and most likely, all of the will be used at one time or another over the next 48 hrs. I've been through this 2 times in the past, once during Hurricane Charley and I forgot the other storm but Charley was definitely the biggest. During the storm, the EOC lost power but we did run on generator for about 2 days. There really was no issues with the PCs (our IT office is awesome and all of the IT techs do a great job "running" the place). I basically got paid to sit there and do nothing. I guess its ok, FEMA paid the bill. Anyway, just wanted to write a quick post about IT departments during a storm. We definitely do whatever we can to keep critical operations running just as smooth as if there were no storm.
Ok....time to give credit where it is due. Miekiemoes helped me finish getting my friend's laptop back to normal tonight. If you read her post about the VIRUS ALERT! next to your system clock, you will discover exactly how fix this issue...I mean exactly....no joke....seriously. This post is so detailed that I actually made a joke in my comment to her asking if she created the virus! I worked on this laptop for 4 hours last night where at least I was successful in removing the virus categorized as Trojan horse agent.zak from his AVG scan. But the Trojan does some very strange things as Miekiemoes touches upon:
1) After pressing the start menu, most of your normal options are gone (like control panel, my documents, log off, etc). Apparently, the Trojan disables these items in an attempt to stop you from being able to remove the Trojan. 2)It also disables the registry (regedit.exe). Fixing spyware/virus laden computer in the past, getting into the registry is a MUST. I was shocked when I got a message saying "Your administrator has disabled registry access". Uh, hello, I was logged on as the Administrator! 3) Adds VIRUS ALERT! after the clock down in the system tray. Also in the Computer Properties area. 4)But the most annoying issue is the fact that the Trojan actually manages to delete your Windows Product ID. This then causes Microsoft to determine that your PC now has an illegal copy of Windows XP!!! Incredible! I've never seen a virus/spyware do something like this before! As stated above.....I fixed everything based on the instructions listed here in Miekiemoes blog. If this ever happens to you, be sure to check her blog first. I finally figured out why IE7 has been opening slow for the past few weeks. At first, I blamed it on the fact that I have a totally wireless connection now on my desktop due to my current living situation. But that was not the problem. Then I decided to search Google for answers to IE7 slowness and I discovered some discussions but none related to me. So, I decided to add another hard drive to my PC with Vista preloaded on it to see if IE7 was still slow. And of course, it opened within 2 seconds (unlike the 17 second delay I had been experiencing).
side note: Firefox was slow as well. The only difference besides the fact that this was a bare bones Windows Vista setup is that I did not have an Anti-virus program installed yet. Up until now, I had been using Computer Associates Internet Suite (free from Brighthouse). I had a stripped down version of only the Virus protection since Windows Defender is enabled by default on Vista. I decided to install the free version of AVG for Virus protection. Guess what....IE7 still opened within 2 seconds! I guess I must have never noticed the slowdown or it just started. Maybe from the latest updates from Computer Associates. Anyway....AVG is now my virus protection software of choice for Windows Vista. Being an HP Certified Professional has its advantages. Sometimes we have to replace parts for desktop PCs and laptops. If you read my post a few months ago relating to a Toshiba tablet repair, you''l know that I was happy for repair shops. But in this case, our outside vendor (which will remain anonymous because they really are awesome...except for the prices) wanted $850 for the repair job of replacing a system board for an HP NC6230 laptop. I'm getting pretty good at these replacements so I decided to see if I could find the part online for a cheaper price. Upgradebay.com had the replacement board for only $354. Granted, it is refurbished, but I am Ok with that because if its not so a working board Upgradebay has a 30 day warranty for returns.
4 Hours later....I was done! Yeah, this has been the hardest replacement I've done to date....but I saved the client about $500. Oh yeah.....the problem was with the PCMCIA slot, some pins were bent due to someone trying to jam a Sierra Wireless Sprint card into it. Today's post is related to a product that I came across while troubleshooting my own PC. I usually do not use registry repair tools because I would rather go into the registry myself and attempt to fix the issue. But the majority of my readers probably would rather use a trusted software tool to handle these types of issues.
I recommend using XP Repair Pro for the following reasons: 1) XP Repair Pro has had over 2.71 million downloads in less than three years, and has quickly become one of the most popular system utilities on the market today. 2) It has no spyware, adware or viruses. (You would be surprised about this fact, there are products out there that claim to help you get rid of problems but only create more) 3) It fully supports Windows Vista, Windows XP and Office 2007 You can more information about this product Here Recently, one of our work PCs was unable to execute any program ending in .exe. This can be very frustrating and immediately the client thought that the PC was infected with a virus. While this can happen, in this case, the program responsible for virus protection actually failed.
During the day, our office was in the middle of receiving some SMS packages related to the new Symantec EndPoint Protection. While 99% of the PCs were upgraded successfully, the PC in question failed to upgrade properly. This then caused no application ending in .exe to open. I have never experienced this before! I was about to re-image the PC but that is the easy way out. If anyone knows me, I will troubleshoot an issue for hours if I have to. (In my opinion, that is the best way to learn). So began my troubleshooting of this .exe issue. First, I was shocked that I could not even get to the Internet, but then I thought, oh yeah, Internet Explorer is an application so of course it will not open either! I went to another computer and began searching online for solutions. I found a website that already had the answer to my problem: exefix_xp.com All I had to do was download this file and it fixed the registry entries for the .exe file association automatically. Disclaimer: Do this at your own risk, even though its done automatically, your PC could crash and become unbootable. If you are able to, back up all important data before continuing. You can find more information about this on Winhelponline.com As most of you know, I am a big fan of Microsoft products. This includes Windows Vista and Virtual PC. Now granted, I do not know too much about Apple and its Macs but I am learning. (Watch for a future post on how I got a Mac on a Windows domain). Seeing these "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" commercials, you think that Microsoft would retaliate with ads of their own......well, the wait is over!
Check out this article on Channel Web. From what I've read, Windows Vista is clearly better than any OS Microsoft has designed so far. Not to mention more secure. Think about it, when Window XP first came out, everyone complained about it as well. I'd really like to see someone that knows nothing about Windows XP start using Vista and see if they don't love it. It all depends on what one is familiar with. People hate change....but most of the time, change is needed. In my opinion, Windows Vista is just what we need to have a better PC experience. But, I do give credit to my graphic design friends out there, so stick with your Mac! What are your thoughts? The other day, a client of mine had a Windows XP machine that could not get its Windows Updates from Microsoft. The following error appeared:
Error Code 0x80072F8F Not sure how it happens but apparently, the date and time on the PC is so different from the Windows Update site that the error appears. The solution is quite simple and is listed on Microsoft's website. Apparently, this must be a normal issue if there is an entire support page for it. It even happens on Windows Vista. I will be posting more of these type of problems/solutions in the next few days. It has been a busy few days at work and there have been lots of issues that I have not seen before. Stay tuned for some more Windows XP troubleshooting tips. Yesterday, I came across a PC at work that had a faulting application error related to shell32.dll. This happened while the person was using the Windows XP Search Companion to search for a file. About half way through the search, the following error appeared:
Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2900.3156, faulting module shell32.dll, version 6.0.2900.3241, fault address 0x00103537. I've looked through some Google searches and really can not find an answer to my problem so I guess its time to reimage the PC. The PC has only been running for about 3 weeks anyway but just not sure what caused this problem. I've tried all of the so called "Registry fix" programs out there including Regcure but nothing worked. I am assuming something got corrupt and sometimes reimaging a PC is much quicker than attempting to pull out our hair trying to solve an issue that seems to be unsolvable. I've even tested for possible spyware. I've also tried upgrading the PC to Windows XP SP3 but the error still appears while searching. If anyone has an answer....please comment below. Many Windows users complain that unlike its Linux and Mac competitors, Vista doesn't have a very good "out of the box" image editor. Paint has been around for many years, with only small improvements. Windows Photo Gallery lets you do some basic image editing (adjusting brightness and color saturation, cropping, etc.) but it's pretty limited. Neither supports layers, lets you sharpen photos or contains much in the way of special effects. Sure, you can get PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro but that will cost you from one to several hundred dollars. If you need more than you get with the built-in tools but not the complexity and sophistication of the expensive commercial ones, check out getPaint.net, a free image editor that works great on Vista.
You can read about it here: http://www.getpaint.net/index.html Apparently, the new Symantec product called Symantec Endpoint Protection may cause Blue screen errors in both Windows XP and Vista. Our Windows department at work recently begin upgrading individual workstations to this new version and Blue screen errors began almost immediately. Here is an example of the error message some of our PCs are getting:
Faulting application Smc.exe, version 11.x.x.x time stamp XXXXXX, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 6.0.6000.16386, timestamp XXXXXXX, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x00061635, process id 0x694, application start time XXXXXXXXX Basically, the solution is to turn off some of the protection included in the software package....if you ask me, what's the point? If its going to cause errors, why even release the software. Just another case of a vendor not testing software 100% before releasing it. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of PC security, but if a product does not do what it should, don't release it until fully tested. Symantec support is available here Recently, I found out that Road Runner High Speed Online from Bright House Networks has more than one service plan for their customers to sign up for. I have been using RR for the past 5 yrs and all this time, I've been paying $44.95 per month. Now while I love my high speed connection, $44.95 a month was starting to seem a little bit silly. (I do have the option to use my work laptop with a sprint card for free while at home). So I decided to call Bright House to see if they offered any cheaper options for high speed connections.
Sure enough, they do.....and after comparing plans, I decided to go with Road Runner Lite for $29.95 per month. Actually, I am not sure if this is a special or not, but the Sales Rep informed me that for the first 6 months, I would only be paying $19.95, then the normal $29.95 per month price would kick in. She also informed me that I would not even notice a difference in speed. Well, she was right...and it makes me so mad that I've paid almost double the price for the past 5 yrs. Anyway, if you are looking to lower your High Speed Online cost per month, Road Runner Lite is a great option. Today during my usual search of product pricing, I came across a website that deals with PC memory upgrades. I've been searching for some new RAM for my PC at home and since its important to make sure you purchase the correct RAM that matches what is already installed, I figured I would search online for a website that will have compatible RAM for my Dell E521 desktop.
I already discussed earlier the benefits of adding RAM to your PC so I figured I would take my own advice. I have Windows Vista and although my PC came with 2GB of RAM, I decided to upgrade to 3GB for now since that is all I can afford at the moment. Upon looking at the PC3200 DDR400 SDRAM Upgrade prices at Memory Deal, it looks as though I found the correct RAM module for my PC. I will have to go with two 512MB 184-PIN PC3200 modules. For $19.88 each, that is an awesome price! Memory Deal also does a great job of explaining about every type of RAM available. Whether its Apple Memory & MAC RAM, or if you are looking to do a 2GB Memory Upgrade, they explain it all! I love this website and it will now be the first website I check for PC memory prices. Check them out today: Memorydeal.net I did not think I would have the same issues with Windows Vista. But apparently, I am...
There are tons of searches for svchost.exe 99% CPU usage in Google and most are related to Windows XP. But not too many, if any at all are related to Vista. Well, maybe I am the first person to come across this issue so I am posting about it. I submitted a comment to the Windows Vista Blog this morning related to my issue. All of the searching I have done has come up with 2 yr old issues that were related to XP and not Vista. For now, I've disabled Windows Updates because this seems to be the problem. Svchost.exe is a Windows process that is used multiple times within the Operating System. Its not possible to completely disable svchost but there are ways to disable certain services that use it. Stay tuned for any updates. I know I am not the only person with this issue. A PC hard drive is probably one of the most important parts of a computer. Basically, it is responsible for the physical storage of information which it does by way of magnetic disks. Here are 3 ways hard drives fail:
1) Normal wear and tear are possible due to the moving parts needed to retrieve the data on the hard drive. Data is constantly being transferred to and from locations so eventually, disk parts are bound to die. 2) Power surges among other electrical related issues can cause a hard drive to fail. 3) Logical disk errors such as software corruption, unexpected OS failures or computer viruses. This could also include the accidental formatting of a drive or deleting files without a current backup. Usually, physical drive errors can not be fixed at home and will probably require a disk recovery utility from some well known company that specializes in data recovery. Hard drive recovery is possible because the data continues to exist on the hard disk even after it is deleted. Unless data is overwritten in the same sector, the data will continue to exist even if the operating system does not show it. As for logical drive errors, data can be copied to an external disk, then the affected drive can be reformatted with the original OS. Data can then be restored to the original settings. I accomplish this task at least one a week at my current job. Data recovery companies are generally used by businesses that can afford them as the price could cost thousands of dollars. Most of the programs they use can be installed easily and can be scheduled for self-maintenance such as taking a periodic backup of important files. Backup your important files today! Your hard drive could fail at anytime. Infoworld is still trying to save Windows XP from its apparent removal from store shelves on June 30th. I personally do not care if Microsoft extends the deadline to support Windows XP but if enough people actually sign the petition, they just might do so. Windows XP is almost 8 yrs old which makes it most likely the longest operating system (from what I can tell) that Microsoft has had in existence to date. There is not much more that can be done to XP to make it any better than it already is. Even though Microsoft just released SP3 for XP, this does not seem to matter as they are sticking to their June 30th deadline.
Let's face it folks, Windows Vista is the future or something else will be. We will just have to embrace this and move forward. Technology is always changing, which requires people to change with it, good or bad. Let me give you a warning, if you want to spend all of your time trying to reinstall this printer, then feel free to purchase an HP Officejet 7680 All-in-One device. I am absolutely convinced that HP could care less if this printer ever installs correctly. I've read every HP related forum, talked to multiple techs for hours on end and nobody can help. Their solution, re-image the PC......are they serious!!!! That is the easy way out...this is their product and it should be fixed by an HP Technician.
Here is the issue: Installing the device is OK the first time around. Printer/Scanner/Copier works great on Windows XP/Vista. Problems beginning if the device needs to be reinstalled or drivers need updating. Recently, I had an issue where Microsoft Word 2007 was closing unexpectedly and I discovered on HP's website that the cause was their Officejet 7680 driver. It says it clearly on their support site: Fixes * Possible loss of print job when printing from simplex and duplex mode. * Unexpected closure of Microsoft Office PowerPoint application. Of course it just says Powerpoint, but it was happening for all Office applications. I attempted to upgrade the driver, when I did, installation got stuck at 96%, never finished. (I waited for 30 minutes). So, I started doing some research and I found what was supposedly some steps to take to troubleshoot the installation. See HP's recommended troubleshooting So, I did exactly what this page said to do....no luck. I spent 4 hrs attempting to fix this. The printer works fine, but you can not scan at all. Just my opinion, but there should never be this much trouble installing a device. HP needs to step up the troubleshooting solutions! Update: I have an HP tech coming on site to my office to see if he can install the printer....this should be fun! I'll update everyone with the results. |
  |
contact |
All rss from this site
Print this article
Webmasters ! Get this feed on your site