“Microsoft” collection
Master your productivity with in-depth guides on the Microsoft ecosystem, including Windows operating systems and Office software. From software troubleshooting to Surface hardware reviews, these articles offer practical solutions for both professional and home environments.
HTD Tech Briefs
View all →January 5, 2009
Ongoing Roundup of Macworld 2009 News, Products, Links, etc.
I will be at (or currently am at) Macworld 2009 this week. As you can see, they have been waiting for me (GRIN – see picture below). I'm hoping to visit quite a few vendors and see what new gadgets and technology are being announced. If you are a vendor, please contact me here. I will be on Twitter (@HighTechDad)…
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December 28, 2008
Fix It: Opening Control Panel Crashes Windows Explorer on XP/Vista
Have you ever tried to open your Control Panel on Windows XP (or Vista) and every time that you attempted it, you received a “Windows Explorer has Stopped Working†message and your entire Windows environment loses all of its functionality? It can be very bothersome and extremely annoying. This happened to me the other day and there wasn’t a very…
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November 25, 2008
Microsoft and Family – LifeCam VX-5500 & Microsoft Office 2008
When you think about Microsoft, the first thing that comes to your mind is probably not Family. If you are like me, Microsoft software rules your computer at your office and runs the infrastructure there as well. Microsoft has done quite well in securing the business space from desktop productivity tools like Office to BackOffice systems that get your email…
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August 27, 2008
Fix It: Outlook Calendar and iPhone Calendar Events Hours Not Synched Correctly
Just a quick fix-it tip here. I have a co-worker who was having some issues with his iPhone and Outlook 2007 calendar times being off or offset by 1 hour. I guess that this fix it would apply to anyone who is getting calendar notifications on their iPhone earlier or later than what is showing up on their Outlook 2003…
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May 15, 2008
Transition from DD-WRT to Tomato on Linksys Router
I decided I was tired of waiting around for the next version of DD-WRT to come out (v24) which, as of this writing, was at RC7, I believe. I twittered today that I was tired of waiting and got a tweet back saying that I should check out Tomato and that people were saying some good things about it. I…
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April 16, 2008
BART Ticket Kiosks Running Windows 2000 Professional?
Today I tried to add some money to a BART ticket and came across an interesting screen. I guess they had just been servicing the ticket machines and they were "rebooting." What I saw really surprised me. First, they are running on a Windows platform. Second, they are running not on Vista, nor Windows 2003 Server...not even Windows XP, but…
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December 11, 2007
New Job: Technology Evangelist for ServePath
It has been a few weeks since my last post and quite a lot has happened with my professional career. First through, apologies to my regular readers for not having posted anything as of late. Hopefully I can return to this soon. However, for those interested, the company that I have joined, ServePath, has chosen me to help them navigate…
Read more →October 15, 2007
Fix It: Hitting “Enter” types a backslash on Windows XP
Update #1 - Making me look like a fool! This is a very obscure error that I came across today with a client. He was having issues where every time he would hit ENTER, his machine would type a backslash "\" and it was proving to be very unnerving. Rebooting did not help nor unplugging his external keyboard. There was…
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October 2, 2007
iPhone: Firmware 1.1.1 – Delete Messages from Exchange Server, Calendar Invites and incompatible Vircom ModusMail
I'm looking for as many positives as I can with the new 1.1.1 iPhone firmware (and I haven't found too many and I still miss my 3rd party apps) but this is one "fix" that I'm thankful for. With previous versions of the iPhone firmware, deleting messages from Exchange-based email accounts used to have no effect...until now. If you have…
Read more →September 20, 2007
Fix-it: SBS 2003, 16 gig Exchange Limit, Event IDs 9175 and 445
Ran into a complicated emergency today. An office that I support suddenly could not connect any of their Outlook clients to their Exchange Server. It was very weird and I got sidetracked by the fact that my own ISP was having email issues with my domain (turned out they were completely unrelated). Before I get into the process, here are…
Read more →September 13, 2007
Fix-it: Outlook 2007 Emails not showing in Preview Pane, constant crashes, and Windows Desktop Search not returning results
I recently helped a friend work through and some issues he was having with Outlook 2007. They were some strange, yet common problems, namely: Not being able to view emails within the Preview Pane Constant crashing of Outlook A slower than normal refresh of things My understanding is that this is actually a fairly common issue just from viewing a…
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July 17, 2007
Fix-it: iTunes 7.3.1.3 install Error 2908 on Windows
Well, I'm back from a vacation in Mexico and have been catching up on things. Playing with my new 4 Gig iPhone and getting things working has taken a little bit of time. In the process of doing that, I saw that there was an update to iTunes for PC (I'm on Vista Ultimate) for version 7.3.1.3 and I ran…
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