William D Buchanan » PC Support

Enable the Preview Pane in Explorer

William Buchanan — Sat, 29 May 2010 15:28:00 +0000

Windows Vista and Windows 7 both have a great option called the Preview Pane. Instead of having Windows classic style folders with file names, icons, and maybe some details, you can have a pane on the right side of your Explorer window that will preview any file selected including graphics files and Microsoft Office files without having to open them.

To find this option do the following:

While in Windows Explorer click Organize. Mouse over the Layout option and then select Preview [...]

"An Unexpected Error Occurred" When You Right Click on a Network Connection in Windows XP

William Buchanan — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:41:00 +0000

When you try to right click a network connection in the Network Connections folder in Windows XP and select Properties, you get an error message that says "an unexpected error occurred". Not very descriptive, so what is the problem? The most common cause of this problem is damaged registry settings that prevent you from viewing the network connection’s properties.

To repair this problem:
Click Start | Run In the Open box, type: regsvr32 %systemroot% \system32 \ netshell.dll Click OK in [...]

Unable to Upload Files to Live Meeting

William Buchanan — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:10:16 +0000

I ran into an interesting problem recently with a client who was trying to upload a file for a Live Meeting in which she was the presenter. Her presentation was created in Power Point 2007 and had the extension .pptx. When she attempted to upload the file to Live Meeting she was prompted to install an ActiveX control to convert the .pptx file to a Live Meeting (.lmp) file. The problem came when installing the ActiveX file, when she clicked [...]

Slipstreaming Service Packs into Windows XP

William Buchanan — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:30:00 +0000

If you need to reinstall Windows XP and only have the original disk you are in for a long process to get the operating system installed and up to date. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of security patches and updates released for Windows XP since its release in 2001. So, you could install XP with the original disk, then install the latest service pack and updates, but you may run into problems such as the fact that the [...]

"Windows has disabled remote access to this computer"

William Buchanan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:04:00 +0000

Sometimes when you try to share a folder on an Windows XP computer, you may receive an error message that says "As a security measure, Windows has disabled remote access to this computer. However you can enable remote access and safely share files by running the Network Setup Wizard." This is caused by a local policy setting, read on for the step by step instructions for resolving this problem…

To resolve this issue, modify the Network access: Sharing and security [...]

Program Windows Are Blank When You Use the RUNAS /USER:ADMINISTRATOR Command in Windows XP

William Buchanan — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:55:00 +0000

A client of mine had this issue recently. When you try to start a program with administrative privileges in Windows XP by using the Runas command, the program window opens but it’s empty. This happens because of an issue with permissions. There is a fairly simple workaround for the problem.

To work around this problem, keep the first Command Prompt window open. To do so:
Click Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type cmd, and then [...]

Enable Command Prompt QuickEdit Mode

William Buchanan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:43:00 +0000

By default, QuickEdit mode in the command prompt window is disabled in Windows XP. QuickEdit mode is a useful function that lets you copy text between a command window and GUI-based programs, or paste text into the command window using the right click option.

You can enable QuickEdit mode by following these instructions:
Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. Click the icon in the upper-left corner of the Command Prompt window, and then click Properties. On [...]

Windows XP Doesn’t Remember Settings in Explorer

William Buchanan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:36:02 +0000

I ran across this gem recently when I had some folders in Explorer that were set up to show in the Details view, but some worked and some did not. What I found out is by default, Explorer in Windows XP will remember the customization settings for up to 400 folders. When you exceed that limit, it will no longer retain the settings. There are a couple of ways you can fix this issue…

You can manually edit the registry [...]

.NET Framework Error on Login & Services not Starting

William Buchanan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:28:53 +0000

I have had a few laptops running Vista (Enterprise version) in my care that have experienced this problem lately. The user boots up their machine and logs in, then they receive an error from the .NET Framework, which is the first symptom of this particular issue.

The user receives the following error:

Microsoft .NET Framework

Unhandled exception [...]

Problem Printing From Vista to XP

William Buchanan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:56:30 +0000

I ran into this problem the other day while trying to print from a laptop running Windows Vista to a PC that was running Windows XP. The XP machine had a USB printer that was being shared and was visible on the network. I installed the shared printer through the Add a printer function as a network printer on the Vista machine and it installed without error. When I tried printing something to the newly installed printer nothing happened, no [...]