Just noticed my blog of about 2 years ago where I described my world without Windows.
Two years on and I have not regretted making the change.
In fact I get increasingly annoyed whenever I have to touch a Windows system, which I do because I have clients with them.
I upgraded my hardware last summer to get 4 monitors onto my system and I moved my old Phenom machine across and have installed Win 7 for those few occasions when I need to access Windows. It's like wading through treacle in comparison to my Ubuntu machine.
This morning for example when I wanted to pop on to Windows to check something it decided to do some updates. 20 minutes and some 6 automatic reboots I was able to get to what I wanted. What a drain on productivity!
If all you do is browse the internet, send and receive a few emails, maybe write a letter or two then go on, be brave, make the leap into the world of Ubuntu Linux.
Friday 12 April 2013
Windows Error 0x00000709 - a fix
Have you been suffering with Error 0x00000709 when trying to change the default printer on your Windows computer.
Here is a potential fix.
Environment:
Two workstations as part of the Windows Server 2008 domain, both running Windows 7 64 bit.
The default printer for these computers have broken irreversibly and had been removed from the system. A new printer had been introduced into the system and the drivers had been installed (not professionally done, the printer had been set up as a shared printer not as a standard network printer - I don't think this is necessarily relevant). When the user tried to set the printer as default it produced this error.
My solution was to uninstall the new printer and reinstall as it should be. To do this I logged on as domain administrator to have access to all the areas I needed.
On the first workstation I deleted the new printer. Then in "Devices and Printers" I clicked to remove the old printer which it seemed to do, however when I went back in to the 'Devices and Printers' page the old printer was still there. I eventually found there was a print job in the print queue for the old printer. I deleted the print job and was able to remove the printer. I then reinstalled the new printer and it appeared as the default printer. I logged on as a normal user and was able to set the default to the new printer without any problem.
The second workstation was not as kind. I went through the same process and when I installed the new printer as administrator it was set as default. Great! When I logged on as a normal user I could not set the default, in fact I could not set the default to any existing printer. Not so Great! I trawled the net and found several solutions some of which suggested manipulating registry keys - not for the faint hearted. What I noticed is that for this user is that there was no registry entries for the new printer where you would expect to find them.
There is a side problem here. When you are a domain user, you can run regedit and under HKCU you can see the keys relevant to yourself but you cannot alter them as you do not have permissions. However if you find regedit on disk and 'run as administrator' then under HKCU the keys you get are those for the administrator not the logged on user, so to manipulate the keys for other users you need to go to HK Users and find the relevant user from those listed.
Now, despite resetting these keys I could still not get the default printer to switch. Why I didn't think of it earlier (see workstation 1) I looked in the print queue and there were some stalled jobs there. On this workstation I could not cancel the jobs directly nor could I 'remove' the printer, this had to use the manufacturers uninstall utility to remove the printer. Once this was done the reinstall of the new printer and the setting of the default printer worked as required
So the moral of this story is this. If you are experiencing 0x00000709 errors then check that you do not have a previously installed printer with stalled jobs in the queue.
If this blog helps one or two people then I will be pleased. If it is read by a Windows engineer who can resolve the problem for Windows internally then I shall be ecstatic. I won't hold my breath for the latter.
Good luck everyone.
ps a further clue here is the behaviour of the printers under different users. On workstation 2 where the administrator had not been using the old printer the default printer was set without any problem. As a standard user where there was a stalled print queue there was a problem. Each user had their own print queue which determines how the default printer can be set. Home users where there is only one user may not see this behaviour.
Here is a potential fix.
Environment:
Two workstations as part of the Windows Server 2008 domain, both running Windows 7 64 bit.
The default printer for these computers have broken irreversibly and had been removed from the system. A new printer had been introduced into the system and the drivers had been installed (not professionally done, the printer had been set up as a shared printer not as a standard network printer - I don't think this is necessarily relevant). When the user tried to set the printer as default it produced this error.
My solution was to uninstall the new printer and reinstall as it should be. To do this I logged on as domain administrator to have access to all the areas I needed.
On the first workstation I deleted the new printer. Then in "Devices and Printers" I clicked to remove the old printer which it seemed to do, however when I went back in to the 'Devices and Printers' page the old printer was still there. I eventually found there was a print job in the print queue for the old printer. I deleted the print job and was able to remove the printer. I then reinstalled the new printer and it appeared as the default printer. I logged on as a normal user and was able to set the default to the new printer without any problem.
The second workstation was not as kind. I went through the same process and when I installed the new printer as administrator it was set as default. Great! When I logged on as a normal user I could not set the default, in fact I could not set the default to any existing printer. Not so Great! I trawled the net and found several solutions some of which suggested manipulating registry keys - not for the faint hearted. What I noticed is that for this user is that there was no registry entries for the new printer where you would expect to find them.
There is a side problem here. When you are a domain user, you can run regedit and under HKCU you can see the keys relevant to yourself but you cannot alter them as you do not have permissions. However if you find regedit on disk and 'run as administrator' then under HKCU the keys you get are those for the administrator not the logged on user, so to manipulate the keys for other users you need to go to HK Users and find the relevant user from those listed.
Now, despite resetting these keys I could still not get the default printer to switch. Why I didn't think of it earlier (see workstation 1) I looked in the print queue and there were some stalled jobs there. On this workstation I could not cancel the jobs directly nor could I 'remove' the printer, this had to use the manufacturers uninstall utility to remove the printer. Once this was done the reinstall of the new printer and the setting of the default printer worked as required
So the moral of this story is this. If you are experiencing 0x00000709 errors then check that you do not have a previously installed printer with stalled jobs in the queue.
If this blog helps one or two people then I will be pleased. If it is read by a Windows engineer who can resolve the problem for Windows internally then I shall be ecstatic. I won't hold my breath for the latter.
Good luck everyone.
ps a further clue here is the behaviour of the printers under different users. On workstation 2 where the administrator had not been using the old printer the default printer was set without any problem. As a standard user where there was a stalled print queue there was a problem. Each user had their own print queue which determines how the default printer can be set. Home users where there is only one user may not see this behaviour.
Friday 9 March 2012
Support Scams - Don't fall for it
I have just had a someone saying there we calling from the IT support department of TechBuddha (well it is a change from saying you are calling from Microsoft!).
Don't fall for it these are scamming calls.
A 'whois' indicates the domain owner has the same name as the founder of TechBuddha.
I went along with all the requests even as far as going to the website as instructed. As a precaution I did this on a Linux machine. The website shows a remote support site invitation and I was given the code to allow access.
When asked the agent said that of course this does not give access to my computer but as a provider of remote support services I know this to be wrong.
When I said that I felt that by typing in the code this would give access to my computer and I suspected that this was to download things to my computer the agent very curiously hung up!!
I had half a mind to let him have access to my Linux machine just to see what he would do but I kept him talking for 10-15 minutes.
By way of preamble I was asked to look at the error log in Windows 7. As always there are some errors; services not loaded, updates failed and so on. Nothing at all serious. I was informed that these errors were caused by internet downloads and contained stuff that would cause my computer to stop working within the next week.
The domain tbs123.com is registered in the Seychelles.
As a user just give these people short shrift. They are probably looking for find out your bank details or credit card codes. They are not doing this for your benefit.
And just to add to this, they phoned my Mother in Law who does not have a computer. They phone me and I don't use Windows and the computer I looked at was built on Monday for one specific purpose and apart from updates has not been used on the Internet.
Thursday 6 October 2011
SEO - Is it worth it?
I am rapidly becoming disillusioned by all the hype about SEO.
Everyone is offering you Page 1 on Google. Hey guys, unless that page contains millions of entries we can't all be on there. Or maybe we could get on page one with a single very obscure keyword that no one is ever likely to use but if they did you would be there!
On offer are instant results that take a year to be effective. Overnight success stories that take 2 years to come to fruition.
On offer is an SEO expert who wants £ 500 a month to do SEO work for us. In our business that would mean selling an extra 10 units a month just to pay for the SEO advice. I don't think so!
Others offer you placement on 10 Directory listings a month. Oh come on! Some of those will be so obscure that they are not worth it for the traffic they will generate.
We will soon be placing on one of our websites a fuller story.
In the meantime if you would like to have a go at me for writing such scandalous, sacrilegious, scurrilous content then click here Email Me.
Is it worth it? It is probably worth doing something but lets not get over excited by it all.
Everyone is offering you Page 1 on Google. Hey guys, unless that page contains millions of entries we can't all be on there. Or maybe we could get on page one with a single very obscure keyword that no one is ever likely to use but if they did you would be there!
On offer are instant results that take a year to be effective. Overnight success stories that take 2 years to come to fruition.
On offer is an SEO expert who wants £ 500 a month to do SEO work for us. In our business that would mean selling an extra 10 units a month just to pay for the SEO advice. I don't think so!
Others offer you placement on 10 Directory listings a month. Oh come on! Some of those will be so obscure that they are not worth it for the traffic they will generate.
We will soon be placing on one of our websites a fuller story.
In the meantime if you would like to have a go at me for writing such scandalous, sacrilegious, scurrilous content then click here Email Me.
Is it worth it? It is probably worth doing something but lets not get over excited by it all.
Friday 29 July 2011
Spamming attack resolved
It would appear that recently an email account on our web server had been compromised and was being used to send out spam mail despite the security measures we have in place.
We believe we have now solved the problem and have put further security measures in place to revent this from happening in the future.
We apologise to any user who has received spam email emanating from our server and to those webmasters who may had had an increase in traffic resulting from the use of false email accounts purporting to reside on their servers.
We believe we have now solved the problem and have put further security measures in place to revent this from happening in the future.
We apologise to any user who has received spam email emanating from our server and to those webmasters who may had had an increase in traffic resulting from the use of false email accounts purporting to reside on their servers.
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