Let’s look at DEP and how to configure it, or turn DEP off, depending on your needs.

What Is DEP & What Does It Do?

According to Microsoft, DEP is :

“…a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help prevent malicious code from running on a system.”

Dell simplifies it a bit and tells us that DEP

“…can help protect your computer by monitoring your programs to make sure that they use system memory safely.”

What does that mean? There are certain areas in the computer’s memory which aren’t intended to have code running in them, but sometimes code does run there.

Usually, the code that will run there is malicious. DEP will monitor those areas and if it sees something going on in those areas it will shut it down. If you want to get in-depth about how it works, read Microsoft’s detailed description of Data Execution Prevention.

So Why Does DEP Cause Problems?

Even today, computers are dumb. They cannot reason, they can only use the most basic of logic. Plus, that logic is put into them by humans so computers also get our mistakes put into them.

Sometimes, good programs will wander off into the areas that DEP monitors and work in those spaces.

When this happens, DEP will sometimes shut the entire program down and let you know via an error message. But sometimes DEP will just cause the program to run very poorly and there won’t be anything obvious to tell you why.

What Programs Have Problems With DEP?

Programs that conflict with DEP are typically older programs or built on old codebases. A lot of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is built on codebases that go back to the 1970s. There was no DEP then, so the program will go into areas that DEP patrols.

64-bit programs were created after DEP was well established, so they were developed to comply. Most programs that conflict with DEP will be 32-bit programs. 

Non-Microsoft programs that interact with Windows Services heavily or run their own Windows Services may be tripped up by DEP. If that is the case, the vendor will recommend to completely turn off DEP.

For the home user, old games that are 32-bit, and someemulators for playing even older games, are the most likely to conflict with DEP.

Old device drivers or drivers downloaded from unofficial sources may also trigger DEP errors. Only download drivers from the hardware manufacturer or Microsoft, andupdate your drivers regularly.

How Do I Know If DEP Is The Problem?

You may have togo into Event Viewer and sift through the logs for Event ID 1000. If you find one, it may look like this:

Event ID : 1000 - DEP Error : Generic host for Win32 servicesGeneric Host Process for Win32 Services - DEP : Application Error
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: (100)
Event ID: 1000

 You may see other errors referencing things like:

• 0xFC:ATTEMPTED_EXECUTE_OF_NOEXECUTE_MEMORY – occurs when a device driver is trying to run in memory. It may be a bad or outdated driver. You’ll want to update your drivers.
• STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) – occurs when programs are trying to run in DEP protected memory space.

How To Configure Or Turn Off DEP

In Windows 10, DEP defaults to the setting Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only. Most of the time, this is sufficient. It means that the majority of your programs will be ignored by DEP.

But if DEP helps protect the computer and it doesn’t have a performance hit, you may want to select Turn on DEP for all programs except those that I select. Then if you find a program that has a problem with DEP, we can add it as an exception. Let’s look at how to do that.

• Open the Control Panel then open System.

• On the left side of the System window, click on Advanced System Settings.

• The System Properties window should open and already be set to the Advanced tab. In the Performance area, click on Settings.

• In the Performance Options window, click on the Data Execution Prevention tab.

• With Turn on DEP for all programs except those that I select selected, click on the Add button near the bottom of the window.

• Navigate to the executable for the program that we’d like to add as an exception. It will most likely be in C:/Program Files (x86).
• In this example, we’re adding MediaMonkey, an old music player utility. Click on the .exe file once we find it and click on Open.

• In Performance Options, click on Apply. Now, MediaMonkey will run outside of DEP protection while all others will run within DEP protection.

Turn DEP Completely Off

If you want to turn DEP completely off, we advise only doing that as part of troubleshooting an issue. DEP is there for your protection.

Since it’s something that isn’t advised, there isn’t a good point-and-click way to do it. Let’s look at how we can turn off DEP.

• Open the Command window as Administrator. Do this by typing cmd in the program search field near the Start menu.

• Enter the command bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff and press enter.

bcdedit.exe is a Windows utility for editing boot configuration data, hence bdcedit.

/set tells bcedit to set an option value entry in the boot configuration.

{current} tells becedit to work with the boot configuration being used right now.

nx is short for no execute and is the setting name for DEP in the boot configuration.

AlwaysOff is self-explanatory.

• Restart the computer.
• DEP will now be completely, and permanently off.

Turn DEP On For Everything

To turn DEP on for absolutely everything, the process and command is like above.

• Open the Command window as Administrator, following the instructions in the procedure above.
• Enter the command bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOn.

• Restart the computer.
• DEP will be turned on and all programs monitored.

After turning DEP to being always on or always off, it CANNOT be changed via the Data Execution Prevention tab in system settings.

Let’s look at how to change it so that the radio buttons in the DEP tab can be used again.

Set DEP Back To Default Behavior

To set DEP behavior back to default and make it manageable again via system settings, do the following.

• Open the Command window as Administrator.
• Enter the command bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx OptIn.

• Restart the computer.
• Now the radio buttons in the DEP tab in systems settings are accessible again.

To DEP Or Not To DEP

We recommend leaving DEP on its default setting of Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only, unless it’s necessary to change it to troubleshoot problems that may be DEP-related.

The post Configure or Turn Off DEP (Data Execution Prevention) in Windows first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

If this problem annoys you also, there is a simple way to change the default photo viewing program in Windows to the application of your choice! Actually, there are two ways to go about it.

Also, you can configure it so that one image type opens with one application and another image type opens with a different program. So you could have JPG images open with Photoshop and GIF images open with Photo Viewer, for example.

Note that in addition to changing the default picture viewer, you can follow the same steps below to change the default media player, default web browser, etc. For example, for the default media player, you would select your media player from the list, i.e. VLC Media Player, and then adjust the settings for it.

Adjust Default Programs

If you’re still running Windows XP, then make sure to read my separate post on changing the default program to open a file with since the XP procedure is different.

In Windows 7 and higher, you can change which file types a program opens or you can change which program is used when opening a specific file type. Click on the Control Panel and then click on Default Programs while under the icons view.

Here you will see the two options I mentioned above: Set your default programs and Associate a file type or protocol with a program.

If you click on the first link, you’ll get a list of the different programs installed on your computer. Select the program and Windows will tell you how many defaults this programs is set to open.

You can then click on Set this program as default to have it open all the default file types or you can click Choose defaults for this program to choose specific file types.

In the example above, Internet Explorer is set to open GIF images and Microsoft Office 2010 is set to open JPG files. All other formats are set to open with Windows Photo Viewer. If you want to use a different program to open pictures, for example, select that program from the list and then choose Set this program as default.

Adjust via Open With

Going back and clicking on Adjust a file type or protocol with a program will allow you to browse through the hundreds of file types stored on the computer and then change the default program for opening that type of file.

When you click Change Program, you’ll get a list of Recommended Programs and Other Programs, along with an option to Browse to a program that is not currently listed.

The advantage to this method as opposed to the first option is that here you can choose any program you like to open a file. In the first method, only programs that have registered with Windows will show up in that list and there is no way to manually add a missing program.

You can also get to this same dialog by right-clicking on the any file in Explorer, clicking on Open With and then clicking on Choose default program.

Windows 8, 10 Default Programs

In Windows 8 and Windows 10, things are slightly different because now you have desktop apps and you have Windows Store apps. By default, all Windows 8/10 PCs will have Windows Photo Viewer and the Photos app installed. The former is a desktop app and will load there and the latter is a Windows Store app and will load as an app.

You can follow the same procedures as for Windows 7, but the only difference is that you will see the Windows Store apps listed as options too. As mentioned earlier, you can change other defaults like the default media player to another program or app of your choice rather than the Video or Movies & TV app in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Hopefully, you can now double-click on an image and expect the correct program to open. You do want to be careful changing these settings because there is no way to simply reset all default programs back to their original values. I’m not sure why this option doesn’t exist, because it should, but it’s just not there.

The only real way to reset default programs is to either download a registry file that will manually change each value or create a new user profile. These settings are stored on a per user basis, so creating a new user account will start you from scratch. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

The post How to Change Default Picture Viewer in Windows first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Most of the time you will see this in corporate environments where the IT staff has locked down the computer by disabling Windows settings and services. If it’s a policy pushed out by the main servers, it can be very hard or impossible to bypass. However, you can still give it a shot!

Another major reason the registry gets disabled is due to malicious viruses. By disabling access to the registry, the virus can prevent the user from repairing their system.

In this article, I’m going to go through a couple of different methods you can try for enabling access to the registry.

Method 1 – Group Policy

The first method involves opening the Group Policy editor in Windows and checking the setting for registry access. Unfortunately, the group policy editor is only available in the Professional, Ultimate and Pro versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8. If you have the Starter or Home editions, this method won’t work.

Step 1: Click on Start and typing gpedit.msc into the search box.

Step 2: Navigate to User Configuration – Administrative Templates – System.

Step 3: In the right hand pane, double click on Prevent access to registry editing tools.

Step 4: If the setting is set to Enabled, you can change it to Not Configured or Disabled.

Now try to run the registry editor and see if it works. If not, go to the command prompt (Start, Run, type cmd) and type in gpupdate, but only if you are not in a corporate environment. In a corporate network, the gpupdate command will download the settings from the server again, which might just overwrite the setting to Enabled.

You can try to avoid receiving the setting from the server by restarting your computer, but disconnecting your network card so that it can’t communicate with the network. You may also want to try the whole procedure above while disconnected from the network in order to ensure that the corporate policy does not override the local policy.

If you have a home computer, then you don’t have to worry about all of this, just restart your computer and you should be able to edit the registry again.

Method 2 – Registry Key

Even if you can’t open the GUI registry editor, there is a DOS command line tool called REG that lets you edit, update and manipulate the registry.   Using this command, we can try to add a key that enables the registry. Click on Start, type Run and paste the following line into the Run box:

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Now try to open the registry editor and see if it is accessible. You may have to restart your computer first. Since Windows is running, you might run into problems using this method.

Luckily, there are ways to edit the registry while offline, meaning editing the registry without having to load Windows. Another good tech blog has written a detailed article on different ways to edit the registry offline, so check that out if the Run command method didn’t work. If this didn’t work either, keep reading!

Method 3 – Rename regedit

Sometimes a virus or malware program will simply prevent the registry loading by the name of the EXE file (regedit.exe). This is quite easy to bypass because you can just rename the EXE file to something else like regedit_new.exe and it might load just fine.

You can find the regedit executable file in the C:\Windows directory. Since this folder is a Windows system folder, you won’t be able to simply right-click and rename it. You’ll get an error message saying that you don’t have permission from TrustedInstaller.

In order to rename the file, you’ll have to change the owner to yourself and then change the permissions to give yourself Full Control.

Also, check to see if regedit was already named something else like regedit.com. Some viruses rename the .exe file so that it doesn’t load when you try to run it. In these cases, just rename the file back to regedit.exe and see if it works.

Method 4 – Symantec

Symantec has a really old file from 2005 that still seems to work with this registry issue. Some viruses will change the shell command registry keys so that anytime you run an EXE file, it just runs the virus instead. This file will replace those keys with the original default values. Once you download it, just right-click on it and choose Install.

When you open the link above, make sure you right-click on the link to UnHookExec.inf and choose Save link as, otherwise it will simply load the contents of the file in your web browser.

The Save as type should already be set to Setup Information, but in case it’s not, change it to that.

There are a couple of other ways you can try to enable the registry, but I haven’t had any success with any of them and that’s why I’m not mentioning them here. If you’re not in a corporate environment, the first thing you should do is install anti-virus and anti-malware software to try and remove any malicious program that could be causing the issue.

Check out my previous articles that can help you with removing viruses and malware:

Best Software for Malware and Spyware Removal

Use Windows Defender Offline to Remove Viruses

How to Protect Your Computer From Viruses and Malware

If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

The post Fix Registry Editing has been Disabled by Your Administrator Error first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

I guess Microsoft didn’t think about that issue when the released Windows XP. Nor did they add the option in Service Pack 3, the last major non-security update to XP. By default, the thumbnails in Windows XP look like this:

That size is simply not large enough, especially for anyone with vision problems! Luckily, there’s an easy way to modify these settings so that the thumbnails can be any size you want up to 256×256. Unfortunately, the max size for icons in Explorer is 256×256 pixels. If you want to see them bigger than that, you’ll have to use a third-party program. Scroll down past Tweak UI to learn about adjust thumbnail sizes in Windows 7/8.

Tweak UI

Previously, I had written about a cool little utility that you can get for free from Microsoft called Tweak UI that lets you modify and tweak a bunch of Windows XP settings. Using this program, we can quickly and easily change the default 96 pixels size of thumbnails to something more visible.

Once you install the program, go to the Start Menu and click on All Programs – Powertoys for Windows XP – Tweak UI. After you have opened the program, click on Explorer from the left hand menu and then click on Thumbnails.

Change the default size from 96 to something higher. In my case, I chose 256. Also, make sure to keep the Image Quality closer to high so that the thumbnails look nice. Of course, it will take more resources when browsing pictures, but if you have a fairly new computer, it should not be a problem.

Now when you browse through your photos in My Pictures or anywhere where you have thumbnails turned on, you should see something like this:

Now that is much better! I can actually see what’s going on in a picture! Cheers! The second method for changing the thumbnail size is to modify the registry.

ThumbnailSize Registry Hack

If you decide to use the registry hack, then you can change the size of the thumbnails on Windwos XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 since the same hacks works for all these versions. The only clear advantage to using the registry hack at all in Windows Vista and higher is if you want to use a custom size for the thumbnails.

By default, in Windows 7 and Windows 8, you can choose from Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large icons. You can adjust the size by moving the slider in Windows 7.

In Windows 8, the Explorer interface has change a little bit and Microsoft removed the whole slider option. Instead, you have to click on the View tab and there you will see the same options in the Layout box.

Anyway, back to the registry hack. If you want a custom size for your icons, you can open the registry editor by going to Start and then typing in regedit. Then navigate to the following registry key in the left pane:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER – Software – Microsoft – Windows – CurrentVersion – Explorer

Now on the right pane, you should look for a key called ThumbnailSize. If it’s not there, you will have to right-click in the right-pane and choose New – DWORD (32-bit) Value. Give it a name of Thumbnail Size and then double-click on it to edit it. Choose Decimal give it a value from 32 to 256.

You should be able to see the effects immediately when you open a new Explorer window. Note that the thumbnail size will apply to all folders and files regardless of what other settings you may have previously chosen. You can still manually change the thumbnail size for a particular folder, but when you browse back to the same folder later, the thumbnails will display with the custom size you set in the registry.

Preview Pane in Windows 7/8

If you’re still not happy with the 256 max size for thumbnails in Windows and you don’t want to install any third-party software, you have one other option. Both Windows 7 and Windows 8 have a Preview Pane option that basically lets you view a preview that is as large as you can make the preview pane itself.

As you can see, the preview is much bigger. You can expand the explorer window to as large as your monitor and the preview will expand as well. In Windows 7, just click on that small little window button at the top right. In Windows 8, click on the View tab and then click on Preview Pane to enable it.

Hopefully, whether you are running Windows XP or Windows 8, you now have enough options to view thumbnails at a desirable size. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy!

The post How to Increase Windows Explorer Default Thumbnail Size for Pictures first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

In this article, I’ll talk only about network or Ethernet printers. Also, this article is for Windows XP users. If you’re using Windows 7 or Windows 8, the process is far easier and you can read my other post on adding a printer to Windows 8 here. Now let’s get started. Here’s what you’ll need to do in order to setup the printer on your Windows XP machine:

Step 1: First, connect the printer to your network by connecting one end of a Cat 5 or 6 cable (which should have come with your printer) to your router and the other end into the network port of your printer. Now, turn your printer on and wait for it to become ready.

Step 2: Next you’ll need to get the IP address of your printer. The IP address is what will let your computer know where to find your printer on the network. All network printers allow you to print a configuration sheet that will list basic information about the printer along with the current network configuration.

For most printers, this involves pressing the Menu button on the printer, going to the Information option and choosing Print Configuration. Sometimes if there is no display, you just press and hold the Go or Print button down for about 10 seconds and it’ll print the configuration page. You will be looking for the TCP/IP section:

The IP Address is what you’ll need for the next steps. You printer should automatically get an IP address from the DHCP server on your network. At home, the IP should be coming from the wireless router or residential gateway if you have one that acts as a cable modem plus router.

Step 3: The last step is to add the printer to your computer. Click on Start, then Printers and Faxes.

If you don’t see this in your Start Menu, you can go to Start, Control Panel and then click on Printers and Faxes there. Click Add Printer from the task pane on the left.

The Add Printer wizard will begin, so click Next to get started. On the next screen you’ll be asked whether your printer is a local printer or a network printer. These options are confusing because a network printer is actually referring either a printer connected to another computer or a printer on a print server. Our printer is a stand-alone printer and so you must select Local printer attached to this computer and make sure that you uncheck the box for automatically detecting the printer.

Click Next and you’ll be asked to select the printer port. Since our printer is a network printer with a IP address, we need to select the Create a new port option and choose Standard TCP/IP Port.

Click Next and you’ll get another wizard to add a TCP/IP printer port. On the main wizard screen click Next. In the first text box, Printer Name or IP Address, enter the IP address from the printer configuration sheet you printer earlier.

Click Next and depending on the printer you have, you may get one more dialogs before the end of the wizard. If the network card for the printer cannot be identified, the wizard will ask you to choose the card type. You can leave the default of “Generic Network Card” and click Next.

Click Next and click Finish. You will then continue on with the Add Printer wizard and you’ll need to either choose the printer from the list of manufacturers or click Have Disk and insert your printer driver cd in the computer.

Click Next and enter a name for your printer and click the Yes radio button if you would like the printer to be your default printer.

Click Next and you’ll be asked whether you want to share the printer or not. Click No because anyone else who wants to connect will be able to do so following the same steps. In later versions of Windows XP, the printer sharing dialog has been removed. Click Next and click Yes to print a test page and make sure that the computer and printer can communicate!

Click Next and then click Finish! The new printer will appear in your Printers and Faxes screen and you’re ready to print to your network printer in Windows XP!

The post How to Install a Network Printer on Your Home or Office Network first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

In order to use Remote Desktop, there are a couple of things you need to understand. First off, remote desktop only works with Windows XP and Windows 2003. What I mean by this is that you can only connect INTO a Window XP or 2003 machine. You can use a Windows 98, ME, or 2000 to connect INTO a Windows XP or 2003 machine, but you cannot connect INTO a 98, ME or 2000 machine remotely. If you want to be able to connect to a Windows 2000 or earlier machine, you’ll have to buy commercial software.

Since this post is over 7 years old, the above statement is out-dated. You can also connect into a Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 machine. Also, since Microsoft has recently ended support for Windows XP, this tutorial will becomes less useful as time passes.

Secondly, you need to make sure that you are logged in as a computer administrator on the machine in order to set it up for remote access. If you brought a computer from a store or got it straight from the manufacturer, the first user name you create is always an Administrator account.

An easy way to check whether or not you are an Administrator is to go to Start, Control Panel and then click on User Accounts. You’ll see your user name and it should have “Administrators” or “Computer Administrator” written next to it.

Thirdly, the administrator account on your machine must have a password. If you do not have to type in a password in order to access Windows when you start up your computer, then you do not have a password set up and Remote Desktop will not work. Remote desktop does not allow you to connect to a computer with a user account that does not have a password.

When you go to User Accounts and click on the Administrator account, you will see an option to create a password for the account. Go ahead and do that before moving on.

Next, if the computer you are connecting to is running Windows XP SP3, then you need to open the firewall to allow remote desktop connections. To do this, go to Start, Control Panel, Windows Firewall and click on the Exceptions tab.

Make sure that the Remote Desktop check box is checked. The last thing that needs to be done in order for Remote Desktop to work correctly is to tell Windows that we want to allow users to connect remotely. So far we’ve just fulfilled the requirements, but now we have to actually allow remote desktop connections to this computer.

Go to Start, Control Panel, and click on System. Click on the Remote tab and make sure that the “Allows users to connect remotely to this computer” box is checked. Don’t worry about clicking the Select Remote Users button because Administrators have access by default. If you want to give an non-administrator account remote desktop access, then click that button and add the user.

And that’s it! Your computer is now setup for remote desktop! First try connecting to the XP machine from another computer on your home network. In order to connect, go to the other computer and click on Start, All programs, Accessories, Communications, and Remote Desktop Connection. If you want to connect to the XP machine from Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8, just click on Start and perform a search for remote desktop connection. On Windows 8, go to the Start Screen and start typing to perform a search.

In the dialog box, you can type in the IP address or the name of the computer. The best way to connect is to type in the IP address of the computer. In order to get the IP address of the computer you want to connect to, go to the computer and click on Start, Run and type in CMD.

In the black command window, type in the word “ipconfig” without the quotes as shown below and press Enter.

You’ll see your IP address listed along with some other info, but you don’t need to worry about that. Write down that IP address (192.x.x.x or something similar) and type that number exactly into the remote desktop text box on the other computer (the computer you are connecting from).

Click Connect and you should get a login screen pop up, which means you have successfully connected to the other computer. You can now enter the Computer Administrator user name and password.

If you get an error saying that computer cannot accept new connections, etc. that means something was not configured correctly. Remember you need to give the administrator account a password, open the port in the firewall, and check the allow remote connections check box in the System properties. All  three items need to be performed on computer you want to connect TO.

Once you are able to connect from within the same network, now you can try to connect from outside. So if you want to connect to your home computer from the office, you can do that, but you’ll have to do a few extra things.

First, you have to get your public IP Address (not the 192.168.x.x number). You can do this by going to the computer you want to connect to and navigating to the What Is My IP site to get your public IP address. This is the address that can be used from anywhere in the world to connect to your specific location and is unique. Unfortunately, on most home connections, this public IP address changes often and without notice. Basically to solve that problem, you have to use dynamic DNS.

The second thing you have to do is open the port in your router (unless you’re connecting your cable modem directly into your computer) and forward that port to the computer you want to connect to. Here’s how you would do this on a Netgear router (as I have that) and the procedure is pretty much the same for other routers, except that it might be called something else. Most manufacturer’s web sites have an article on how to configure their particular router for port forwarding since it’s very common.

You’ll need to log into your router by typing it’s IP address into the browser address bar. You can figure out the IP address of your router by going to any computer on your network (that you want to connect into) and opening the command prompt like we did above and typing ipconfig again. In addition to the IP Address field, you’ll also see Default Gateway, this is your router. From the above screenshot, you can see mine is 192.168.244.2.

Type that address into your browser address bar as follows and press Enter:

You’ll most likely be prompted for a user name and password. Usually, you can find this in the documentation or on the under side of the router itself. For my Netgear router, the username as “admin” (lowercase) and the password was “password”.

Once you’re in, you should see an option called “Port Forwarding/Port Triggering” or something very similar. I know Netopia calls these Pinholes and on Linksys it might be called a Service or Applications.

Once you’re on the Port Forwarding page, you might see different layouts/options. The basic parts will be giving the forward a name like “Remote Desktop”, choosing the external port and the internal port, the protocol and picking the IP address for the device the data is supposed to be forward to.

For remote desktop, you’ll always want to choose TCP for Protocol. Be default, remote desktop uses port 3389, so type that into both the internal and export port boxes. Lastly, the internal IP address should be the IP address of the XP machine. On some setups, you’ll be asked for a starting port, ending port and triggering port. Just put 3389 for any port boxes.

Click Apply and you’re done! You should now be able to use your public IP address (type this into the Computer text box in the Remote Desktop Connection dialog) to connect through your router to your computer!

If you have any problems remotely connecting to your Windows XP machine, please post a comment here and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!

The post How to Setup Remote Desktop on Windows XP first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

This feature is actually part of a Windows security feature called Group Policy, which is used by most IT Professionals who manage computers in the corporate network via servers, however, it can also be used locally on a PC without any servers. The only downside to using Group Policy is that it is not available in lower versions of Windows. For Windows 7, you need to have Windows 7 Professional or higher. For Windows 8, you need Pro or Enterprise.

The term Group Policy basically refers to a set of registry settings that can be controlled via a graphical user interface. You enable or disable various settings and these edits are then updated in the Windows registry.

In Windows XP, to get to the policy editor, click on Start and then Run. In the text box, type “gpedit.msc” without the quotes as shown below:

In Windows 7, you would just click on the Start button and type gpedit.msc into the search box at the bottom of the Start Menu. In Windows 8, simply go to the Start Screen and start typing or move your mouse cursor to the far top or bottom right of the screen to open the Charms bar and click on Search. Then just type in gpedit. Now you should see something that is similar to the image below:

There are two main categories of policies: User and Computer. As you might have guessed, the user policies control the settings for each user whereas the computer settings will be system wide settings and will effect all users. In our case we’re going to want our setting to be for all users, so we’ll expand the Computer Configuration section.

Continue expanding to Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Audit Policy. I’m not going to explain much of the other settings here since this is primarily focused on auditing a folder. Now you’ll see a set of policies and their current settings on the right hand side. Audit policy is what controls whether or not the operating system is configured and ready to track changes.

Now check the setting for Audit Object Access by double clicking on it and selecting both Success and Failure. Click OK and now we’re done the first part which is telling Windows that we want it to be ready to monitor changes. Now the next step is to tell it what EXACTLY we want to track. You can close out of the Group Policy console now.

Now navigate to the folder using Windows Explorer that you would like to monitor. In Explorer, right click on the folder and click Properties. Click on the Security Tab and you see something similar to this:

Now click on the Advanced button and click on the Auditing tab. This is where we’ll actually configure what we want to monitor for this folder.

Go ahead and click the Add button. A dialog will appear asking you to select a User or Group. In the box, type in the word “users” and click Check Names. The box will automatically update with the name of the local users group for your computer in the form COMPUTERNAME\Users.

Click OK and now you’ll get another dialog called “Audit Entry for X“. This is the real meat of what we’ve been wanting to do. Here is where you’ll select what you want to watch for this folder. You can individually choose which types of activity you want to track, such as deleting or creating new files/folders, etc. To make things easier, I suggest selecting Full Control, which will automatically select all the other options below it. Do this for Success and Failure. This way, whatever is done to that folder or the files within it, you will have a record.

Now click OK and click OK again and OK one more time to get out of the multiple dialog box set. And now you have successfully configured auditing on a folder! So you might ask, how do you view the events?

In order to view the events, you need to go to the Control Panel and click on Administrative Tools. Then open up the Event Viewer. Click on the Security section and you’ll see a large listing of events on the right hand side:

If you go ahead and create a file or simply open the folder and click the Refresh button in the Event Viewer (the button with the two green arrows), you’ll see a bunch of events in the category of File System. These pertain to any delete, create, read, write operations on the folders/files you are auditing. In Windows 7, everything now shows up under File System task category, so in order to see what happened, you’ll have to click on each one and scroll through it.

In order to make it easier to look through so many events, you can put a filter and just see the important stuff. Click on the View menu at the top and click on Filter. If there is no option for Filter, then right-click on the Security log in the left-hand page and choose Filter Current Log. In the Event ID box, type in the number 4656. This is the event associated with a particular user performing a File System action and will give you the relevant information without having to look through thousands of entries.

If you want to get more information about an event, simply double click on it to view.

This is the information from the screen above:

A handle to an object was requested.

Subject:
Security ID: Aseem-Lenovo\Aseem
Account Name: Aseem
Account Domain: Aseem-Lenovo
Logon ID: 0x175a1

Object:
Object Server: Security
Object Type: File
Object Name: C:\Users\Aseem\Desktop\Tufu\New Text Document.txt
Handle ID: 0x16a0

Process Information:
Process ID: 0x820
Process Name: C:\Windows\explorer.exe

Access Request Information:
Transaction ID: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Accesses: DELETE
SYNCHRONIZE
ReadAttributes

In the example above, the file worked on was New Text Document.txt in the Tufu folder on my desktop and the accesses that I requested were DELETE followed by SYNCHRONIZE. What I did here was delete the file. Here’s another example:

Object Type: File
Object Name: C:\Users\Aseem\Desktop\Tufu\Address Labels.docx
Handle ID: 0x178

Process Information:
Process ID: 0x1008
Process Name: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\WINWORD.EXE

Access Request Information:
Transaction ID: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Accesses: READ_CONTROL
SYNCHRONIZE
ReadData (or ListDirectory)
WriteData (or AddFile)
AppendData (or AddSubdirectory or CreatePipeInstance)
ReadEA
WriteEA
ReadAttributes
WriteAttributes

Access Reasons: READ_CONTROL: Granted by Ownership
SYNCHRONIZE: Granted by D:(A;ID;FA;;;S-1-5-21-597862309-2018615179-2090787082-1000)

As you read through this, you can see I accessed Address Labels.docx using the WINWORD.EXE program and my accesses included READ_CONTROL and my access reasons were also READ_CONTROL. Usually, you’ll see a bunch more accesses, but just focus on the first one as that’s usually the main type of access. In this case, I simply opened the file using Word. It does take a little testing and reading through the events to understand what’s going on, but once you have it down, it’s a very reliable system. I suggest creating a test folder with files and performing various actions to see what shows up in the Event Viewer.

That’s pretty much it! A quick and free way to track access or changes to a folder!

The post How to Track When Someone Accesses a Folder on Your Computer first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Well, Windows is quirky and if some of the system files get corrupted, you can end up with this really annoying problem of having to reformat all your USB drives and SD cards!

Most of the time that’s not even an option and if you can plug the device into another system where it loads properly, then why format.

Luckily, there are a couple of things you can do to get rid of the problem. In this article, I’ll try and walk you through the different actions you can take to correct this issue.

Method 1 – System File Checker

The first thing to try is to run the System File Checker, a built in tool that scans all the Windows system files and replaces any corrupted ones with fresh copies. You need to run this using an elevated command prompt.

You can get to an elevated command prompt by going to Start, then Accessories and right-clicking on Command Prompt and choosing Run as Administrator. In new versions of Windows, just search command prompt from the Start Menu and then right-click on the first result.

Now type sfc/scannow and press Enter. Get ready to sit back and wait a while because this process usually takes a long time.

If, for whatever reason, system file checker cannot replace all corrupt files (which it will tell you), then you will have to manually do it. You can follow the instructions here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833

Hopefully, you won’t have to do that though. Now go ahead and restart your computer and then try to plug in your USB device and see what happens. If you are still being asked to format it, keep reading.

Method 2 – Reinstall USB Controller

Another thing you can try is to reinstall the USB controllers on your Windows machine. You can do this by clicking on the Start button and then typing in devmgmt.msc in the search box and pressing Enter.

If you are not using Windows 7, you can go to Device Manager by going to the Control Panel, then System and clicking on Hardware.

Go ahead and right-click on each item under Universal Serial Bus controllers and choose Uninstall. After you have uninstalled all items, go ahead and restart your computer and it will automatically reinstall each USB port.

Method 3 – Run chkdsk

So it may not seem worth doing, but running a chkdsk on your USB drive might also fix the problem. chkdsk will check for bad sectors and fix them if they exist. Now you might be saying that the USB drive works perfectly fine on a different computer, so it can’t have any possible problem, right? Well, maybe not.

Either way, it’s a solution that some people have said has fixed the problem. Again, you need to run it using an elevated command prompt, which I mentioned how to do above. Then type in the following command without the brackets:

chkdsk [drive:] [/p] | [/r]

The [drive] is the drive you want to scan. /p will check the hard drive even if it has been marked as dirty. /r will find the bad sectors and recover any data from there. Once it has finished, go ahead and disconnect the drive and then restart your computer. See what happens when you connect it again.

Method 4 – Plug into Different USB Port

At this point, you are running out of options. One solution a few people mentioned was trying to plug the device into a different USB port. Apparently this is more of a problem with Windows XP.

Somehow when a device gets connected to a particular port, Windows remembers something about that device and connecting it to a different port can confuse Windows.

I’ve never really had this problem before, but it seems to cause issues with some folks. It’s worth a shot and could be a simple fix.

Method 5 – Try Partition Recovery Tool

If the USB drive is giving you the same message on any computer you connect it to, then it’s probably an issue with the file system structure on the USB drive.

You can try to repair the USB drive by running chkdsk, which I mentioned in Method 4. If that doesn’t work, you can try out a third-party tool called TestDisk, which is open source and free.

It’s a command line tool and therefore a little more technical, but it does work very well. They also have good documentation. In our case, you should follow the step-by-step instructions for recovering and repairing partitions.

Method 6 – Format the Device

If you still get this message, then there really is not much else you can do other than format it. However, you should connect the device to another computer, copy off all the data and then perform a format.

Also, when you format the device, you should go to Disk Management and then right-click on the device there and choose Format.

You can get to Disk Management by right-clicking on My Computer or the Computer icon in Windows 7 and clicking on Manage. Also, check out my previous post on the best file format to use when formatting USB drives.

Lastly, I wrote a post if your computer doesn’t recognize your USB drive at all and how to fix that issue. If you had this problem and fixed it some other way, post a comment here and let us know how! Enjoy!

The post Windows Asks to Format Your USB Drive or SD Card When Connected? first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Authentication of Outgoing E-mail Servers

When receiving mail in any e-mail client, it is necessary to use a username and password to authenticate that you have the right to receive the e-mails in your account. The Post Office Protocol (POP) server, managed by your e-mail provider, handles incoming mail.

Many e-mail service providers, however, do not require authentication for outgoing mail. Most e-mail service providers use the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to handle outgoing mail.

If you receive Windows Live Mail error 0x800CCC0B, it is possible that your e-mail service provider requires authentication for outgoing as well as incoming mail.

In Windows Live Mail, you can turn on authentication on an account-by-account basis. Before you proceed with the fix below, be sure you are applying it only to the account(s) that are experiencing the error. Adding authentication to an account that does not require it can cause further errors with the account.

Fix Error 0x800CCC0B in Windows Live Mail

Open up Windows Live Mail and click on the Accounts tab. Click on the e-mail account giving you the error and then click on the Properties button.

You should now be looking at the properties for your e-mail account. Click on the Servers tab and locate a section of the window titled Outgoing Mail Server. Check the box labeled My Server Requires Authentication.

Normally, your email service provider will use the same username and password for outgoing mail as it uses for incoming mail to authenticate that you are authorized to send mail from the account. If this is not the case, click on the Settings button.

You should now be looking at the Outgoing Mail Server properties window. By default, the option titled Use the Same Settings as My Incoming Mail Server is selected.

Check the option titled Log on Using. Type in your Account Name and Password information for outgoing mail.

It is up to you whether to choose the option labeled Remember Password. Unless you are using a PC that is located in an unsecure location, you should keep this option checked.

Otherwise, you will have to type in your username and password every time you want to send mail from this account. Click the OK button on the window and then click on the OK button in the properties window. Send an e-mail from the account and see if the error disappears.

Windows Live Mail, like any mail client, is capable of securely receiving and sending e-mail from your e-mail service provider. Some service providers require server authentication for both incoming and outgoing mail.

This can result in a Windows Live Error. By checking a simple option in the application and optionally adding username and password information, you can fix Windows Live Error 0x800CCC0B.

The post Fix Windows Live Mail Error 0x800CCC0B first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Learn how to turn on Windows Tablet PC Components in Windows 7/8/10.

What are Tablet PC Components?

Tablet PCs are notebook shaped computers that can accept input directly through the computer’s screen. Using your finger, a stylus, or other device, you can control Windows without using a keyboard or mouse.

Unlike previous versions of the operating system, Windows 7 and higher natively support tablet PCs and other computers that use touch screens as an input device. Shipping with Windows 7/8/10 is a collection of Tablet PC Components to help you get the most out of your tablet computer.

However, not all Windows computers come with the Tablet PC Components pre-installed. If you installed the operating system yourself, you may have forgotten to install them or used an express install that didn’t install them by default.

If you own a tablet PC, get the most out of your computer by turning on Windows Tablet PC Components.

Turn on Tablet PC Components in Windows 7/8/10

Begin by logging in to Windows with an account that has administrative privileges. Then, click on Start > Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features.

To the right of the window, click on the link titled Turn Windows Features On or Off. In Windows 10, just click on Start and type in “turn windows” and select the first option.

You should now be looking at the Turn Windows Features On or Off window. Here is where you can install or uninstall Windows features. Which features you can turn on or off depends on the version of Windows you have installed on your computer.

Scroll down the list and locate a folder labeled Tablet PC Components. Note that since you don’t have the components turned on, there is no check mark next to the folder.

If you hover over the folder, Windows tells you which components will be installed if you check the box. Here is a list of those components:

1. Tablet PC Input Panel
2. Windows Journal
3. Math Input Panel
4. Other Hand Writing Recognition Features

When you have clicked on the box next to the folder labeled Tablet PC Components, click the OK button and follow the onscreen directions. You may have to give administrative permission to install and/or turn on these components depending on which Windows features you are using on your PC.

Unfortunately, Microsoft does not allow you to choose which of the Tablet PC Components to turn on or off; they are either all available or all unavailable.

Still, if you have a tablet PC or a computer with a touch screen monitor, you will likely want to turn on all of the components to get the most out of interacting in Windows with all of the tablet features available.

Turning Tablet PC Components on or off on your computer is a simple matter. Although you don’t get the opportunity to choose exactly which components are turned on, you at least gain access to the most useful Windows tablet PC applications such as the Tablet PC Input Panel and the Hand Writing Recognition Features.

Troubleshooting Tablet PC Components

In some instances, you might run into issues if you are using a tablet PC. For example, my Tablet PC settings item in the Control Panel simply disappeared on my Surface Pro and I could no longer calibrate my pen.

In this case, you can try to create a new shortcut to Tablet PC Settings by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing New – Shortcut. For the location, copy and paste the following:

%windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{80F3F1D5-FECA-45F3-BC32-752C152E456E}

Give the shortcut an appropriate name like Tablet Settings and then click Finish. You should now be able to access the tablet settings. Enjoy!

The post Turn on Windows Tablet PC Components in Windows first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Depending on what operating system you are running and whether or not you have a Windows Media Center PC, there are a few different ways to connect your Xbox to your PC.

Connect Windows XP to Xbox 360

If you have Windows XP without Media Center, then you will need to use Windows Media Player in order to stream content to your Xbox 360.

It’s a pretty simple process and doesn’t take very long to setup. First, follow these steps on Windows Media Player:

1. Click on Tools – Options from the top menu.

2. Then click on the Library tab and click on the Configure Sharing button. Depending on which version of WMP you are using, you might instead have a button called Media Sharing on the Library tab.

3. Now click the Share my media check box and select your Xbox 360 console from the list below.

4. Finally, once you select the Xbox in the list, go ahead and click on the Allow button. A green checkmark should appear next to the console icon.

5. Click on the Customize button to configure what type of media you want to share with your Xbox console.

Now to access your media on your Xbox, simply go to the Media area of the Xbox Dashboard and select Music, Pictures, or Videos.

6. Xbox will automatically detect the computers on your network that are running WMP network sharing, so you can just select the computer by name.

It’s as simple as that! You can now browse your PC media on your Xbox.

Connect Windows 7/8/10 to Xbox 360

To connect a Windows 7/8/10 PC to your Xbox (that does not have Windows Media Center), follow the steps below.

1. Click on Start, then Control Panel, then Network and Internet.

2. Click on HomeGroup and Sharing Options.

3. Then click on Change advanced sharing settings.

4. Scroll down to Media Streaming and click on Choose media streaming options. The option may be located under All Networks.

5. Go ahead and click on Turn on media streaming. Here you can then give your media library a name and choose what to share.

6. Click OK and then click Save changes on the Advanced sharing settings page. This will get you back to the HomeGroup screen. Here you want to check the Stream my pictures, music, and videos to all devices on my home network.

Now you can follow the same steps on your Xbox 360 to access your media stored on a Windows 7/8/10 PC.

Connect Windows Media Center to Xbox 360

If you have a Windows Media Center PC, it’s a very simple process. Follow the steps below.

1. First, on your Xbox 360, you need to get the 8-digit media center setup key. You can do this by going to My Xbox and selecting Windows Media Center.

It may also be under the Media tab.

2. Follow the on-screen instructions until you get to the media center key. It should look something like this:

3. Now go to your Windows 7 or Vista Media Center PC and launch it. Then click on Tasks and Add Extender.

4. Now input your 8-digit code and click Next.

At this point, unless you have some crazy firewall setup, your PC should be connected to your Xbox 360 and ready to stream music, videos and pictures!

Any trouble connecting your Xbox 360 to your PC? Let us know in the comments and we’ll try to help. Enjoy!

The post How to Connect Xbox 360 to Windows PC first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Still, with each application you install on your computer such as word processors and desktop publishers, more and more fonts accumulate on your PC. It’s entirely possible for you to have so many fonts on your computer that performance starts to suffer.

Installing and deleting fonts in Windows is easy enough, but there is a way you can restore the fonts on your computer to include just those that originally shipped with Windows.

In this way, you can start over and make your computer operate as it should when you use an application that uses the fonts stored and managed by Windows.

Why Deal with Too Many Fonts?

As stated above, too many fonts can slow down your computer when you use applications such as word processors and spreadsheets that use the fonts managed by Windows.

These performance slowdowns can take the form of applications taking a long time to load, making the font drop down menu of an application almost impossible to use, and too much memory being used up by your computer to manage all of those fonts.

There are no hard and fast rules that determine how many fonts is too many; it depends on how many fonts you have installed in Windows, how much memory you have in your PC, and the type of processor you have.

Dealing with too many fonts means deleting those that you don’t need. When you do, you will also notice that it is easier to find the font you want because you won’t have to wade through hundreds of fonts.

Restoring Default Fonts in Windows

To restore Windows to the default number of fonts, begin by logging into your computer using an account that has administrative privileges. The following procedure works in Windows Vista, 7, 8 and Windows 10. Click on Start > Control Panel.

In the Control Panel window, click on Appearance and Personalization and then Fonts. You can also just click on Start and type in fonts in the search box.

You should now be looking at the Fonts Control Panel. Notice that each of the fonts installed on your PC are listed here. To see how many fonts you have installed in Windows, look at the bottom of the window. This is where Windows reports how many fonts are installed on your PC.

To reset the fonts on your computer to only the ones that shipped with Windows, click on the link on the left hand side of the window titled Font Settings.

In the Font Settings section of the window, click on the button titled Restore Default Font Settings and follow the onscreen directions. When done, only the fonts that shipped with Windows will show up in the list of fonts you have on your PC.

As stated above, there is no universal number of fonts that can be installed on a PC before they start to slow down your computer and applications. However, on a moderately powerful computer with about 2GB of RAM, you’ll start to experience problems at around 1,000 to 1,200 installed fonts.

Of course, you can also delete the fonts you don’t want on your computer one by one. Before you do this, however, you should back up all your fonts to a separate location in case you delete a font and realize later that you want it back in the list of available fonts in your applications.

In fact, periodically backing up your fonts is a good way to ensure that you don’t have to go hunting for a font you want but deleted earlier. Enjoy!

The post Dealing with Too Many Fonts in Windows? first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Basically, the connection suddenly dropped one day and he decided to buy a wireless USB stick in order to keep working until he could fix the problem.

However, the built-in wireless adapter could no longer detect any wireless networks and would simply display the error message below:

Windows cannot configure this wireless connection. If you have enabled another program to manage this wireless connection, use that software.

If you want Windows to configure this wireless connection, click “Change advanced settings,” click the Wireless Networks tab, and then select the check box labeled “Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings.”

The user tried to update the driver for the built-in wireless adapter, but that didn’t work either. That’s when he called me. After taking a look at the problem and trying a few different solutions, we got it fixed.

I will go ahead and list out the various solutions I tried since the one that worked for me might not work for you.

Method 1 – Uninstall Third-Party Wireless Manager

On some machines, like Dell computers, there is third-party software installed by Dell that manages the wireless connection. Similarly, if you have an Intel Pro wireless card installed, it may be controlled by the Intel provided software.

In this case, go ahead and uninstall the software to manage the wireless connection. Note that you should not uninstall the driver, just the software. In the case above, the user had installed a wireless USB stick, so that software had to be removed first.

Restart your PC and see if Windows starts detecting wireless networks. If not, keep reading!

Method 2 – Start Wireless Zero Configuration Service

If you’re getting a message about starting the wireless configuration service, it may have been disabled by a third-party program on your computer.

You can start it by going to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, and click on Services. Scroll down to the bottom until you find Wireless Zero Configuration.

Make sure that the Status is Started. If not, right-click on the service and choose Start. Once the service is started, check to see if Windows is now detecting wireless networks.

Method 3 – Lets Windows Manage Wireless Settings

If Windows does not automatically start managing the wireless connection, you may have to manually tell it too. Note that this only works on Windows 7 and earlier.

You can do that by right-clicking on the wireless icon in your taskbar and choosing View Available Wireless Networks.

Next, click on Change advanced settings in the left hand menu:

Then click on the Wireless Networks tab when the Properties dialog pops up. Here you should check the Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings box.

Go ahead and try to see if Windows is now able to detect your wireless networks. Hopefully, this will fix your problem. If you are using Windows 10, you can go to settings, then click on Network & Internet and then click on Wi-Fi.

If you still cannot connect using your built-in wireless card, post a comment here with details and we’ll try to help. Enjoy!

The post Fix Windows Cannot Configure This Wireless Connection first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

Pretty weird right? Well this can happen for a number of reasons, but basically your calculator is gone! If you recently installed a service pack to Windows XP, such as SP2 or SP3, that could be the culprit. If you upgraded from Windows 7 or Windows 8 to Windows 10, that could also be the cause.

Either way, here are a couple of ways you can get your calculator back in Windows XP and higher.

Method 1 – Reinstall Calculator (Windows XP)

The first method is pretty straight-forward as long as you have your Windows CD. Pop it into the disk drive and go to the Control Panel. Now go to Add/Remove Programs, click on Add/Remove Windows Components.

Click on Accessories and Utilities and then click the Details button below:

Now click on Accessories and click the Details button again. Now make sure to check the Calculator box.

Now click OK all the way back and XP will go ahead and reinstall the calculator! If you can’t get a hold of a Windows XP disc, then try the second method.

Method 2 – Copy calc.exe (All Windows Versions)

The second way to get Calculator back and probably the easier method is to simply copy the calc.exe file over from another machine to your C:\Windows\System32 folder. Also, copy calc.chm to c:\Windows\Help.

Obviously, you’ll find both of these files in those two directories on another computer that has the calculator working. After that, you can just create a shortcut to the calc.exe file on your Start Menu or wherever you like. If you can’t find the CHM file, don’t worry, all you really need is the EXE file.

If you get an error message when trying to copy to the System32 directory, you need to make sure you open Windows Explorer as an administrator.

To do that, click on Start, type in Explorer and then right-click on Windows Explorer and choose Run as Administrator. In Windows 10, right-click on the Explorer (Run Command) option.

With an administrator rights Explorer window, you should now be able to copy and paste the calc.exe file into the System32 directory.

Method 3 – Download Calculator from Microsoft

If for some reason, you can’t get Calculator working on your system, just download it from Microsoft (now it’s only available from CNET). This works on all versions of Windows.

http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-Calculator-Plus/3000-2053_4-10628441.html

Once you download and install it, you’ll probably be shocked by the horrible UI that is set by default. It’s purple and has oval buttons and looks terrible.

Thankfully, you can click on View and then choose Classic View to get a normal looking version of the calculator. If you don’t like the Calculator app that comes with Windows 8 and Windows 10, you can always download this version and use it instead.

You can also click on View and choose Standard to remove the conversion options on the left and just have the old standard calculator.

In Windows 10, the calculator app should already be installed by default. If not, you can download the calculator app from the Microsoft Store.

Method 4 – Use CD and SFC

If you have a Windows XP CD, you can also try popping the CD in and running these two commands, where X is your CD/DVD drive letter.

expand -r X:\I386\calc.ex_ c:\windows\system32
expand -r X:\I386\calc.ch_ c:\windows\help

If you’re not running Windows XP, you can try running system file checker (SFC), which is a built-in command that checks all the system files to make sure they exist and are not corrupt. You can read my previous post on how to use the SFC command in Windows. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!

The post Windows Calculator Missing or Disappeared? first appeared on Online Tech Tips.

If you’re running newer versions of Windows like Windows 10, Windows 8, or Windows 7, then everything will work fine. It’s only with older versions of Windows like Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, etc. that rely on NETBIOS and WINS where you will run into issues.

In the second case, you might end up seeing a message like the following:

Duplicate name exists on the network

At first, you might think the obvious answer is to just rename one of the computers, right? Well, you may also get this error even if no two computers on the network have the same name!

The problem could be caused by an old network adapter that is no longer present on the system. Here are a couple of ways you can try to solve this issue before renaming computers.

Method 1 – IPCONFIG

Firstly, a simple release and renew of the IP address might solve your problem. Go to Start, then Run and type in CMD. At the command prompt, go ahead and type in

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

If you still get the error, then move on to the following possible solutions.

Method 2 – Remove Hidden Network Adapters

Go to Start, Run, and type in DEVMGMT.MSC in the box. Now in Device Manager, click on View and choose Show Hidden Devices.

Now scroll down to Network Adapters and uninstall any that are showing with transparent icons. If nothing is grayed out, then your problem is also not with an old network adapter.

Method 3 – Rename computer

If neither of these two methods worked, then you will probably just have to rename the computer. This can occur for one of two reasons:

1. You actually have two machines on the network with the same NETBIOS name
2. One of the computers has the same name as the name of the workgroup

You can go to Start, run, type in CMD, and then type in nbtstat –n at the command prompt and it’ll show you a conflicting workstation if there is one.

Make sure to look at the one for network connection you are currently using, i.e. Local Area Connection or Wireless Network Connection.

You can rename a computer by right-clicking on the My Computer icon on the desktop, choosing Properties and then clicking on Computer Name tab.

Click the Change button and type in a new name for the computer. Restart your computer and the problem should be gone. If you’re still having issues, post a comment here and I’ll try to help! Enjoy!

The post “Duplicate name exists on the network” Windows Error first appeared on Online Tech Tips.