Problem clearing NetBT when repairing a network adapter on Windows XP

You may find that a PC will lose it’s connection to the network and when you try to do a ‘Network Connection Repair’ it will give you an error and produce the message “Windows could not finish repairing the problem because the following action cannot be completed : Clearing NetBT, For assistance, contact the person who manages your network.”

There may be a number of causes for this problem and therefore, different fixes may have to be applied before the problem is resolved. See the steps below :

Step 1 : Removal of any Malware (if present). This kind of network problem can be caused by malicious software that has infected the computer and made changes to important registry settings. Therefore, the first step is to run full scans with your Anti-virus and Anti-Malware software
Once you are confident that the PC is clear of malicious software move onto the next step.

Step 2 : TCP/IP stack repair method

• Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt.
• Reset WINSOCK entries to installation defaults: netsh winsock reset catalog
• Reset TCP/IP stack to installation defaults. netsh int ip reset [log_file_name – this can be any name]

Note: the log_file_name needs to be specified, e.g. netsh int ip reset reset.log

Step 3 : WinSock XP Fix
This is a free software utility that has been created to fix this type of problem.
Official description – “WinSock XP Fix offers a last resort if your Internet connectivity has been corrupted due to invalid or removed registry entries. It can often cure the problem of lost connections after the removal of Adware components or improper uninstall of firewall applications or other tools that modify the XP network and Winsock settings.”
Download it here

Step 4 : Uninstall and re-install the network drivers
· Make sure you know what network adapter you have on the PC or laptop and have the driver disk handy. If you do not have a driver disk then download the driver from the internet on a different machine and place it on USB drive to transfer to the problem PC.
· Right click My computer, Properties, Hardware tab, Device Manager
· Find network adapters on the list, expand it out to show your current adapter
· Right click the adapter select ‘Uninstall’ and confirm.
· It should now show as a problem item in your Device Manager list
· Go to the file you have on your disk or USB pen drive and re-install the network driver.

Any one of the above fixes should solve the problem.

How to remove multiple hyperlinks from one word document

One of the scenarios I encountered today involved a user who had copied and pasted a large amount of information from the net and had stored it in a single word document.

The user wanted to print this information but the content included over a hundred hyperlinks to other websites, which showed as underlined in the printed version. Therefore, she wanted to remove hyperlinks from this document altogether.

Word hyperlinks can be removed individually by Right clicking the link> Remove hyperlink but as there were so many she wanted a way of removing them all in one go.

So here’s the solution….

REMOVE MULTIPLE WORD HYPERLINKS
1. Highlight the entire document by pressing Control + A
2. Once highlighted press Control + Shift + F9

The document will now be converted to text, and the hyperlinks will be totally removed.

How to fix ‘XML-RPC services are disabled on this blog’

If you have your own hosted account i.e not hosted on the Wordpress site and you have installed Wordpress 2.6 or later on your website, it is likely you will run into problems when you try and use offline blog editing software such as Windows Live Writer.
When you configure your settings in Windows Live Writer and try and connect it is likely that you will receive the message ‘An error occurred while attempting to connect to your blog : Blog Server Error-Server Error 405 Occurred XML-RPC services are disabled on this blog. An admin can enable them……’

This error may look abit daunting but it is actually very easy to resolve.

Solution
· Go to your wordpress blog dashboard.
· Go to Settings , Writing
· In the Remote Publishing section place a tick in Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols.
· Save the options
· Go back into Windows Live Writer and reconnect.

Does the Philips LFH 9172 conference microphone record in Stereo orMono ?

This seemed like a very simple question but after checking the manual that came with the microphone, the Philips website and Google, I still couldn’t find a definitive answer.

Therefore, the only thing left to do was connect it up to a PC and do some testing of my own.

The microphone is best suited to work with the Philips SpeechExec pro software but I wanted a more visual set of results regarding the two channels, so I used Cool Edit Pro and Audacity to record the audio.
Despite setting the software to ‘Stereo’ (to record on both channels) , the software only received a signal on one channel.

In conclusion, the Philips LFH9172 only records in mono not stereo.

Want to see how people view your website and give them more targetedcontent ?

Usability is extremely important on any website and the aim should be to give your visitors the information they need as quickly as possible. Recent figures indicate a webmaster only has 5 seconds to capture the interest of a visitor before they leave to find something more appropriate, so putting the right content in the right position is paramount.

A website might look fine in development but it should be remembered that people are going to be using different browsers, monitors and viewing the content through different resolutions. So what is in plain sight to one visitor may be completely obscured to another (unless they scroll downwards).
Thankfully, Google have created a tool called “Browser size”. It’s official description released on Google’s blog is as follows :

“Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to google.com. Special code collects data on the height and width of the browser for a sample of users. For a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. For example, if an important button is in the 80% region it means that 20% of users have to scroll in order to see it. If you're a web designer, you can use Browser Size to redesign your page to minimize scrolling and make sure that the important parts of the page are always prominent to your audience.”

HOW TO TEST YOUR WEBSITE

You just go to http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/ and enter your website URL into the search field. I entered http://www.supportingtech.blogspot.com/ and received the following overlay.

This tool won’t change your life and it’s not something you will use everyday but it is good for making you think about your audience and how they experience your content.

Where is the email application in Windows 7 ?

The simple answer is “There isn’t one”. XP had ‘Outlook express’, Vista had ‘Windows Mail client’ and now Microsoft have decided that their latest OS can do without. I’m not quite sure why Microsoft would decide that the ability to email people isn’t a core requirement in a modern operating system but with their ongoing anti-trust issues I wouldn’t be surprised if they just wanted to avoid more legal headaches.

That said, Microsoft haven’t left us totally in the lurch and they do provide an email client (Windows Live Mail) as part of the ‘Windows Live Essentials’ suite. This is available as a free download and also includes :

• Windows Live call


• Windows Live messenger


• Windows Live Movie Maker


• Windows Live Photo Gallery


• Windows Live Writer

You can find this download by going to the Start Menu and typing essentials in the search field. It will then give you the option ‘Go online to get Windows Live Essentials’.

Just follow the instructions and select the items you would like to download an install.

When you launch the program you will be asked for your email account credentials. Once these have been entered just sit back and watch Live Mail go off and retrieve all your email.

So in summary, it’s slightly odd that Microsoft wouldn’t include it in the OS but at least they have made the solution simple and painless. :-)

 Hope you liked the post. Please leave a comment

How to identify and remove a virus or malware

You may have arrived on this page for a couple of reasons a) because you think you have a virus and want to be sure b) you know you have a virus and want to remove it. Either way it is best to be sure that you are in fact dealing with a virus or malware.
SYMPTOMS OF A VIRUS

• Slow startup
• System crashes and reboots
• Printing failures
• Freezing
• Unexplained high processor and memory usage
• Errors
• Internet explorer homepage has changed or is taking you to the same website when you click different links
• Last but not least – your anti-virus or anti-malware program tells you, you have a virus !!

So lets assume your PC is doing one or more of the above, what are the next steps ?.
Anti-virus : If you haven’t already got this installed, get it as soon as possible. Once installed, get the latest updates and then run a full system scan. The software should identify the virus and remove it for you or provide you with information for manual removal. See software recommendations at the end of this post.
Anti-Malware : Anti-virus doesn’t always pick up Malware so it would be worth while downloading a separate program, installing, getting the updates and running a full scan. Once again, the program should remove it for you. See recommendations at the end of this post.
THE THREE OUTCOMES
Software removed the virus : Excellent. The software did it’s job and is money well spent. If you are using a free program – even better !!
Software found the virus but couldn’t remove it : The software should provide you with information on the virus and give you the steps you need to follow to remove it manually. Once you have completed these steps re-scan your pc.
Software has removed the virus, you’ve rebooted your pc and it comes back !! : Don’t worry this is actually quite common. Many computer viruses are designed to self replicate and spread themselves through-out your system. For example a virus may contain 100 files that it distributes among the directories and settings of your pc. Your anti-virus may find the main 80 files and does a perfect job of removing them, however, when the PC reboots the virus is able to rebuild itself using the 20 remaining files. The solution is to research the virus and find some manual steps or a tool to remove all of the files. Once you have done this make sure you re-scan the PC to verify it’s removal.
Hope you found this useful. Please leave a comment :-)
RECOMMENDATIONS
Anti-virus
AVG Free Edition
Avira Personal Free
Norton Anti-Virus
Anti-Malware
Malwarebytes Free edition