Windows Vista won't update, getting error 80072EFE

I had to scratch my head on this one for a while. I had someone ask me to look at their personal Vista Home Premium laptop because it wasn't able to connect to Windows Update. I had helped to remove some spyware/viruses/adware from it in the past so that was my first thought. Scans came back clean though so I went on to some other stuff. Eventually I tried installing the missing updates manually. One of those updates was the most recent Windows Malicious Software Removal tool. I figured I'd let it run a full scan and that turned out to be a good idea. It reported finding Alureon.F and removing it. However, Alureon infections can bring along a rootkit, which is exactly what happened. I removed the rootkit using TDSSKiller from Kasperky, then rebooted. My atapi.sys driver had been listed as infected. Sure enough, after everything was loaded back up the Windows updates worked fine. I ran a few more scans to make sure the rootkit hadn't been hiding anything, but they came back clean so everything is back to normal.

If you're trying to update your Windows Vista machine and getting an error 80072EFE, you may want to check for the rootkit yourself. Download and unzip TDSSKiller, then rename the executable file to something random. I used 1a2b3c4d.com (.com will work the same as .exe in this instance). Then run your executable, follow the prompts, and restart. If you want more in-depth instructions, check out this article at bleepingcomputer.com

Illustrator CS3 Unknown Error when trying to save a file

I had a user who couldn't save their Illustrator files, but had no trouble doing it the week before. It didn't matter whether she was saving locally or to the server. I tried rebooting and repairing the permissions, but neither worked. Then I trashed the Illustrator CS3 preferences and things went back to normal. If this happens to you and you don't want to lose your file, do a Save As, then pick EPS as the format. It appears that it will still let you save it as an EPS even if you can't save it as an AI file.

This was a Mac OS X 10.4.11 machine. If you're seeing this problem on a Windows install, sorry, but I don't have a fix for you. If you're not familiar with deleting preference files on a Mac, the following will explain what to do. If you have custom settings in Illustrator CS3 I'd suggest writing them down beforehand since removing the preference file will reset Illustrator to its defaults.

1. Close Illustrator CS3 if it is open
2. Go to Macintosh HD->Users->username->Library->Preferences, but substitute your actual username in where it says username
3. This is where your user account preferences are stored. Look for the com.adobe.illustrator.plist file. Move it to your Trash, but you don't need to empty it
4. Now, within your Preferences folder, find the "Adobe Illustrator CS3 Settings" folder and move that to the Trash, but do not empty it
5. Start Illustrator CS3. This should create new preferences files containing the default settings for Illustrator CS3.
6. Open or create a document, then try to save


If you get to step 6 and it works, then you're set. If you had customized settings in Illustrator you will need to set those up again since removing the preferences also removes any customizations to the settings. If you had them but do not remember what they were, you can get your preference files from the Trash, restore them to where you found them, then open Illustrator again. That way you can see what your customizations were, remove the preferences again, then set up the preferences while working with a good set of preference files that allow you to save.

If you still can't save after step #6, you have the option to put the preference files (com.adobe.illustrator.plist and Adobe Illustrator CS3 Settings) back into your Preferences folder and restart Illustrator. That way your settings will be back and you can go on troubleshooting your problem saving without losing any customizations to the application.

How to install CUPS-PDF in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Adobe did away with it's Adobe PDF printer in OS X 10.6 stating enhanced security prevented it from working. However, CUPS-PDF does the same thing and is free to download. Update 12/7/10: From the comment below from Jeff Z, it sounds like the CUPS-PDF install package has been updated to work with Snow Leopard without all the Terminal tweaks below. You should be able to download, install, and use without having to perform any of the tweaks below. I've left them in the article though for completeness.

If you're installing CUPS-PDF on Snow Leopard, there are some things you need to do in order to get it working though.

1. Download and install CUPS-PDF. You can get it from here in the Downloads section. It says there is an updated version for Snow Leopard, but that still doesn't help you avoid the rest of this.
2. Once you have CUPS-PDF installed, open a Terminal window. You can find that by going to Macintosh HD->Applications->Utilities->Terminal
3. In Terminal, use the command sudo chmod 0700 /usr/libexec/cups/backend/cups-pdf to change the permissions on the CUPS-PDF install
4. Now, change the ownership using sudo chown root:wheel /usr/libexec/cups/backend/cups-pdf
5. It gets a little tricky here because you have to change a configuration file. It's not hard, but most people probably haven't had to do it before. Use the command sudo vi /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf to open the file in the VI text editor
6. In the file, scroll down to where it says "Out ${HOME}/Desktop/cups-pdf"
7. Press 'a' on the keyboard, which will put VI into edit mode. Now change the line in step #6 to instead read "Out /var/spool/cups-pdf/${USER}", but you don't need the quotes
8. Now press ESC on the keyboard, then type ":wq" (without the quotes) and press Enter. This will write your changes to the files, and also quit the VI editor
9. Now use the command sudo ln -s /var/spool/cups-pdf/${USER} ~Documents/CUPS-PDF to put a shortcut to the CUPS-PDF save location in your Documents folder
10. You can close the Terminal at this point and shouldn't need it again. Open System Preferences
11. Go to Print & Fax
12. Click the + to add a printer
13. Under the Default area, you should see CUPS-PDF in the list of available printers. Select it and choose Add.

Now you can use the newly installed CUPS-PDF printer to create PDF files, and don't need to use Adobe's workaround of "Save as PDF". To get at your printed PDF files, go to Documents folder and follow the CUPS-PDF shortcut. You can move that shortcut to your Desktop if you'd prefer to have easier access to the shortcut location of where the files get created. One downside of this is I believe you have to go through this process for each individual user on a machine that will need to use CUPS-PDF. You can skip a few of the steps, but the rest could turn into a pain if you have a lot of users on each machine.

Thanks to the macosxhints.com forum for helping sort this one out.

Error c1041739 when mounting a mailbox store in Exchange 2003

I ran into error c1041739 "The database files in this store are inconsistent" when trying to mount a restored mailbox store on a backup Exchange 2003 server. It wasn't too hard to fix using some of the Exchange command-line utilities though. You may want to make a copy of your .edb and .stm files prior to performing any activities on them, just to be safe. For this example, let's say I have priv1.edb and priv1.stm both in the C:\Mail folder and am getting error c1071739 when trying to mount priv1.edb. Here's how I would attempt to fix it:

1. First, open a command prompt
2. Change to the C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\bin folder using cd "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\bin". This will put you in the location of the Exchange command-line utilities. If your program files folder is somewhere else, change the path in the command accordingly
3. Now, use eseutil /p on the .edb file. In my example, this command would look like eseutil /p "C:\Mail\priv1.edb"
4. Once that finishes, defrag and rebuild the edb database. To do that, use eseutil /d /t:C:\tempEmail "C:\Mail\priv1.edb". The /t:C:\tempEmail is telling the command to use C:\tempEmail as the temporary location for the defrag files. You can change that location to wherever you want, so feel free to use a different folder or a separate partition that fits your needs. The defrag can take some time if you have a rather large .edb file.
5. Once the defrag is complete, use eseutil /mh "C:\Mail\priv1.edb" to check the consistency of your file. You should not get any errors at this point.

That's all I had to do. Mounting the mailbox store after the repair worked fine, and I was able to retrieve the information I needed. There are a few steps I left out, but if this doesn't work for you check out Microsoft KB 906148. It covers the c1041739 "The database files in this store are inconsistent" error, along with the steps Microsoft recommends using to fix it. Good luck!

Black box around things or computer is talking to you in Mac OS X

If you're using a Mac and all of a sudden your Mac starts speaking to you, or you start seeing a black box outlining everything you click, it's ok. Your computer is not possessed. Instead, you probably enabled the VoiceOver feature. You can do this by pressing Command+F5 (which toggles it on and off), or through the System Preferences. To shut it off either use the shortcut keys, or go to System Preferences->Universal Access and turn VoiceOver off. That will get rid of the black box outline, and also stop your computer from talking.

Of course, if VoiceOver is not turned on and your computer is still talking to you, then it may be possessed and you'll have to find a computer exorcist... You only need to watch from 0:20-1:00 to see what a computer exorcism is all about.

How to disable Windows 7 Aero snap feature

You may have seen the new window snap feature advertised in the commercials for Windows 7, but after using Window 7 for a week I can tell you that it is really annoying. Luckily you can turn it off with one check box. If you're like me and can't stand it, here's how to shut it off.

1. Go to Start->Control Panel->Ease of Access
2. Open the Ease of Access Center
3. Find the "Make the mouse easier to use" link and click it
4. Scroll down and check the box that says "Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen" and click OK

Now you can move your windows around again without having them snap to positions or automatically resize themselves. If you have trouble following those instructions, try the howtogeek.com walkthrough that has screenshots.

Open Excel spreadsheets in a new window

I upgraded my machine to Windows 7 Pro yesterday, and one of the first things I ran into is Excel 2007 no longer opens spreadsheets in new windows. They all get lumped into one Excel window. This can be very annoying if you like working in multiple spreadsheets at once. There are various methods for allowing multiple windows in XP and Vista, but I had a tough time finding one for 7. Luckily, I finally did and am happy to report that it worked just fine on my machine (it's at the bottom of the page). It's a registry hack, so here's what you need to do on each OS (XP, Vista, and 7) in order to open spreadsheets in a new window

For XP and Vista, there a few a different ways reported that allow you to do this. I'll point you in a few different directions, but have not actually tried any myself. I only used the Windows 7 fix.

For both Excel 2003 and 2007, the setting for "Show all Windows in Taskbar" is said to work by some. In Excel 2003 you can find it in Tools->Options->View. In Excel 2007 you can find it by clicking the Windows button in the top right, then going to Excel Options->Advanced. From there scroll down to the Display section and check the box. This solution was posted here

For an XP specific solution, you can supposedly make a change to the file associations to force a new window when opening each spreadsheet. Here's how to do it:

1. Go to My Computer->Tools->Folder Options->File Types, choose XLS, then go to Advanced.
2. Uncheck "browse in same window"
3. In the Actions box, highlight Open and click the Edit button
4. In the "Application used to perform action:" box, remove the /e at the end and instead insert "%1" with the quotes. It should look like this: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"
5. Check the box for "Use DDE"
6. Delete anything that is in the "DDE Message:" box, and leave it blank
7. Make sure "Application:" says Excel
8. Empty the "DDE Application Not Running:" box
9. "Topic:" should say system
10. Click OK twice to get back to the File Types tab
11. Repeat steps 1-10 for the XLSX extension (if it's listed)

For Windows Vista I wasn't able to find a specific fix. However, when I used Vista I had no problem with spreadsheets opening in new windows and do not think I changed anything. If you are having the issue in Vista, I'd suggest first trying to uncheck the "Show all Windows in Taskbar" option named higher in the article. If that doesn't work make sure to go back and recheck that box, and then try using the same registry hack below that fixes Windows 7.

And of course, for Windows 7 you can do the following

1. Open Regedit so you can modify your registry. If you're worried about messing something up make sure to back it up first. You can do that by going to File->Export... and choosing a save location

2. Navigate to "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT->Excel.Sheet.8->shell->Open"

3. Rename the ddexec folder to something else. If you're feeling brave, delete it

4. Now go into the command folder

5. Within the command folder you will see two keys: (Default) and command. You will want to change both of those, so start with (Default). Double-click on it

6. In the Value data box, delete the /e at the end and insert "%1" instead. Make sure to use the quotes too. Click OK

7. Now do the same to the command entry. Remove /e at the end and insert "%1" instead. Click OK

8. Excel.Sheet.8 refers to .xls files. To change this for .xlsx files as well, repeat steps 3-7 on the "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT->Excel.Sheet.12->shell->Open" location

9. Close regedit

10. Try opening two spreadsheets. Each should open in their own window now

Hopefully that helps. I know it helped me. Thanks go to Turbo2001rt in the Microsoft TechNet forums for the fix. If you want to see the original TechNet article that helped me, you can check it out here. If you made it all the way through this article and either don't know what an xlsx file extension is for, or do not have xlsx as an option when you change your file type, check out my previous post for info about Microsoft's Office 2007 compatibility pack download.

Adobe PDF printer not available in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

If you purchased a Mac with Snow Leopard on it and expected to be able to use the Adobe PDF printer, sorry, you can't. According to Adobe this is "due to security features in Snow Leopard that disable the Adobe PDF Printer". They do provide a workaround however, but it requires you to make sure you upgrade to Adobe Acrobat 9.1 (free upgrade if you own Acrobat 9 already). To check for updates, open Acrobat and go to Help->Check for Updates. Now, if you're a Windows user and ran across this post while looking for a way to create PDF files on your computer, check out my previous post for some free software to do just that.

The 9.1 update should give you a "Save as Adobe PDF" option in the menu. This is Adobe's solution to the lack of a PDF printer. I have read a little about a free package called CUPS-PDF, which you can find here. This package allows you to install a virtual PDF printer, just like Acrobat did, and you can get it to work in OS X 10.6 with a few workarounds. I did try setting it up in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and it indeed allowed me to create a virtual PDF printer and print directly to a PDF. If you're interested, check out my other post about installing CUPS-PDF on a OS X 10.6 machine.

To read the Adobe knowledge base article about their issue with Snow Leopard, along with screenshots of their solution, you can find it at http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/509/cpsid_50981.html

Make Outlook mark email as read when it is clicked

The title may be a little confusing, but I don't like waiting to click off of an email in Outlook before it is marked as read. Instead, I'd rather have it mark it as read as soon as I click on it. Luckily, there is a single setting that will take care of this for you.

1. Open Outlook and go to Tools->Options
2. Go to the Other tab, then click on Reading Pane... in the Outlook Panes section
3. Check the box that says "Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane"
4. Set the wait time to something small, such as 1 second
5. Click OK a few times to get back to Outlook

Now your new mail should be marked as read right after you click on it. No more waiting. If you're more of a visual person and want some screenshots, check out the guide for this at howtogeek.com

Resize photos using iPhoto

If you're a Mac user with some photos you want to resize, or even shrink them to take up less hard drive space, you can do it with iPhoto. This does reduce the resolution of the photo, but unless you need high-res for printing out large posters or something similar to that you should be fine. If you're a Windows users then I suggest downloading Axiom PicSizer, which is a free utility that will resize individual photos, or entire folders.

To resize photos using iPhoto:

1. Open iPhoto and choose the library the photos you want to resize are in

2. Select the photos you want to resize, or you can resize the entire folder. Once you have the photos selected, move to the next step

3. Go to Share->Export...

4. Change the Format box from Original to JPG. This will also enabled the resize proportions boxes

5. Select "Scale images no larger than" and define the proportions you want to resize the photos to

6. If you want to change the names at all, look at the options on the right side and pick them accordingly

7. Click Export at the bottom

8. Choose the location you want to save the newly resized images to and click Ok. If you selected the same folder as the original photos it will overwrite those originals unless you defined some naming rules in step #6 to distinguish the resized files.

After the export finishes you should have a new set of photos that take up a lot less hard drive space. I used this last week to resize a folder of photos to a resolution of 800x600, and that folder went from 5.3GB to 180MB.