Archive for the ‘8’ Category

Flagging duplicates in excel

Monday, July 20th, 2015

Excel is a useful tool in matters such as listing systems which need migration to new domains. Problem is duplication of records.  Rather then sorting and reviewing each entry; why not flag each duplicate found?

  • To do so:
    1. Select the range of cells you wish to test. …
    2. On Excel’s Home tab, choose Conditional Formatting, Highlight Cells Rules, and then Duplicate Values.
    3. Click OK within the Duplicate Values dialog box to identify the duplicate values.
    4. Duplicate values in the list will now be identified.

  • Identifying Duplicate Values in an Excel List | AccountingWEB

    m.accountingweb.com/article/identifying-duplicate-values-excel…/221103
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Sound only works with earphones.

Saturday, March 15th, 2014

A recent upgrade of windows 8 to 8.1 for whatever reason prevented sound through the speakers. However, it would work through my ear buds. I have a Dell E6520 and of course Dell did not have an audio driver for 8.1.  I tried the 8.0 driver but no change.

I played around with the diagnostics and troubleshooting tools but they did not find anything.

One interesting possibility came from trying to play the test tones with the audio device.

I received this nice little message:  

Failed to play test tone.

A quick check on the Net showed someone else ran into this situation.

The steps to correct this error (at least for my situation):

  1. Right click the taskbar’s speaker icon and select playback devices(if you don’t have it on the taskbar, use the Sound control panel).
  2. Select the Speakers /Headphones and click the properties button.
  3. Click the Advanced tab.
  4. Click the Restore Defaults.
  5. Click the Test button and you should have sound

A rather strange problem and I am surprised….well?…not really that an update would do this.

 

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Admin Script Editor is no more

Wednesday, January 1st, 2014

I was looking at upgrading my editor for powershell.

Normally, I use Sapien but I had not upgraded it for several years and they said I basically had to purchase it new.   I thought maybe with the New Years Eve deal but it appears they stopped doing that.  😦

I had a look at the old ASE and found the company had closed its doors last September but they made the last version free to people who join the itninja site.

It’s the enterprise version and so far it runs on 8.1.

Time will tell.

 

 

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Windows 8.1 preview due in June.

Friday, May 31st, 2013

The update will be previewed in June and it looks like it will include the venerable start menu. It’s odd listening to the complaints over Win8. Sure it was disconcerting when I first installed it but I thought it was an “adventure” like in the old days when trying something new. Guess people these days want instant gratification and don’t have the patience to play with the OS and figure things out.

Metro is fine once you figure it out. The problem was the lack of touch screen monitors to really make use of it. That will change in time.

Many of the improvements listed in the article really mean nothing for me the corporate user as they are more for the home/mobile user.

What will be interesting is to hear the comments of the Win 8 users after we upgrade.

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Windows 8 to restore some classic features?

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

Windows 8 is getting labeled as the next Windows Vista.  I am not so sure it deserves that label.

People are lamenting it’s slow acceptance and are talking about the doom of the desktop and laptop to the great hopes of the Cloud evangelists.

I would argue the main problem with Windows 8 acceptance falls mainly on Windows XP.  It was a solid dependable operating system and companies and people are slow to change. Even today; some companies are in the process of migrating to Windows 7.  Other companies converted to Windows 7 in the last year or so and are not interested in starting a new conversion.

There is of course the lack of touch screen technology to make use of Windows 8 tile approach but in time that will change.

Probably the biggest shock when you first look at Windows 8 is the missing Start menu.  I have to admit to being a little lost when I first looked at the OS.  Some things are always expected and I would think Microsoft would have done a better job with the OS to allow for old familiar things to be brought back if the user wants them.

There are rumors Windows Blue will restore some old features. It has even been said this will restore PC purchases.

Time will tell.

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System error 2148073478 has occurred.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

As we start to play with Windows 8 in our environment; we run into many new things. One such issue was trying to mount a network drive from a Netapp Filer.

We issued the command and received the following error:

System error 2148073478 has occurred.

A quick check at Microsoft showed this was due to Windows 8 and Server 2012 now using “secure negotiate” in their use of SMBv3. This requires servers using SMBv2 (which the filer in question uses) to use a signed response for all error messages which some filers don’t use and it causes the connection to fail.

The suggested resolution was to get the third party vendor to provide an update which in this case was not possible as it’s a “Release Candidate” at this time. This is not always the best thing to run in a production environment. Especially, for only a couple clients that are being used to test the new operating system versus having a genuine need.

The other option was to perform a registry edit via PowerShell to disable the “secure negotiate” on Windows 8.

I opened the PowerShell window and pasted:

Set-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters” RequireSecureNegotiate -Value 0 -Force

But, it didn’t work.  I received this nice little message:

> Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Serv
ces\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters" RequireSecureNegotiate -Value 0 -Force
Set-ItemProperty : Requested registry access is not allowed.
At line:1 char:1
+ Set-ItemProperty -Path
"HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstatio ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : PermissionDenied: (HKEY_LOCAL_MACH...tion\Parame
   ters:String) [Set-ItemProperty], SecurityException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.Security.SecurityException,Microsoft.Powe
   rShell.Commands.SetItemPropertyCommand

One of the things to remember is Microsoft is trying to be more secure with such things. Being a local administrator isn’t what is used to be.

The way around this was to right-click the tile for powershell (I have the administrative tools displayed on the desktop).  This made a check appear on the tile and a menu appear at the bottom of the screen.  On that menu was the option to “run as administrator”

I clicked the option and was able to run the command.

After that; I was able to mount shares from the filer.

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Windows 8 Administrative menu

Sunday, January 13th, 2013

Windows 8 is almost a treasure hunt to find the old menus. One missing menu is the Administrative menu. To get a quick display of available administrative tools:

  1. Move the cursor to the bottom left corner where you should see a thumbnail of the metro desktop.
  2. Right-click on it.
  3. You will get a menu of the most common tools such as task manager and the cmd window.

 

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Display Windows 8 Administrative tools

Saturday, January 12th, 2013

The new Metro interface of windows 8 can be intimidating at first.  Especially, when all the usual tools are missing. They aren’t missing just hidden or in a different place.

One such set of tools are the old Administrative tools.  These can be enabled and will show up as their own set of tiles.

To display administrative tools:

  1. Move the cursor to the upper/lower right part of the screen and click Settings.
  2. Under settings; click Tiles
  3. You will see Show Administrative Tools and under that it will read No
  4. Click the bar to the right of no which will move the slider to the other side and No will change to Yes
  5. Click anywhere on the Metro field which will close the menu and the tiles for Administrative Tools will appear.

This will cover most needs as you test out Windows 8. Once you are comfortable, you can of course change the display back and create your own set of tiles for tools you frequently use.

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Where is the command window in Windows 8?

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

Windows 8 is a massive change on the user interface.  Many of the things we took for granted are no longer where they used to be.

One such feature is the trusty option for the CMD window in the start menu.

It’s rather easy to get one actually.

Simply type cmd on the main user interface and this will bring up the search apps menu and it will highlight a box on the ui.

Either click the box or press enter and the screen will change to the familiar looking desktop with a command window opened.

I am told once you figure out windows 8, you will find it’s better then windows 7

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