Windows Server 2008/2012 Blue Screen after Login – No Desktop
One of my teammates was working on a Windows server and needed to access IIS to complete a Sitecore upgrade on the machine. After logging in, he was reporting that he only saw a blue screen with no user interface. I logged in under the administrator account and ran into the same thing. Here’s how I was able to reset:
- CTRL + ALT + END
- Start Task Manager
- Click processes tab and find all instances of “explorer.exe”
- Right click each process and selected “End process tree”
- Once all instances are gone, select the Applications tab
- Click new task button
- Type “explorer.exe” without the quotation marks
- Click OK.
If it’s a user account and you can login to the administrator account and see the UI, you can load remote desktop as admin.
- Start -> Run
- Type “mstsc /v:servername /console /admin” in order to access the server.
- In “Windows Taks Manager”, go to the Users tab and proceed to do a right click over the account that you want to “Log Off”, select log off.
This should free the locked session used by that account and bring the UI back.
Steam is having trouble connecting to the Steam servers.
If you use Steam and  suddenly find yourself unable to connect receiving the error “Steam is having trouble connecting to the Steam servers.”, check and see if you have Peerblock installed and running. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out why the connections wouldn’t go through and finally went through apps running in the background one by one, until I closed Peerblock and discovered Steam suddenly started working. If you would like to continue to use Steam while Peerblock is open, follow these instructions for a workaround:
1. Start PeerBlock
2. Click List Manager
3. Click Add
4. Put something in the description like steam-allow
5. click add url and paste this: “http://list.iblocklist.com/?list=steam” (no quotes)
6. Choose type: allow
7. Click Ok then close the List Manager.
This will download a list that adds exceptions for Steam and should let you connect with no issues.
Visual Studio 2013 package did not load correctly
Today I loaded up Visual Studio to continue work on a project and created by a random bunch of errors. All were complaints that various packages could not be loaded. The one I captured was:
[alert color=”gray”]The ‘JavascriptWebExtensionsPackage’ did not load correctly.’ The problem may have been caused by a configuration change or by the installation of another extension.[/alert]
I had just installed SyncFusion’s Essential Studio which apparently screwed something up. I tried doing a repair on Visual Studio which unfortunately did not work.
I was able to fix it by following these steps:
- Close Visual Studio Open the *Users*\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ folder
- Rename the ComponentModelCache folder
- Restart Visual Studio.
Visual Studio should now rebuild the cache and no longer display the error messages.
ASP.NET MVC Model Generator
In making the switch to ASP.NET MVC, I’ve moved away from using my old Data Access Layer that I’ve used for years and have opted to use Dapper as my ORM of choice in the quest for optimal performance. My DAL was actually pretty optimized for WinForms and WebForms (using straight SQL Queries and SQL parameters) but mapping it to models wasn’t something I had in mind when I created it. I’m finding Dapper takes some getting used too but it is still pretty fast. The downside is that writing the code for Models to wire it up is proving to be a little tedious.
To that effect, I wrote a little application that has helped me generate the models from a database dynamically. It’s in it’s infancy stages and something I cobbled together in less than 8 hours but it works. I’ll add more features too as time goes on if there’s enough interest or to satisfy my own needs. In the meantime, I’m open sourcing the project as it may help others and I’d love to see it become something grander if others are willing to contribute to it. There’s also some useful bits of code that others may find useful to reference like dynamically reading fields from a database, pluralization/singularization of words, amongst others.
You can find the repository on Github: https://github.com/gregvarghese/MVCModelGenerator
SourceTree Crashes on Load
I’ve recently started using Git for development and while I am getting used to the command line tools on Windows, I have been using Atlassian’s free tool, SourceTree to help manage my code. Recently I’ve run into an issue where SourceTree crashes on start up.”Oh dear. We’re sorry, but SourceTree just crashed. How terribly embarrassing.”
I submitted an issue (https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-3011) and received a response that didn’t solve the issue. I submitted a follow up but never heard back so I did some further digging and found that SourceTree was crashing because it corrupted a repo and was still trying to load it back up on start up. The application does not exit gracefully or even give you the option to start in a safe mode which loads nothing.
To prevent it from opening the repo on start up:
Open %localappdata%/Atlassian/SourceTree/opentabs.xml in notepad or another editor.
Delete the problem repo.
Viola! No more SourceTree crashes on start up.
ESET AntiTheft Causes Dell Machines to Lose Permissions on C:
I just spent the past two days complaining about Windows 8 to everyone I know because of how awful the experience is. I installed Windows updates, rebooted, and the system stops working.
It turns out it wasn’t Windows causing the problem but ESET AntiTheft on Dell laptops. It turns out there’s a permission bug specific to Dell machines when ESET creates it’s ghost account and instead of giving it restricted access, the system essentially copies the permissions and then changes everything on the C: drive to a state where the permissions are no longer accessible.
Unfortunately, the only known fix at this point is to contact ESET support. I called their support line in North America and the tech knew about the issue right away. You’ll have to reboot into safe mode, and then get them to remote in to install a utility that runs a script that resets the permissions.
Contact Info here: http://www.eset.com/us/about/contact/
The tech assured me they are working with Dell to get this issue resolved so until they do, make sure you don’t activate ESET’s AntiTheft on the Dell machine.
Uninstalling Trend Micro Client/Server Security without a Password
Lost or forgot your Trend Micro Client/Server Password? How about inheriting a computer that had the software installed by an IT team or consultant that won’t give up the password? I had to work on a network with the latter and it’s rather annoying. The product is utter crap as the machine is spyware infested even though the antivirus is running and present. I went to uninstall it but can’t because the previous person/company password protected it and nobody has it.
Here’s how to bypass the protection:
- Load up Regedit and browse to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\TrendMicro\PC-cillinNTCorp\CurrentVersion\Misc.\Allow Uninstall - Change the value to 1.
Now you can uninstall TrendMicro’s crappy product and replace with a real solution like Eset.
TrustedInstaller.EXE CPU Usage
Solution 1: Clear Problem History
The following fix is intended for situations where trustedinstaller.exe causes problems due to the Problem Reports and Solutions history maintained in Windows Vista.
- Go to Start and then select Control Panel.
- Turn on Classic View.
- Select Problem Reports and Solutions.
- Click Clear Solution and Problem History in the left panel.
- Confirm your decision.
- Exit the Problems Reports and Solutions Window and Control Panel.
You can also click Change in the Problems Reports and Solutions Window. And then change the configuration from Check for solutions automatically setting to Ask me to check if a problem occurs.
Solution 2: Change Microsoft Update Startup Settings to Manual
- Go to Start and then select Control Panel.
- Select Administrative Tools and then select Services.
- Scroll down to Microsoft Update, right-click on it and then select Stop.
- Right-click on Microsoft Update again and select Properties.
- On the General tab, set Startup type as Manual.
- Next, display the Recovery tab.
- Choose Take No Action and click OK for First Failure.
- Exit the properties dialog box.
- Bring up your Task Manager by pressing on Ctrl + Alt + Del or Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
- On the Processes tab, look for and select trustedinstaller.exe.
- Click End process to kill trustedinstaller.exe.
Solution 3: Disable Automatic Update
- Go to Start and then select Control Panel.
- Go to System and Maintenance.
- Click Turn automatic update on or off option.
- Next, depending on your preference choose one of the following options:
- Never check for updates (not recommended)
- Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them
- Download updates but let me choose whether to install them
- Click OK to save your changes and exit the dialog box.
Solution 4: Stop the Windows Module Installer That Runs Trustedinstaller.exe
- Click on Start, in the Start Search box, type msconfig and then press Enter.
- Click Continue when User Account Control prompt is displayed.
- In the System Configuration window that is displayed, open the Services tab.
- Locate and clear the Windows Module Installer check box.
- Click OK save your changes and exit the dialog box.
- Next, open Services window again and change the Startup type of Windows Module Installer to Manual.
Drobo Dashboard Can’t Connect to Drobo when ESET Firewall is Active
Have a Drobo storage unit? If you have ESET Smart Security Firewall enabled, you’ll probably find Drobo Dashboard can’t connect while the firewall is on even after adding all the required ports and services to ESET’s rules from the Drobo online help site (http://goo.gl/iVKVU).
After enabling the detailed logging in ESET, I found that ESET’s firewall was flagging Drobo Dashboard as an intrusion attempt and blocked it. From the Drobo help page (http://goo.gl/iVKVU):
Drobo Dashboard connects to port 5000 and then randomly picks a port in the range for broadcasting.
This is definitely not the most intelligent way to build a product when users who are trying to secure their home or business network and it’s no wonder that ESET flagged the behavior as suspicious. Luckily there’s a fix to keep ESET from blocking the Drobo connection:
- Make sure you add the rules as per Drobo’s site (http://goo.gl/iVKVU).
- Open the main program window by clicking ‘Start’ -> ‘All Programs’ -> ‘ESET’ -> ‘ESET Smart Security’.
- Click on ‘Setup’ on the left, and then click ‘Enter Advanced setup’ on the right to open the Advanced Setup tree.
- From the Advanced Setup tree on the left, Expand ‘Network’, and Click on ‘Personal Firewall’, and then select ‘Interactive mode’ from the Filtering mode drop-down menu on the right.
- From the advanced setup tree, click ‘Personal Firewall’ -> ‘Rules and zones’. Click the ‘Setup…’ button in the Trusted zone section and then choose ‘Allow sharing’. Click ‘OK’.
- Click ‘Personal Firewall’ -> ‘IDS and advanced options’. In the ‘Allowed services’ section, make sure all services are selected. Click ‘OK’.
Drobo Dashboard should now be able to connect to the unit with no issues.
Round Up to Whole Numbers in Excel (10s, 100s, 1000s, etc)
After years of using Excel, I realized today I have never had to round up to the nearest whole number before – until today that is. I was organizing my finances and realized that I wanted to round some of the amounts up to the nearest 10. So to round to the nearest decimal place in Excel, the formula is:
=ROUNDUP([Range],[Position])
Count the number of places after the 0 to round to and set [Position] to that value
So if you had 1234.25 in Cell A1 and wanted to round up to the nearest cent, =ROUNDUP(A1, 1) would produce 1234.30.
| 1234.25 ^ 1 |
1234.25 ^ 2 |
| =ROUNDUP(A1,1) | =ROUNDUP(A1,2) |
Want to go the other way? Simply start at the decimal as 0 and count backwards in the negated position.
| 1234.25 ^ -1 |
1234.25 ^ -2 |
1234.25 ^ -3 |
1234.25 ^ -4 |
| =ROUNDUP(A1, -1) | =ROUNDUP(A1, -2) | =ROUNDUP(A1, -3) | =ROUNDUP(A1, -4) |
To round to the nearest ten (10)
To round to the nearest hundred (100)
To round to the nearest thousand (100)