Thursday, 21 July 2011

I can't open the Word/Excel attachment in email

If you receive an email with a file attached and the filename ends with DOCX or XLSX or PPTX that you can’t open with your version of Word/Excel/Powerpoint, its probably because the file is saved in the new format for Office 2007 and Office 2010.

The older versions of Office 2000, 2002, 2003 can’t open these without an update.

Microsoft have made a converter available as a free download:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3

Alternatively you can upgrade to the latest Office 2010 Home and Student (3 pack) for around £89 or
if there’s a pupil or older student using the computer, buy the special education version of Office 2010 Professional Plus from
www.software4students.co.uk
approx. £40
You just have to specify the school/college/uni and students name

QR code generator for address details

Wouldn't have thought it was that hard but something like the first six hits from Google all failed to generate a working QR code. Was only after something basic with Name, Email, Mob and Website. Got lots of spurious characters appearing in the text fields :-(

Anyway the winner was http://goqr.me/

Simple to use, variety of formats and sizes and the QR works - shock! Tested successfully with red Laser on the iPhone.

(I would reproduce here but seeing as it has my son's mob, email and facebook page, maybe not)

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

AVG 2011 Internet Security Business Edition reports NDIS driver not found

Just upgraded a client from AVG 9 to AVG 2011. This was to the Business Edition of AVG Internet Security (and Anti-Virus) 2011.

One of the laptops running Windows XP SP3 failed to uninstall the previous version properly then screwed up the install of the new one.

When you opened the AVG Console, the Firewall reported an error 'NDIS driver not found'.

Running a repair install didn't help and that article about manually installing the AVG Network Filter Driver from Local Area Connection properties didn't work either.

I did an unistall of AVG and was still connected to the Internet and network ok, however when I looked in Network Connections there was no Local Area Connection and no Wireless Connection.

To fix that I went into the Device Manager and uninstalled both LAN and WLAN devices. Then did a Scan fro Hardware Changes to reinstall them. That did the trick and AVG 2011 reinstalled successfully after that, presumably finding the NDIS that had been MIA.

Rather than doing a full AVG uninstall and reinstall, maybe worth testing if uninstalling and reinstalling the LAN and WLAN devices recovers the NDIS error ...

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