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)

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 ...

SBS 2003 mailbox limit and warning over 2GB

Its not often that I don't find an answer to an SBS admin question on Daniel Petri's excellent website. He's got a post about loading up ADSIEDIT to set a mailbox limit warning higher than 2GB. Basically the standard Exchange Server Manager won't edit the values higher than 2GB so you have to dive into obscure Active Directory attributes to load a bigger value.

At one particular client that didn't work and he kept getting daily warnings, which in turn meant I got a daily prompt ;-) There is a global setting that affects all mailboxes fortunately and it worked at this particular client.

I tracked down an article to set the global mailbox limit higher than 2GB. Use ADSIEDIT but drill down to the attributes at this location:

Configuration [YOUR_SERVER.YOUR_DOMAIN.london]

CN=Configuration,DC=YOUR DOMAN,DC=london

CN=ServicesCN=Microsoft Exchange

CN=YOUR_DOMAIN

CN=Administrative Groups

CN=first administrative group

CN=Servers

CN=YOUR_SERVERNAME

CN=InformationStore

CN=First Storage Group

CN=Mailbox Store (YOUR_SERVERNAME)

Move Sage Payroll data

Just had a client going from Sage Payroll 2011 on a standalone PC to a network version on the server.

It was surprisingly straightforward! I just copied the Company.001 directory from the PC's payroll directory in to a shared folder on the server.

Then ran the latest Payroll setup CD on another PC and told it to open the payroll.mdb from that shared location when prompted.

The answer to telling the original standalone PC to switch to the network data was prompted by this post http://www.great-one.co.uk/archives/132

But on this version of Payroll I had to copy the paydata file from the new PC to the old.

Advantage of doing this was I could easily revert to the standalone Payroll if there was a problem with the network version.

Recover Administrator domain password for server 2008 (and SBS 2008) on Hyper-V

I've worked out a top tip for resetting a forgotten domain administrator password in Small Business Server 2008 (SBS) - which is effectively the same for Windows Server 2008 - except its running on Hyper-V and you can't get the Windows-U command to the remote session.

(That is the Windows command key near the bottom left of the keyboard pressed at the same time as the 'u' key)

Follow these instructions from woutware
http://www.woutware.com/blog/post/How-to-reset-the-domain-administrator-password-on-Windows-Server-2008-with-just-the-Windows-Installation-Disk.aspx
(He's also got a link to a Youtube video in case you're having trouble)

which are basically:
* Insert the original Windows Server 2008 installation DVD.
(You'll need to do this in the Hyper-V settings to allocate the drive to the guest OS)
* Reset the computer, boot from DVD.
(watching for the press a key prompt)
* Choose option "Repair your computer".
* Start command prompt.
* C:\
* CD C:\Windows\System32
* MOVE Utilman.exe Utilman.exe.bak
* COPY Cmd.exe Utilman.exe
* Restart windows
* At the login screen, type Windows-U, this fires up cmd.exe now
* NET USER administrator
* Presto! Login as administrator!
* Now repair computer again and move the original Utilman.exe back.

Now if your server is virtualized with Hyper-V you'll be connected via Remote Desktop or Hyper-V Manager. Pressing Windows-U starts the accessibility program on your local PC not the remote server session.

The trick is to run the remote session in full screen mode (note this is different from maximised). On Hyper-V Manager you can get that option from the View menu or you can press Ctrl-Alt-Break.

In full screen mode, the Windows-U command will be successfully passed to the server and you can complete woutware's instructions to load a command shell and use the NET USER command to reset the password.

SBS 2011 undeliverable local email after migration, 0x8004010F

Just completed an SBS 2011 migration from SBS 2003 using the Microsoft method. Two of the mailboxes failed to transfer correctly and I had to manually create and import them. Subsequently some staff were unable to email one of those mail accounts.

They received an undeliverable error which showed the new server name but trying to route to the old 'First Administrative Group' on the 2003 server. Download Offline Address Book gave error 0x8004010F, not found.

Creating a new OAB in 2010 Exchange Management Console didn't appear to fix the problem. Found the key bit of info here
http://forums.msexchange.org/fb.aspx?m=1800473258
Create the new OAB with a different name. Then allocate it to the Mailbox Database. Going back to Outlook and clicking Download Address Book worked straight off and email routing was successful.

IT Support

"Taking IT apart is easy, putting it back together in the right order is what you pay for"

SBS 2008 DHCP server not registering DNS from workgroup XP

Made sure I was set for
- secure and unsecure registrations
- separate username in DHCP
- member of DNSProxyUpdate group
- deleted reverse records
- restarted services repeatedly

and kept getting DNS registration failed in DHCP audit log

but this KB saved the day
A Windows Server 2008-based DHCP server does not register DNS records for earlier version DHCP clients that do not send option 81 to the DHCP server

the hotfix dowload didn't actually work for me - was a Vista x64 version that reported incompatbile with SBS 2008.

However going back to the problem PC and adding the local domain suffix (xxx.local) into the TCP/IP settings did the trick

AppleCare Protection for iPhone - what could go wrong?

So I just purchased an AppleCare Protection Plan from O2 to go with the shiny new iPhone which has 12 month warranty on a 2yr contract - bit nervous about those second 12 months.

This is how the protection plan arrived.

What could possibly go wrong if they have to take a look at the iPhone? An iPhone can bend like that can't it?