Office 2010 Home and Student, Unable to “Open With” Word, Excel etc.
A customer just brought in a machine to be reformatted, and asked us to put Office on it for him. However as of now we are still waiting for our first retail copies of Office 2010 Home and Student to arrive. Thinking I was clever I installed the trial version from the Microsoft Website and figured I’ d pop the key in as soon as the final version arrived. Immediately something seemed bizarre. The Start Menu Group for Office 2010 had (English) appended to the end of it. I right clicked on the executables and realised they were pointing to “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Virtualization Handler\CVH.EXE” What the hell I think. Why is Office being Virtualised? Apparently this is a product of the use as you download feature of the Digital Download, they use an application virtualisation layer to allow you to use the app while it downloads all of the features. However this causes an unexpected problem, there is no easy way to open other non-standard formats from Explorer in Office. I developed this fix because a customer needs the ability to open WPS and XLR (Works Spreadsheet) files. As soon as the retail disks arrive I’ m going to uninstall Office and put a correct copy on there but for now I came up with this.
I made a new batch file, with the contents:
“C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Virtualization Handler\CVH.EXE” “Microsoft Excel 2010 9014006104090000″ %1
Then I saved it as “openwithexcel.bat”, then I told the Open With dialog to always use that batch file to open XLR. Worked no Problem, I then made a second batch file called “openwithword.bat” with the contents:
PXE Booting in Linux
I was reading slashdot today and found this article: http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/05/scalable-day-to-day-diskless-booting/
I remember having tried to do this in the past with an openfiler installation and an atom box, I ended up getting frustrated and moving on but this sheds a lot more light on how the process works and how to get it working. It’s kind of a dream of mine to be able to network boot a diagnostic distribution of Linux without having to worry about the HDD at all.
How to Convert an Avast Pro 4.8 Key into a Avast 5.0 Key
After much searching I have found the answer. You can convert an Avast 4.8 Professional Edition Key to an Avast Profession Edition 5.0 key here: http://www.avast.com/resend-license.php
ESXi 4.0 Error attempting to install Windows 2008 R2 on Dell PowerEdge Server
Recently I was attempting to install a new copy of Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition on a customer’s ESXi machine. Although I was currently running many different operating systems on the server, I was surprised to see that I could not install 2008. I received the error “0xc000035a Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this cpu is not compatible with 64-bit mode”. After about 10 minutes of troubleshooting I realised that the problem was not in Windows 2008 or ESXi but rather in the Dell System BIOS. For some reason dell ships their servers with Intel VT Virtualisation Technology turned off! ESXi is unable to run 64bit operating systems without first turning on VT technology. I’m surprised I missed this, out of some coincidence all of the operating systems on the machine are 32-bit. That seems a bit perplexing to me that by default Dell disables this on their servers, it seems like it’d be a no brainer to turn it on. Perhaps for security purposes? If you have an answer, let me know in your comments!
Configure TFTP Option 66 and Option 150 with dhcpd
Here is a copy of the top portion of my /etc/dhcpd.conf file. Using this configuration you should be able to setup any TFTP bootable device to look to your TFTP server for configuration files. For example Cisco 79xx series phones, or SPA5xx series phones.
Invalid Cisco SmartNET Serial Number?
We can help! We have specific experience in this problem and we know all the hoops necessary to get your device re-added to the Cisco eligibility list! Fill out the below form, and attach proof of your Serial Number, in the form of a photo of the Serial Number on the device, or a screenshot of the CLI or device information page showing the Serial Number. All phone contracts cost 20USD for the Basic One Year SmartNET agreement. We will get back to you with a price on any non-phone agreements you may want. All payments are processed via Google Checkout which means we never see your credit card information.
You’re information will not be reused or sold. All personal information and device information will be kept strictly confidential.
Cisco SmartNET Contract for Cisco 7940, 7941, 7960, 7961, 7970, 7971
We now provide expedited SmartNET agreements for all Cisco Devices! Your quoted price will be for the Basic One-Year SmartNET agreement unless you specify a different service level in the notes section. All payments are processed via Google Checkout which means we never see your credit card information. If you have had problems in the past with your device having an “invalid serial number” according to cisco use this form here. These agreements are necessary to obtain the firmware for Cisco 79xx series phones.
You’re information will not be reused or sold. All personal information and device information will be kept strictly confidential.
When we say all fields are required, we mean it, Cisco needs them all.
Prolific PL-2303 driver Device Cannot Start Windows Vista 64bit and Windows 7
I’ve had this problem a couple times and the solution seems to be slightly different each time. The problem presents itself as a Device in Device Manager showing “”The Device Cannot Start (Code 10)” after you’ve installed the Prolific PL-2303 Drivers from the Prolific website. Which are available here: http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=31
The solution is to use a similar driver set floating around on the internet here: http://www.usglobalsat.com/download/546/win_drivers.zip
Unzip the file and install the executable within. That fix solved the problem for me instantly. To make sure that the new driver take priority over the other one in Windows 7 right click on the device and go to Unistall and check “Delete the driver software for this device”. I found this solution on the microsoft social forums here.
Howto BLF (Busy Lamp Field), SLA (Shared Line Appearance), on the Linksys SPA942, SPA962 and Cisco SPA525G
I’m sure by now you’ve read a few articles saying that you CANNOT do BLF on the SPA942, SPA962 or SPA525G, this is in fact false. BLF works JUST fine on these phones. In fact I have a wall behind me with all three models connected together with Asterisk (elastix) merrily reading each others line states. The red lights are extensions demonstrate extensions in use.
For those of you who do not know what BLF is. BLF or Busy Lamp Field allows you to see which extensions are currently on the phone, or being called. It also allows you to pickup a ringing phone for someone else.
By placing these same configuration details into the SPA932 screen you could also use these instructions to programme a Linksys SPA932 Sidecar.
I’m sure by now you’re jealous of all my little red lights blinking away. Well, fortunately for you the next part of this guide is how you can do it on your own phones. I’m going to break this down into four sections: Configuration in common to all three models, and then three separate sections for configuration elements unique to each phone.
Before Using this Guide Make sure you have the Latest Firmware from Linksys / Cisco
This is NECESSARY
General:
First things first, here is what is more or less common to every model. To do anything you need to log into the phone. To do this you need to get the IP Address of the phone. You can either get it from your endpoint manager or by hitting the settings button, then pressing 9.
Once you’re logged into the phone, we need to log in and switched to advanced.
On the right hand side you’ll see “Admin Login”, once you’ve done that and it’s switched to “User Login”. Go ahead and hit “Advanced”. Do it in that order else it’ll go ahead and switch back to basic mode and you won’t see the options we need. The SPA525G has a slightly differently looking screen but it’s phrased identically.
Next we’re going to setup the actual BLF and shortcut lines. This step is identical on all the phones so we’ll do it first.
Click on the “Phone Tab” on the menu bar up top. Double check that you’re in Advanced Mode and you should see the Line Keys. I typically leave Line Key 1 configured as a normal extension. This means that the phone will be able to handle two simultaneous calls. If you need four simultaneous calls assign Line Key 2 as well to Extension 1.
For the lines that will require BLF Switch the Extension to Disabled, switch the Share Call Appearance to shared. Enter a short name for the line, this is the name that will show up on the button on the screen.
Once you have that you’ll need to enter the following into the extended function section:
fnc=blf+sd+cp;sub=EXT#@ASTERISKIP;nme=SHORTNAMEHERE
Replace EXT# with the Extension number of the phone you would like to monitor, ASTERISKIP with the IP of the Asterisk server that both phones are connected to and SHORTNAMEHERE with the shortname entered above.
You may fill out as many lines as necessary using this same command. The same syntax is used on the SPA942, SPA962 and SPA525G.
There is one additional step necessary to get BLF working. You must now tell the phone that you want it to use Asterisk style BLF.
Save your settings and move on to the next phone-specific section.
SPA942 Specific Instructions:
While you’re on the Phone Tab, You need to scroll down directly below the last Line Key (should be Line Key 4). You’ll see Line Key Extended Function.
Here you must switch the Server Type: to Asterisk, and changed the SPA932 Call Pickup Code to *8 to match the Asterisk call pickup code.
That’s it, save your settings and you’re done.
SPA962 Specific Instructions:
On the SPA962 the setting is located under the SPA932 tab (that’s the model name of the sidecar for the SPA962 and SPA525G).
Once you’ve clicked on the SPA932 tab you should get this:
If you don’t see this, make sure you’re in advanced mode and logged in as admin (Admin Login button). If you do see this, switch Server Type to Asterisk and SPA932 Call Pickup Code to *8.
Save you’re settings and you’re done!
SPA525G Specific Instructions:
On the SPA962 the setting is located under the Att Console tab (this tab is intended to work with the SPA932 which is the Sidecar for the SPA962 and SPA525G).
If you don’t see this, make sure you’re logged in as admin and in advanced mode. Once you see the below dialog we’re ready to change a couple settings for Asterisk:
Switch the Server Type: to Asterisk and change the Attendant Console Call Pickup Code to *8.
Save your settings and you’re done.
None of my NICs work in ESXi 4.x!
I’ve been driving myself nuts for the last couple of days trying to figure out why none of the NICs that I had previously used in ESXi 3.0 and 3.5 aren’t working on my latest ESXi 4.0 installs. I checked the HCL to find that nearly all of the 10/100 chipsets have been removed from the VMware ESX HCL. Bummer. Realistically, there was is no good reason to use a 10/100/1000 card for a WAN port.
I’m sure there is a way to reload the kernel modules for the card I need but it seems like a lot of work to do that every time I need to setup an ESXi server.
So, exasperated I went to the VMware HCL to find another card that does work. This normally would not be such a big deal if the VMware ESX HCL wasn’t notoriously difficult to make any sense of.
After a few hours of trying to find an affordable PCI-E NIC on the HCL I found this site:
http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/Hardware_support.php
It arranges everything nice and clearly. I ended up buying some bulk Broadcom NetXtreme PCI-E cards, and we’ll see how well they work in ESX 4.0.
