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Apparently the error below from Zune is indicative of some sort of problem with your DRM data. The redirect is to KB 929642 which of course doesn’t list the error message, but it was a useful clue. —————————Zune————————— Zune encountered a critical error and needs to close. For instructions on correcting this error, open the URL below in a web browser. http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=105744&locale=409&geoid=f4&version=2.5.447.0&userlocale=409&system=ZuneClient —————————OK ————————— On my x86 box which hosts the Zune software, C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM is where all this stuff is. You can check by going to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DRM and looking at the DataPath value. If you double click … Continue reading Zune Error

Since I’ve been living in Microsoft Word lately, I figured why not take some time for a couple more handy Word tricks. This one is about getting a gutter to show up in Draft view so you can see what styles have been applied to text. If you’ve ever worked with a complex stylesheet before, especially one which is post-processed by some other tool, getting the styles properly applied to your content, and also debugging messed up styles is important. The display I’m talking about looks something like this in my sample document: You’ll notice the various style names which … Continue reading Word Tip – The Draft View Gutter

Another handy Word tip today is using Outline view to work with big documents. If you’ve got a sizeable document, chances are your document is also structured hierarchically. By this I mean that you are probably using multiple levels of Heading styles to organize your content. If you flip to Outline view (on the View tab of the ribbon), Word will give you a collapsed view of your document based on these heading style elements. You can use the Show Level option on the Outlining ribbon to manage how deep the outline is, and you can also expand and collapse … Continue reading Word Tip – Outline View and Document Map

One of my colleagues reported an issue at a customer this past weekend where every time he transferred FSMO roles, MOM would report that the MS DTC (distribution transaction coordinator) service had terminated unexpectedly on all the domain controllers in a domain at this customer. At this particular customer that bought us about 350 emails from MOM since the roles got transferred twice over the weekend in each domain. For reference, it’s a highly distributed Windows Server 2003 SP1 environment with a mix of x86 and x64 installations. A quick look at MOM & the event viewer on a suspect … Continue reading MSDTC Exits on PDCe Transfer

I discovered this afternoon that you can insert simple formulas in Microsoft Word tables, at least in Word 2007. This is really pretty helpful when you just need to do something simple like sum a column or row and don’t want to build the table in Excel, copy it into Word, and then format it. I had a table something like this:   Foo Bar Snafu Total X Y X Y X Y Day 1 .5 1.5 0 1 1.25 .5   Day 2 .5 1.5 0 1 1.25 .5   Day 3 .5 1.5 0 1 1.25 .5   … Continue reading Formulas in Word

So I’m working on a project which involves some documentation around disaster recovery and I flagged a word in the text for the technical reviewers to suggest a better word (BCD40). The feedback I got really made me laugh: Share this post: email it! | digg it! | bookmark it! | live it!

I was complaining (more or less) several weeks ago about the amount of work it was going to take to upgrade my MCSE to the latest version. The good news is I went and did the Windows end of things and now I’m apparently an “MCITP: Enterprise Administrator”. Now compared to MCSE, no HR person is going to know what that means. Most folks are trained to look for MCSE and it’s going to be a long time before that mentality is changed I suspect. Personally if someone asks me if I have an MCSE or if I’m certified on … Continue reading Update on the MCSE Upgrade

Scott’s post prompted this post as I’ve found that unlike Scott, my recent upgrade to a third screen is really helpful. I run with two PCs under my desk. One PC is a simple Dell tower with 4GB of RAM, a dual core chip in it and a couple of SATA spindles – it’s a few years old at this point I think [1]. This is what I call my personal machine – I do email, IM, and pretty much everything else on it – all my files are stored here. My second machine is a fairly high end Dell … Continue reading Running with a Third Screen on my Desk

If you’ve ever gotten the error below when you go to Windows Update on a machine or Windows Update is completely missing from the Tools menu in Internet Explorer, it’s fortunately an easy registry change to temporarily back out. Network policy settings prevent you from using this website to get updates for your computer. If you believe you have received this message in error, please contact your system administrator. Read more about steps you can take to resolve this problem (error number 0x8DDD0003) yourself. This is generally set as a group policy setting and thus will get refreshed, but, you … Continue reading Unblocking Windows Update

I’ll be down in Orlando at TechEd IT Pro next week. I’m working a booth of some fashion in the Technical Learning Center most of the week I’m told, so feel free to drop in and say hello if you’re in town as well. Share this post: email it! | digg it! | bookmark it! | live it!