Gene's Blog

0x80004005 Error with ActiveSync

gene — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:54:00 GMT

Quite suddenly the other day, my BlackJack with Windows Mobile 6 stopped syncing with my Exchange mailbox. The error read "Attention Required" and although I gave it a lot of attention, I was unable to get things working by re-entering the server info and my password.

Finally, I went so far as to de-select all of the options to sync - Contacts, Calendar, E-mail, and Tasks. Clearing these checkboxes will delete the data on your device when you apply the change. I then went back and re-enables all of the checkboxes and ActiveSync started pulling down data and syncing properly again.

The Add-in "FaxExtension" cannot be loaded message appears when replying or creating a new message in Outlook 2007

gene — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:58:00 GMT

So this message is more than an annoyance. If you're like me, after clicking OK for the 500th time you've finally decided to do something about this error message that appears every time you reply to a message - for some folks this happens when you compose a new message. The message looks like this:

The Add-in "FaxExtension" (C:\Windows\SysWOS64\fxext32.dll) cannot be loaded and has been disabled by Outlook. Please contact the Add-in manufacturer for an update. If no update is available, please uninstall the Add-in.

I did some digging and found a solution buried in a forum. Don't bother trying to delete the extend.dat file - it doesn't work and I wasted a bunch of time trying that. Hopefully this solution will work for you and save you some time.

In Outlook, Click Tools > Trust Center
Click the category "Add-ins" on the left
At the bottom of the window, change the Manage list to "Exchange Client Extensions" and click Go
Uncheck the box next to FaxExtension and click OK.
Sigh with relief when you don't see that error anymore!

Parallels and Vista Network Problem

gene — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:04:00 GMT

On a few occasions, I've run into weirdness with networking on Vista under parallels. I can get a DHCP lease, but I can't ping anything. Yet, I'm clearly connected.

When I ran ipconfig, I discovered that I had two default gateways showing up, the first being 0.0.0.0. Well, that's not going to work! To force your routing table to clear, you can run the following command as an admin in the command prompt within Vista:

route -f

Now that clears all of the gateway entries. You'll need something to get around the network, so simply running ipconfig /release followed by ipconfig /renew and I was good as new and able to surf the network!

Flushing DNS

gene — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 07:21:00 GMT

When making DNS changes, you want to make sure your change was successful and undoubtedly you want to start getting the new address that corresponds to your change. Sometimes, your computer won't pick up this change because the address has been cached. The reason is that DNS tells your computer that this information is good for a certain length of time, so don't bug me every time you want to find such-and-such host. That being the case, it may take many hours before your computer checks for updated information. Here's a way for you to force your computer to get the latest and greatest DNS info by flushing the dns cache.

On Windows:

Open a command prompt and type

ipconfig /flushdns

On Mac OSX:

Open a terminal session and type

lookupd -flushcache

Critical Flash Player Vulnerability

gene — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:37:00 GMT

Flash is ubiquitous, therefore Flash is a great target for attack. Adobe announced a patch for a critical vulnerability in which Adobe Flash Player that could allow an attacker to take control of the an unpatched computer by way of Flash.

You need to be running the latest version of Flash - version 9.0.47.0 in order to be secure from this vulnerability.

To find out what version of Flash you are running, visit the page below. A player will launch that shows the installed version:

http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/about/

To upgrade, go to the page below to download the latest version of Flash:

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

For more details of this vulnerability, visit the page below:

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb07-12.html

Testing out the CS upgrade

gene — Fri, 25 May 2007 03:20:00 GMT

Just finished migrating and upgrading this installation to the latest version of CS. We're using the Small Business Edition. So far, so good!

Jott.com helps me get more done (or at least remember to get more done).

gene — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 20:13:00 GMT

Tom sent me an invite to www.jott.com and I love it. There's a reason I use it daily: it rules.

Jott is basically a personal assistant that ties your phone to your email. There's more to their website, but I've been incredibly happy with this basic functionality. Here's how it works.

I call the Jott 877 number.
The attendant says "Who do you want to Jott?"
I say myself.
A beep.
Then I leave a message for myself.
{magic happens here}
A few minutes later a message arrives in my inbox with that message typed out.

Sometimes they have trouble with words or acronyms, but a link is included in the message to an audio player that will play back my original voice message.

I spend so much time in my car - often my best daydreaming/brainstorming time. Jott allows me to capture that idea I have or the thing I need to do and ensures it gets written down for me to process later when I have time.

Like I said, jott does a lot more than that, but this is how I normally use it and by itself is awesome.

Check it out: www.jott.com

Hello Ecto!

gene — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:02:36 GMT

I'm trying out Ecto, a nifty blog editor that allows me to manage blog posts to multiple blogs such as community server and wordpress. It has a nice interface (not that I've had much time to dig in too deep). I really like the choice of html vs rich text editing, I'll have to work with this more to have more to rave about. I see a speech recognition thing that looks pretty interesting! Runs on the Mac and PC.

Technorati Tags: blogging, Mac

Daylight Savings Time is coming. Are you prepared?

gene — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 18:00:00 GMT

This March, the change to Daylight Savings Time comes a little earlier, and that could spell trouble if you aren't aware of the imact this year's change has and what you need to do to prepare.

Some people are likening this to Y2K. However, unlike Y2K, there is a very strong likelihood that you will be directly affected. If you use a calendar application such as the one in Outlook, Entourage or a smartphone to schedule meetings at specific times, you need to know about these changes. Imagine missing a meeting because your calendar tells you the time, but it's off by an hour.

Lanlogic's support staff have put together some information about the subject and things you can do to prepare:

http://www.lanlogic.net/support/docs/?cNode=6G0M5K&pNodes=3Q2Q0G

How to get Vista on Parallels to see and use my AirPort connection.

gene — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 06:05:00 GMT

Ok, the problem here is more likely that Parallels doesn't know it needs to share your internet connection. Here's what I did to get my Parallels to play nicely with my MacBook's networking:

Launch Parallels and click the "Edit" button to edit your virtual machine.
Select the Network Adapter item in the resource list.
Make sure BOTH device status boxes are checked - especially the "Connect cable at startup" box.
Under Emulation, select your wireless adapter from the list under "Bridged Ethernet"

Instant Messaging for Mac - Adium 1.0 Rocks

gene — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 19:14:00 GMT

I've been using the beta version of Adium as a replacement for the Trillian experience I was accustomed to on my PC and have been very happy with the way it works. Just yesterday they released version 1.0 with a bunch of improvements and fixes (release info here). What's great about Adium is that it is very customizable, works with all of the major IM services like Yahoo, Google Talk, AOL, MSN, as well as Jabber (hence Google Talk) and several others. Plus it's free!

http://www.adiumx.com

MacBook Tablet?

gene — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:34:00 GMT

This could get very interesting:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ModBook

Unfortunately, this mod seals the case shut, so there's no built in qwerty. Bummer.

How to hard reset a Cingular 3125 to factory settings

gene — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:04:00 GMT

1. Power off your phone. You may need to remove and replace battery.
2. Press the red power button to turn on the phone.
3. Immediately press and hold the two soft heys (they're the dash buttons at the top of the keypad)
4. Follow the instructions. Press 0...

This will wipe your device and restore it to factory default settings. It should not interfere with any data saved to your micro SD card.

What is taking up all of that disk space?

gene — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:55:00 GMT

If you've ever run out of disk space, you know how frustrating it can be to get through the whole house-cleaning process. WinDirStat is a handy visual tool that helps you identify where your disk usage is going so you can quickly locate and move large blocks of data or identify chunks of duplicate files.

Check it out here (windirstat.info).

How to remove Windows Messenger from the toolbar at startup

gene — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 00:28:00 GMT

It shouldn't be this complicated, but this is the hack I found to keep MSN Messenger from launching at startup.

Start -> Run

Type: gpedit.msc

The Group Policy Object Editor will open. Drill down to:

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Messenger

Double click the object "Do not allow Windows Messenger to be run" and choose the Enabled option. Click Apply.

Double click the object "Do not automatically start Windows Messenger initially" and choose the Enabled option. Click Apply.

You will need to reboot your machine to see this take effect.