Artifact Weblog

The #Windows10 Creator's Update is a good one. Goes on without hassle, has some nice new features, and has sorted out some printer gremlins. — Steve Garvey (@artifactireland) April 26, 2017 from Twitter https://twitter.com/artifactireland April 26, 2017 at 01:03AM via IFTTT

A while back I ran into some issues trying to boot a client PC through Acronis SnapDeploy: v3 boot disk wouldn't see HDD but saw NIC v4 boot disk would see HDD but not NIC v4 PXE was same as above Eventually I concluded that the driver for NIC on v3 boot disk was dodgy. Solution: Download Windows AIK 1.6 for XP/Vista Install on Acronis machine. Build PE boot for PXE and add drivers for the NIC Boot from PXE

I've encountered this issue a number of times at customer sites protected by good quality firewalls with web content filtering. The issue is that you can view a YouTube video but the thumbnails for the videos you want to watch don't show up in YouTube.  This makes browsing YouTube less than entertaining and a little tiresome. To resolve this issue you need to un-block or allow access to the following domain on your firewall: ytimg.com

One more thing regarding Windows Updates... In order for Windows updates to work properly your firewall must allow access to the following domains: download.microsoft.com ntservicepack.microsoft.com update.microsoft.com windowsupdate.com wustat.windows.com

A while back I encountered a nasty little BSOD:   0x000000A0 INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR After some digging I discovered that this seems to relate to the size of the Windows Hiberfile being less than 100% that of the system's RAM. The fix is as follows: - Open elevated Command Prompt - Type "powercfg -hibernate -size 100" and hit Enter

On certain models of HP ProBook one will encounter an error when trying to uninstall the HP Client Security Manager software. Here is the solution: Disable the DVD/CD drive in Device Manager Uninstall HP Client Security Manager Reboot the laptop Then re-enable the DVD/CD drive

Lately I've been finding Windows Updates under Windows 7 to be a real pain.  One of the more common issue is where Windows gets stuck on checking for updates.  This can go on indefinitely. The following steps often resolve the issue.  I say often because in some rare cases the issue can persist... - Open an admin command prompt - Enter "net stop wuauserv" - Run KB3138612.msu - Restart PC - Open an admin command prompt - Enter "net stop wuauserv" - Run KB3102810.msu - Enter "net stop wuauserv" - Run KB3135445.msu - Run WindowsUpdateDiagnostic.diagcab - Run WindowsUpdateDiagnostic.diagcab again (must see everything fixed) - Run Windows Update and check for updates One last thing: always make sure you have the latest version of the Windows Update Client.