MS Word Hell! Why does word keep closing on me or wanting to open in safe mode?

Hi Admin, I have a question for you - Word crashed on me, and now when I start it up, it says If I continue, I get the following: (Do you want to start in safe mode?)

If I choose No, I get the 1st crash message again, and the cycle repeats.
If I choose Yes, Word starts ok, but it’s in Safe Mode. Thoughts? Do I need to re-install office? Jay

Admin: What version is that 2003?

This loads word without add-ins. If it works your normal.dot is corrupted. Rename it normal.old and make sure word is closed down fully - restart if you are not sure. Then start word normally - let me know how it goes. 

You’re magic, Karl. Worked like a charm. Thank you!! J

Why you should follow up on status reports… (PIC)

When I was a project manager I kept this tacked to my office door. Trust you me no one ever responded to “How’s your project going?” with a “good” or “Fine!”

_TheWhipCrackingAdmiN_

IPV6? The day the router died! (Video ReRun)

The Day The Router Die… Set to Bye Bye Miss American Pie

Do you know what IPV6 is? If you are smiling already you will find this funny. But, if you are shrugging your shoulders and staring blankly at your screen chances are this will NOT be funny for you. But enough with the disclaimer and here it is for all you geeks out there.

Creative, geeky…and most importantly funny.

No but really what are your takes on IPV6 vs our current IP structure?

Why is my computer so slow?

First off Happy Gobble Gobble! It’s Thanksgiving day and the family is coming over? If you are the type to enjoy sites like “AsktheAdmin” then I’m willing to bet you are the person the family goes to when they have a computer problem. I think the problem I get most often is “Why is my computer so slow?” Well, there are a number of reasons your pc experience has started crawling at a snails pace, I’ll try to cover some of my basic ways to get your machine back to the days of snappy response.

First what we need to realize is when people say their machine is slow they generally mean their overall user interface experience….ie Windows. We’re not talking rocket science or trying to factor the number of cells in the human body, this your Mom’s PC, or Grandma’s…or the guy next door that just wants to get email and check on the weather for the weekend. So fairly simple PC setups that have grown tired from use such as loading applications or surfing the web. For these scenarios (and others more complex) I have some simple methods to get things cleaned up and running smoothly:

1. Start Up
2. Clean Up
3. Memory

First things first; many people don’t realize that when Windows starts up there are a number of hidden little programs that plant themselves at startup to run automatically. Now this is usually done “to help the user out”. How? Oh, well if I run my program EVERY time you start your PC then the 1 or 2 times a month you actually need to use it it will be ALL READY to go for you. Nice huh? Not exactly. Most “helper” apps such as these put unnecessary load on your machine and when speed is a premium, we need to address them.

A few people know about the Start Up folder in their Program files folder, which is a simple way to get programs to launch at start up. Most often though, the “helper” apps hide in the registry where the average user is less likely to find them or remove them. For these situations I recommend using a Start Up Manager program. Windows has it’s own built right in called “msconfig” that can be launched from the RUN command, but I have found freeware alternatives that in my opinion do more and are easier to use. One such program is “Starter” by a group called CodeStuff.

Their website was not available at this writing, not sure what the story is there, but you can find it all over the web including on Snapfiles: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/starter.html.

This program will show all the applications that launch at Windows Start up. Do you really need Adobe running on every start? How about Office? Yahoo Toolbar?

The great thing about these StartUp Managers is that they allow you to disable rather than just delete an application. You might find something cryptic and think “What the heck is that? Delete it” only to find it was part of your antivirus or printer program. Disabling allows you to reboot and try out if you are missing any functionality when in doubt. I always choose to disable and then in a few months I’ll go back and delete it if nothing is “missed”.

Use a StartUp manager to stop unneeded applications from hogging your system resources and slowing things down.

Now that we have removed all the unnecessary applications from launching at start up the next thing to review is “Clean Up”. This doesn’t always yield faster response but it’s a general good practice and may help performance. What happens is over time all your temp files and cache gets loaded up, and there is no process to clean things up. Enter CCleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com/.

This great little utility (affectionately called “Crap Cleaner”) will clear up those areas as well as do a number of other things to help tidy up the PC. Getting and running this program with the defaults is more than enough to get things cleaned up, I’ll let you experiment with all the other features this little gem can accomplish.

The last item I like to check is how much system memory is installed. Memory is relatively cheap and I find that sometimes the basic consumer level PCs have barely enough to run.

Now I have to admit, for all the PCs I’ve built, fixed and loaded I still get confused by memory. You may not have this issue but a tool I like to use is a free program provided by Crucial (http://www.crucial.com) called Crucial System Scanner: http://images.crucial.com/drivers/CrucialScan.exe or run it on-line here: What I like about this program is that once run it will tell you what you have installed, what configuration and if you have the ability to increase the memory. No more “cracking the case” just to see how many memory slots are there or if they are all used! Sure, Windows can tell me if 1 gig of ram is installed, but it doesn’t tell me if that equates to 1 gig ram chip or 2 512mb ram chips. Of course the Crucial tool is going to show you the Crucial brand memory equivalent of what you can upgrade with, but now that you have the information you can choose whatever brand you want should you decide to upgrade. (AskTheAdmin recomends Crucial memory and gets a few cents for every purchase you make through this link here.)

So there you have it - 3 simple things you can use to help get your (or your Mom’s) PC back to a more snappier pace. Load them up on a thumb drive so you can take them with you for “field visits” like today for Thanksgiving or other upcoming holidays…. Now where is my turkey?

Have other tools or practices to share? Let’s hear about them in the comments….

_TheEatingTurkeyEarlyAdmiN_

Can you hear me now? Know when your email got to their BlackBerry.

I just love hearing “oh sorry, I didn’t get your email” as a response when I ask someone for a response for the third time. Especially when I know that person has a BlackBerry. When it’s from users on my BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) I usually just create a help desk ticket from their “oh I didn’t get your email” response, and then attach a screen shot of the BES log showing that it was in fact delivered to their BlackBerry.

Then they forget that I can do this, and in a few weeks I have to repeat the whole thing. But what do you do when the person you’re sending email to doesn’t have a BES, or is not on your network?

Apparently the good folks at RIM are one step ahead of me, as they have a solution to this nonsense built in. Keeping in mind that this will only work with actual BlackBerry devices (I’ve confirmed that it works with a BES server, and using the BlackBerry Redirector for peeps without a BES), send a email to the address that gets delivered to the BlackBerry with <confirm> as the subject, and in a few moments you should get a reply that looks something like this:

As you’ll see in the screen shot, you can use this functionality with an actual subject, or by sending just <confirm> as the subject (just make sure that <confirm> is the first thing on the subject line). The really awesome part of this is that unless the recipient knows what the <confirm> tag in the subject line does, they have no idea that you now know that the email was delivered to their device. Take note smarmy sales weasels: I see what you did there.

Check out more from our Joe at his blog Joe-IT here.

Tivo Scheduling on My Mobile Phone! For Real.

I have been using my TiVo series 2 with on-line scheduling for years now but it was always cumbersome to say the least on my Windows Mobile. Now just in time to enjoy my HTC Fuze AkA The HTC Touch Pro… All you need to do is point your browswer to http://m.tivo.com , log-in and select your DVR.

That’s it - and in return it will let you search, schedule and set-up season passes! Sweet. Stay tuned for some Tivo + WHS Geeky Goodness!

And if you are into Satellite radio like XM check out this page chock full of deals!

_TheWhatsThatNowAdmiN_