Tag: Windows 8

Adobe Reader Doesn’t Open in Windows 8

Adobe Reader doesn’t open in Windows 8 at least not on every attempt.  I have uninstalled and reinstalled Reader and have yet to see a difference.  I also am not sure what causes it.

What I do know is that Reader is opening in the background but is not being displayed on the screen.  Acrobat does not have these issues.  In this particular instances the Windows 8 copy is sitting in VMware Vsphere and being accessed via remote desktop.

Here is what you do.  You hit ctrl-alt-delete if you are in windows 8 but if you are accessing it from a remote desktop you hit ctrl-alt-delete to get to the  task manager.  In the task manager you may have to click “More Details” in order to see the entire list.  Once you do that you need to END TASK one each and every Reader in the list.

Like I mentioned earlier, Acrobat doesn’t have this issue.  With Reader becoming so large and bloated maybe it’s time to start looking for something else.  The built-in Reader for pdfs in Windows is just awful.  I won’t consider that an option.

Mapped Drives will not stay connected in Windows

I would think that the process of mapping drives would be a mature and simple process in Windows.  Taking into account all the years that Windows from XP through Windows 8 there is no reason for these random hardships.  The difficulties with mapped drives is so random that one can’t pinpoint the issues.  For example, client buys 1o computers all the same and 1 out of the 10 computers won’t keep the network drives connected.

One of the first fixes to mapped drive connections is to use the net use command in a batch file.  There is plenty of sites out there that explains in detail how to use the net use command.  However, I have found a minor detail not described in earlier postings.  When creating a batch file be sure to use all lower-case.  At least in my situation with 2 Windows 7 computers the net use command would not work in upper-case.

Secondly, I’ve had issues with the mapped network drive batch files consistently working.  From the Technet website I used this info to manually delete the drives because a reboot and a normal disconnect would  not work for me.

 
Steps:

a. Click Start, click Run, type REGEDIT, and then click OK.

 

b. Locate and click the following registry subkey:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache

 

c. Click Edit, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

 

d. Type SilentForcedAutoReconnect , and then press ENTER to name the value.

 

e. Double-click SilentForcedAutoReconnect .

 

f. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.

I also have had issues getting the persistent flag to work properly. Yes, I have tried just cutting and pasting.  Here is what I had to do on 2 different Windows computers to get the connections to work.

  1. Created the batch file to map the network drives.  I set it up in task manager with a 30 second delay after computer startup.
  2. The 2nd computer required me to put in a batch file to delete the current mapped drives on reboot and then another task to connect them after a 30 second delay.

There are just a lot of options out there that it can be a real time consuming issue.  Right now I am looking at 6 open tabs in Chrome with info on mapped drives and I used each tab to figure out how to resolve this issue.

 

How to Disable “opening these files might be harmful to your computer” Windows 8

This also applies to Windows 7.

I found the answer to this question on a technet forum.

Here is the deal: You go to copy or delete some files on a mapped network drive and you get this annoying warning as a popup that says “opening these files might be harmful to your computer.”

I’m thinking that’s fine I know what i am doing so lets click through the warning. Can I? Nope.

You have to go into Control Panel –> Internet Options –> security –> intranet sites –>advanced and then add the name or IP (I added the IP) of the mapped drive.

Activate Windows – Go to PC settings to activate Windows

The above message is what I get on my Start and Desktop screens in my Windows 8 VM. I do realize this copy needs to be activated but here is the catch.

THERE IS NO “PC SETTINGS”!!!!!

Yes, that’s right. Go ahead, I dare you. Type in PC Settings on the start screen and see if anything comes up.

In order to activate Windows there are a few ways but the easiest is to type in Control Panel in the search. Open up the Control Panel and then open up System. In here at the bottom of the screen a person can activate their copy of Windows just like Windows 7 and Vista.

And people wonder why some of us despise Windows 8. Things like that are frustrating.

Ultra VNC is slow on Windows 8

I’ve been setting up a server for a business. I’ve written a few posts about my tribulations with the project. As I continue to learn I try to add it here.

Today I learned that Ultra VNC on Windows 8 is not very good. It’s frustratingly laggy. I’ve tried a few settings to speed it up. None of my ideas worked!

I need to find another way (read:free) to access the copy of Windows 8 on the server.

Installing LMS on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 and using a mapped network drive

This article is to help remind me how to fix problems I ran into installing LMS on Windows 8 and now Windows 8.1.  It’s been 2 years and here are still with the same issues.

LMS is a Loan Management System created by Anchor Commercial. I recently installed LMS on a Windows 8 system. Windows 8 was virtualized.

I had 2 problems with LMS. The first issue I had was I couldn’t see my mapped network drive for the database. I had to edit the registry to fix the issue. It is related to LMS running in an elevated state as administrator.

Type in REGEDIT in a command prompt.
Navigate or search for this area in the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/System
Proceed to add a new key called EnableLinkedConnections
Assign a DWORD value of 1.
Save and reboot. From that point on you should see the mapped network drive.

The second issue I had was several generic messages that would crash the program. 1 problem was a permissions issue. For some reason I needed to open up the permissions of my file server a bit more. The database is sitting in a samba share. I had to do 1 more thing to cause it to stop crashing. I created a local database on the Windows 8 image first then switched to the shared drive and deleted the created new database. That cleared out all my errors and now I have a working copy of LMS!