Archive for the ‘Fixes that really work’ Category

By Percy Blakeney

There are times when you will write a correctly spelled English word and it will be corrected by the Spellchecker.

The word labour is a good example as I wrote it in a blog entry above and  it was underlined in red to indicate that the word was misspelled. It is not if you are in the UK!

This is a common issue. Word is often set with a US dictionary so it will highlight the words that are spelled differently in the UK from those in the US, such as colour tyres or night etc.

It is easily sorted out.

Here is what to do;

First click on Tools/Language/Set Language and highlight “English (UK)”, make sure the option ‘Detect language automatically’ is ticked and just click on the Default button.
There is a message about amending the Normal. Dot template to accept and that is it done.
No longer will Word correct your spelling when it is fine anyway!

Fix that `pooter!

Back to (forgotten) basics.

By Percy Blakeney

During the week I am an IT `tec working in London for an American company.
I love the work mostly, well who wouldn’t? – I get to play with all sorts of new IT kit from Blackberries to Servers and everything in between…

Well as these toys are all morphing so quickly, from version to version, with new upgraded processors and applications, we in IT, rush along merrily, trying to keep abreast of the latest and greatest.

However in all this, some of the things I enjoyed the most about IT kind of got forgotten.

A good example is what happened last week. A desktop PC arrived in the office, a slightly older P4 box running Windows XP.

It would not Boot and had an unbelievably important file stored on it. There were of course, no disks either.

It was the IT director’s wife’s machine so there was no back up.
Normally in a case like this we image the drive then use Ghostwalker to recover the files and then rebuild the PC.
However that is what is done in the corporate environment, where it doesn’t matter about drivers because the corporate image has them installed. Likewise the product key is a volume license so is irrelevant. You can see where this is going, instead of rebuilding the machine we needed to repair it.
Now back in the days when IT was a hobby to me I used to love to do this.

To properly repair a PC takes some thought and often a lot of time, which is fine for a hobby… But when it is work and time is money things are a little different.

If a PC needs sorting at work, you Ghost the image off the machine, recover any data needed and rebuild or replace the HDD and restore the correct image.

Done this way the fix is quick and permanent. The user down time is minimal and the cost in time and labour is minimized.
Done this way there is no time spent on fault finding.

So the cause remains unknown.
Tomorrow I will walk you through what had to be done to get that one sorted out.

By Percy Blakeney

Disclaimer;

This information is for entertainment purposes. I am recounting some situations where DOS commands have helped me. A lot. This does not mean that they will necessarily help you. Always make back ups. This is vital.
Do not use these commands without first reading widely about the subject. I am not liable for your actions, so be warned!

First off I used a PE (Pre Windows) Environment. I often use the great Bart’s PE Disk – all respect duly given.

Without these kind of tools you are in trouble.

But don’t worry they are mostly free.
The one I use most often is called UBCD or the Ultimate Boot CD.
With one you can boot the PC to “another place” an alternative operating system.

It is really easy to use. Just pop the CD into the pc and restart.

Instead of the ugly Blue Screen of Death that you have been seeing, it brings up a new Operating System that looks and feels a bit like Windows, But nicer.

It works by creating a RAM drive in your volatile RAM memory.

Usually it is labeled drive B.

So you are working in a user friendly, windows-like environment, but your ACTUAL windows operating system is dormant.

You are standing on a different platform and from there you can investigate any intact files on your PC.

If you are a DOS guru, well there is a run window there too so you can run tools such as the DSKCHK function. If you need to look at your systems files or event logs, then you can do that too.

You can make your own Boot CD or download someone else’s from the internet. It is completely free. I have no interest in it whatsoever. I am a huge fan though and if you try it I think you will be too!

It is available from the official site http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Step 1 was;
I booted into the UBCD environment and ran extensive disk checks on the HDD. As there were errors found I chose to replicate the drive before proceeding.

Step2;

I took an image of the HDD using Symantec Ghost. This really is must have software. I have a Bart’s PE disk that will let me use Ghost.

Step 3 was,

To install a new HDD to the PC and restore the Ghosted image to it. Doing this means that I still have the original Hard Disk stored safely.
At this point in the process anyone coming to look would think that nothing had been done as the new drive has the exact same symptoms as the old.

Now came the fun part!
Remember how I said that I have forgotten lots of the stuff that I used to do when this was all a hobby?
Well somewhere in that forgetfulness I had a disconnected memory. I knew I wanted to use the recovery console to run some commands but for the life of me I could only remember one of them. But it was enough!

All I could remember was that years ago I used this command and some others to great effect.

Don’t be careless. Plenty of websites say to avoid the Recovery console.
When you do use it always look for the option R to repair.

It is crucial that you understand how very close you are to destroying all of your information once you are in the Recovery console.

Got it?

Good. OK I will continue.

The command I remember so fondly is the BootCfg command. With the rebuild switch tacked on to it, this is a real gem.
I once managed to recover a users only copy of their PHD thesis (Always make backups!) from a dead PC using this command.
Here is a web page

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

That will walk you through the correct use of this command. If you need to use it then I hope that this will help.