Fixing a Corrupted Nickname Entry in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook maintains a list of formerly used email addresses which is used for the automatic completion feature. If one of these “nicknames” becomes corrupted it can cause any emails to that address to bounce. If this happens, the proper way to fix itis is to delete the corrupted entry and retype the email address in the To… field.

How to remove a corrupted nickname cache entry

1. Open a new email message.
2. Type the first few characters of the nickname cache entry that you want to remove from the cache.
3. When the entry appears in the list of suggested names, use the Up and Down arrow keys on your keyboard to move the highlight to the entry you want to remove.
4. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it from the list.

Managed Services customers: Submitting a help desk ticket from the desktop

If you’re one of our Managed Services customers, there’s an easy way to submit a help desk ticket to us by using our management agent’s system tray menu. In your system tray (the lower right corner of the Windows task bar), there is an icon for our agent which looks like a little blue ball with white stripes.

If you click on this icon, a menu will pop up and one of the options will be Create Service Ticket.

Clicking on this option will open up your email client with our helpdesk email filled in. Just tell us what the issue is and hit send. We’ll take it from there.

Getting online when the only DNS server is not

Although best practice is to have redundant DNS servers, not every small business has the luxury of being able to afford a second server. There are however cases when the server is down but users need to get online and work (or look up ways to solve the server’s issues). Fortunately Google has provided a solution in the form of a pair of publicly accessible DNS servers. While these servers will NOT provide address resolution for local LAN devices such as file shares, printers or local e-mail systems, they do allow for name resolution for any public site on the Internet.

The process is as simple as opening the IP setting for a system’s LAN card and entering the IP address of one of the public DNS server, 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4.

For more details look at Google’s instruction page at https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using

Managed Services Customers: Capturing error messages for submitting tickets to the help desk

If you’re one of our Managed Services customers and you submit a helpdesk ticket because an error message popped up on your screen, it is generally very helpful for us to be able to see the full text of that error message. Rather than writing down the entire message which can sometimes be very lengthy, you can capture the information and send it to us using our management agent.

In your system tray (the lower right corner of the Windows task bar), there is an icon for our agent which looks like a little blue ball with white stripes.

If you click on this icon, a menu will pop up and one of the options will be Screen Capture.

Clicking on this option will send us a current capture of your screen, complete with whatever error message is on screen at the time.

Then when you submit the helpdesk ticket by calling us or emailing support@lewan.com, just mention that you sent us a screenshot. We’ll be able to find it in our management interface.

LabTech Reboot Messages

If you are one of our Managed Services customers, one of the services provided to you is scheduled patching of your computers . Microsoft releases patches on a regular basis as do some other application vendors and our remote management software (LabTech) will apply these patches to your machines as needed and as approved by our staff.

Once patches are applied to your machine, if those patches require a restart of the computer you will be prompted by LabTech to reboot your computer with the dialog box below.

If it is inconvenient for you to restart your computer at the time the reboot is requested, you can simply dismiss the dialog  by clicking the No button. The dialog box will count down from 90 seconds and if no response is given during that time the dialog box will dismiss itself and not restart the computer. This is to prevent loss of unsaved data should you be away from your computer and not able to answer the question in a timely fashion.

If the dialog box is dismissed it will pop back up hourly to remind you that a reboot is needed. Since the patches will not be effective until after the restart, it is a good idea to save any unsaved work and allow the reboot as soon as possible.

How To Avoid the Windows MBR Disk 2TB Limit by Using GPT Type Disks

If you want to use a disk larger than 2TB within Windows, it might look like you can’t use all of the space. This is due to the type of initialization performed on the disk. This lesson will show you how to initialize the disk with the "GPT" type of disk (rather than the default MBR type) so you can use disks larger than 2TB.

The 2TB Size Disk Limit Problem

Our screenshot shows you that when adding a very large disk to Windows, it looks like you can only use 2TB of that disk.

The GPT Solution

In order to use the full size, right click on the disk (1) and choose "Convert to GPT Disk" (2).

Now you have all of the space available to format (in our example, 10TB).

Creating the Partition

Now you just create the partition just like any other disk by right clicking on the unallocated space and choose "New Partition".

Notice the note when creating the new partition (circled in red on the screenshot).

Ready to Use

Once you go through the rest of the New Partition wizard and choose to format it, the disk will be available as shown.

Windows 2000 EOL coming very soon

Just another reminder…. if you still have Windows 2000 in your environment you need to get it out NOW, pretty soon you won’t be able to call Microsoft about anything related to Windows 2000.

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2010/01/14/windows-2000-server-approaching-end-of-life.aspx