From time to time we have often received complaints about this particular issue. I never really got a chance to troubleshoot beyond the standard “Clear IE cache” rhetoric1 that somehow is the magical non-solution to all IE woes. Well, alas, I finally encountered the issue on the lab PC and spent some time poking around. Here is what the problem looks like:
Archive for April 2nd, 2012
The Case of the Missing Web Page Menus
Posted by William Diaz on April 2, 2012
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Internet Explorer | Leave a Comment »
As Good as AutoRuns is, Sometimes You Still Need to Manually Search the Registry
Posted by William Diaz on April 2, 2012
I love Autoruns. Think msconfig on steroids. It truly reveals everything that starts up with Windows. Well almost everything. A couple days ago a user complained to me of a popup error they were receiving after logon. I had no doubt I would find the offending process in Autoruns, since the error message revealed the process name: 
Posted in Troubleshooting Tools | Tagged: Autoruns | Leave a Comment »
Hung Up In Outlook
Posted by William Diaz on April 2, 2012
One of the most common complaints your going to encounter in the desktop support role is when Outlook becomes unresponsive while a user is performing any random task in Outlook, whether it be switching between folders, going into a delegated mailbox, or sorting messages. Often, the knee-jerk reaction by the front line technical support is to assume something is wrong with Outlook and begin the gamut of what I term “blind-troubleshooting”. This usually involves running an range of scripted fixes (that is meant to address issues with some of our in-house or 3rd party add-ins), followed by a repair, reinstall, and/or creation of a new Outlook profile. Over the lifetime of this incident(s), the issue can drag out to several days because usually the issue cannot be reproduced immediately after the first fix, so each additional fix is tried at some point later when the user calls back. In some cases, this drags out for a couple weeks to where the user’s workstation is replaced or Windows profile is recreated.
And all to no avail.
Posted in Troubleshooting, Troubleshooting Tools | Tagged: Hang, Outlook | Leave a Comment »
Windows Explored 