From time to time we encounter requests where someone tries to print an email and encounters the following message prompt: “Items in this are still loading. Please wait a moment and try again.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for the ‘Troubleshooting’ Category
The Email That Refused to Print
Posted by William Diaz on September 17, 2010
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Outlook, Printing | 1 Comment »
The Case of the IE Print Failures
Posted by William Diaz on August 26, 2010
I was asked to assist when one of user’s was unable to perform the simple, mundane task of printing a web page in Internet Explorer. Furthermore, they could not even print preview the page. There was no error of any kind and IE simply went on with its business like nothing happened. I started my analysis by running Process Monitor on the workstation, creating a filter in the trace log for iexplore.exe. I then repeated the steps of the user by going to File > Print Preview and then stopped the trace log. There were just over 500 events logged in that one action, small enough that I was quickly able to scroll through it and I some Access Denied results: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Internet Explorer, Printing, Process Monitor | Leave a Comment »
Process Monitor & the BSOD
Posted by William Diaz on August 24, 2010
Very rarely do I ever experience a Blue Screen of Death. In fact, I can’t recall the last time I did, so it was worth taking a photo of:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: BSOD, Crash, Dump, Process Monitor | 2 Comments »
The Case of the Persistent Logon Prompt
Posted by William Diaz on August 19, 2010
While trying to open an application on her workstations, our user was encountering a logon prompt each time:
Entering her logon info failed to get pass the logon prompt. Clicking Cancel also did not dismiss the prompt and it remained stuck here. The tech handling the call was about to give up and have the application reinstalled, but I was asked to take a look for a second opinion. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Process Monitor | Leave a Comment »
Back(space)up A Moment
Posted by William Diaz on August 19, 2010
This is rather mundane, but an issue that another technician was unable to resolve required my assistance. The problem was that at random times while the user was typing in any Office application, the Save As dialog box would suddenly open. We also established that he was not using any special keyboard, such as the ones that turn various common commands into a single button or key-stroke paradise or 3rd party kb management software. Nope, just a plain-jane standard usb kb.
Working remote and with nothing to go on, I decide to open Process Monitor.
OK, I’m kidding.
Actually, I asked the user to compose a message while I watched. He was a fast typist but I soon noticed a trend, the Save As would open when he was correcting a typo using the backspace key. The question then became how do you invoke the Save As dialog box from keyboard? F12. Backspace happens to be right under F12 on most standard keyboards. The proximity of the Backspace key to the F12 was probably causing some debris or other electrical quirkiness against the F12 key, too, making it act as if it was being depressed each time Backspace was.
The solution, in case you haven’t caught on by now, was to replace keyboard.
Not all my encounters are this exciting.
And, yes, I just had to take a picture:
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Hardware | Leave a Comment »
The Case of the Missing Windows CD\DVD Drive
Posted by William Diaz on August 17, 2010
In a large organization, this can actually be quite common. Many a floor support tech has been dispatched to try to correct by physically checking or replacing the drive. The symptom is that the CD\DVD drive letter is missing in Windows. In the vast majority of cases, this is a software issue and can be resolved remotely, without the need for someone to open the system. The cause is the result of class filters becoming corrupted or modified in some way, usually because of a badly written or incompatible driver, firmware update, or after installing CD\DVD burning software.
To correct the issue, navigate to this location in the Windows registry: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Delete the upperfilter and lowerfilters strings and reboot. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Hardware, Windows | Leave a Comment »
The Case of the Sluggish Email Message (Outlook HTML Gone Crazy)
Posted by William Diaz on August 5, 2010
Upon trying to move an email into our document management system in Outlook, the user reported the following error: “The item could not be deleted, it was either moved or already deleted, or access was denied.” This was odd, because normally this error is seen when items are deleted from shared mailboxes, as this this Microsoft KB article explains. The folder she was trying to move it into was her own document store, which she had full access. Upon trying to move other items, the error was not encountered.
I asked the user to send me the message and at first glance there was nothing special about the email. It was composed of a few short paragraphs with no special formatting beside some text bolding. The user composed these messages on a weekly basis, sent them to herself and then would re-file them into the DMS.
I asked the user to open the message on her system, noticed it was very slow to open, and eventually caused Outlook to become unresponsive. After restarting Outlook and looking at the message in the message pane of the user I noticed it was 1MB in size. This was odd because there was no attachment.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Office, Troubleshooting | Tagged: Hang, Outlook, Performance | 1 Comment »
Using Application Logs to Troubleshoot a Failed Web Meeting
Posted by William Diaz on August 3, 2010
Here is an example of using application logs for troubleshooting. In the case here, the user was unable to connect to a video meeting hosted across the web in an application called iLinc. After logging into the initial login page, the user was presented with the following prompt requesting further authentication:
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Networking | Leave a Comment »
HP 1020 1022 Print Drivers Crashing the Print Spooler
Posted by William Diaz on July 21, 2010
We see numerous complaints about missing printers. This will happen when the Windows print spooler (spoolersv.exe) is not running and we often see this complaint with those setup with personal HP 1020/1022 printers. While attempting to print PDFs, or after printing PDFs, the print spooler is crashing. The drwtsn32.log and user.dmp files in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson all point to the same culprit, the HP ZSR.dll print driver.mHere is an excerpt from the drwtsn32.log: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Troubleshooting | Tagged: Crash, Dr Watson, PDF, Printing | Leave a Comment »
Outlook 2007/2010 File Delete Quirk
Posted by William Diaz on July 20, 2010
I ran into this one when troubleshooting The Case of the Crashing Email with a different version of Outlook. I created a test folder to save the crashing email message attachments. When I was done, I went to delete the folder and received: “Error Deleting File or Folder. Cannot delete filename. It is being used by another person or program…”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Troubleshooting, Troubleshooting Tools | Tagged: Outlook, Process Explorer | Leave a Comment »
Windows Explored 