PCL XL ERROR SUBSYSTEM….

pcl

This is one of those incredibly annoying issues.  I’ve been going back and forth between so many different fixes.  I almost gave up on this.  Ultimately, I would have to remove all traces of the drivers with the Admin Printer Management tool and wipe out the driver manually and add the printer back. (Note, I only really see this with network printers.  We don’t have any local printers where I work).

 

I’ve discovered a fix that seems to work. (Fingers crossed).

  1.  Right click on the Printer and bring up the Properties
  2. Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab.
  3. Click on ‘Printing Preferences’
  4. Disable Print Optimizations

All your local client PCs connected to the remote printers should updat eon their own but don’t hold me to it.  I would recommend just deleting and adding them back if you notice it does not apply to all of your local PCs.

Outlook 2007 / 2007 Public Folder Favorite Calendars disappearing

So recently around the office we started noticing that the calendars listed under “Other Calendars” in outlook would just disappear if you clicked on them.  This only happened to the calendars listed coming from Public Folder favorites.  This is what I did to fix the problem.

  1. Go into your Public Folder Favorites and delete whatever favorites your previously created.
  2. Close Outlook
  3. Click on START and then RUN and enter %appdata%.  This will take you to the following directory:  C:\Users\<usernamehere>\AppData\Roaming
  4. Inside the path above navigate to the Microsoft and then Outlook folder.
  5. In the Outlook folder you will see a Outlook.xml.  Rename that file to something else.  (Add .old to the file name).  It is never a good idea to delete a file when troubleshooting an error.  Always try to rename the file causing the problem.  You can rename it back if this fix does not work.
  6. Launch Outlook once you have completed step #5
  7. Navigate to your Public Folders and add the Calendars back to your favorites.

Microsoft Outlook 2010 – Increase OST size limit

Hi All,

It’s definitely been a while.  So recently at my Job we’ve had some issues with the OST file limit.  We have plent of people here that access shared resources and with their own mailbox being large need to have more thatn 20GB stored in their OST.

To increase the OST size you can do a simple registry change (I believe the example below sets it to 50GB).  Create a .reg file and drop this in and then launch it:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\14.0\outlook\PST]
“MaxFileSize”=dword:00011800
“MaxLargeFileSize”=dword:00011800

Here is a link to the article that tells you about changing the file size limit.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832925

Add programs to “Send To” Menu in Windows 7

Recently, someone asked if they can add Notepad or Wordpad to their “Send to” menu in Windows 7 when you right click a TXT file.  You can add anything into this menu with ease.

  1. Click on Start and then Run
  2. Enter this path: %appdata%\microsoft\Windows\Sendto
  3. Create a shortcut to any application you would like.
  4. As an example, right click and then select New > Shortcut.
  5. For the location of the program enter:
    “%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe”

This will add WordPad and you’re all set!

sendto

 

Powershell – Automated Reboot Script – Schedule as a Task

ps  So I’m sure some of you are in smaller environments and don’t have a PC Management system in place (SCCM, Altiris, Etc).  I created a Powershell script that sends the command and also does error logging.  The results of the script are sent via SMTP.

In this case, I created a script that runs at 2am local time and created a scheduled task on the server to run the Powershell script.  The basic functionality is that it reads a Active Directory Group to get the Computer Names you would like to reboot.  It then attempts to send a Shutdown -R command to all machines.  It will keep track of the results and then send a HTML formatted E-Mail via SMTP.  Feel free to modify the code to save to a file if you would like instead.  This script uses Quest’s Powershell Active Roles commands.  I would recommend you down them also.

Download Link

HTML E-Mail with Results:

automatedreboot

Problem with Group Policy Settings not applying or Group Membership not applying properly.

I’ve seen this happen recently at my job and it actually happened to me directly.  Being in Support I have to be apart of many groups.  While I was setting up a new machine I noticed none of the Group Policies were applying and certain drives I normally access were now throwing a ‘Access Denied’ error.  After discussing it with some colleagues we determined I was a member of too many groups.  Increasing the default Token Size to 48000 was recommended.  This is a very simple fix and we decided to apply it to our default machine policy for our Domain.

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\Kerberos\Parameters

Entry: MaxTokenSize
Data type: REG_DWORD
Value: 48000

If you are having symptoms where your group policy is not applying or a group membership isn’t taking effect try this out.

To learn more about this check out this Microsoft Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327825

How to transfer account settings in Microsoft Outlook from one User/PC to another User/PC

So, let’s say you’re in a situation where you don’t have roaming profiles or you just got a new PC and don’t feel like recreating all your Outlook settings.  There is a simple way of doing this.

NOTE:  You can also use these steps to just simply backup your Microsoft Outlook profile and settings.

On the original computer/user profile do the following:

  1. Close Outlook (if open)
  2. Click on Start and then Run and enter ‘Regedit’ and press enter.
  3. Navigate through the registry to:
    ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles’
  4. Click on File
  5. Click on Export
  6. Save the .REG file to a external drive or a network path (whichever you prefer).

On the new computer/user profile do the following:

  1. Open the the location where you saved the .REG file from the other computer
  2. Double click on the .REG file and import the registry settings
  3. Start Outlook to confirm everything is OK.

If you feel like something was not imported incorrectly or there was an issue simply delete the new profile created in the registry or open up ‘Mail’ in the ‘Windows Control Panel’.

Note:  If you have multiple profiles on the original PC they will all transfer.  You can delete the rest individually by going to Mail in the Control Panel.

outlook

Repairing Micrsoft .NET Framework on Windows 7 / Vista

I recently came across a machine where .NET Framework 3.5 wasn’t functioning correctly.  It was needed as a prerequisite and the application was not recognizing it even though it was enabled in the “Turn Windows Features on and off” (Search for this on the Windows Start Menu).

If uninstalling and installing .NET on Vista does not work you can run a command to scan and repair system files.  Since .NET 3.5 is part of Windows 7 you can’t easily uninstall it.  Try this command out and it should help if you actually have corrupt system files.

  1. Open a command prompt (CMD) window and make sure you ‘Run As Administrator’. (Search for CMD in your Windows 7 Start Menu and then right click CMD.EXE and select ‘Run As Administrator’).
  2. Enter the following command and press enter:  sfc /scannow

This can take a while but let it run.  This will scan all protected system files and replace incorrect versions with correct Microsoft versions.  Once it has completed reboot your machine and try again.

sfc

If any errors are reported that SFC was unable to fix, there are steps in this knowledge base article  that explain how to locate and attempt to fix the errors