Author Archives: Patrick

How to completely / cleanly remove a Printer from Windows 7

Open the ‘Start‘ menu and type ‘CMD‘ in the search bar.  Right click on ‘CMD‘ and select ‘Run as Administrator

When the command prompt opens up type the command ‘printui /s /t2‘.

printui

Select the Printer you would like to Remove and click on ‘Remove..’.  Remember to select ‘Remove driver and driver package’.

If you have difficulty removing the driver and package you can stop and start the ‘Print Spooler’ service.  You can do this by searching for ‘service.msc’ in your Windows 7 start menu (Remember to Run as Administrator).  Find the service named ‘Print Spooler’.  Right click and Stop the service and then Start the service.  After you have done that you can try removing the Driver / Driver Package again.

Error 1324. The folder path ‘My Pictures’ contains an invalid character.

I came across this problem recently at my job.  We recently migrated from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 and during this process we were also upgrading our desktops to Windows 7.
error1324

We started seeing this MSI error randomly once we moved a large majority of user ‘home drive’ shares to our new Windows 2008 Server.  From my understanding, MSI files verify free space of the users “Home” directory (My Pictures, My Music, etc).  Since we use folder redirection it looks to the full UNC path which is in the registry under the following path:

Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

If you change all the values pointing from the UNC path to ‘%userprofile%\Path’ the error will go away but this needs to be done each time the user logs on and off.  But, that will only happen if you use folder redirection.

After doing some research and testing I realized that Windows 7 + Windows Server 2008 requires a specific security change to the folder or else this error will constantly occur.  Under Advanceed > Change Permissions for “Authenticated Users” or “Domain Users’ (We used Auth. Users) we needed to add “Read Attributes” and apply it to “This folder only”.
Capture
The error should go away after you make this change.  Making this change WILL NOT allow for anyone to see the given folder.  It is simply an attribute.  We tested and confirmed this in our environment.

Windows 7: Unable to access network share?

This is a pretty random issue we came across at my job but apparently this can happy with Windows 7.  Users were randomly losing connection to their network share.  It would tell them that the location is unavailable.  We realized that the Offline files service in Windows 7 was running and for some reason it was causing their drive to go offline.

There is a simple solution for this.  First, turn off and disable the ‘Offline Files’ service if you don’t plan on using it.  Also, add the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache

Create Key Name: FormatDatabase
Type: DWORD
Value: 1

Note:  You don’t need to disable the service but there is no reason it should be running for desktop computers.

Warning: All cache files are deleted and unsynchronized data is lost. (applies to laptops that sync)

Microsoft SQL – Setup.rll is either not designed …

I came across this error the other day.  I’ve installed SQL 2008 through 2012 without any real issues.  Recently, I was trying to run the installer again so that I can add some features.  I kept getting this message.  It would even come up when I would try to do a change from Add/Remote Programs.  I figured out the fix and it was pretty simple.

Copy %InstallMedia%\resources\1033\setup.rll

to

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\SQLServer2008R2\Resources\1033

Make sure you overwrite the file. 

Windows 8 Enterprise will not activate (MAK Key)

I recently installed Windows 8.  I used my company’s MAK Key which is a volume license key.  Everything installed just fine but I did notice it never asked me for my product key. On a domain, Windows 8 Enterprise automatically determines which servers to activate against using DNS.  This helps with managing your volume license easily.  Now, if you decide to do a 1 off install it will never activate correctly because it is missing the product key.  This is easily resolved. 

  • Hit the Windows+R hotkeys to open the Run box and run: slui.exe 3

This will bring up the following window:

Enter your product key and then click Activate.  You should be good to go!