My Experience with upgrading of Windows 8 Pro to it's 8.1

I am using a Lenovo Thinkpad T440p with Windows 8 Pro stock installation, well-I inserted the recovery disks and re-format the system when I first got it from the suppliers.

Unfortunately, it didn't come pre-loaded with Windows 8.1, so I had to install this later on.

I followed the upgrade pre-requisites instructions and tried to ensure there will be no issues faced when running the upgrade. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

The issues faced that the Upgrade Check found were:

1. Itunes requires me to de-list my authorization for the iphone - which I did.
2. I can't bring forward the Quicktime player, which means I'd have to re-install it later on.

The Issues that I faced after the upgrade which the check failed to see, however:

1. Virtual Box 4.3.6 was unable to run properly due to network adapter problems
2. Fences 2.01 was unable to run properly - I can't move any icons on the desktop
1. solution: Download the latest version of Fences 2.12, and re-install.
2. Restart PC and solve the issue
3. I got this inspiration from here

These are 2 of issues I've faced thus far. I hope no additional problems though.

My Experience with Lenovo Thinkpad T440p as my new Work-Horse!

It's the year of the horse here in Singapore, 2014... Well, at least I am entering into one in this coming year soon at the writing of this post. :)

I got a new work-horse in the horse year. Ha-ha-ha!

I was expecting a blow-me-away experience with fascination and wonder with the notebook, instead, I got more disappointment than joy at most cases. I believe this has to do with Windows 8 integration with Lenovo and not all Think-Family's fault, but nonetheless, it's a painful and not-so-enjoyable ride of the new 'horse'. 

I got the P series of the Thinkpad 440, supposedly the P series is meant to be a more powerful system as compared the "S" - slim, or the vanilla "nothing" - Thinkpad T440. I got mine with a HD+ screen (1600x900), 8-GB DDR3 memory, 1-TB disk, Core i7-4600M... What a powerful machine it is in contrast to all my other older machines I've used before!

I love the speed, look and usual ThinkPad beauties, unfortunately, the difference between the T430 (and before) were so vastly difference that I am contemplating if I should have purchased the T430 instead of this model.

Here are why:

1. lack of a wifi on/off button, basically the FN key button doesn't work well with Windows 8 at the moment
2. Fn key auto activated.. well as thinkpad engineer users, we use the F1-12 keys for different needs (refresh, close apps, etc), and setting it primarily as functions makes a lot of inconvenience.
3. the missing right and left clicks are a big no-no as the single touchpad, albeit more sensitive and smarter, still creates a double finger tracking issue at times with mouse going opposite directions when 2 fingers are resting on the pad
4. the missing light from the top of the screen.. I miss that.. I really liked that LED shining down from the top of the screen to the keyboard instead of the back-lit keyboard
5. no HDMI port.. oh man, why mini-display port and not simply a full HDMI port?
6. no HDD status LED. oh dear, there's no way I can figure if my disk is busy or it's not.
7. the stock power adapter is so bulky and heavy!
8. the stock HDD comes with a Western Digital 1-TB disk... oh man, I have had so many WD failures that I am a WesterDigiPhobic now...

These are just some of the painful experiences I've encountered with the notebook thus far. I do hope the list doesn't increase, but I'll update whenever I can, should I encounter more issues with it.

Other than that, the things I still love about this work-horse are:

1. The keyboard is lovely
2. The 4x USB ports are PERFECT
3. The adapter head that's inter-flip is cool and useful
4. The water-spill proof keyboard is a great addition to the feature-set
5. The screen is so-so-so-so very beautiful, crisp matte sharp-screen
6. The system is super-duper-fast! With whatever that I have thrown at it.

more to come I hope...

I will be changing the hard-disk to a Hybrid soon, let's see if there's any significant performance improvement!

Troubleshooting Steps in Common Microsoft Office and Other Applications

Sometimes we encounter weird problems that appear from time to time while using our PCs or notebooks. As such, we've got to be armed and ready to carry out some diagnostic tasks to ensure that we eliminate 90% of the possible issues system wide. If these steps could not resolve the issue, I'd recommend re-format and re-install Windows as it'll be faster and more cost-effective to do that as re-install of Windows these days are pretty 'fast'.

Provided of course, you have all the drivers information, back-ed up data and all applications needed for the re-installation.

The troubleshooting for Common Microsoft Office or application issues especially when Windows gets cranky are:

1. Try to repeat the problem to find a pattern to the issue. 
2. If you're able to, that's good because we'll rely on the pattern to troubleshoot the issue
3. General guideline for troubleshooting for Ms Office issues
4. Go with Microsoft way of i-fix it at http://support.microsoft.com/fixit/ 

If i-fix it can't fix it, then:

1. find out when the problem occured, and 
2. then try to perform a system restore to (Before the problem happened).

If there's no system restore, go with these steps: (outlined here) 
Basically in summary, it's run the diagnostic tool that comes free with Ms Office, from 2007 on-wards. Location of fix tool is in Programs > Microsoft Office  > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office Diagnostics.

Run all the diagnostics to ensure that the Ms Office installation and system is well.

In the event where there is no system restore and no diagnostics - (Tough luck) 
Or, the system diagnosis stated that all is well....

1. run registry repair using Ccleaner, backup registry first using the ccleaner tool, save it to my-docs folder
2. go to add-remove programs, perform repair of the Microsoft Office
3. restart system and run all ms office updates and windows updates

I believe this should resolve 90% of all Microsoft Office issues. Do let me know if you have comments or improvements!

Converting a local old Machine to a Virtual Box compatible VM (VHD)

Client told me that they need to change PC, but has an old Accpac 4.0 that need to run only on XP. Plus without a valid maintenance contract, the vendor wants to charge them about 100bucks just to install the application. How? Need to change PC but don't want to spend too much money.

This is a step-by-step guide in how to virtualize a Windows XP or Windows 7 into a virtual machine so that users can run the Windows Virtual machine in Virtual Box. The steps are very important or you might possibly run into problems.

Tools needed:

1) USB Ext Disk 500GB

2) Disk2VHD (latest edition), i think v 1.4

3) Virtual Box 4.22

4) plenty of time

Phase 1 - virtualize the current machine

a) just run the disk2vhd

b) virtualize to a USB disk instead of local disk or D drive. it's safer and better

c) ensure that no running processes are in the system. close all running programs

d) ensure that all windows xp and 7 patches are installed and system is just restarted before the program is run.

e) proceed with the virtualizing to VHD format

 

Phase 2 - install virtualbox onto the new system

a) proceed with default installation and follow all steps

b) no special configuration is needed for virtual box

Phase 3 - Setup VHD and Virtualbox

this is complicated, pls follow carefully:

a) make network card to be bridged onto the physical network adapter

b) configure VM name carefully with the Upper cap and lower cap accordingly when creating a new VM.

c) set ram size to 512mb, and leave everything as default

d) create shortcut of the VM to the desktop for ease of access

e) when closing the VM, set to save the state

f) if there's a problem with auto-restarts all the time, do note to delete this file in c:\windows\system32\drivers\intelppm.sys, just delete that file in SAFE MODE of the VM, and restart. should solve the problem. happened to me several times when setting up the Windows XP VM on different machines, especially when I transfer the VM from 1 machine to another.

g) configure PC name to be (host pc name)-xp or (host pc name)-vm. Eg, mcsfin-pc01-xp

h) install the virtual box add-on tool VM add-on. you must configure the ISO image to be mounted. this is important for the sync of video and mouse

I think this is it! Everything should work as per norm. Will update again if there's things to add.

Internet Explorer 10 and issues with Singapore Government Related Sites

Recently, Microsoft started distributing Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 to Windows 7 systems through Windows Updates. There’s an increase of calls related to issues with Internet Explorer 10.  Most of the law firms clients that we service uses access eLigation, EFS, and the websites does not support IE 10 yet. I really wonder why our legal services staff are well paid, yet the infrastructure is not built-or-upgraded accordingly. 

There are other clients using Windows 7 has problems with IE 10 also. I encountered that IE10 was not being able to download any files, only uninstalling Internet Explorer 10 resolves the problem. Users that logs-in to Electronic Filing System (EFS) are able to log-in, use the system, but when doing the unpacking of the document, there seems to be a script block of some sort which has no work-around as of this posting.

We will be disabling IE 10 updating in the Windows 7 implementations at the moment. 

The IE 10 blocker can be downloaded from the link below. 

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36512

which means, no law-firms in Singapore that requires EFS, can run on Windows 8 at the moment... Sad!

Cisco AnyConnect VPN Connection

A client of mine called me just a minute ago and mentioned that she needs a VPN access using Cisco AnyVPN connect. 

Upon google-ing, found out that Cisco requires people to pay for the client download and access! Yikes!

It requires a partner or an admin subscription to access the download location.

As such, after searching hi-and-lo, I manage to locate the file to be downloaded and place them in my personal storage for future references.

The link to download for both English (32bit and 64bit) is here!

Enjoy!

Customizing Windows Themes for a personal 'touch'

I have always like leaving a fingerprint unique to my taste on the services that I offer. It could be with a documentation that I have generated or a way that users can remember that I've done this job with an extra mile and-a-smile. :)

While waiting for my colleague to take some awesome photos to be used for our systems that we've 'overhauled', I realize I could use the awesome Windows Theme Packs to personalize the systems we set-up!

Theme packs for free, are available from: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-SG/windows/themes 

Some of my Favorites:

1. Carribean
2. Painted Skies
3. Forestry
4. Magic Landscapes 

These are the least intrusive and relaxing themes that I'd like to see. The beauty of applying these:

• Less stressed out users
• Gives more interesting colors to desktop
• Changes wallpaper all the time! :)

Ps. My apologies for the lack of updates. I promise to update more on this blog for 2013 onwards!