Author Archive for KW – Page 3

Print Conductor for Bulk Printing of Files

It was in 1978 that F. W. Lancaster addressed the concept of a paperless society. And yet here we are nearly 40 years later and printing is still a big business.

And the forecast does not seem to indicate a downward turn.

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OK, so enough of the bad news. The fact is that we still need to print a lot of things – reports, presentations, graphs, spreadsheets, emails, etc. And perhaps like me, there are times where you need to print multiple files immediately.

I just came across a nice little Windows utility called Print Conductor that will do just that.

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Imagine you have been working on a series of files for a customer – including some Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, a PowerPoint presentation, several logo images, and an Autocad drawing. And now you need to print out all these different files.

Ugh. You’re looking at a time consuming process of opening each document, starting up the associated program, click to Print, and then click to select Printer.

With Print Conductor, you can highlight (select) all the files that need to be printed, and with once click you can have all your various documents printed immediately!

Here’s a screen shot of the main interface of Print Conductor, where I selected 12 PDF documents that I needed to print. As you can see, it was as easy as 1-2-3:

  1. Select documents to be printed
  2. Select the printer to be used
  3. Start printing

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Best part of this, besides how easy it is to use this utility, is that this is free for non-commercial use, and $49 per computer for commercial use. Give it a try!

Active Hours in Windows 10

Active Hours is a new feature recently released within the Insider (beta) version of Windows 10, and will be part of the upcoming anniversary release of Windows 10.

Think of Active hours as your business work hours, or the time frame that you most use your computer. By setting Active Hours, you can make sure that your computer will NOT automatically restart after updates are installed during those times.

By default, Active Hours is defined as 8am to 5pm (relative to your time zone).image

To change your Active Hours,

  • Click Windows+I to go to the Settings app
  • Click Update & security
  • Click Change active hours

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Unfortunately, the valid range for active hours is 10 hours. And, keep in mind – you are defining your busiest work hours so as to avoid automatic reboots. Personally, I would have preferred if this would have been the  time frame when we would want reboots to occur.

And for those Group Policy people, yes, Active Hours can be set and changed within the Group Policy Editor.

Go to:  Local Computer Policy –> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Updates and locate the “Turn off auto-restart for updates during active hours” policy.

Disable Chrome Browser XP/Vista Warning Banner

Google has announced that their Chrome browser will not be receiving updates in the future if you are running Chrome on Windows XP or Windows Vista. Read Chrome Ends Support for Windows XP and Vista.

Consider this as just one more way to encourage you to move off outdated and unsupported platforms.

But don’t think that Google is picking on Windows. At the same time, they also announced that Chrome will no longer be updated on Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 platforms.

In all cases, Chrome will continue to work as a browser. It’;s just that it will no longer receive new features, and more importantly, will not receive new security updates.

But … if you are not quite ready to retire your XP or Vista computer, there’s a simple way to disable the annoying banner that displays every time you start Chrome:

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To disable the banner from displaying:

  • Right click on the Google icon on your desktop or taskbar
  • Click on Properties
  • Click inside the Target: box
  • Position the cursor to the very end, immediately after the final double quote mark
  • Press the spacebar one time
  • Then type:   –disable-infobars 
  • Then click Apply and OK

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And, if you prefer a video of these steps, I found this one on YouTube — kudo’s to DiegoG!

Just Installed Windows 10 Build 14328

I’m on the Microsoft Insider list for Windows 10, which provides beta releases of Windows 10 as Microsoft makes them available.

Over the weekend, Build 14328 was made available, and for the most part, it’s getting rave reviews. Sure, there are things people don’t like, features not yet implemented, and outstanding issues (mostly with drivers) – but overall, it seems to me that Windows 10 is getting pretty stable.

The obvious big change with this build is a somewhat revamped Start Menu, or what Microsoft now calls the “Start Experience”. You still have the list of all apps in alphabetical order, as well as your tile menu.But you now have a selection of important functions, such as Power, Settings and File Explorer along the left rail (see below).

So, if you are on the Insider Build list, give this new build a run. But please remember, it is BETA, which means unexpected bugs can occur, and even system crashes. All that is to say – don’t install BETA software on a production system unless you are willing to take the risk ANDE you have good backup!

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LogonUI.exe and Low Memory Warning on HP

I recently upgraded an HP 700-410xt workstation from Windows 8.1 Pro to Windows 10. The upgrade itself went very well, and the user noticed immediate improvement with the various Adobe suite of products that he uses.

However, he reported that the each morning his workstation would have an error message on the screen regarding LogonUI.exe, or a low memory warning:

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Note — he closes all his apps and locks the computer at night. I was able to monitor the computer that evening and identified that the LogonUI.exe service was indeed consuming all available memory.

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I did the normal effort of making sure that Windows 10 patches were up to date, as well as computer drivers. I even went so far as to disable any apps with “live tile” turned on.

Finally, several other MVPs that were trying to assist asked (1) is this an HP computer, and (2) were there any fingerprint or biometric software installed? The answer was YES to both questions. The computer in question had the HP Simplepass program installed, although the user was not using any fingerprint scan device.

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And then it turns out that this issue with LogonUI.exe has been affecting HP computers for at least two years, both on Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. In all cases, uninstalling software such as HP SimplePass or HP OmniPass fixed the low memory issue with LogonUI.exe!

I uninstalled HP Simplepass, rebooted the computer, and a day later, the user reported all was fine!

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Emergency Patch for Adobe Flash Player to be released

Adobe is working on a patch to address a critical vulnerability in their Flash Player software. The exploit impacts those on version 20.0.0.306 and earlier. If your Flash Player is at version 21.0.0.182 or above, then you are not impacted by this exploit.

The patch may be available as soon as Thursday April 7, 2016.

Read more at this PC World post.

Frontier Outage Map

I came across this web site tracking outages with Frontier: http://outage.report/frontier/map 

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Frontier Takes Over Verizon Services

This is NOT an April Fool’s post.

imageFrontier Communications officially took over landline operations from Verizon today, April 1, 2016 in Florida, Texas and California. This includes Verizon’s FIOS service.

There have been reported outages all day today, including an unrelated fiber cut in Tampa, per this post from ArsTechnica.

All I can say is that if you are impacted, hang in there! Or try calling Frontier’s customer service at (800) 921-8101.

Apple iOS 9.3 Causing some Devices to Freeze or Crash

Apple released their 9.3 update to their operating system (iOS) last week. Since then, many people are reporting that their iPhones and iPads are freezing up or crashing.

Read more on at CNN and 9TO5Mac.

As usual, whether you are using a Windows, Apple or Android device, it is always best to make sure that your files and apps are backed up before proceeding with an operating system update.

Better yet, unless you really love being on the “bleeding edge” of technology, I would always advise to wait several weeks before upgrading to a new OS release. Let others work out the bugs first!

New Ransomware Will Overwrite Your Computer’s Boot Record

Petya ransomware corrupts master boot recordsRansomware keeps getting uglier by the day. Now comes a report from Germany of a new version of Ransomware that will overwrite the boot record of your computer. This version is called the Petya ransomware,

Up until now, most ransomware viruses were writing a highly secured password to files on the computer disk, blocking you from opening those files unless you pay the ransom.

But the Petya ransomware attacks the boot record. With a corrupt boot record, you will not be able to boot your computer at all!

According to anti-virus vendors, the Petya ransomware is being distributed through spam email that masquerades as job applications.

And if this is not enough to put you on your toes, consider that this Friday is April 1st!

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!

Thanks to PCWord for their in depth article on the Petya ransomware!