HP recalls some Australian laptop batteries

HP is recalling more than 3,000 rechargeable battery packs used in laptop computers due to a potential fire hazard.  The voluntary recall comes after the company received reports that a fault in the lithium-ion battery pack could cause it to overheat.  HP Australia estimates 3,405 potentially affected battery packs have been sold in Australia.

There have been 19 instances of overheating recorded worldwide but none in Australia.

The company is recalling battery packs sold individually or used in HP Pavilion notebook computer models:

dv2000

dv2500

dv2700

dv6000

dv6500

dv6700

dv9000

dv9500

dv9700

Compaq Presario models:

A900

C700

F700

V3000

V3500

V6000

V6700

HP Compaq models:

6720s

HP G6000

G7000 

 

Owners can contact HP Australia to arrange a refund or free replacement battery pack.

For help in identifying if your notebook is affected, visit the HP Notebook Battery Replacement website

MYOB pictures on email & pdf forms

OK, let’s ignore how long it’s been since my last post and just rejoice that due to my great filing system I managed to find my wordpress login details

Strangest thing in MYOB accounting software – customise a form and insert your own picture/graphic (eg company logo), use the ‘Send to email’ or ‘Send to Disk’ to create an electronic version of your document (invoice/statement etc) … and no picture images appear.

The solution?  Install Apple’s free Quicktime software http://www.apple.com/quicktime/, which must be at least version 5.5.  You’ll most commonly find this occurs if a computer is rebuilt, with it’s software reloaded from scratch, and someone forgets about Quicktime.

This has to win the award for one of the most illogical solutions to a problem, though I’m sure MYOB have some great reason for the quicktime dependancy.  It can also be a little challenging to find this solution in the official MYOB knowledgebase (though if you are paying for support, the call centre are pretty quick with this answer).

Until next time .. which hopefully won’t be as long as last time!!

-SCuffy.

Not-quite-Internet Banking

As a business owner, I rely on internet banking to work every day (and every night).  It sure beats the way that many businesses used to work – collecting daily statements from the bank each morning.

So, when internet banking goes bad (and only on your computer .. not one of those lovely ’service is not available’ messages from the bank), where do you turn? Assuming your problem is not that you have the Pop-Up Blocker turned on and your banking site wants to pop up the login window.

Start by disabling any ‘anti-bad guy’ software on your PC (anti-virus software, windows defender, dare I say it ‘Nortons’ etc) just to eliminate them from throwing a spanner in the works.

Now my personal first guess is always SSL.  SSL is an encryption method used to disguide traffic between your PC and the bank, so wehn you type in your password and hit send, the little packet of data that goes whizzing across the internet doesnt look like it has your password word in it, it looks scrambled.  SSL is used by banks and shold be used by any internet site that requires you to log on to access sensitive information or requires payment (esp by credit card).  It changes the site address to start with https:// at the start and will also show a little padlock icon in Internet Explorer.  If your banking sites arent working but Google etc is, SSL is the first place to look.

And the first trick to try for SSL is the following Microsoft article, in particular re-registering the files (DLLs) that help make SSL run:  http://support.microsoft.com/KB/813444

The next suspect is Java, another technology that is added to your web browser to make things display nicely and perform all sorts of functions.  Visit www.java.com and test/verify/uninstall/reinstall Java.

You can also try starting IE ‘clean’, without any other program add-ons loaded, to see if something that has it’s hooks into IE has got itself upset:  Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Internet Explorer (No Add-Ons)

If you are still having no luck (especially if your browser has some other strange things like the search window in IE7 not working, or a lot of options under Tools are greyed out), your internet browser may be damaged.  Many techs will yell out ‘install Firefox’ or ‘install Mozilla’, and while these can help to determine if it’s just a browser or a whole PC problem, I’m not a fan of installing more software if I don’t have to.  If you are running IE7, follow this procedure to uninstall it http://www.ie-vista.com/kbase2.html and try IE6.  If it works with IE6, then try a clean install of IE7 following these instructions http://www.ie-vista.com/known_issues.html#pre-install.

If it doesnt work with IE6 … it’s time to call in the experts!

 

-SCuff

 

 

Save, save, save

Save – of the critial “protect your data” type, not the “look how much money I saved in this sale today type” (though arguably they are just as important as each other).

Normally my favourite rant is regarding backups (and, more importantly, testing your data restorations), especially where small business is concerned. And I’m talking real small business (1 – 20 users). But I’ll save that for another day.

No, today’s rant is about saving your progress as you go. Though the concept was made famous when Microsoft Word crashed during that business report/university paper you had nearly finished .. and hadn’t saved .. and couldn’t be recovered … saving as you go is important for other applications too .. and not just software applications.

When building a standard computer software image (thanks Ghost or Acronis or dare I say it, Microsoft) to be applied to multiple computers with identical hardware, it also pays to save your progress. Most importantly, take a full image of the completed software build BEFORE you sysprep, then you’ll have a fallback if it fails – which it did.

Windows Message:
The system is not fully installed.
Please run setup again.

Microsoft does provide a registry edit to reproduce the problem (why would you want to?), or it can be fixed with a registry edit after a “parallel installation” of Windows (yuck).
In my case, it was far quicker to reapply the completed, working image, then “ensure that the Use Mini-Setup is checked when you use the Reseal option in Sysprep”.

Saving – one of the most simple yet underrated things you can do on your computer.

And I work in I.T.!!!

I’m afraid I’m starting this blog with a technology drama, involving my shiny new iPod Shuffle (2nd generation) and Windows Vista.  “Ah yes, Vista” you say knowingly.  But at Microsoft’s defence leaps the voice of my dear friend who pointed out that the vendors had the Vista code for 2 years prior to the release, so surely they could have sorted out their device drivers by now and what more does Microsoft have to do?

Anyway, following the somewhat limited instructions that came with my birthday present, I downloaded and installed iTunes 7.5.something (the latest and greatest).  Only problem was, after running the installation I was presented with a “Please wait while Windows configures iTunes” message .. and finally an error stating it couldn’t stop the iPod Services service.  Yuck.  No help from the Apple support site either.

OK, I’m in I.T., I can figure this out.  Everyday, millions of people buy these things and get them working. OK, maybe not millions. 

Google at the ready, it’s becoming more apparent that what seems like a problem with iTunes may in fact be a problem with Quicktime.  Enter Gerger’s suggestion re a handy dandy tool for fixing associated registry entries (http://research.gerger.com/?view=lab&aID=1006#h2:4) – didn’t work for me but I sensed it was on the right path.  Delved into regedit myself, reset the permissions under HKEY Local Machine / Software / Classes and added my user name with full control (even though it was already a member of the listed Administrators group). Tried the reset.cmd tool again and this got Quicktime working!  Victory 1!

Now, back to iTunes 7.5, which will now start but is displaying rather weirdly and gives up (freezes) whenever it feels like it.  Trying to sync one song, I get a lock up when I try and eject the iPod (after a sync completed message), and no songs on the iPod to play

At this point in the story I must confess to my husbands helpfulness when installing Vista.  I inherited his laptop, which had a dual-boot XP and Vista partition (of which the XP partition was subsequently removed).  This has left Vista as V:, which causes a lovely driver installation issue with anything you install (as it’s not finding the operating system on the C:).  It’s been one of those things which is annoying but not annoying enough to completely wipe the thing and start with a fresh install.  Only, my new iPod has come along and grabbed the first available drive letter .. so it wants to be C:.  Thinking this is not such a good idea, I change it to Y (as in Y am I having so many problems with this damn thing).  And hey presto, all is well in the world!  iTunes is playing happily, syncing etc, no problems.  Also, the high disk and CPU usage I was seeing since the start of this epic journey have miraculously settled down.

Case closed.  What a mission.  It’s midnight and I have one song on my Shuffle.