Intel WiDi Stops Lync 2013 from Recognizing Audio Devices

We have used Lync 2013 for a while the company I work for and overall with little issues (amazingly). However the other day I attempted to join a conference call and utilize my built in webcam/mic but found that Lync couldn't see any audio device at all. This was strange considering it was showing up in the computer management console, and in recording devices. I could even use the microphone and record with windows built in recorder so that was odd too.

I attempted first a repair of Lync 2013, but no dice. Then I re-installed my Dell audio drivers, but no luck there either. A bit of Google searching lead me to just a few articles stating that Intel's WiDi application caused some problems with audio devices. Sure enough one of the posts in particular was on Lync specifically so I decided to give it a shot and uninstall. After a quick reboot Lync was perfect again and I was without one more useless program (to me at least). Dell (from whom we buy our laptops) has components in most of their laptops which include this application, however I have never used it. Uninstalling it did not show any unknown devices in computer management or prompt for driver installation every time the machine booted up so I'll be making sure to uninstall this from all new deployments of laptops within the company.

I never could figure out the "why"behind the failure for the applications to not play nice, but what's fixed is fixed.

Unable to install Symantec 12.1.4xxx on Windows 8.1 VM

I had a bit of trouble today trying to install Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.4xxx on a Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit virtual machine. The installer would fail and give cryptic advice through the windows event viewer console which was almost worthless. I followed the random number given to me (1603) to a few articles on Symantec's website but all referenced an issue that was supposed to have been fixed in 12.1.3xxx.

Sad to say I must have found a loophole.

I did check into a few things but was not able to find a work around. (Disabled Windows Defender, looked for a bad KB update)

I opened a case with Symantec and will report back my findings.

EDIT 2/4/14:

We were able to resolve this after running the clean wipe utility from Symantec. After that the installation completed successfully!

New Bumper Sticker Idea

While laying in bed reading the doom and gloom of April's XP-mageddom I wanted to type out a warning to friends and family about running the ancient OS.

I came up with a saying that even impressed me after saying it

"For the love of IT, dump XP"

Didn't even realize is kinda rhymes. Now to just find some place to make the bumper sticker I'll never use.  I've got a dislike of those things unless they are in your cubicle somewhere.

Installing .NET Framework 3.5 (3.0, 2.0) on Windows Server 2012 R2

.NET 3.5 and previous verions do not come standard on Windows Server 2012 R2 and tripped me up the first time I needed to install it for a software installation. Its easy enough to get through but I thought this would be a great quick write up in case anyone ran into issues or were curious of the process. You will need your 2012 R2 installation disk for this process.

Step one is opening the server manager

Next click on Add roles and features

Click Next

Make sure Role Based or Feature Based installation is selected and click Next

Make sure Select a server from the server pool is checked and your server is highlighted and click next (may be different for more complex installations)

Click Next

Select .Net Framework 3.5 Features and click Next

On the Confirmation page select Specify an alternate source path

On the Source Path window that pops up note the part that talks about where these source files would be found. We will need to pull them from the 2012 R2 installation media. Place it into your computer (or mount it to the server if in a virtual environment). We will go to the noted path and copy the address into the field next to the word Path:.

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to "This PC", right click on the media drive and select Open

Open the Sources folder

Open the "sxs" folder

Move your cursor to the address bar and highlight the entire path, for me it is D:\sources\sxs

Copy this to your clipboard

Paste the path into the Path: box in the Source Path window and click OK

Click Install and you are finished! If you have any issues just post up and I will try to help.

An Outlook Quirk

I discovered a slight bug recently when designing a new signature for our company that I would never had caught in a million years of troubleshooting and is testament to how hard it is to make a perfect application/design.

After setting up tables, images, fighting outlooks lack of support for certain layouts in versions previous to 2013 I thought I had done it all. I checked, printed, sent and printed some more and everything was in great shape. Then I roll out to my first beta group, and man did something so strange happen.

Our CEO has multiple monitors and as such small print can definitely be hard to see way out in the corners, so he has increased the OS rendering 125%. I've seen people do this before, but I have never seen it effect Outlook like it has now. He runs 2013, and every time he sends an email out with the new signature 2 of the 4 images increase in size by 25%. We have compared them to the others, and can not find anything different. It's amazing but so frustrating at the same time. I have yet to find a solution to this issue other than changing the screen back to 100%, but there has to be something that's different....right?

Well after a few hours of prodding I was able to figure it out. The issue seems to only happen when the image has Inline Word Wrapping turned on. Setting it to Top/Bottom seems to fix the image blowup for good.

Laziness of Computer Repair Shops

After years of hard work and honestly I get the pleasure of looking over friends and family's computer to make sure they are in tip top shape when the owners believe otherwise.

This week I was approached by a friend and handed a machine that was a friend of a friends etc. They stated that the user took the machine to a repair shop and was told it was a mainboard issue, the user didn't want to spend the money and had asked around to see if anyone could take a second look. I responded to my friend with a "Sure ill be glad to" and was off to my work bench.

I worked on the toshiba laptop for 5 maybe 10 minutes doing basic testing and was able to conclude in that amount of time that the mainboard was fine, in fact the only fault part on the laptop was the hard drive. Bad hard drives can definitely cause a no POST situation and sure enough this was one of those times.

Then after my excitement of finding the issue started to wain I realized that the company that looked over this the first time was either lying or missed a basic part of computer troubleshooting. I really do not see how any company could stay in business after such a poor performance. Honesty and common sense should be a standard of any company, and small businesses are not omitted to that.

Rule of thumb, always get a second opinion from someone you can trust. Hopefully in the future that will be more businesses and less individuals.

Windows 8.0 Review

After using Windows 8.0 for 2 months (this would be my second try at using this OS) I have come to somewhat of a conclusion about the state of the OS and its potential as well as drawbacks. My wife has also acquired a Windows 8.0 laptop (Dell brand) and her discussions and opinions on it have made me rethink many things as I have to face the coming of deploying it to users once Windows 7 becomes extinct.

I will focus on 5 items to make this post short, sweet and hopefully information.

1. Start Button - A lot can be said of this. I installed Classic Shell day 1 of trying this system out again and there hasn't been 1 time when I have said to myself, yes I would love to have a hot corner back to get to my programs. In fact I use it much like I did in windows 7 and before. The missing start menu is still an issue of frustration for my wife (whom will get Classic Start installed as soon as I get the chance). Why this was missing and waiting to 8.1 I will never know, and by then neither of us will care.

2. Start Screen - No, just no. The whole thing is confusing and I am in the IT field. For my wife it's even worse. There are times I can't even help her, I end up opening some random application and then constantly switching to it via another hot corner. It's a mess. Since Classic Start I have only ventured into the Start Screen when I get curious about an app, in fact I haven't really used any apps since then. When the computer is setup I could be able to pick Laptop or Tablet experience and have it optimized for my use.

3. Speed - Windows 8.0 is fast, there is no denying that. My wifes new Dell is not a power machine by any means but the speed at which Windows 8 runs vs Windows 7 is blinding. I love how a restart can take less than a minute. Startup time is even less. Keep this, at all costs.

4. Apps - Poor selection and the fact that on a laptop if I want netflix I can just bring up a web browser to do it negates any reason for the app store in the first place let alone the App like start screen. Are my apps taking up processing power and ram? Probably. Is it a lot? Probably not. But if I never get into it, id like that extra 5% please, especially on a budget machine.

5. Program compatibility - Great! In fact I have only come across 1 program that wouldn't run in Windows 8 due to a missing driver. Being able to run to old programs without the need for a virtual machine is a great thing.

Would I deploy it to my users? - Sure, If I had to. You could bet yourself that I would install Classic Shell and disable most Windows 8 features though. And my users are on their own signing up for a Live ID to purchase things if they really want into the App Store.

Working in Windows 8 Preview for a Day

On friday I gave Windows 8 Preview a shot after setting up a dual boot environment on my laptop. I attempted to only use W8 and Office 2013 for the day without running back to Windows 7 to do necessary work. Unfortunately it flopped and I ended up making it through only 3/4 of the day. I will go over what made the test fail as well as my impressions of the OS as it is today.

Part 1 "Excuse me while i reboot" -

Trying to work in an SMB environment has its challenges for an OS built for home use, and in short it doesn't work. I am not quite sure what Microsoft has up its sleeve with W8 RP but unlike Office 2013 where SMB and Pro versions were available Windows 8 is a Home Premium install only. It makes it very tough then to test this OS with my programs, domain setup, administration tools and more without having to spend money on an OS that might not work. I struggled throughout the day using remote desktop to our servers to do simple administration tasks that I could have done natively, as well as logging into network shares and other machines using network file sharing. These issues were tough but did not cause me to reboot quite yet. I finally ran into a driver issue (I won't blame the OS for this fault however) and could not complete the task at hand with some software. Rebooting into Windows 7 solved this and I felt no desire to run through what is a lengthy reboot process for Windows 8 dual boot environments. In fact I have not quite sure why the bootup process has changed, yes I still get the choice to setup a 10 second choice screen for the OS I would like, but if I decide on Windows 7 the computer has to shut down, go through POST procedures again and then boot into Windows 7 adding another 20-30 seconds delay. A bit strange I do say.

Part 2 "Excuse me Sir, I seem to be lost" -

Windows 8 can be summed up in one word after Fridays immersing test, "confusing". I became quite frustrated trying to find simple programs or tasks using the Metro start screen, depending on which screen it would show up on. This problem baffled me, using a dual monitor setup I could get the desktop showing on both screens, and a task bar mirrored on each as well. This was great as I could bring up windows without having to run to the other monitor. This was not great as it felt like, depending on the operating systems mood when I would hit the Windows key the Metro Start screen would randomly pop up on one of the monitors. I think I saw the Start screen change positions over 5 times and could not for the life of me figure out why it chose the monitor it did. Then there is the all programs menu and lack of need for the Metro Start screen all together. Trying to find all the programs installed on the machine if the icon was not present in the Metro screen had you treck all the way to the corer of the screen before listing everything side by side instead of traditional list form like in previous Windows versions. I found this change more time consuming especially when Start changed monitors. Windows 7 search through the start menu which I have come to use for everything now needed me to use another function key set (Windows Key + F) to bring it up whereas before I could just hit the Windows Key and start typing, or click on the start menu in the corner. My last bone to pick on this post is the horrible App Switching interface. Trying to find the window you just had open was a flipping nightmare, I would have an App open on the left monitor then want to go back to the desktop I had before. Clicking on the desktop on the right would not bring it up, and trying to find Desktop in the Metro screen was a pain as well. This is where App Switching would be nice and efficient, but it isn't. To bring up the App Switching interface you have to go to the Start "hot" corner, then slide your mouse up the side of the screen...but dont move it out of the window that appears or it will disappear again leaving you to start from scratch. And for some dumb reason Microsoft felt the need to make your current window list start from the top, as far as virtually possible from the Start button. Because why make it close and easy and a second quicker to use?

DNS Scavenging Turned On....Or Is It?

I have had lots of issues with Windows Server DNS configurations, and a good 90% of those issues circle around scavenging.

What is scavenging you ask? It is the process of removing old invalid records from the DNS index so that (especially in DHCP scopes) computer names are correctly reflected in name resolution and more commonly for an end user, the Networked Computers window.

I believe to finally have solved the problem with a final karate chop to the Windows Server 2008 R2 (in this case) GUI. I believe the graphical interface for most Microsoft products is great, but I will add DNS management to the list of not so great products.

As hard as I tried scavenging was not enabled on my server, I had it setup on each zone as well as the host (even though it was not tied to Active Directory and therefor the option shouldn't matter) but yet in the Best Practices results it always stated it was off. I was caught by good surprise when I had seen this hoping that finding a fix should solve my issues once and for all (since I know a certain users laptop does not have 5 network connections so should not be listed under as many IP addresses at once..). I followed some basic command line garble and after inputting it into the console finally had the results I was looking for (though the next week of testing will tell me if it REALLY works now). Follow the commands below on your DNS server to truly enable scavenging.

To check your setup and see if it is enabled type in : dnscmd <DNSSERVERNAME> /Info

If ScavengingInterval is set to something other than 0 it is actually enabled, if set to 0 work through the following commands.

1. Open a Command Prompt session
2. Type in the following : dnscmd <DNSSERVERNAME> /Config /ScavengingInterval 168
3. Hit Enter
4. Verify by typing in: dnscmd <DNSSERVERNAME> /Info

The 168 hour value is a default that should be assigned to scavenging (mine was set to 0 and therefor disabled)