Tuesday, August 28, 2012

How to fix error: “Location is not available” in Windows 7

You might have come across an errant error message Location is not available whenever you try to open any folder, file or application. The main cause of this error message is bad/corrupt registry hives, or corrupt ACLs. The problem is easily fixable but I know many technicians or computer user who generally go ahead and perform either repair installation or complete clean installation of operating system to fix this problem. Let me guide you to fix the problem without performing repair or clean installation of Operating System. Below is the snapshot of the error message.

Location is not available

Below are methods which we can perform before going to repair/corrupt operating system.

Method 1

  • Reboot your PC and press F8 to get Advanced Boot Options and select Last Good Configuration and boot Windows normally.
  • If it doesn’t help, restore your system to recent checkpoint which are created automatically by your computer.

 

Method 2

  1. Run Command Prompt as Administrator and execute the following command

    gpupdate /force

  2. Now log off and log on again. If it doesn’t work, jump to step 3.
  3. Run Command Prompt as Administrator and execute the following commands

    chkdsk /r /x

    (It checks hard disk for errors and recovers readable information.)

  4. Press Y to perform check at next start up and reboot your PC. (Remember not to touch your computer’s keyboard or mouse as this may bypass CHKDSK process while system reboots again)
  5. Let the CHKDSK finish and repeat step 1 again and this time it will work.

 

Enjoy the easy troubleshooting and say bye to the error mesage.

 

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Unable to open/launch hyperlinks from Outlook mail

Getting error message: “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.”

This usually happens when there is no default Internet browser (properly) registered in Windows.

To recover, it often is enough to reassign a default browser via;

 

Windows 8
Start-> type: Default Programs
or
Charms (clip_image002+C)-> Settings-> Control Panel-> Programs-> Default Programs

 

Windows Vista and Windows 7
Start-> Default Programs

 

Windows XP
Control Panel-> Set Program Access and Defaults

When you have multiple browsers installed, it sometimes helps to set the other browser as the default, apply the changes and then set your preferred browser as the default again.

If you only have a single Internet browser installed in Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8, you can also deselect all the defaults for the browser by pressing “Choose defaults for this program”, save the changes and then select them all again.

 

 

Reset the browser

Depending on your Internet browser, you might additionally need to reset the browser. For Internet Explorer this can be done in Control Panel-> Internet Options. When you use Internet Explorer 6 or lower, you’ll find this option on the Programs tab. For Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 or 10, you can find this option on the Advanced tab.

For Firefox, open a Run command and type the following (note the spaces);
firefox -safe-mode

In the dialog that pops-up select the option “Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults” and press “Make Changes and Restart”.

 

 

Registry fix

If resetting via the conventional means does not work out for you, then the issue is probably rooted a bit deeper and it could be the file associations and handlers not correctly registered in the registry or are conflicting. To resolve this, you can work in two step registry fix. If one fails try other. You can download First Registry Fix from here (IE-associations.zip).

  • The downloaded IE-associations.zip file must be extracted in folder named “IE-associations”
  • You can read the Readme.txt file for better understanding.

If first registry fix fails, then try to download this registry file (ie-fix-restrictions.zip).

This zip-file contains 2 files;

  • ie-fix-restrictions-Win32.reg           For when using a 32-bit version of Windows
  • ie-fix-restrictions-Win64.reg           For when using a 64-bit version of Windows

This registry file contains the minimal amount or registry entries needed for making Internet links open again with Internet Explorer. All these registry entries are original entries which are also there when you do a clean installation of Windows.

It also removes some registry entries which could conflict with the original entries. These registry entries also do not exist after doing a clean installation of Windows.

Note 1: For importing this registry file you’ll need to have Administrator’s rights on the computer.

Note 2: The registry keys are based on a default installation of Windows on the C:\-drive. If you installed Windows to another drive letter or if you want to see what’s inside the reg-file before importing it, you can extract the zip-file and then open/edit it in Notepad by right clicking on the reg-file and choosing Edit.

 

Saturday, August 18, 2012

How to migrate your email from Gmail.com to Outlook.com

Microsoft launched the new outlook.com mail interface on the last day of July 2012 with the intention to replace its traditional email service Hotmail with the new service eventually. Hotmail users currently can switch between the old and new interface as they please, but can only make use of some of the new features if they are logged in to the new interface.

Outlook.com users can integrate emails from other services such as Gmail.com in to the account, and a new blog post at the Outlook blog highlights how this is done. The post begins with a list of features that Gmail users get when they switch to Outlook as their web email service. The list includes an address book that can be connected with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to receive information about contacts directly from within the Outlook website, SkyDrive and Office web apps built-into to the service, integration of Facebook messaging, and automatic filters that highlight specific email types under quick views in the interface.

Outlook webpage1

Migrating from Gmail to Outlook

If you migrate your Gmail address to Outlook you retain the full functionality of that address. This means that you can send and receive messages, get access to all contacts and access to all past email messages. The thing that changes is the interface you access those features on.

There are five steps to the process:

  • Creation of a Hotmail or Outlook account. Can be skipped if you already have a Windows Live, Hotmail, MSN or Outlook account.
  • Forward all Gmail mails to Outlook
  • Configure Outlook so that you can send emails using your Gmail address
  • Import your Gmail address book to Outlook
  • Import all your old mail from Gmail
The Outlook account

This is without doubt the easiest step. If you already have a Windows Live, MSN or Hotmail account, you can sign right into outlook.com and skip the rest of this chapter. If you are using a Gmail address for Microsoft services such as Xbox Live or SkyDrive, you already have a Microsoft Account and can use it to sign in to outlook.com as well.

If you want, you can rename your account to get an @outlook.com email address, but that is optional.

If you do not have a Microsoft Account yet, you can sign up for an account over at the outlook website linked above.

Forward Gmail messages

You need to head over to Gmail and sign in to your account on the site.

Please note that the first Gmail link above leads right to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings of the Gmail account. Here you need to find the forwarding menu and enable the forwarding of all Gmail messages to your outlook.com email address (that is the email address that you use to sign in to outlook.com).

gmail forward email

When you configure the forwarding, you will receive a confirmation message to your outlook email address. This email contains a confirmation link that you need to click on to confirm the forwarding. Go back to Gmail once you have made the confirmation and enable the forwarding in the same settings menu on the website. You can keep a copy of the email in your Gmail inbox, archive the message, mark it, or have it deleted.

Send Gmail emails from Outlook

If you do not want to send emails using your Gmail account from Outlook skip this step. Otherwise, click on the settings icon next to your name on the Outlook website and select more mail settings from the options there. Locate sending/receiving email from other accounts under managing your account here, and click on add another account to send from on the next screen.

managing your account

Enter your Gmail email address under add an email address here and click on send verification email afterwards. If you have enabled forwarding already, you should see the email in your Outlook.com inbox. You can alternatively head over to Gmail if you have configured the forwarding to not delete emails that get forwarded.

Open the email and click on the verification link to confirm the process. Once done, you can select to send emails from your Gmail address from the outlook interface.

Adding Gmail contacts to Outlook

To import all of your Gmail contacts to Outlook move your mouse cursor over the outlook logo on the website and click on the down arrow that appears next to it. Select the people icon and then Google Contacts from the import options.

Just follow the wizard from this point on. Please note that you need to enter your Google account credentials during the process.

Click “Connect,” then enter your Gmail sign-in information. You’ll see a confirmation screen, which shows you that Gmail is confirming that Microsoft is asking to connect to your Gmail contacts. Click “Allow access.” You’ll get a final confirmation screen, and you can click “Done.”

Microsoft notes that it may take a while before the contacts start to appear in your outlook address book.

Import old Gmail emails to Outlook

You can import all your old Gmail emails using Microsoft’s TrueSwitch service. Just visit the website and do the following here:

import gmail emails

  • Enter your Gmail address and password under “Other email”
  • Enter your Windows Live, Outlook or Hotmail email address and password under “hotmail e-mail”
  • Select what you want to copy to the Outlook account (email messages, address book, calendar)
  • You can also tell contacts about your switch, with options to personalize the message and choose the contacts that you want to notify.
  • Lastly, you can configure the service to forward Gmail emails for 90 days to Outlook.

As you may have noticed, there is a bit of redundancy here. If you have already imported your contacts, there is no need to keep the option enabled. The same is true for the forwarding which you have configured in step 1.

Rest best of luck in migrating Gmail to Web Outlook.

Original article by: Martin Brinkmann

Monday, August 13, 2012

Open Command Prompt with Administrative rights directly from Run box

You must be using Command Prompt on your computer to show your geekery to your friends while helping them in troubleshooting problems on their computer. Have you ever thought of opening Command Prompt with “Administrator” privilege directly from Run box. Well I would like to provide another trick to all of you to open Command Prompt with Administrative privilege directly from RUN box.

Click on Start Menu (Orbit icon), then on Start Search Box (Run) type “cmd”

The Start Search will promptly show you cmd in its result ready to be launched. Now instead of hitting the Enter key to launch it, use Ctrl+ Shift + Enter. You will be prompted with same old User Account Control dialog box. You can quickly close this dialog box by using Alt + C in Vista or Alt + Y in Windows 7.

 

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Resize Icons Quickly in Windows 7 or Vista Explorer

Ever wondered how easy is to resize the icons in Windows 7 or Vista quickly. If you are in a folder and would like to quickly resize the icons, there’s a shortcut you can use with your mouse wheel to resize the icons. This is a great way to show off the beauty of the new vector icons in Windows 7 or Vista to your friends.

Procedure to resize icons: Just hold down the Ctrl key, and scroll the mouse wheel in any folder. The icons will immediately resize bigger or smaller.

Below is an icon of Windows Media Player which is really huge.

 

The same thing works wherever you are in Windows as well.

 

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Repairing Internet Explorer by re-registering dll files

Yesterday we talked about repairing Internet Explorer using Fixit Utility, however there are people who want it to do in professional style using command prompt of Windows. Well if you know how to re-register dll files then here is the list of all files that need to re-register in order to fix Internet Explorer.

We will start it with using “regsvr32” command. The regsvr32 command-line tool registers *.dll files as command components in the registry. If you don’t know what is a dll file, then here is a short briefing: A dynamic link library (*.dll) is a collection of smaller programs, which can be called upon when needed by an executable program, such as explorer.exe. The *.exe extension specifies an executable program, so if the *.dll files are corrupted; they will most likely not work properly and cause you problems. You can quickly re-register them with this command quickly and safely.

First – you need to ensure that you need to repair Internet Explorer. You will know if, you have major problems with opening it (closes on its own), or you may have spyware that has corrupted it so badly that nothing can save it anymore.

Second – we need to make a batch file and get it on the target computer. This is easily done with a USB. The batch file is made by opening up a notepad and creating the actual script as given here:

rem Script used to manually reregister Internet Explorer and Shell related *.dlls
rem Also included the Digital Signing and Cryptographic Provider *. dlls if needed
rem rundll32.exe advpack.dll /DelNodeRunDLL32 C:\WINNT\System32\dacui.dll
rem rundll32.exe advpack.dll /DelNodeRunDLL32 C:\WINNT\Catroot\icatalog.mdb
rem regsvr32 setupwbv.dll /s
rem regsvr32 wininet.dll /s
regsvr32 comcat.dll /s
regsvr32 CSSEQCHK.DLL /s
regsvr32 shdoc401.dll /s
regsvr32 shdoc401.dll /i /s
regsvr32 asctrls.ocx /s
regsvr32 oleaut32.dll /s
regsvr32 shdocvw.dll /I /s
regsvr32 shdocvw.dll /s
regsvr32 browseui.dll /s
regsvr32 browsewm.dll /s
regsvr32 browseui.dll /I /s
regsvr32 msrating.dll /s
regsvr32 mlang.dll /s
regsvr32 hlink.dll /s
rem regsvr32 mshtml.dll /s
regsvr32 mshtmled.dll /s
regsvr32 urlmon.dll /s
regsvr32 plugin.ocx /s
regsvr32 sendmail.dll /s
rem regsvr32 comctl32.dll /i /s
rem regsvr32 inetcpl.cpl /i /s
rem regsvr32 mshtml.dll /i /s
regsvr32 scrobj.dll /s
regsvr32 mmefxe.ocx /s
rem regsvr32 proctexe.ocx mshta.exe /register /s
regsvr32 corpol.dll /s
regsvr32 jscript.dll /s
regsvr32 msxml.dll /s
regsvr32 imgutil.dll /s
regsvr32 thumbvw.dll /s
regsvr32 cryptext.dll /s
regsvr32 rsabase.dll /s
rem regsvr32 triedit.dll /s
rem regsvr32 dhtmled.ocx /s
regsvr32 inseng.dll /s
regsvr32 iesetup.dll /i /s
rem regsvr32 hmmapi.dll /s
regsvr32 cryptdlg.dll /s
regsvr32 actxprxy.dll /s
regsvr32 dispex.dll /s
regsvr32 occache.dll /s
regsvr32 occache.dll /i /s
regsvr32 iepeers.dll /s
rem regsvr32 wininet.dll /i /s
regsvr32 urlmon.dll /i /s
rem regsvr32 digest.dll /i /s
regsvr32 cdfview.dll /s
regsvr32 webcheck.dll /s
regsvr32 mobsync.dll /s
regsvr32 pngfilt.dll /s
regsvr32 licmgr10.dll /s
regsvr32 icmfilter.dll /s
regsvr32 hhctrl.ocx /s
regsvr32 inetcfg.dll /s
rem regsvr32 trialoc.dll /s
regsvr32 tdc.ocx /s
regsvr32 MSR2C.DLL /s
regsvr32 msident.dll /s
regsvr32 msieftp.dll /s
regsvr32 xmsconf.ocx /s
regsvr32 ils.dll /s
regsvr32 msoeacct.dll /s
rem regsvr32 wab32.dll /s
rem regsvr32 wabimp.dll /s
rem regsvr32 wabfind.dll /s
rem regsvr32 oemiglib.dll /s
rem regsvr32 directdb.dll /s
regsvr32 inetcomm.dll /s
rem regsvr32 msoe.dll /s
rem regsvr32 oeimport.dll /s
regsvr32 msdxm.ocx /s
regsvr32 dxmasf.dll /s
rem regsvr32 laprxy.dll /s
regsvr32 l3codecx.ax /s
regsvr32 acelpdec.ax /s
regsvr32 mpg4ds32.ax /s
regsvr32 voxmsdec.ax /s
regsvr32 danim.dll /s
regsvr32 Daxctle.ocx /s
regsvr32 lmrt.dll /s
regsvr32 datime.dll /s
regsvr32 dxtrans.dll /s
regsvr32 dxtmsft.dll /s
rem regsvr32 vgx.dll /s
regsvr32 WEBPOST.DLL /s
regsvr32 WPWIZDLL.DLL /s
regsvr32 POSTWPP.DLL /s
regsvr32 CRSWPP.DLL /s
regsvr32 FTPWPP.DLL /s
regsvr32 FPWPP.DLL /s
rem regsvr32 FLUPL.OCX /s
regsvr32 wshom.ocx /s
regsvr32 wshext.dll /s
regsvr32 vbscript.dll /s
regsvr32 scrrun.dll mstinit.exe /setup /s
regsvr32 msnsspc.dll /SspcCreateSspiReg /s
regsvr32 msapsspc.dll /SspcCreateSspiReg /s
regsvr32 licdll.dll /s
regsvr32 regwizc.dll /s
regsvr32 softpub.dll /s
regsvr32 IEDKCS32.DLL /s
regsvr32 MSTIME.DLL /s
regsvr32 WINTRUST.DLL /s
regsvr32 INITPKI.DLL /s
regsvr32 DSSENH.DLL /s
regsvr32 RSAENH.DLL /s
regsvr32 CRYPTDLG.DLL /s
regsvr32 Gpkcsp.dll /s
regsvr32 Sccbase.dll /s
regsvr32 Slbcsp.dll /s
exit

Once you have the file ready, save the notepad file with an extension .bat. If you really do not want to create a batch file then follow the steps that has been described here. Now once you have your batch file complete, simply save it to your desktop. To run the file, just double click on it and it will re-register all dll files automatically for you. You need to restart your computer before you check Internet Explorer.

Enjoy the troubleshooting geek way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Monday, August 6, 2012

Repair And Fix Internet Explorer 8 With Fix IE Utility

If you are having some problem while running Internet Explorer or it got corrupted from a malware attack, then you can try the Fix IE utility to get it back to normal. Usually, the source of such problems is that the DLL and ocx files of the Internet Explorer get unregistered due to a malware attack or some other reason, this tool simply re-registers them.

If you are wondering what I meant by the registering and unregistering of DLL files, you can read this on my other post to get some idea of it. Running this utility is very simple, download it from the link mentioned at the end of this post, unzip it and run its executable file Fix IE Utility. Since it is a portable utility, it doesn’t need any installation. Here is the first screen which is displayed when you run it.

FixIE

Hit the Run Utility button, it will ask you for the confirmation to re-register the DLL and OCX files.

FixIE_2

Click OK and it will fix the problems regarding the internet explorer’s system files. But please make sure that you close all IE windows before running this tool.

Download IE Fix Utility

The tool has been tested several times in professional environment and has produced excellent result. So enjoy.

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