Monthly Archives: February 2014

Office 2010 fails to activate, error 0x80070190

by

I ran into this problem after creating a customized windows 7 pro install image that included Office 2010 sp1. I installed all the updates for both Office and Windows 7 before running sysprep, these updates included sp2 for office. It seems there is a problem with updating to sp2 before activation, that leaves you unable to activate in the normal way. Luckily there is an easy work around. First attempt to activate normally, when this fails, close out what ever office application you had open. Next open an elevated command prompt. Navigate to the folder :C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14   if you are running 32 bit windows, if running 64 windows with 32 bit office  go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14   Then simply enter: cscript ospp.vbs /act   If everything works correctly you will see Product Activation Successful in the output of the script. There have been a couple times that I have gotten a failed activation using this method as well, but trying it again after a reboot has worked.

Losing interest in HP…..

by

Since working to replace /upgrade all our old XP machines I’m running into more and more printer problems with Windows 7 pro 64bit mostly but also some with the 32 bit variety.  Granted some of these are old Laserjet printers, but the latest, an HP LaserJetP1505n has gotten on my last nerve. I’m replacing it with a Brother workgroup laser printer instead of going with another HP. We are almost exclusively an HP shop but between fighting with printer driver problems and HP’s latest move concerning firmware updates (you can read about it here), I’m seriously looking and going a different direction. What direction that is, I’m not sure. But the last thing a one man IT dept. needs is another support subscription to keep up with when other vendors are giving it away for free.

PDF to Word converter

by

I often have users looking for a way to convert an ancient form or some other document that they only have a paper version of and has been copied and re-copied to death, to something they can edit and update in Word. Its no problem to scan the file to a pdf (that usually looks terrible) and there are lots of free converters online but most of them just convert the document to an image in a Word file, not very useful. This morning I found a site www.onlineocr.net that does great conversions using OCR or Optical Character Recognition, which means it outputs the conversion in an actual text format that you can edit. It supports multiple file formats and languages. You get 25 free credits (or pages) and after that you can purchase credits for very reasonable prices. Give it a try, I have no affiliation just something I ran across that works.

Hyper-V 2012 r2 guest 2 “unknown devices”?

by

If you are running a Hyper-V 2012 r2 host with guest VMs that are of earlier versions of windows you will notice a couple of unknown devices in the device manager, even after installing the hyper-v integration services on the guest. When I first noticed this I thought maybe some driver didn’t install correctly, but after doing a little digging i found a Microsoft Knowledge Base article dealing with this very subject kb2925727. The article states   “On a Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Hyper-V host, you may see 2 unknown device under Other Devices in device manager of any virtual machine running operating systems earlier than Windows Server 2012 R2. These Virtual Devices (VDev) are provided for Automatic Virtual Machine Activation (AVMA) to communicate with the host. AVMA is only supported on virtual machines running Windows Server 2012 R2 or later versions of operating systems. The unknown devices are harmless and can be ignored. ” So there you go.

And away we go!

by

I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a blog for years. Just a place to put some helpful hints and info that I’ve found while attempting to fix assorted IT related problems, and what ever else may come to mind. Don’t be surprised if there happens to be some random posts from time to time about life, running, hobbies, and even Christmas lights. Thanks for stopping by.