Installing Crystal Ease for all users
Posted by: David
Why won't Crystal Ease install for all users?
There are two reasons why it might not be working even though you might have installed is successfully.
- You installed the software on a computer using an account that is not an administrator.
- If you did install it as an admin and can't get it to run on other accounts that is because Crystal Ease doesn't support all accounts to run from the initial installation without some modification.
What can you do about it?
A: You installed the software on an account that wasn't an administrator
- Uninstall Crystal Ease.
- Log onto an account that is a computer administrator.
- Install Crystal Ease.
- Enter your release code.
- Enter upgrade release code if necessary.
B: You installed the software as an admin, but want other users to have access to the program.
Since Crystal Ease doesn't support this necessarily, it won't be a popular solution but there isn't much for choices. Crystal Ease will always work on the account which installed it and entered the release codes. Here is what you do for other accounts that will use the computer.
- Go to C:\Program Files\Surfing Gecko Software\Crystal Ease\ (or wherever you installed it)
- Find CEV.EXE and make it a shortcut on the desktop of the account (or all users account) that will be using it. Delete the old shortcut
- When that user goes to open Crystal Ease for the first time, it will ask for the release codes. Unfortunately they will have to have someone enter in the release codes if they don't have access to them.
- Once someone has the release codes set up on their account on a particular computer they can continue opening Crystal Ease as they please.
Big time tip for success
Create a generic account for users to log into if you expect more than a few people to log onto and use Crystal Ease on a computer. This way you will only have to prepare Crystal Ease one time instead of doing it several times.
Project ideas for your IT department
Posted by: David
What can my IT department do to improve?
I think a lot of issues that IT has is with the stakeholders that aren't directly involved with any projects. Basically, most issues IT has to deal with are typically from the IT users, either internal or external users of systems. You will want to create a system that can help you manage your own department better so that you can better handle the issues from the IT users.
How can I do that?
I have a couple of ideas that small to medium sized company's can overcome easily. Larger companies may even be able to try this project if they have the spare time to devote to it, unless they feel like they should make it a priority.
IDEAS:
- Inventory Management - How many printers do you have? Where are they? What are their IP addresses? What types of paper will they print? All of these are great questions that you will see very often. The idea of a project with inventory management would be to inventory your Printers, and all information you can about them and then place them on a map that your support staff can view and interact with through a web based module. This can be done with some very simple php, mysql and javascript.
- Expand on your inventory - Don't just stop with the printers. Try to keep your computer inventory up to date as well through the same method. This will take a lot more time and effort but if you can get a system up and running and keep it up to date then you will be glad you put them time into it.
- Priority ticketing - Find a way to create your own ticketing system, or integrate with another one to create a very well organized priority chart. This system could work similar to an outlook calendar and schedule times for certain events, and reschedule things with different priorities. Just have things automatically reschedule themselves if the tickets aren't closed on time.
Here's what I did
I did an inventory of all of my company's printers one week. There were about 50 laser printers that were shared on the network and located in several different buildings. To take the inventory I went to each printer and marked it's location on a map. I then took down information about the printer such as its hostname, FQDN, IP, number of trays, tray paper types and whether or not it had an envelope feeder.
With all of this information that I needed, I created a mysql database with appropriate relations to put each printer into a different building. This step was very simple, buildings in one table, and printers in the other. The printer table would have a foreign key of the building ids which that printer is in. I also went beyond that, but I'll get to that soon.
Once you created this simple database, input your information. Create your PHP scripts to show the information as you please about the printers. Now that you can see a list of your printers and their information, how do you know where they are located? Now you work with your printer locations you marked down.
Find a copy of blueprints, or a layout for your buildings and open it on your computer with some software (MS paint) that can help you find the coordinates on that image. Now add a field onto your database for the coordinates located on the image for your printer. Mark the printer location on the map with the printer's ID in the database. Once you have all the printers marked on the map and the coordinates in the database you can code your php to show the map you marked with locations. To top that, you can use the coordinates to create an imagemap that, with javascript can display a popup with some brief information about the printer and perhaps a link to that printers page for more detailed info.
Go even farther
Create a another table in your database for your printers page counts. This table with have the printer id as the foreign key.
Now, create a php script that will pull out the printed page counts for each printer. Most printers in businesses now have web based interaction that you can use to pull this information from automatically. Set up this script to run every day at midnight and you can keep track of just how much particular printers are being used, and if they need to be moved, gotten rid of, or have more purchased.
Word and Outlook are messed up whenever I open a new document/email
Posted by: David
What's wrong?
You opened up Word or Outlook and were going to type a new document or email but the format is all messed up.
How did this happen?
You accidently, or maybe not so accidently changed your template for regular blank documents.
What does a regular blank template mean?
Every time you open up Word or Outlook (which uses Word) you open up a blank document template. Normally this would just include a basic file with normal margins and nothing in it.
Some people change their normal template because they do certain jobs over and over so it was a good idea for Microsoft to allow you to edit that, but if you didn't know that you changed it or how it was possible to change it then you have a problem, and that's why you are here.
OK, so you understand what is going on but you just want to fix it.
Windows 7 Office 07
- First make sure you have your folder options set to view hidden files. You can search how to do that if you don't know how, it is very simple.
- Then, browse to your C: drive, then go to Users > Username > App Data > Roaming > Microsoft > Templates and you should see the normal.dotm file.
normal.dotm
- From here you should close Outlook and Word and make sure that they are closed in the task manager.
- Simply delete the normal.dotm template file. It will be recreated from scratch when you start Word again.
Windows XP Office 07/03
- Follow the same isntructions for Windows 7 and Office 07 but go to C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.
- From here you can delete normal.dotm for Office 07 or normal.dot for Office 03.
Tip for success
Try to remember this can affect Outlook as well. Outlook uses Word to edit e-mails so it is important that you recognize this as a possible problem for similar issues with Outlook as well. Most people who use a computer wont understand this, so it is important to keep it in mind.
Best Firefox add on that you must have!
Posted by: David
What is the best add on for Firefox?
The best add on for Firefox in the Kingpin's opinion is the Thumbnail expander.
What does it do?
This add on takes any thumbnail image and loads it in the background while you are hovering your mouse over it. Once the image has loaded, it will display above the thumbnail you are previewing. The best example of what it does is on the add on's site itself.
Here are two of the preview pictures.
The add on also embeds video when you click on links. It would be harder for me to explain this so I will just show you below what it does when you click on a video on youtube.com.
If you notice, when you click on one of the videos it will embed it into that page. If you want to go on to the video just click the video, if you want to get rid of the video you can hid the button just above the video to hide it.
How can you get it?
Go to this LINK and hit Add to Firefox.
Desktop icons are gone/dissappeared in Windows 7
Posted by: David
Why are my desktop icons missing?
There really isn't a good reason why they are missing, perhaps you accidently hit the wrong button earlier, or someone is messing with you. It can happen in other ways as well. This personally happened to me after installing a single update for Windows 7.
The simple fix
- Right click your desktop
- Choose View
- Make sure 'Show desktop icons' is selected
Deleting from and editing the spiceworks database
Posted by: David
Why edit the spiceworks database?
- You need to correct an error you made
- You need to delete an old item
- You feel more comfortable navigating the database
WARNING
- If you don't understand what you are trying to do before you attempt to do this you might as well not bother. If you delete something in your database that was included as a foreign key for something else you could really mess things up. Be careful!
How to edit the database
- First thing you need is the ability to edit the database. The one prerequisite for this walk through is that you have Firefox. I find it hard to believe someone in IT wouldn't have this browser right now, but if not, download it.
- The next thing you need to do is open up Firefox browser and go to tools > add ons.
- After the Firefox add on window is up, search for "sqlite manager" and it should be the first result. Compare to the image below and hit "Add to Firefox".
- With Firefox you will get a confirmation window asking you to hit "install now" to install the add on. Do it.
- Once it is installed, it will ask that you restart Firefox. Do it. You can just click the "Restart Firefox" button.
- Once Firefox is restarted the add ons window should come back up saying that 1 add on had been installed. You can just close this window.
- Now you need to go to the Firefox menu bar and click on Tools > SQLite Manager.
- It might take a moment to load it, so be patient. Once it does load it should look like this.
- To view your data base click on File > Connect Database.
- Now you should see a file explorer asking you to find the database you want to open. The first thing you want to do is change your file type to "All Files" because you won't see the spiceworks database with the default selection. Next you will need to browse to C:\Program Files\Spiceworks\db and select the spiceworks_prod.db file and hit open.
- Once the database is open you should see this.
- On the left you see an expandable list of tables that contain your information. In this example I am going to edit the information in a ticket. Browse down the table list and click on the "tickets" table. Click the "Browse & Search" tab.
- The rows that are displayed to the right in the "Browse & Search" tab are the actual rows of information in your database. To delete a row, just right click the row and select delete. To edit a row, right click the row and select edit.
- To edit the information, change what you like in the text boxes and save your changes by clicking "OK".
- Now your information in the database has been successfuly manipulated. Congratulations.
Have users run a batch file to find their IP Address
Posted by: David
Why have a user run a batch file to find their IP Address?
Simple, users don't know what their doing. Your CEO may be the smartest person you have ever met, but this doesn't mean they are informed enough about computers to find their IP address.
This is part of Network Support, being able to support your network, and preparing for issues where your users are having connection issues are hard to support without remote tools. Sometimes computers have trouble synching on the domain and other times users can swear they are connected when they really aren't.
The reason you make this a batch file is because while some users are computer literate and are able to follow along over the phone, others are near impossible. You know it.
How to make the batch file
- Open up notepad. Start > Accessories > Notepad
- Type in "ipconfig /all > c:\ip.txt"
- Save the file as ip.bat and store it directly on the C: drive
- Put the ip.bat file on all the computers you support
How to use the batch file
Scenario: User calls with connection issues, although they are able to access the Internet.
- Direct user to open up "My Computer"
- Direct user to open up the C: drive
- Tell them to look for the file named "ip.bat" and then double click it to run it
- If this didn't create a txt file on the c: drive called "ip.txt" then you are probably using windows 7. In Windows 7 you will need to right click the file and tell them to run the file as administrator
- Now tell them to open the "ip.txt" file and then request any information from an "ipconfig /all" command that you might possibly want.
Tip for success
Make sure the ip.bat file is on the computer when you send them out for deployment. That or you can create a policy that will make sure that file is placed on the computer.
If you want to go farther, you can put the file in the startup folder on Windows XP computers and it will generate a new copy of the ip.txt file every time the user logs on. This will take another step off the entire process.
HTML standards will lead to flexible web browsing
Posted by: David
Why do we need HTML standards?
HTML 5 is being introduced as a way to better organize the way the web is coded and performs. If we go without standards we are going to have slowly developing web innovations and innovations that are less flexible.
How do HTML standards make web browsing more flexibile?
If you have ever used an iPhone, iPod Touch or plan on using an iPad you will know exactly why you want a more flexible web. You get no flash player support with the Apple products. While it wouldn't be much trouble for a big company like Adobe to design a way for the iPhone to display flash content, Apple simply isn't letting it happen.
Other phone's haven't had the ability to play flash content until lately. Adobe has been working hard to give everyone as much content available on their phone as well as their PC. Just because you are on a phone or portable device shouldn't mean you need a portable Internet. You pay $30 a month of a data plan, you should be allowed to view all of the data you please.
Now, to the question of how standards will make the web browsing more flexible. The standards will make the web more flexible because unfortunately for Adobe, flash will soon be replaced with the abilities of HTML. Originally Flash was made to do things that the web had a really hard time doing, and having an easy way to create and publish such things. As the abilities and intellects behind web design adapt and use new standards, the strengths of flash will be all but obsolete.
There are many technologies that are capable of performing similar to some of the capabilities of Flash. Web video from sites like YouTube may no longer have to be streamed through flash, but brought to you directly through your web browser, and not a plugin.
Benefits of a flexible web
- All content available on all media. (people can still develop for certain browsers if they wish!)
- Less hassle for developers on all sides. Mobile OS developers and web designers have less to worry about
- It will probably be faster. Why wait for a plugin to load when your browser already has the capability?
- No more Silverlight. Very few people use this. 80% of the computers on our network don't have it on them.
- No more Flash. While I like Flash, we will all be better off without it in the long run. It doesn't make sense to use anything third party to show something on a website.
How do I use the old Windows Search?
Posted by: David
Where did your old Windows Search go?
The old Windows Search was replaced in a patch a while ago. If you have Windows XP and you are fully up to date you probably have notice your little dog pal hasn't been showing up recently when you've been trying to search for your files. The new system doesn't actually scan your computer like the old search does. Instead, the new search scans your computer for you even when you don't want it to (slowing your computer down) and when you search for a file it goes through what it knows your computer has instead of what might be on your computer now.
That actually increases the speed of your search, but what if you just accidentally misplaced a file a second ago and you can't find it with the new search. Well, use the old faithful search. It is still there.
How do I get to the old search?
- In windows, you may notice the icon in your system tray. If your computer is running slow and you hover over this icon and it says indexing, you can stop it.
- Now, to get to your old search you can go to hover over the start button and right click it and select Explore.
- Now when you have the explorer up, you can hit the search button at the top of the explorer. This will bring up the nasty new search.
- From here, in the new search area use the scroll box to scroll down to the bottom of it, and you can see your old search companion dog! And beside him it says to click there to use the old search companion!
- Once you have clicked to use the old search companion you will be familiar with the search and probably more likely to find your files you just recently lost!
Building a “curved” table with php, mysql and html
Posted by: David
http://www.sitepoint.com/graphics/table3.gif
Why build a "curved" table
Many web designers like to build these "curved" tables in order to make their websites more aesthetically appealing. The tables aren't really curved obviously, but you can alter their contents to make them appear that way.
How to build a "curved" table
It is really simple. Your easiest solution if you are just going to make one out of HTML is to go to THIS LINK and follow that guide. If you are familiar with some web design and just haven't done this before I will save you some time and break it down in slow mode right now.
- Open up an image editing software.
- Create a 40x40 file (if you want a table with a 20px turn).
- Make sure the background is transparent.
- In the center of the file create a circle with the color of your table and extend it to the edge of your file working area.
- Crop the file into 4 separate files. You will want each corner of the circle saved into its own file.
- Save the corners of the circle, and then open up your HTML editor
- The first <td> tag in the first row of your table will need to have the top left circle image in it with the <img> tag. Since you are using a 20x20 image, set the <td width=20 height=20>.
- The next <td> tag in your first row of the table should be empty and only include a colspan option equalling the amount of columns you have in your table without the two edges. (N-2 = Number of columns - 2 curved columns).
- The last <td> tag in your first row of the table should have the top right circle image in it with the <img> tag.Since you are using a 20x20 image, set the <td width=20 height=20>.
- For all of the rows that will contain your information start with a <td> tag with a width of 20 and the bgcolor to match that of your curved column image. Also end the row with the exact same tag with the width of 20.
- Repeat steps 7-9 but with the respective images for the bottom.
- Publish it and make sure you tagged your table correctly.
How do I build a "curved" table with a loop using php and mysql?
Ok, now you have to pay attention. This is not quite nearly as easy.
Start by doing the usual and creating your database connection, and running your query and saving it to a variable, I use $r (standing for results).
Start by building the first row of your table.
echo '<table><tr bgcolor="#B6E6E7"><td width="20" height="20"><img src="topleft.png" /></td><td colspan="2"></td><img src="topright.png" /></td></tr>';
Now that you have the first row of your table you can begin your loop with your query. I have my loop set up to check if the row is odd or even in number that way to create a table with different alternating colors for each row.
$i = 1;
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($r)) { // LOOP THROUGH QUERY RESULTS
if ( $i&1 ) {// its an odd result
echo '<tr bgcolor="#B6E6E7"><td width="20"></td><td>'.$row[0].'</td><td>'.$row[1].'</td><td width="20"></td></tr>';
} else { //it's an even results
echo '<tr><td width="20" bgcolor="#B6E6E7"></td><td>'.$row[0].'</td><td>'.$row[1].'</td><td bgcolor="#B6E6E7" width="20"></td></tr>';}
$i ++;
} // END LOOP
Now if you noticed, the even rows had the <tr> tag with a bgcolor instead of the <td> tag. This is because I want those entire rows to match the color of the table corners. The odd rows only had the first and last <td> tags with the bgcolor selected so that it would appear our table was outlined.
The final thing you have to do is finish off your table by essentially doing the same thing you did in the table's first row.
echo '<tr bgcolor="#B6E6E7"><td width="20" height="20"><img src="bottomleft.png" /></td><td colspan="2"></td><img src="bottomright.png" /></td></tr></table>';
I hope at this point you can tell what is going on. The table is done. You can release your query results.
Now you can see something similar to
http://www.sitepoint.com/graphics/table3.gif
But with your data in it and the rows are alternating colors. Simple, yet appealing.