Archive for Computing

External SAS on Dell PowerEdge R730 (with Dell PowerVault MD1200)

September 4, 2025 Computing Comments Off on External SAS on Dell PowerEdge R730 (with Dell PowerVault MD1200)

Some other day of work, I moved my idle server set to office so that they get being use instead of sitting in the living room collecting dust.

On hand are a Dell H810 and LSI 9285-8e External SAS card, they are to be use for connecting to the Dell PowerVault MD1200 DAS.

I could not get the server to see the cards, not from BIOS, not from Lifecycle Controller, not from the OS, it was not a great experience due to limited work space and other distracted micro tasks….

Took me 2 days on and off to finally Google the manual, turns out the R730 that was idle was a failsafe unit and it only comes with 1 CPU, in that case, PCIe cards can only be use on Raiser 3, which I only tested 1 and 2…

Lesson learnt, RTFM, again, ALWAYS RTFM. (and yes, multitasking different tasks on different fields are really distracting, needs to strongly avoid)

REF:
Dell PowerEdge R730 Owner’s Manual – Expansion card installation guidelines
https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-aw/poweredge-r730/r730_ompublication/expansion-card-installation-guidelines?guid=guid-48fdcedc-e689-4cb6-a83c-7b9ea4e31449&lang=en-us

Office 365 Login error from Windows Server 2016

July 9, 2018 Computing, Support Comments Off on Office 365 Login error from Windows Server 2016

Ok, I really do not understand how and why Microsoft did not fix / let this happens.

As the title, since the default (And only) security settings on a Windows Server 2016 is “HIGH”, that blocks all Office 365 login screen to load.

The solution is adding the required domain to the Trusted Sites in order to get it to work.

The domains to add are:
odc.officeapp.live.com
login.microsoftonline.com

I mean, please, Microsoft, I do expect just a little bit better than that for charging us a kidney on that.

Print Spool service has stop and printer stop working

September 15, 2014 Computing, Support Comments Off on Print Spool service has stop and printer stop working

Print Spool

I came across this problem on at work today.

Printer gone missing and first thing I checked was print spool service and I notice it has been off in service.smc, try re-enable it and it stop itself after a little while…

Turns out there is a cache problem on the spool printer files issue.

Removing files in C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*, restarting “Print Spooler” service solved the problem.

Excel popup issue on opening csv file with extension xls

September 3, 2014 Computing, Development Comments Off on Excel popup issue on opening csv file with extension xls

I am currently working on some files with csv data in a xls file, and Excel popup an alert everytime it tries to open it.

“The file you are trying to open, ‘[filename]’, is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?”

Clicking Yes simply open the file, and No to quit.

This annoying popup is “stealing” focus of windows and gives me problem on my scripts.

A bit of searching comes with a Registy edit to suppress this popup.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Security]
“ExtensionHardening”=dword:00000000

This works with Office 2010 and it solved my problem, kind of…

Link
MSDN Excel 2007 Extension Warning On Opening Excel Workbook from a Web Site: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vsofficedeveloper/archive/2008/03/11/excel-2007-extension-warning.aspx

Downloading youtube video by CLI in Ubuntu

August 11, 2013 Computing, Raspberry Pi Comments Off on Downloading youtube video by CLI in Ubuntu


群星-《寶記正傳Part 1》MV

I came across this song the other day in a local pub with old buddies, so I did a youtube search and turns out it was in youtube, like it so much I think it can go to my video list on my new Nexus 7 FHD.

There are lots of tools to download youtube video, but don’t we just love CLI?

youtube-dl is the tools.

> sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
you will need to make sure it is in the latest version,
> sudo youtube-dl –update

and download with:
> ~/youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGYXp563FKM
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] wGYXp563FKM: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] wGYXp563FKM: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] wGYXp563FKM: Extracting video information
[download] Destination: 群星-《寶記正傳Part 1》MV-wGYXp563FKM.mp4
[download] 100.0% of 149.55MiB at 309.02KiB/s ETA 00:00

I am now enjoying it on my devices!

SPFS.Context menu in Explorer right click menu.

June 3, 2013 Computing Comments Off on SPFS.Context menu in Explorer right click menu.

I am very picking when it comes to my right-click options.

I suddenly notice this “SPFS.Context menu” appears in my right-click options, quick googleing appears that is a leftover for SkyDrive Pro Microsoft Office 2013 preview.

A quick Regedit fixes the problem.

Links
Microsoft Community – what is SPFS. ContextMenu?

3TB Hard Disk cannot be access in Windows 8

April 6, 2013 Computing Comments Off on 3TB Hard Disk cannot be access in Windows 8

Minimus USB 3

I recently obtain a couple Lacie Minimus USB 3 casing from a friend, they were RMA but in great condition, price were very great so yeah I took a couple..

During the Easter holiday as usual I was sick (Flu again) so I have the extra time to do some house keeping, so I decided to clean up a bit on my “Harddisk Mountain”..

Everything went smooth, but I was having problem with one of the 3TB Seagate ST3000DM001 9YN166 with the case, the problem HDD works fine with directly SATA connection to mainboard but not with the case, it does not mount correctly, I cannot even create GPT/MBR nor format it in Windows (All option was grey out), while I have another same HDD (same model and serial, same batch) with the case running just fine.

Took me few hours of Google, which most of the answer were not that related (Mostly about 3TB GPT issue, which of coz not the problem in our case), and finally I came across some post complaining about formatting drives with Acronis TrueImage installed, and Bingo, that seems to be the problem we have.

Long story short, seems Acronis TrueImage is not working well with Windows 8 build-in Disk Management, I will have to add the disk from TrueImage instead of Windows build-in function.

acronis_trueimage_000

acronis_trueimage_001

Launch Acronis True Image, Go to Add new disk, and select the disk (this is also confuse, it was marked as “Unsupported” but it would work, click next and create a GPT disk, follow the screen and finish, and now we are good to go on formatting it under Windows build-in Disk Management.

Anyway when I do my search I came across Lacie support page with Firmware upgrades for the Minimus 3 USB, is always good to update while we can.
Lacie – LaCie Win USB Firmware Updater

HP Lasterjet P2035n on Windows 7 Home Premium

January 16, 2013 Computing Comments Off on HP Lasterjet P2035n on Windows 7 Home Premium

I need to setup a network printers (HP Lasterjet P2035n) at work on Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit)

Went to Devices and Printers. Add a printer, Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer, next, everything went smooth…

Until I try to print a page, the printer keeps on printing until there is no paper in tray, I cannot even cancel the print queue…

A bit of search results me in the page on answers.microsoft.com, seems this is a known problem since 2009, I wonder what HP or Microsoft has been doing for this problem to still exist in 2013?

Anyway the quick solution, after you setup the printer, before you do ANY print job, right click on the Printer > Printer properties > Ports > Untick “Enable bidirectional support” and it should fix the issue.

Links:
Answer.microsoft.com – HP P2035n (network printer) is printing non-stop instead of a single page after upgrade to Win-7 from Vista Home Premium.

Checking TRIM enabled or disabled on Windows.

December 27, 2012 Computing Comments Off on Checking TRIM enabled or disabled on Windows.

Recently I built my new computer set, and I installed a Intel 330 120GB SSD as my OS drive.

I was reminded by many to make sure TRIM command has been enabled to prevent SSD performance degrade, as of many search and report, TRIM was suppose to be enabled by default on Windows 7, anyway just to be sure.

in CMD>
>fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify
DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (enabled)
DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (disabled)

Links
Wikipedia – TRIM
Tom’s hardware – How to enable TRIM

Blocking input when executing AutoHotkey scripts.

November 12, 2012 Computing, Development Comments Off on Blocking input when executing AutoHotkey scripts.

When we are doing some UI automation with AutoHotkeys script, we really would not like other user to be able to move / input which may result in errors.

By using:

BlockInput, on
Sleep, 2000
BlockInput, off

We would be able to block user input while Autohotkey still be able to work with the system (MouseMove, x, y etc)

I thought it works well till B tell me that it was not working on his box, I retested it and no it was not working on the new installed x64 win7 too (I am sure it was working before, on a x32 win7…)

It turns out it was related to UAC in Win7, scripts has to be run with Admin rights to get BlockInput working (it was not documented on the API ref.).

A bit of Google gave me some solutions:

Howtogeek – Add “Run as Administrator” for AutoHotkey Scripts in Windows 7 or Vista

Make the scripts into exe (compile scripts), setup registry to force autohotkey to run as Admin fixes the problem.

Links
Blockinput not working under windows vista

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