To enable logging of all logon/logoff attempts in the Security Event Log:

1. secpol.msc (as administrator)
2. Local Policy > Audit Policy
3. Audit account logon events policy
4. Check both the Success and Failure check boxes.

This happens sometimes. After a server reboot, clients say they get “Error Code: H202 This company file is on another computer, and QuickBooks needs some help connecting” and you find the QuickbooksDB service is stopped. You start it but it just stops with the error “The QuickBooksDB26 service on Local Computer started and then stopped.  Some services stop automatically if they are not in use by other services or programs.”

This is happening because of contention over port 55333. The DNS server and the QuickbooksDB service both want to use it by default. If the DNS Server service starts before the QuickbooksDB service, DNS grabs it and QuickbooksDB doesn’t choose another available port and just stops.

You can manually resolve this by stopping the DNS Server service, then starting the QuickbooksDB service, then starting the DNS Server service.

To fix permanently,

1. Stop the DNS Server and QuickbooksDB services
2. Reserve the port using netsh from an elevated command prompt:
netsh int ipv4 add excludedportrange protocol=udp startport=55333 numberofports=5
3. Start both services

Server 2012 Essentials stopped accepting SSTP connections after automatic certificate renewal using Win-Acme. Found many services weren’t starting.

The fix was to:

1. Via MMC, copy new certificate from Web to Personal.
2. In elevated CMD, go to c:\Program Files\Windows Server\Bin
3. WSSPowerShell.exe
4. Add-WssLocalMachineCert

The process takes a while and may produce errors at the end. However, after it finishes and the server is restarted, all was well.

This was developed using this very helpful blog post:

https://windowsserveressentials.com/2013/04/29/windows-server-2012-essentials-an-error-prevented-the-dashboard-from-opening/

The Oprintware product O’Print is an excellent Airprint printer server for Windows and is well worth its modest price (under $20 as of this writing.) We have installed it at many locations and it’s reliable and well-liked.

Upon initial installation, it runs in fully-functional trial mode for 30 days after which you must enter an activation key purchased from Oprintware. However, their activation mechanism frequently goes down, sometimes for months at a time.

If you find yourself unable to activate the program because of the activation service being unavailable (usually an error 12029,) you can perform the following procedure to reset the trial period for another 30 days during which their activation machine may be back online.

This is not a “hack” in the sense that you should do this to avoid paying for the product. It is well worth its very modest price and the developer deserves being paid for such an excellent product. But it will get you out of a situation where a needed function isn’t working anymore and you have to get it working again.

1. Quit O’Print
2. Delete the following registry keys and their sub-values:
   HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\OPrint
   HKCU\AppEvents\EventLabels\option
3. Delete the following file if it exists:
   C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\settingenv

Now you can re-open OPrint and the 30-day trial will have been reset.

UPDATE: The problem described below seems to have been limited to Outlook using Exchange accounts located on Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange service. Later in the day, the problem resolved itself probably after Microsoft corrected a bug in their Exchange Server. So we stopped performing this fix on client machines pending any further trouble reports. We’ll leave the earlier description & fix below in case it comes up again.

We received multiple reports of Outlook crashing immediately after opening following the installation of a botched Office update from Microsoft. Resolves by rolling back. In command window:

cd “\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun”

officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470

No reboot is required afterward. We have been turning off automatic updating of Office suite after doing this.

A client could not print an image from the Windows 10 Photos app. It displays error about the printer needing configuration with error code 8007007e.

1. Browse to c:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64
2. Search here (and subfolders) for printconfig.dll (you may see several)
3. Copy any one of these to c:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\3

No reboot is required. The next time we opened the Photos app, all was well.

When there are two versions of Office installed, such as 2007 and 365, this will sometimes happen: Every time you open Word 2007, it will pause while it goes through its “configuring” step.

In the registry, navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options

Then add a new DWord called NoReReg and give it a value of 1

YouTube has been rolling out a new design of its home page with large previews and the loss of its familiar and useful layout.

Unfortunately, none of the below works anymore. If something new is discovered, we’ll post it here.

To restore to the old layout, use the F12 key to bring up the PREF cookie and replace its value with this: f5=30&al=en&f1=50000000&f6=8

The above no longer works but this does:

Install a user-agent extension like User-Agent Switcher for Chrome or Firefox

Chrome users:

1. Go to youtube, and on the drop down, you have to hover on “This can read site and change data” when you are on youtube, and select the youtube option. This will make it work just on youtube.
2. On youtube, left click the icon, and go all the way to the bottom, under the ‘Spider / Bot’ options, and there is an option called ‘Googlebot (Google’s Spider)’. Click that and it should work.

Firefox users:

1. Go to youtube and set your user agent to Google Bot
2. Tick ‘Override for Domain’

Windows will try to download the icon for the printer but this often gets stuck because the Microsoft metadata server stops working. You can turn this feature off on the WIndows 10 machine by running the following command in a command window:

Rundll32.exe %SystemRoot%\System32\newdev.dll,DeviceInternetSettingUi

After rebooting, the printer should show fully installed and ready.