Joe Boy

Force a computer to install Windows 11?

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Windows 11 have been out for a few months now and Microsoft have made it very clear that they want to ensure you not only use a Microsoft to help (track) assist you with targeted advertising and content, but to make things more secure with the new security chip called TPM 2.0. This week they have now offered a work around to get Windows 11 on a computer that does not have this security chip. Should you upgrade and why would Microsoft change its mind?

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Joe Boy

Network Share error Invalid Handle after KB4480970 patch

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So three calls at 7:00am with clients that cant access their quickbooks and a client from the Department of Transportation explaining that all their water tables and plans are gone. After quick review we find that all network shares on the network are getting an error of Invalid Handle. Reboot both the fileserver and the workstation creates no improvement. HMMM not good. Wait it is Wednesday!!! That mean Microsoft tried to improve your computer again and most likely messed something up.

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Windows 10 patch wiped my files
Joe Boy

Windows 10 patch wiped out my documents!!!

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Ok so imagine you turn on your computer and Microsoft does another one of their normal patches and when you go to your do your work you notice all the files and folders in the my documents folders are gone.  This is a reality for a number of Windows 10 users this week.  In a number of forum posts on Microsoft community site, there were people complaining about the Windows 10 1809 update patch and that it deleted all their documents.  People were not affected if they happen to be using the one drive service but anyone else lost all their work.  A few people got their stuff back because they had a working backing.  (reminder to think about if you have a good working backup like YCS Backup)  Other just lost all their work.

Microsoft then decided to stop the update and request people affected to call them directly.  Microsoft made a post stating; “Microsoft has pulled Windows 10 version 1809 from the Software download page, Windows update and update assistant as of today. ” They explained they have paused the rollout of Windows 10 October 2018 Update 1809 for all users they investigate isolated reports of users missing some files after updating. Lucky for most users Microsoft did not add this update to the automatic push system yet. The only people affected are those that checked for new updates and ran the new patch.  Some people did receive errors just trying to install the update.  This was do to using an Intel Display adapter.  Intel already released a fix for their driver to ensure it will install. But we are telling people to wait and not risk your data by installing this update.

It seems the error all comes down to a group policy that removes a profile that are older than a specified number of days on a system after restart.  Microsoft will not confirm this but so far many system admins are claiming that if you disable or set as not configured the group policy you are able to run the patch and not loose all your stuff.  As far as for YCS, we are telling our clients not to run thew new patch until it is repaired and if you have any question be sure to call the office at 407-826-0810 and ask for Joe Boy.  We will be happy to assist you with a proper backup system and to check to ensure you are not running this update at this time.

Joe Boy

Why we don’t always suggest cloud services

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Today I was forwarded a story from a friend. This is one of those that really makes you think about cloud services. A staff person from a software company with roughly 100-150 employees was pulling a joke on a friend and because of his actions the company he works for lost access to their files and emails for over three days. So to start a guy like to play jokes on his friend. His friend is an app developer on the android framework and had just released an app. The guy purchases the app and make a copy of it and then immediately refunds the app. THen he messages his friends with a copy of his own apps saying look what I got online for free. Pretty lame joke but for a techie it is kinda funny. But this does break google’s terms of agreement with the guy pulling the prank.

So google bans the access that this guy has to his account. He can log in but is not allowed to do anything. The only issue is that his account is a company account so google banned access to all the accounts in that domain. (ie, The entire company) That means the staff can no longer access their google drive account and can’t access their documents on the cloud. To make matters worse anyone that used their personal google account to be the recovery email for their company account also got banned for their personal account. Which mean mothers could not get notifications from their schools and it interferred with peoples personal business.

Now dont get me wrong, if you do bad things on gmail or other google mail services I want them to ban you, but to ban the entire company makes for a completely different thing. Also their IT department has been unable to get anyone from google to help since they were banned for breaking the Terms of Agreement. So here is what we at YCS can take from this story… First if you ever use a cloud service you should still retain the acess to your files or a backup of those files no matter what. If you use a cloud service for email be sure that you use a service that will not punish all accounts for the actions of one. Microsoft 365 exchange for example will only stop the account that is causing the problem and not the entire domain.

So what do we suggest. If you are going to use a cloud based service just be sure you have a backup of your files somewhere else. Even if you use a syning service like dropbox it is always a good idea to have a backup of those same files with a different company or on your own hardware. Nothing beats having your stuff on your own hardware. We run email on our servers as well. But if you decide to use YCS email services or MS exchange or any other service just ask your IT professional to go over the differences and ask for suggestions. We are always able to provide answers to your questions and help design a good IT infrustructure for your business that will have redunant ways to get to your data just in case something were to fail. You can reach one of our techs at 407-826-0810.

Place Value Chart from Ones to Decillions
Joe Boy

Place Values for my six year old.

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My son is fun and at six years old finds the most odd items interesting.  Case in point is numbers.  Ever since he was little he would tell me he loved me 1 times and I will tell him well I love you ten times.  Then he would retort then I love you one hundred times and we would go back and forth each week we would learn and add a new place value to our fun equation.  Tiberius did not know he was learning.  Read more

Joe Boy

How to move Sticky Notes from your computer.

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Well I had a client that used Sticky Notes religiously and had thousands of notes.  At least it looks like thousands all over her screen.  They really kept her organized so I wanted to ensure we kept them when we upgraded her computer.

The good news is that all the data from Sticky Notes and the location info and which ones are on top are stored in one small file.  You can locate that file by using any explorer windows and typing %AppData%\Microsoft\Sticky Notes in the address bar.  And when you press enter you will see a single file that should be call StickyNotes.snt.  So now just backup the file and copy it to your new computer in the same spot.  Oh and this is important.  You must delete the file on the new computer first and then copy the new one in place. There is no way to merge the file together with just a file copy.

Hope that helps all those people who are going crazy trying to save their Sticky Notes and if you have other computer issues that we should cover here or if you need to hire a professional just call Your Computer Solutions Inc. at 407-826-0810 or email Joseph Boy at joeboy@yctp.com.

Joe Boy

Object reference not set to an instance of an object in ACT!

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For those that use the Sage ACT! products you are in with a select group of contact management.  Either you have sales team or run a donation business, but either way most people are using very little of this robust product.  Part of the reason why is that when the product has an issue the development team wants to wait for another update to fix it.  Case in point is the error listed as “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”.  This error happen for a number of different reasons in a number of different versions of ACT! The issue is that it is a general error and does not do a good job of describing the problem.

I started to get the error when working with smart tasks.  I wanted to have a task run after the user changed a date field.  It ran fine for a few years and after an upgrade to a brand new version of ACT!  wow pops up the error: “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”  After three months worth of research and called ACT! and other ACT! consultants I was ready to just bang my head against a wall.

Wait there is more!  I have a solution!!

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Joe Boy

A Guide for Safe Trick or Treating

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Each year young children go out to people’s homes to celebrate Halloween and receive sweets while showing off their creative costumes.  Whether you have children or not, please keep in mind all those out there out there in the streets visiting homes.  We are providing the following guide for safe Trick or Treating so that everyone can enjoy a safe Halloween.

A parent or responsible adult should always accompany young children during their neighborhood rounds. Even if you know the neighborhood well there are a number of new persons both adult and children that you may not know. Read more

Brian Smith

Are you being ‘Forced’ to upgrade to Windows 10?

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It seems that the people at Microsoft are hell bent on having their newest version of OS on as many computers as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that the new Windows 10 software will be a hit in due time. Already there are many people using Windows 10 that are singing their praises and are enjoying the new look and feel of the OS. However, let me point out that far and wide these are individual users and not the normal office environment. The business world is not the place to make hasty upgrades in software when we really do not know how compatible the OS will be with other client specific software and hardware. Read more

Cloud service in Office 365
Joe Boy

How to add Dropbox and Google Drive to Office 365

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Using Droxbox in Office 365

If you have been using office 365 you would have noticed now it is designed to seamlessly work wtih Microsoft SkyDrive Cloud Storage service. So when you click on Open or Save As you get to see a nice logo for SkyDrive and access the Cloud Storage directly. But when you go to Add a Place you can only find Microsoft Services and not services like Dropbox and Google Drive. You can still browse to your dropbox or google drive by searching your hard drive for it, but why not make it easy. Microsoft isn’t going to include access to competing services right out of the box, but that does not mean you are not able to add it yourself. Read more