Speaking of anxiety: yesterday, the CEO’s e-mail stopped working. I am the IT department. After an hour with no success during the late afternoon, I took his computer home (it’s a laptop) and virus scanned and virus updated, to no avail.
Today I re-installed Office and updated all the service packs. No go. Then I hit the Microsoft web site. Under the software “Outlook 2000″, the keywords “not responding” have pages and pages of hits. I tried starting up with the preview pane off. No go. Then I got aggressive and tried the next close match to the problem description, and deleted all the Outlook registry keys and reinstalled (again).
It wasn’t until after I deleted the keys that I thought, “Bad Word! What’s going to happen to his e-mail?” Fortunately, the .pst file was intact and the keys were not relevent. It took forever for Outlook to come up, but it did. The CEO can send and read mail again.
He plugs the computer right into the wall, and power in our building is VERY erratic. I’m guessing it was an inopportune “spike.”
Add a small battery backup unit - probably around $80, usually with pretty good voltage regulators built in.
Yeah, there’s one sitting in his office waiting to be connected right now.
Ah, computers. I am getting to the point I don’t let my girls use the PC on the internet, they manage to get spyware gallore. I do what I can to prevent it such as firefox, adware software, etc. Now I tell them to use the Old Mac computer for internet browsing, it is impervious to adware and .exe files.
Your computer skills are impressive, to say the least, PC’s are no easy beasts to tame.
I’m the same way, Trail Seeker. The kids can only surf online if I am present and I have banned several web sites because of all the gunk that clogs up my hard drive because of them. The best program to get rid of them, when adaware and your firewall have failed, is Hijack This. BUT, you have to have a good sense of what is supposed to be running so you don’t accidentally delete something important.
Ann, you are, my dear, a genius. How did you know that my Outlook just stopped working and I really, really needed your help?
I’ve tried all the other stuff, and even pulled up a bunch of articles on the Office web site, but didn’t come across the “delete the registry” idea.
I may not have to shoot this laptop after all.
Next time I’m down your way, I owe you a po’boy.
[blush] Are you Randy’s Craig, or Mormon Craig?
Thanks for the kind words. The keys live in two places. The instructions are in Knowledge base article number 277019
This would be Mormon Craig. Thanks for the link to the article, I’ll dig into that once I finish helping our RS Prez load her moving van.
Interesting choice of name qualifier - there was a time that one could google me by first and last name and I would show up several times on the first page. But, alas, there are now so many people on the web with my name that I’m lost in the shuffle.
However, if you tack on “Mormon” to my name, I’m back to top ranking. So - in keeping with your entry about identities - perhaps we are who we google to be.
I think of you so often, MC! (That would be your rap name, I think.) Hurry back to town.