Category Archives: software

PuTTY – Network Error: Software caused connection abort

software

Scenario:

You are using PuTTY and you frequently receive the following error:

Solution:

  1. Start Putty
  2. Load your connection settings if you have them saved
  3. Click on “Connection”
  4. On the section that says “Sending of null packets to keep session active”, Changed it to 5 seconds. 300 seconds may be better if network outages are your problem, read below for details.

How do I search for an image with another image in Windows?

software, windows

Question:

How do I search for an image using another image as the criteria?

Answer 1:

There are a few ways. If you are looking for an exact match you can use a program that creates unique hashes based on the contents of the file that will determine with certainty that it is identical. There are many free programs available to do this. Wikipedia lists open source/free duplicate file finders:

Answer 2:

The second method involves using a program that is able to compare two photos possibly of different sizes and estimate whether they are of of the same image. This is called a “reverse image search”. For Windows as of the writing of this article there is a free package called Visipics which can do a reverse image search on your hard drive. Visipics is also reported to work under Linux utilitizing the wine virtualization software. This package can be found here:

Printer goes permanently offline fix

software, windows, ,

Scenario:

Whenever you print documents in Windows 8 or Windows 10 they do not print and the printer appears Offline.

Solution:

Often times the printer will go offline and not come back online until you reboot.  Microsoft points to the vendor drivers as the cause and the vendor usually point a Microsoft as the cause.

A temporary work around is to restart the print spooler service.  This will save you from having to reboot.  To restart the print spooler follow these steps:

  1. Open “Computer Management”
  2. In the “Computer Management” window click “Computer Management->->Services and Applications->Services”.
  3. Right click on “Print Spooler” and choose “Restart”.

Shortcut to clear the terminal window in Linux

linux, software, , , ,

Scenario:

You want a command line option to clear the terminal.

Solution:

Clearing the terminal window is highly dependant on what terminal software you’re using. You can create an alias that rights a clear code out that most terminals should support. The alias will allow you to map it to a command line “cls”.

Steps:

  1. Edit the “~/.bashrc” file
  2. Add the following line: 
    alias cls="echo -ne '\033c'"
  3. Save the file. You may need to start a new terminal session for this to take effect.

Alternate Method for a Mac running OSX (Unix):

OSX supports a command called “reset”. Using this should clear the terminal window.

How do I start Internet Explorer in safe mode (both 32-bit and 64-bit)

internet explorer, software, windows, ,

Scenario:

You want to start Internet Explorer in safe mode with no-addons. You may want to do this in order to see if an add-on or extension is causing issues with your browser.

Solution:

Depending on your version of Windows you could be running either 32-bit or 64-bit Internet Explorer (or you may want to run 32-bit IE on 64-bit Windows). Below I will include both all paths.

32-bit IE on 64-bit Windows

  1. Press Windows Key+R to bring up the run dialog
  2. Enter this (with quotes as listed) “C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” -extoff

64-bit IE on 64-bit Windows

  1. Press Windows Key+R to bring up the run dialog
  2. Enter this (with quotes as listed) “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” -extoff

32-bit IE on 32-bit Windows

  1. Press Windows Key+R to bring up the run dialog
  2. Enter this (with quotes as listed) “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” -extoff

How do I stop Windows 8 and/or Windows 10 from restarting to install updates?

software, windows, , , , ,

Scenario:

Windows 8/10 has initiated the process to install patches and updates but needs to restart. You will receive a banner message box with text such as this:

Restart in 14 minutes, 59 seconds

Your PC needs to restart to finish installing important updates.  If you've already saved everything, you can restart now.  Otherwise, you should take a moment to save your work.

A restart is needed

To finish installing important updates, you need to restart your PC.  If you've already saved everything, you can restart now.  Otherwise, you should take a moment to save your work.  Your PC will automatically restart the next time you sign in.

Solution:

You can use the group policy editor to disable this behavior (you will still have to restart at some point to finish installing patches but it won’t happen automatically). Steps for professional and higher versions of Windows that have the group policy editor included:

  1. Open epedit.msc
  2. Navigate to “Local Computer Policy”->”Computer Configuration”->”Administrative Templates”->”Windows Components”->”Windows Update”
  3. Click on the “No auto-restart with logged on users” policy and change it to “enabled“

Steps for home versions of Windows that don’t have the group policy editor.

  1. Open the registry editor, e.g. start “regedit”.
  2. Navigate to KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
  3. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value and name it NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers. Set the value to “1” (with no quotes).
  4. Reboot the computer after you have entered this.

Google update installation failed with error 0x80070057

google, software, , ,

Scenario:

You’re trying to install Google Chrome onto a Windows machine and you receive the following error message:

Google update installation failed with error 0x80070057

Solution:

Chrome users a ClickOnce technology to deploy Chrome in most instances. Sometimes this can cause issues. Google also offers a direct MSI (Microsoft Software Installer) installation that is geared towards businesses and may help alleviate this error (the MSI allows business to deploy to all their workstations over a Windows network, it can also be installed standalone which is what we will do). The MSI installer can be found on Google’s site at this location:

  • https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/browser/

How to Activate a Chrome Extension that is not from the Chrome Web Store

google, software, , , ,

Scenario:

You want to active a “crx” extension that is not from the Chrome Web Store and Chrome tells you that “Extensions, apps, and user scripts can only be added from the Chrome Web Store”.

Solution:

The first thing to note is that CRX file is a ZIP file with a different extension. You can either open it with a zip program (like 7-zip) or rename it and change the CRX extension to ZIP and then use your operating system to get the files. Here are some basic steps:

  1. Unzip the contents of the CRX file to a directory anywhere (change the CRX extension to ZIP to make this easier if you like).
  2. Inside Chrome, go to settings then to extensions, then click “Load unpacked extension” and choose the directory you placed the unzipped files in.