Sharepoint - The following file(s) have been blocked by the administrator

Sharepoint blocks a list of file extentions when you are trying to upload them to a Document Library. If you know that the files are safe then you can take the extention from the list.

To do that open your Sharepoint Central Administration and go to Security, Define Blocked File Types and delete the extention you want to be able to upload.

And that's it.

Adding PPA repositories in Ubuntu 10.04

There is a very simple way to do so. Just open a terminal console and type in


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nameOfThePPA

And that's it.

Printer Error on XP. Operation couldnt be completed.

Damn, it seem like all printers are bound to give me hard times lately. I had a XP machine refusing to print. I tried something that I have heard years ago about changing to RAW from IMF.

To do that open "Printer and Faxes", right click the printer in question, open the "Advance" window. Go to "Print Processor" and choose "RAW" rathen than "IMF" and for good measure select "Print direct to printer".

And that was it! ARGG!

windows cannot connect to the printer.operation could not be completed (error 0x0000000d)

I had a shocking of a problem the other day with two machines. One XP running a shared printer and one with Vista. The Vista couldn't finish communicating with the printer on the XP machine and it was crashing with hips of errors (Printer spooler not working, Error 0000 something etc).

I was on my end of the rope when i stumbled upon this web site

http://www.howtonetworking.com/print/cleanspooler.htm

I downloaded the file and run it on the Vista machine. It failed at the start because the program was made for earliest versions of Win NT. BUT....I opened the properties of the .exe and set the combatibility to XP SP2. It runned like a charm.

I accepted ALL the deletions of printers, monitors, drivers etc that the program found and after a quick reboot i was able to connect to the shared printer and install it localy. Beauty!

Using Evolution with Exchange 2010

I have tried to run evolution with Exchange server but for one reason it was bringing up an error when it was refreshing the folders from the server. I tried everything but with no luck. Fianlly i stumble across a blog that gave me a solution to the problem.

The blog was from Scratch Uncle Gurrier's Back (he he) and the address is: http://gurrier.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/using-evolution-with-exchange-2007/

The solution made the connection to the exchange server more stable (still gives me a few drop outs but not as before).

I would like to thank Gurrier for saving me a lot of time and frustration.

How to change logo on the start menu button on Ubuntu

This is a very easy way to change the logo on your menu start button

1) Open gconf-editor
2) navigate to the apps/panel/objects
3) Click each entry until you find one that has the entry "Main Menu" in its tooltip field.
4) Click on Custom_icon
5) Right click on it and select "Edit key"
6) in the Value field, enter the path where your new logo will be.
7) Click OK to save changes.

Your new logo will appear straight away.

Ubuntu 10.04 saved my laptop!

Ah yes, a new version of Ubuntu is out (10.04) with the new one coming on October (if I remember correctly). Well it was time for me to try the new version out, since I love Linux and I can’t wait to tinker with every new version coming out.

I started by finding an old desktop computer. As I was short of one I thought to try an old laptop. A Travelmate 4230 to be exact. It had Vista on it and it was practically unusable after all the updates and patched M$ had brought out.

To be honest I was a bit sceptical of using a laptop, since the first time I used Linux was on a EeePC 701 and had major problems with the camera, mic and sound, but I said ‘’what the heck; let’s try it’’

I downloaded the iso image from http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso and saved it to my HDD. Then I took an old 2GB USB flash drive and downloaded the Unetbootin from http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/.

Plugged it into the USB port of the laptop, pressed F2 at the start and went to the Booting option. From here it was pretty easy. Select the first boot option to be the USB drive and save.

Surely enough the laptop found the drive and started installing Ubuntu. I must say when it finished installing and load up for the first time I was a bit, emmmm, skeptical about the new themes. The major change is that the control buttons of the window (close, minimize, maximize) it’s now on the left hand side just like a Mac. I really don’t like that but that’s only me.

I decided to alter the default themes with some great ones I found on the internet to make it more…..personal. I used the following themes:

Window borders
Alluminium Alloy Smog from gnome-look.org

Icons
Buuf 2.30 from gnome-look.org

After all the updates and such I started benchmarking it. I was amazed. That old computer with the 1GB memory and a shared video memory, could start MUCH faster than a windows vista and almost as fast as a Win 7 64 bit computer. I couldn’t believe it. I was so thrilled.

Wireless network was working, Ethernet was working, Bluetooth the same. Had a few issues with the edge scrolling on the touchpad but nothing that a mouse can’t fix. The most problems that I had was with propriety programs like the Adobe flash player and Firefox. I tried 3 times to install it. It was saying it was installed but I couldn’t see the flash movie. On the third time it worked. I don’t know why.

I was able to install a network photocopier with the inbuilt drivers and run test prints. That was a bit tricky to find the appropriate drivers from the list (since the model wasn’t there) but a try-and-fail tactic worked. I do realize that’s very difficult to include drivers for all printers if the company that makes the printers does not release them in any other form rather than binary for Windows.

I installed PlayOnLinux and tried to install Microsoft Office 2003 on it. It did install AND downloaded the .NET Framework files from the internet automatically. I run Word for couple of times with no problems. Outlook was launching but couldn’t connect to the mailbox and it was closing down. Couple of hours later when I retried, none of the three applications would work (Even after numerous resets). Well still is a big step ahead on trying to run Windows binaries on Linux. Last time I tried with Wine only it wouldn’t load the setup.exe at all.

I even was able to connect to an Exchange Server 2010 with Evolution (You need to download the MAPI for Exchange packet from the Synaptic Package Manager).

By putting Ubuntu on the laptop, I think, it was given another 2-3 years of life with proper maintenance (cleaning case, not rough handling etc). Not bad for a free OS!

All in all the new version of Ubuntu is a step better than the previous one. I can’t wait for the next release. And as always, a great thank you to the people behind the Ubuntu project and the Gnome project. You guys rock!

AutoCAD LT 2011 multiple windows problem

I had an issue the other day with AutoCAD LT 2011. All of a sudden when you opening multiple windows under Windows 7, it didn't group them as it used to do but it was opening different windows.

I searched high and low for a solution but i couldn't find anything when by chance I found out two variables that needed to change to make it work.

Type in TASKBAR and give value 0, and SDI and give value 0. That fixed the problem.

nvlddmkm display driver stopped responding

I had a problem with my NVIDIA drivers, blanking my screen and turning my monitor off while some times I would get the error message the driver stopped responding and was restarted or something.

I tried everything to no end. At the end I tried two things that seemed to help the matter.

First I went into the NVIDIA control panel in the 3D settings and changed in the Global settings the Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration setting to Single display performance mode. That helped a bit when I was minimizing and maximizing windows, the driver was slowing down but wasn’t crashing.

Second, after a nice hard crash, I went into BIOS and change the frequency of the memory sticks to the lowest I could get, which it was 667MHz. That seemed to stabilize the system a bit more.

So far no crash, but hey you never know. LOL.

UPDATE:
Those settings didn't work at all. Screen still turning off when the error appearing. I had to use an older version of the NVIDIA drivers (186.18) to be able to actually recover from the error. Now the screen does come back on with out freezing the whole system. Is not a solution per se, but it's something. Research is still going on to find a defenetely solution.

AutoCAD 2010 LT crashes on Windows 7 32 bit

Lately i have seen that AutoCAD 2010 LT crashes all the time on computers having Win7 32 bit editions but not in the 64 bit editions. Apparently it has something to do with memory allocation. I had searched high and low for an answer with not much of luck, untill a post in Autodesk's web site pointed to a (logical) solution.

It seems that having the AERO theme on causes AutoCAD LT to crash. By changing to Windows Basic theme the problem seems to go away.

Thank you to all the guys for that solution.

AutoCAD 2010 mtext doesn't show anything when I type

Arggg... And i thought Micro$oft had problems. Nope! Autodesk is as bad as them. The other day i had a call about an AutoCAD 2010 misbehaving. The problem was that the mtext editor wasn't showing anything typed in but could delete. Also i was getting the Undefined something 0.

I tried mtexted set to oldeditor; nothing. I re-installed AutoCAD; nothing. I even created another user and after checking that the program word, i copied all profile files to the other account. Yup you guest it; NOTHING!

I was pulling my hair out. What was the problem. I was starting to play around with settings, and my eye caught the AUTOcaps setting on the mtext dialog box; it was ticked.

I unticked it and it worked! I was amazed! I couln't belive it.

So there you go folks, Autodesk is as bad as Micro$oft sometimes. :-)