Technology Insights

Internet Explorer Won’t Launch, Need To Update Windows With Windows Update Service

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Earlier this I had an interesting problem where Internet Explorer would not launch all the way on a friends computer. When the IE application was clicked on it would flash on the screen and then close immediately. I believe there was either some form of virus left on the computer that was closing Internet Explorer or that the upgrade I had just performed of IE6 to IE7 was causing a different issue. My initial plan was to continue upgrading Windows XP on this friends computer but I could not do this on the Windows Update site without Internet Explorer. Below is a work around if your Internet Explorer is not functioning properly and you would like to try to apply Windows patches from the Windows Update site anyway.

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Windows XP: Clear Windows Update Cache, Purge Windows Updates Cache

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A customer laptops in my friends computer shop had some major issues today. One of the major issues on this Windows XP laptop was the fact that Service Pack 3 would not install so after fixing various other things I figured it would be best to clear the Windows Updates cache and then attempt to install the patches including SP3 again. Below is information on stopping the Windows Updates service,  purging the Windows Updates cache, and then restarting the Windows Updates service.

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Windows XP Task Manager Missing Tabs, No Processes, Performance, Networking, or Users Tabs

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I was troubleshooting a Windows XP computer that had been brought in to my friends computer shop this afternoon and noticed something odd going on with the Windows Task Manager. The computer had multiple issues including various viruses, Norton Internet Security installed, hadn’t been upgraded or patched for over a year, and numerous other items going wrong. I will say that Norton Internet Security is probably the worst antivirus software I have ever come across because not only does it take over every aspect of your computer but on top of that it doesn’t even save your computer from getting infected by viruses. After getting the computer in working shape by removing Norton Internet Security and beginning the installation of Windows XP patches I launched Windows Task Manager to view something and when I did the list of running applications displayed but I could not click other tabs that normally appear at the top of the Task Manager. Below I display an image of what the Windows Task Manager looked like and how I easily resolved the issue.

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RubyGems ERROR: Error Installing Cucumber, hoe Requires RubyGems version 1.3.1

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While creating a development environment for a Ruby project earlier I ran into an error installing some of the gems required by the project. I realized that I had installed an older version of RubyGems which was causing problems with some of the gem dependents that needed to be installed. Below I list one of the examples of the errors I was running into and how I resolved the issue.

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How To Convert .WRF Files To .WMV, AVI, MP4, XVID, or MPEG

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Someone sent me a WebEx webcast they wanted me to view this afternoon. The file had a .WRF file ending which stands for WebEx Recording Format which is one of the two file formats that WebEx webcasts are saved as. The other format that WebEx files are saved as is the ARF or WebEx Advanced Recording Format. Typically you could simply download the WebEx Player available by clicking here however you may want to convert this video, which requires the WebEx Recording Editor, to provide to others in a format they can view without having to install an application. It took me awhile to figure out how to convert this file properly since I only seemed to be able to find the older WebEx Editor versions. I finally signed up for a trial account and was able to download version 3 of the WebEx Recording Editor which allowed me to convert to WMV format and from that I was able to convert to any other video format including AVI, MP4, XVID, and MPEG. Follow the directions below to first convert the .WRF to .WMV and then the second set of directions if you want to convert to another video format.