Windows • Archives • Page 9 of 12 Technically Easy

Restart or Shutdown Windows from a Batch File

April 15, 2009 by Paul Salmon

Some time ago I wrote a post title Automating Computer Maintenance where I talked about creating batch files to execute some anti-virus, anti-spyware and a defrag application on a computer. The batch files can then be scheduled to run on a computer at a specific time to ensure that regular maintenance is performed without having a user remembering to do it.

After the post, I received e-mails about having the batch files also shutdown the computer once the maintenance was completed. The good news is that getting a batch file to shutdown, or even just restart, a computer running Windows is very easy to do. Let’s look at how this is done.

Windows Vista Freezing After Log On

April 8, 2009 by Paul Salmon

I recently had an issue with my laptop. For some reason when Vista loaded, I was able to log on, but then it would stay on the Welcome screen. While I couldn’t see anything on the screen, I did notice that there was a lot of hard drive activity, so I knew that something was executing on the system. A funny thing is that when I pressed CTRL+ALT+DEL to try and restart, Vista would instead continue to load and I was able to view my desktop.

After doing a quick search online, I couldn’t find a solution to my problem, so I began to try various things to try and find the problem. After some testing I did manage to correct the issue and Vista no longer hangs at the Welcome screen. I’ll explain the process I used to solve this problem.

Fix: Audiodg.exe High CPU Usage

June 23, 2017March 18, 2009 by Paul Salmon

I recently had a problem when playing movies through iTunes on a laptop. At various parts of the movie, the entire laptop would become extremely slow, causing the movie to sputter. This happened at infrequent intervals. The laptop has a dual core 1.6Ghz and 2GB of RAM, so I new it was more than capable … Read more

How to Connect to a Network Printer in Windows XP

July 13, 2010November 21, 2008 by Paul Salmon

For most home users it is very easy to connect to a printer. Older printers are usually connected to the parallel port, while the new printers are connected to the USB port. Once the printer is connected and drivers loaded you can easily select the printer from the list and begin printing.

For those on a network that have printers you can use, you have to take different steps to connect to the printers. While the steps to connect to a network printer are different than connecting to a local print, they aren’t complex and can be performed very easily.

What are Batch Files?

October 23, 2008October 22, 2008 by Paul Salmon

I recently was in charge of creating a silent install for an application. While many installations include a silent option, this one was a bit different. I had to also run other installs, as well as import registry settings, and also copy files.

To help me with this task I used a batch file that was easily able to handle everything I needed. If you haven’t used batch files before, then this post will explain what they are and how they can be used.

How to Map a Hard Drive to a Directory

October 27, 2010June 13, 2008 by Paul Salmon

In my last post I mentioned that I have been exploring the option of backing up my data online. In that post I mentioned two services, Carbonite and Mozy. Although both were similar, Mozy was the only service that could backup data located on an external hard drive. During my test with Carbonite, I managed … Read more

How To Open Microsoft Office 2007 Documents in Earlier Versions

August 30, 2011June 6, 2008 by Paul Salmon

I recently ran into an issue with an e-mail attachment. The extension of the attachment was .xlsx, which made me believe that it was a Microsoft Excel document. I saved the document to the local hard drive and attempted to open it, but was dismayed to find that no application was associated with it.

After looking online to find the application associated with the extension I found out that it was indeed an Excel file for Microsoft Office 2007. I had Office 2000 installed, which explains why I couldn’t open it. After some more research I found out that there is a tool you can download and install that will allow older versions of the Office tools to open files from newer versions.

Fix: Internet Explorer Opens a Blank Window

October 29, 2009April 30, 2008 by Paul Salmon

I recently was informed of someone having an issue with Internet Explorer. The problem happened when they clicked on a link that opened a new browser window. Once the new window was opened, the new Web page was not requested and the browser window remained blank.

After some quick searching, I came across a fix that was easy to perform and fixed the issue. I explain how to perform the fix in this post.