Ran into an instance of the Print Spooler service (spoolsv.exe) crashing continuously on a few machines. This seemed to be tied to a recent update and a particular printer. Early speculation pointed to the BrPrint print processor used by Brother printers and the Dell 1700. Since the Print Spooler was crashing, I was unable to delete printers, adjust drivers, or adjust the … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2008
Disable Firefox’s ‘Set as Desktop Background’ option
For a kiosk setup, it can be a bit disruptive for users to be changing the Windows desktop wallpaper. They might change it to something offensive, hard to read, or simply unprofessional. This function can be disabled for most applications through group policy, but Firefox still allows a hole. In Firefox, if you right-click on an image the context menu offers 'Set as Desktop … [Read more...]
Ultra VNC and the invisible Office 2007 Office Button
When using VNC to remote control a machine with Office 2007 you may notice that the Office Button menu (top-left corner, main menu) does not display when using VNC. I gather this is because the menu is rendered with layered menus. If you click where the menu should be the machine responds properly, such as opening the 'Save As...' window, the 'Open...' window, etc. The menu … [Read more...]
GreenPrint – Environmentally conscious printing
The paperless office is another one of those future promises that has yet to be delivered, just like the flying car. Enter GreenPrint. It's not the paperless office, but it's a step closer and a step in the right direction towards protecting our environment from the over-abundance of paper use and far too convenient 'Print' button. It also saves toner, protecting your wallet … [Read more...]
WiX
WiX does work with Visual Studio 2008 Professional. Download one of the latest weekly releases here. The latest SourceForge version available will give a message about requiring Visual Studio standard or professional, but will not work with the Express version. The weekly release, linked above, resolves this error message. I have WiX installed with Visual Studio 2008 … [Read more...]