Psychic Troubleshooting

Internet Explorer has issues with session cookies, fancy that.

The problem was reported thus.

Internet Explorer is not storing session cookies for XYZ website. The session cookies are stored when we use Firefox.

Two hours later, I can tell you that:

I learnt more about web cookies than I will ever need to know again. Firefox does things differently to Internet Explorer.

Gentle [...]

The case of the broken Microsoft Word VBA application

It was a Microsoft Word (VBA) application written back in 2001.

Essentially what it does is:

user selects a letter type.
the user then enters some customer reference numbers.
the VBA application does an Oracle database lookup to convert those customer reference numbers into names and postal addresses.
which the VBA then uses to “mail merge” into whatever number of letters need to be sent out.

And it was broken.

I had a feeling that writing about patch management policy would come back to bite me (and it did).

(Click here to continue reading The case of the broken Microsoft Word VBA application)

The SMS Mirror Driver

The SMS Mirror driver is the root cause of the problem, with help from a dated video driver, the SMS Remote Control application (Wuser32.exe), and an unsupported operating system (Windows 2000).

So what does the SMS Mirror Driver do?:

Video acceleration significantly speeds up your Remote Control sessions clients. For video acceleration on clients running Windows 2000 or later, SMS uses a Mirror driver. The Mirror driver can simultaneously display the same output to several video devices and has no dependencies on the client’s video driver.
- Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Operations Guide.

We received a fault report:

My desktop icons are grey colored.

It took some investigation, as the customer left out some details. Here they are:

the problem was occurring on a system they were remote controlling with the SMS Remote Control application.
it was an intermittent problem.
it was in a development environment.

(Click here to continue reading The SMS Mirror Driver)

The printer does not print

The problem was described to me like this:

When you print to the network printer, and want to use the “URGENT” watermark setting, it does not work. When you print to a locally installed printer, it works.

The answer? When I install the printer driver on the Windows Server I specify WinPrint / [...]

3 fools and a printer.

Problem:

Konica Minolta C652 multi-function printer, with Fiery RIP installed, refuses to print.

Cause & solution:

If you leave the Fiery RIP Controller in Setup / Menu mode, it stops the printer from printing. You can tell the Fiery RIP is in this mode by looking at the item circled in the picture. [...]

Printer jams

I expect that, when a fault is logged though to me to investigate, that some troubleshooting has been done.

“Printer jams. Vendor technician has thoroughly tested printer. I think it’s a driver problem.”

And that was it. No other details.

What did they mean by ““Printer jams?””.

Is it physically jamming?

I’m never seen [...]

“There is something wrong with these files …”

The desktop technician solved the problem himself, with the comment

There is something wrong with these files …

but didn’t realise it.

Microsoft PowerPoint XP was crashing whenever the customer was trying to open a particular set of files.

Google should have been his friend here. aka Let Me Google That For You : [...]

SSL errors, and how to diagnose them.

Frankly, I don’t know, but here’s what I learnt.

It started with a customer reporting a problem

When we press the publish button on the website, we get a 403 error.

A co-worker of mine picked up the call. After trying many different things, he asks our Network team for help.

If it works [...]

A call from a user: “Lotus 1-2-3 files won’t launch in Excel”

Microsoft, in the latest Service Pack for Office, blocked file associations for Lotus 1-2-3 files. Security was the reason given.

So what this means is that you can’t double click on WK4 files, and expect them to launch in Excel. Told the customer about a work-around, and off they went happy.

Six weeks [...]

“PCL XL Error – Invalid Media”

Sometimes it’s the support folk you need to worry about.

When the customer prints a Word document, the user gets an “PCL XL Error – Invalid Media”. The first page prints ok though.

We’re been getting a rash of these lately, "Dude, you people didn’t test the printer properly! It doesn’t print colour".

[...]

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