Tag: Windows

It’s a fairly common problem with Windows. Somehow a program manages to create a file with a name containing illegal characters or otherwise outside the file system’s parameters. No matter what you try, you just can’t rid yourself of it. The file certainly isn’t in use and being locked up by another program. Trying to delete or rename the file only results in Windows telling you the file cannot be found: “This is no longer in <location>. Verify the item’s location and try again.” Even running the Command Prompt with administrator privileges doesn’t allow you to move, rename or delete the blasted thing!

Fortunately, I managed to find an easy solution. Fire up the 7-zip File Manager, and rename the file from there. Bingo – don’t ask me how Vista couldn’t manage it, or indeed why 7-zip could, but at least now you can delete the damn thing! Kudos to the guys on this forum for the answer.

By Fips

On 19th November 2009

In Asides, Technology

Mapped Drives in Windows XP

By Fips

On 10th September 2008

In Asides, Technology

Having recently set up some network storage, I came across a rather irritating problem mapping network drives in Windows XP. The basic setup procedure, as outlined here, worked perfectly on some systems, but failed to retain the stored username/password for network attached drives requiring alternative login details. The solution found, courtesy of this blog, is to map the drives using the following command (replacing U with the drive letter, and NETHOME\LOCID with the relevant UNC network location):

NET USE U: \\NETHOME\LOCID /PERSISTENT:YES /SAVECRED

The necessary username/password details can then be entered and should be stored, allowing the drive to be mapped automatically when the user logs on.

Strange Mouse Cursor Issues

By Fips

On 17th May 2008

In Asides, Technology

A friend of mine was having a strange problem with her Dell XPS system, whereby the active area of the mouse cursor would move with apparent randomness, occasionally being located as it should be at the arrow’s point, sometimes at its middle, other times half an inch below. This post led us to the solution that a simple graphics driver update was required, coincidentally for the same ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT card.

Windows Vista User Profile Issues

By Fips

On 25th March 2008

In Technology

It seems that occasionally, Windows Vista users can encounter a rather nasty bug which leaves them unable to log in to their system. If this is their only user profile, this can leave for a very distressing moment, particularly if the user is unfamiliar with Windows’ Safe Mode or various options available on the Vista DVD. The user is confronted with an error message such as the following:

The user profile service service failed the login. User profile cannot be loaded.

Or in German versions:

Die Anmeldung des Dienstes “Benutzerprofildienst” ist fehlgeschlagen. Das Benutzerprofil kann nicht gestartet werden.

From what I can gather, it appears that this problem occurs during Vista’s attempt to create a restore point. The user profile is backed up but no replacement is made. Thus these errors are most often seen after the installation of some new software or drivers, or after a Windows update, which may occur in the background with many users unaware of its activity.

Fortunately, some solutions are available, although not all appear to work in certain circumstances. Nigels blog offers a solution to restore the backup profile by editing the Windows registry. To do this, users need to:

Start the machine, and press F8 before Vista begins to load, choosing Safe Mode.
Search for the programme ‘regedit’ from the Start menu.
On opening this programme, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionProfileList
Affected profiles can be located by the extension ‘.bak’. This extension should be deleted, the RefCount value should be 0, and the State value should be 0. Change accordingly and reboot the system.

German readers may also refer to this forum post.

Unfortunately this solution appears not to work in all cases. Since this problem generally appears to occur following a Windows Update or other software installation, however, it is equally possible to restore the system to a prior state and restore the working profile(s) to how they were before the incident. This might result in some strange behaviour or odd errors in some programmes, but these problems should only be minor ones. To do this

Start the machine in Safe Mode (hitting F8 before Vista loads, as above)
Search for the programme ‘rstrui’ in the Start menu.
On running the programme, the user should be presented with the option of restoring the system to the most recent restore point (recommended). Restore and restart.
Should the recommended option fail to solve the problem, follow the same procedure but use an older restore point. Hopefully one or other should do the trick.

Hopefully with the gradual rollout of Vista Service Pack 1, this type of problem will become less frequent.