I didn’t find this on the internet, so I figured I would put it here. This may be isolated, but if not, let me know if this helps. I got a call from an accountant saying that all of a sudden Intuit’s ProSeries 2008 would freeze when opening.Dekor okno
After lots of questioning, I found that she had installed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) that week. She uninstalled IE8 and ProSeries worked fine.
I upgraded my QuickBooks 2006 to 2008 on May 29. On the following Monday (June 1), I was reviewing my automatic credit card billing through the integration via Intuit Payment Solutions/Innovative Merchant/whatever-they-are. All my automatic credit card billing was gone! Being that they were supposed to hit on June 5, I called on Monday for support. The only nice thing about their phone support is that a live person answers everytime.. I got transferred to support and they had never heard of my problem. I had someone call me back and he reset something in QuickBooks, but the customers’ charges were still missing. He said that they did get reports from other customers and that they were working on a solution. I called over 6 times over the next week, left two polite messages with the same technician, with no return call. On June 5, since the tech wouldn’t call me back, I asked for tech support and the person told me they were still working on it… That’s helpful.
I’m very happy to report that I received a satisfaction survey in my email about my support call. Ha! I reported honestly how I felt..
Finally, this morning the tech left a message saying that I installed QB on June 1. Since it was past the sunset date, all the data was deleted. I called back and left him a message saying that I have logs to prove that I installed it on May 29 and that I was very unhappy that he wouldn’t return my calls and that I was very unsatisfied with his company that they would be so dumb as to delete customer data. (I bet the problem is not of deleting, but of them not being able to figure out how to fix it.)
I stayed home this morning and spent hours organizing my credit card forms and reentering all my auto credit card charges. That was fun.
Message to Intuit: people hate your company, they hold their nose while using your products (except for older versions). Stop making products (QuickBooks, Quicken, TurboTax) that get worse rather than better. Give us the option to pay an annual fee to keep older versions working and only come out with new version when you actually need to. Oh, and give the people in charge of Innovative Merchant and kick in the pants for me.
(This is an excerpt from my full post about QuickBooks mandatory upgrades.)
After upgrading from QuickBooks 2006 to 2008 (stupid Intuit), I wanted to synchronize my contacts from QuickBooks to Outlook 2000 like I’ve always done. When I tried, it made me download a sync application and install it (the 2006 version had a small, built-in sync program). I had to close Outlook for it to install, but when I went to open Outlook, it wouldn’t open. I finally uninstalled the sync app and closed all my programs and then Outlook opened. That scared me…
Then I noticed other things.. If I tried to use a right-click Sent To – Mail Recipient or a built-in email function, it wouldn’t work. Many times I couldn’t get my Outlook to open again, even with the sync app gone. I finally figured out that with QuickBooks 2008 open, Outlook won’t open and many of it’s functions are messed up. There aren’t any add-ins for QB in Outlook.
I finally figured out the solution: Edit menu, Preferences, Send Forms, My Preferences tab, change “Send E-mail Using” to QuickBooks E-mail from Outlook. This will disentangle the programs. Errr.
(This is an excerpt from my full post about QuickBooks mandatory upgrades.)
Although we spent some time to take pleasure in version 7.5.08 of Google Play Shop. The fact is that we did unknown for sure exactly what it was that it brought with it. Neither what possibilities were opened to the programmers. These inquiries end today, with a review of just whats new in Google Play Store 7.5.08
How many times has it happened that you had to go into the password of a web or application several times in a row? With a smart phone, Play Store APK this job is very annoying. It does not make sense that we have to retype the password if we currently did it.
Currently Google Play Provider permits designers to make use of a new credential API. That permits them to make use of recent logins along with conserve them for future usage.
This is something much like what Chrome currently has. When you discover a login web page or login. It recommends us autocomplete if we have actually seen before. This way, if we save our Android start information, will certainly notify us that we can start our session without needing to re-enter the password. Google Play Store APK This overcomes different tools. Both with password-based accounts and identifiers like Google Sign-In.
Unregistered applications recognition
Many thanks to a new identifier, Circumstances ID (IID). Designers can currently specify a method for validating each circumstances of an application. They can do it without requiring individuals to register or create an account. In this manner it will be possible to have apps that allow us to gain access to progressed features only using this identifier.
Also, Google Cloud Messaging currently supports Circumstances ID to identify the app concerned that needs to receive the message.
Google Cloud Messaging for Everybody
The solution for sending messages and notifications between applications has actually been updated with a number of new functions. Although the primary one has nothing to do with Android: sonymobile now Google Cloud Messaging is also compatible with iOS. This will enable developers to make use of the same style for their apps communications no matter the OS.
An additional of the novelties of GCM are subscriptions by topics. If you want that users who want a specific material kind to get an alert. It is currently possible to let GCM do the dirty work. It can send it depending upon the various topics of apps and also individual choices.
I worked on a computer today that would pop the Generic Host Process for win32 Services error with the szModName: ntdll.dll. I did trial and error in the MSCONFIG application and found that if I uncheck Terminal Services on the Services tab, the problem disappeared. This user will never need to use any built-in remote support features, so I tally this one as fixed..Омоложение сада, омоложение растений в саду
STEPS:
Click Start, Run, type msconfig, click Services tab, uncheck Terminal Services, click OK, reboot and see what happens.
At the school in which I manage the IT, we had 33 HP d530 ultra slim form factor desktop computers donated from a large corporation. They have been so frustrating, with more than half with hardware problems right now. I will use this post to list the problems, and solutions with this model.
Rule 1: If you have any problems with an HP d530U, always start by examining the motherboard capacitors. The only one I’ve seen go bad is the one all alone near the RAM slots:
This one is very bad, or as I like to classify it, a Class 4. Here is another Class 4:
I always replace Class 3/4 immediately and plan on replacing Class 1/2 in the short- to mid-term.
Bad capacitor symptoms: computer won’t turn on, freezing, blue screens, turns off while in use
If you need to replace the board, look for the model number on the board and search for that model number on eBay. I bought lots of 332935-001. It can be tricky to avoid buying bad boards, but that’s how I did it.
Here is the HP Repair Manual with instructions on how to take apart the computer (start on page 149). To swap the motherboard, remove the CPU fan, power supply, hard drive, bay drive, front bezel, CPU heat sink & CPU, RAM, front chassis panel, drive bay, PCI card, then unscrew the two screws on the CPU cradle.
If you determine that the capacitors look good, here are your next steps:
Symptom 1: Computer won’t turn on, hard drive light illuminates, but power doesn’t:
In my testing, I tried swapping RAM, processor, motherboard, but found that the solution is to replace the Power Supply. I have been buying power supplies on eBay with part number 308446-001. NOTE 1/2011 – I’m finding these power supplies hard to come by and the last two I bought were bad upon receipt. Be careful!
Symptom 2: 511-CPU FAN NOT DETECTED
There could be multiple reasons for this message (like not connecting the fan or connecting it properly, or a bad fan), but I swapped fans and motherboards. Finally, I swapped the power supply and it was fixed. The PSU must have not been sending power to the motherboard to run the fan.
Symptom 3: Power light blinks 4 times
I’ve found this to be the power supply each time, although it may not fix it 100% of the time.
Here is a page on HP’s website with a guide to the blinking lights:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c00274415
I’ve found this to be very helpful in troubleshooting.
Long Term Problems – HEAT:
These computer sure get super hot. I’ll tried installing a PCI fan, since it is right below the power supply, but it only dropped the case temperature near the power supply from 120F to 110F. This may be one of the contributing factors of the part failures.
Here is the HP reference page with lots of info.
If you have questions, post them here.
Thanks to the great post by GREEDJ at the Grand Am Owners Club I found how to fix this problem and wanted to show some pictures to help others save lots of cash!
My 2002 Grand Am GT (with 104,000 miles) was starting having these really annoying high-pitched squeaks and rattles, especially on small bumps from the front passenger area. With the radio on, you didn’t hear them, but with it off they were awful. I had my mechanic look at the twice and he didn’t. The strange thing about it is that you would hear it less when you put the window down and it sounded like it was in the dash area, rather than down in the wheel well area.
After searching online and finding the post above, I grabbed my Lithium Grease, which you should be able to buy at auto parts stores and maybe Home Depot/Lowe’s:
Then I opened the hood and took a look at the strut mounts at a sharp angle to see inside the rubber bushing:
You’ll see the little holes, as the arrows show.
I then sprayed some grease on the bolt and in each of the 6 holes are 1-2 seconds, as instructed by GREEDJ:
That was it, the squeaks are gone!!!
This should work for the 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Pontiac Grand Am and I would imagine other GM cars.
I’ve had some of my customers ask me about whether they should switch to Verizon FiOS from Comcast. I posted a comparison earlier.
Today I got a phone call from a customer that their internet was down. She told me the only light on the Verizon FiOS Actiontec modem (MI424WR) was the power light. I had her pull the power and the plug it back in, but then no lights came on.
I went on-site and found the the power adapter/transformer for the modem had a green light and it was blinking. I didn’t have my multimeter on me, but decided this was a bad sign. I called the FiOS support line. It was fully automated asking me what my problems were. When asked whether the lights came back on for the modem, I replied, “no.” It then told me it would have someone call me back and disconnected. Disgusted, I went on the hunt for a power adapter to replace the original. I went to Radio Shack first. He looked at it and immediately said they didn’t have any as high as 5 Amps and that he had my customers come in looking for FiOS modem adapters and he knew they didn’t have any.
Undeterred, I went to Batteries Plus, a very cool battery store that is usually very helpful. They didn’t have any power adapters, except for laptops and cell phones. I then went to Home Depot, but I didn’t come close there either. When I got back to the customer’s site, I plugged in the adapter again, and the light stayed solid this time. I plugged it into the modem and most of the lights came on, but the power was amber, not green, and I couldn’t get any of the 4 LAN ports to light up, so I decided the modem was fried.
I called FiOS support, and this time the automated system said I had an open trouble ticket and that it would transfer to an agent. It then disconnected me. Nice. I called again, went through all the prompts again and talked to a real person. That person couldn’t figure out what kind of trouble ticket was setup, he hadn’t seen an automated ticket like it before. He said he would ship out a replacement modem and we would have it by Saturday. Wait — it’s Tuesday. I insisted that I needed it faster — how about overnight shipping? Nope. How about going to a store? He suggested calling a Verizon Wireless store. I called the closest store and they didn’t stock modems at all, but suggested calling the Pittsburgh FiOS office. I called there and they didn’t have any either. She comforted me by telling me that the Support folks would ship it to me within 2 or 3 days. I told her that I could go pick up a Comcast modem immediately if I wanted and with FiOS I had to wait 2-3 days??
With Comcast, they will usually send a technician the next day to replace your modem. Verizon will ship you a modem in 2-3 days and you have the privilege of doing it yourself!
UPDATE 11/10/08: Verizon did ship out an A/C adapter only. When it arrived, it was an empty bubble mailer. Nice. I called about that, the tech told me that I don’t even need the modem/router, that I could just plug directly into the computer. WHY DIDN’T THE OTHER PEOPLE TELL ME THAT! My customer actually used a router behind the FiOS router, so I just ditched the Verizon router anyway. All that pain for nothing. The Verizon router did come a few days later and I shipped the old one back.
In one more interesting twist, a member of my family has the same router and they received an unsolicited AC adapter from Verizon for that router. It included a letter: (I will scan and attach)
After my ordeal with the TomTom XL 330, I wanted to find a good upgrade to my Garmin c320. I wanted coordinates and Where Am I? features in particular.
I hope Garmin reads this, I could help them sell millions more.
PROS:
1. Best routes. (See my cons) This may be one of the main reasons Garmin dominates in the US — good routing. Of course, I wish it had more a brain and could think about traffic lights and general traffic in certain areas at certain times (not actual traffic reporting), but I guess needing brains is good.
2. Where Am I? (See my cons) This will list your nearest street address. In this screen it also shows altitude and your coordinates.
3. Easier broad map access. On my c320, you had to dig in the menus to find a broad map view, so you could touch areas on the map and go to it. On the 205w, you can just touch the map while driving and it will take you to the broad map. You can then touch an area that you want to make a Via Point and change your route that way.
4. Speed Limit sign. You can set it up to show the current speed limit on the screen. It has been super accurate to the instant of a speed limit change in real driving. If the sign is missing on the screen, you also then know that it doesn’t really know how to calculate arrival time from the road. You may want to use that information to take or avoid that road on your next trip.
5. Very compact. My c320 was much bigger, so this is super small.
CONS:
1. Touchscreen. This may change as I use it, but the touchscreen is no where near as sensitive as my c320. It requires some hard touching. It also shows fingerprints much worse than my old GPS unit.
2. Ball mount. This gives a better range of motion than the mount on my c320, but it feels like I need to push really hard on my GPS unit to get it to snap in. This may change in age, too.
3. Keyboard speed. When I’m typing in a city, street, etc., the keyboard is a full QWERY keyboard, which is an improvement over my c320, but there are two things I don’t like: 1) there is a delay from when you type to when it shows, so if you type fast, you can’t see what you’re typing, if you make a mistake, you don’t see if very fast; 2) the spacebar is tiny and way off to the right, while dumb menus are in the bottom middle — very annoying!!
4. Charging cord. On my c320, the charging cord would plug into the mount and there wasn’t a charge jack in the GPS unit itself. This was nice because you could leave the power cord in the mount all the time and take the GPS with you – you never had to plug in, just clip the GPS in and out. Now, the power cord won’t stay put and it falls out the door, etc because it must be plugged into the back of the GPS. I suppose with the mount the way it is, it’s not possible to have a jack in the mount and GPS, but I think they should work on that.
5. Current road. The TomTom XL 330 did show what road you are currently on and what the next road to turn onto was. Garmin only shows the next road name.
6. Routing pet peeve. Sometimes I won’t want to take its routing because I know of a better way. Let’s say I turn off of the normal route — it will recalculate and have a shorter time than before I turned. What’s up with that? Why didn’t it take me that way to begin with?
6. Routing choices. I don’t like the fact that I can choose either Fastest Time or Shortest Route. I would imagine that much of the time, the best route would be in between those to extremes.
7. Missing POIs. There are just so many cases where I’ll be looking for something and it’s not in the Garmin — even for stores and restaurants open for years. I know you’ll have this will all GPS units, but for the #1 seller in the US, can’t they figure out a way to get the users involved? How about incentives for users to fix problems online and give them discounts on map updates? If you have the best maps and POIs by far, why would anyone buy any other company?
8. Tinny speaker. I’m not impressed with the speaker, it is much worse sounding than the deep c320, but you can hear it. It’s just not pleasant.
9. Voice choices. It would be nice to choose your voice, but I don’t see that option, unless you choose another language.
10. Nearest intersection. This is within the “Where Am I” place in the menu. It could be very useful in an emergency to have the nearest intersection in addition to the nearest address. However, I’ve found that they should have labeled it, “random intersection within a few miles.” It will generally show me a major intersection, and sometimes ignore dozens of closer small intersections that would be much more beneficial to the police, fire, ambulance, etc.
11. Volume. I hate how they have the volume setup. On the c320 there was a wheel on the side of the unit — that’s best. On the TomTom, there was a place on the main driving screen that you touched and then moved the volume slider. On this 205W, you must hit Menu, Volume, move it, then back, then View Map. This is just awful. I want a Mute button on the driving screen and a separate volume button there, too. This is widescreen after all. I hope this doesn’t cause accidents, because I think it will.
12. Need customization! Let me choose 3 shortcut button for the driving map view. That way I can put Where Am I, Volume, and POI on the main screen. Please!! I also want to change my route color to red instead of light purple.
13. POI choices. This is something I’ve never found a GPS that does this how I want it. If I’m looking for gas or food, it is usually on a long trip. If I want to go to fast fast, let’s say (that wouldn’t happen!), I would choose Restaurant, Fast Food. It will show me all the restaurants by how far they are from me now. That’s not what I want, so I choose Near…My Current Route. That’s closer to what I want, but it still shows how far it is from where I am now. I want it to show me that, but also how far I’d have to deviate from my route.
Overall, this is an excellent unit and I would buy it again because I believe the Pros outweigh the Cons and no competitor and yet beat it.
Please leave me comments on how other competitors stack up on these weaknesses, as I’ve only used Garmin, TomTom, and Microsoft Streets & Trips via laptop.
I have a Garmin c320 GPS unit and wanted to upgrade to a model with more features – particularly coordinates and “Where Am I” features. After reading the reviews, I really liked the features in the TomTom XL 330. The only hesitation I had was with the speaker volume. The Amazon reviews showed some buyers that had speaker problems with their units. There were enough positive reviews to make me buy it.
PROS:
1. Lots of customization. You can change color schemes, choose your voice, change viewing angles (Garmin c320 & 205W can’t do that).
2. “Where Am I?” This is far superior than Garmin. It shows in what City, Township, Municipality, etc. where you are and the nearest address. This can be very valuable when calling for help. Garmin only gives nearest address and nearest intersection (which I like to call “some random intersection within a few miles”)
3. Alternative routes. If you don’t like the route you’re given, you can ask for a new one. Read more in the Cons.
4. Tons of route control. You can look through a list of every turn ahead of time and ask it to avoid a certain place.
5. Compact, attached mount. I didn’t use it, but it was a cool idea. The mount would detach from the unit or you could leave it on and fold it in.
6. Fixing map errors. I never got to see this in action, but it sounded really cool.
7. Results as you type. I loved this feature and will really miss it with my new Garmin 205W. As you type a street name or city, it will show you the results as you narrow them down. This can really save time and effort.
CONS:
1. Routing. (Deal-breaker one) The routing seemed to have a large bias toward driving on interstates. It seemed to me that the reason was insufficient non-interstate speed limit information. For example, I asked the Garmin and TomTom for a route from Irwin, PA to Oakland, MD. The Garmin used state routes and backroads to get us there in 2 hours. The TomTom insisted we take mostly interstate (and adding many, many miles) at an estimate of 2.5 hours. The TomTom alternate route was even longer. (Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Mapquest all were similar to Garmin’s route.) When we took the Garmin route, the TomTom said it would take over 2.5 hours (adding existing travel time + time left), but as we drove, the time remaining kept decreasing super fast. The Garmin’s arrival time was rock steady all the way.
2. Address entry without City. (Deal-breaker two) There are many occasions in which I have a street address, but don’t know the city. You know — maybe someone lives in a Township with a city’s mailing address, or any area known as “North Hills” has many post office names, but you don’t know which one. Garmins give you a “Search all cities” option. TomTom has no option. You must enter a city. If you don’t know it, you won’t get there.
3. SPEAKER. (Deal-breaker three) I had read two problems with the speaker; 1) too quiet, 2) garbled. I figured that if I got a bad one, I’d exchange it and I’d get a good one. How widespread could the problem be? Well — the first unit was very quiet. If you have the radio on, you can’t hear this thing. I called TomTom and the nice rep seemed to be very familiar with the problem and suggested returning it to the store. So fine, I shipped it back to Amazon. The second unit was much louder. Wait — you couldn’t understand it, it was all garbled. Well, third time should work. NOPE — just like the first, you couldn’t hear it. See the end of this post — I will post WAV files of what I heard.
4. POI annoyances. On my first unit, when searching for a POI, it would show the distance you were from the POI, but not which direction it was from you. This made it unusable. I won’t make a big deal of this, because my unit #2 did have a directional arrow for each POI. This may have to do with software version on the unit. Secondly, though, it only listed a few pages of POIs. I would have liked to see more choices.
5. Graphics. The graphics rendering was very jagged and old-looking. Garmin is far ahead here.
After doing all this testing, my decision was easy. Even if the speaker actually worked, the first two cons make it unusable for me.
My final question is — TomTom, don’t manufacturers test products before they get shipped to poor American consumers??
Garmin c320 without music while driving
TomTom XL 330 #1 (the quiet one) without music while driving
TomTom XL 330 #2 (the garbled one) without music while driving