As long as you’re running an up to date version Windows 10 you can bring up the windows emoji keyboard with a simple keyboard shortcut:
Windows Key + . (Full-stop/Period) or Windows Key + ; (Semicolon)
Annoyingly you can only select one emoji at a time. Once you’ve selected an emoji, the keyboard disappears. So if you wanted multiple thumbs up, for example you’ll have to copy+paste or bring up the keyboard again.
There’s also a skin colour selector…
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Is outlook taking forever when doing imap send/receive or synchronizing subscribed imap folders?
I had the same problem when trying to connect to imap using gmail accounts. Here’s how I resolved the issue..
In outlook…
Navigate to File >> Options >> Advanced
Scroll down to the “Send and receive” heading
Click on the “Send/Receive…” button on the right.
On the right hand side of the send/receive groups window that opens click on the “Edit…” button.
Un-check “Get folder unread count for subscribed folders”
Under “Receive mail items”, select the option “Use the custom behavior defined below”
In the “Folder Options” list below that displays your imap folders just select inbox and leave the others unchecked.
Click “OK” and then exit out of options.
Now do a send/receive to test if it is now working a bit quicker. Hopefully it is and your imap speed issues are sorted!
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I bought a cheap (£39.99) Connect 8″ Tablet with Windows 10 from eBuyer. It’s pretty good considering the price. One problem i have had, when switching between front and back cameras, is getting the following message…
Close other apps It looks as though another app is already using the camera. If you need it, heres the error code: 0xA00F4243(0xC00D3704)
After much searching online and reinstalling the camera/driver not solving the issue, there are two ways to get this to work:
Method 1: Install Windows 10 Anniversary Update… (Recommended)
Hold down the windows button and tap the power button (This is the same as holding Ctrl + Alt + Delete) (home button on other devices)
Tap the [Cancel] button.
BOOM! camera works!
Note: You will have to do this each time you switch…Annoying but at least it works without updating!
I believe it does this because the camera app itself is the “other app” mentioned in the error message. As the camera is already in use it fails to switch.
Performing Win + PWR (ctrl+alt+del) stops the current camera and allows it to switch.
Updating to the latest version of Windows 10 fixes the camera app issue.
If you had this problem and it helped you out please tweet or comment below stating the Tablet/Phone model you had the issue with hopefully it will help someone else.
If this helps you out please feel free to say thanks by clicking “Buy Me a Coffee” PayPal button in the sidebar (here) or via:https://www.paypal.me/AlanHart
In our office users were complaining of printers randomly going offline even though other users’ computers on the same network were able to print just fine. Usually they would just reboot the PC or disconnect from ethernet and connect to the office wifi instead and it would start working again.
After much exploring of network and IP related settings the solution actually turned out to be ridiculously simple!
Windows Vista and all versions of windows thereafter automatically enable SNMP for networked printers, and if there’s no response to an SNMP message then it stupidly assumes that the printer is offline. If you didn’t know, SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is used to get info from network devices (such as printers, switches, routers, servers etc). Many network printers support SNMP and will happily reply to SNMP requests. In this scenario i discovered that some do not.
Our printers are all reasonably old Brother HL53250DN or HP CP2015 devices (or similar) which seem to have difficulty with SNMP. Essentially Windows will report the printer as offline randomly because it has just tried to get a response via SNMP with no luck.
The easy fix is to just ask Windows politely to not use SNMP to detect printer status.
1. Right-click on the printer in the Printers window 2. Choose the Ports tab 3. Select “Configure Port” 4. Untick the checkbox “SNMP Status Enable” The printer should then start showing as online again.
This fix has worked on many versions of Windows on the various PCs, laptops and servers in our offices.
Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows 8 Windows 8.1 Windows 10 Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2012
If you tried the steps above but the issue presents itself again then you may be able to edit the registry (if you’re comfortable to do so)
To do this… 1. goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print 2. Add new DWORD “SNMPLegacy” with value of 1 and restart the PC/Server (if safe to do so)
The issue can occur even if the printer does support SNMP but a firewall or network setting is getting in the way. This happened in one of our other buildings using an older router setup.
If you had this problem and it helped you out please tweet or comment below stating the Windows version and printer model you had the issue with.
If this helps you out please feel free to say thanks by clicking “Buy Me a Coffee” PayPal button in the sidebar (here) or via:https://www.paypal.me/AlanHart
Turns out you can no longer delete photos from your iPhone on your PC…
THIS IS A FULL “STEP BY STEP” GUIDE TO BULK DELETING A SELECTION OF MULTIPLE PHOTOS AND VIDEOS FROM YOUR IPHONE
PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE MADE ANY BACKUPS OF PHOTOS YOU WANT TO KEEP BEFORE DELETING THEM!
1. Open Photos App
2. In camera roll make sure you are in “Albums” (bottom right)
3. Scroll up/down to where you want to start deleting from (if you want to keep your most recent photos and videos)
4. Tap “Select” (top right). Then tap the last photo you want deleted and drag your finger across or up (to select more than one photo)
5. While still holding your selecting finger on the screen, Tap the top of the screen (where the clock is) with another finger. This will automatically scroll you all the way up to the older images at the top of your camera roll and select everything in between.
6. Tap delete (Bin / Trashcan Icon) and confirm, wait a few seconds and the photos will be deleted (almost)
Naturally you would be expecting this to have removed the photos and videos freeing up valuable space for more lovely photos, videos and apps wouldn’t you?
WRONG! THERE ARE A FEW MORE STEPS TO ACTUALLY DELETE THEM…
7. Tap “< Albums” (top left) and scroll to “Recently Deleted”. Then tap “Select” (top right)
8. Tap “Delete All” (bottom left) and then confirm you really want to delete the photos completely.
Of course Apple have made this SO intuitive you could have easily figured this all out for yourself, right? ;)
If this blog post has helped you please feel free to say thanks sharing it on twitter/facebook/whatever
If this helps you out please feel free to say thanks by clicking “Buy Me a Coffee” PayPal button in the sidebar (here) or via:https://www.paypal.me/AlanHart
So you want to pin a batch file or shortcut with a custom icon to the start menu / taskbar in Windows 7, 8 and 10?
Easily add a batch file (.bat) to the taskbar by following these steps:
1. Rename your .bat or .cmd file extension to .exe 2. Right click the newly renamed .exe file and select pin to taskbar 3. Rename the file extension back to .bat or .cmd 4. Shift+right click the newly pinned .exe taskbar icon and choose properties 5. Change the file extension from .exe to .bat or .cmd and change the icon as needed. (for lots of system icons here use the path: “%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll”) 6. The shortcut will work immediately you’ll need to reboot or just kill explorer.exe in task manager and re-run it to update/refresh the icon if you changed it.
I use the method above to launch .vbs scripts from the taskbar. Here’s how to create a .bat file to run vbs scripts…
Open notepad to create a blank text file and add one of the following lines wscript.exe yourscript.vbs (wscript just runs the vbs as a Windows process) or cscript.exe yourscript.vbs (cscript runs the vbs in a command/console window) then save the text file as a .bat file in the same folder as the .vbs script file.
If this helps you out please feel free to say thanks by clicking “Buy Me a Coffee” PayPal button in the sidebar (here) or via:https://www.paypal.me/AlanHart
Thought my GPad had completely died, but it lives!
I tried everything i could on all the forums i could find when my LG GPad 8.3 V500 wouldn’t turn on
e.g. Press and hold the power button, Press and hold power and volume down together plugging into a computer and running some LG software etc..
Despite my best efforts none of these thing bought my dead LG GPad V500 back to life. Even when plugging the power cable in, nothing, not even a “charging” icon displayed.
I then found out that if you hold the power button for 20 seconds it’s the same as a battery pull (removing the battery) So i did that and then plugged the charger into the Gpad again. Nothing… but then… after a few minutes of being plugged in something appeared on the display… …the charging icon!
After leaving to charge for 15 mins i was able to power it on again! (thought i’d leave it to charge for a bit to be on the safe side)
No factory resets, no taking the LG V500 apart to get the battery out, so simple!
Hope this helps you and saves you buying another tablet.
If this helps you out please feel free to say thanks by clicking “Buy Me a Coffee” PayPal button in the sidebar (here) or via:https://www.paypal.me/AlanHart
Had an issue the last few weeks where DNS across the network would randomly just drop/timeout for a period of a few minutes to an hour or so. Across the entire network (at around lunctime) users would suddenly be unable to access certain websites but strangely applications like skype / outlook etc would still function normally.
I quickly diagnosed that it was a DNS issue as normal web browsing would fail but if i entered the domain’s IP address (using my phone and www.ip-lookup.net to find the domain ip) it would load instantly. I tried bypassing the local DNS server by changing DNS manually to Google DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) but this also didn’t work while the “blackout” was in progress.
Summary of symptoms…
Connection not lost – existing connections stay alive (until bounced/rebooted)
Pings to 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS) all successful
Unable to resolve DNS through any DNS servers (Local DNS Server, Google DNS, Open DNS, ISP DNS etc) on any machine, laptop, server within the network.
nslookup fails with Local DNS server, Google DNS, Open DNS and ISP DNS
On router reboot DNS goes back to working OK for a period of time.
Restarting the router (a Draytek Vigor 2820 in this case) would fix the issue but usually DNS resolution would just drop off again sometime after (sometimes a few minutes, sometimes an hour or so).
After much frustration, and the realisation that it had to be something to do with the router, I rooted around in the Draytek Vigor 2820 settings to see what could be causing the DNS to drop off.
The penny dropped when looking at the DOS defence firewall settings. (Firewall > DOS Defence) in particular UDP Flood Defence
This particular connection is at best 8mb to i set this threshold value to 800. (See screengrab below)
I’m guessing everyone on their lunch breaks was hitting the connection hard with youtube, facebook, twitter, random browsing etc triggering the DoS defence filter.
This has now completely solved this incredibly annoying DNS issue.
If this helps you out please feel free to say thanks by clicking “Buy Me a Coffee” PayPal button in the sidebar (here) or via:https://www.paypal.me/AlanHart
Been struggling for a while with an HP CP2025 colour laser printer.
Essentially the CP2025 would print single pages perfectly fine. However, but when trying to print multiple page documents or multiple copies of the same file, the CP2015 would give a “Misprint” Error and then require the user to tap the OK button to continue.
It appears that some HP CP2025 models have some sort of defect in the paper pickup roller for paper tray 2. This defect causes a slight delay/hesitation when loading the paper which causes it to go slightly out of alignment, the printer responds to this mis-alignment by automatically going through a cleaning cycle. As this misfeed happens on the first printed side it spits the paper out without printing side 2 and requires the user to press OK to continue.
SOLUTIONS: If all trays have the problem…
These settings need to be changed only in printers using the webpage (type the printer’s IP address into your browser) ToolboxFX or EWS utility. (Note: Leave the OS printer driver / printer properties with default settings.)
Screenshot of the webpage
In System Tab and Paper Handling: Default Paper Size: A4 or Letter Default Paper Type: Plain Manual Feed: Off Tray 1 Size: Any Size Tray 1 Type: Any Type Tray 2 Size: A4 or Letter Tray 2 Type: Heavy 111-130g Tray 3 Size: A4 or Letter Tray 3 Type: Heavy 111-130g
Remember to click the [Apply] button!
Note: Tray 2 and Tray 3 availability will differ based on Models.
When I just changed “Tray 2 Size” and “Tray 2 Type” my CP2025 started printing properly again
If this helps you out please feel free to say thanks by clicking “Buy Me a Coffee” PayPal button in the sidebar (here) or via:https://www.paypal.me/AlanHart
Thank You
A few other thing to try if the above doesn’t work…
If the above solution doesn’t work for you then here are some other things you can try that i found in various places on the net:
The other day I came across a problem while when installing McAfee Total Protection “as-a-service” (mcafeeasap.com) on a laptop which had a free trial version of McAfee pre-installed.
Once installed, the Virus scan part of McAfee as a service would say it was downloading the latest definitions but would never complete.
The taskbar status icon was grey and would stay greyed out (it’s supposed to be red if all is ok).
After much digging and google searching I came across quite a few methods to try and fix this but none seemed to work.
Here are the steps I took to fix this issue…
McAfee Total Protection Clean Install Procedure…
Follow all of the steps below to fix the issue.
NOTE: Ignore if ANY of the trouble shooting steps below end in failure and continue to proceed with them all in order…
2. Click on the “Utilities” tab-> select the sub tab “Migration & Optimization“.
3. Under the Cleanup Utility –> select the Download option.
4. Download and save it to the desktop then run the downloaded .exe file to uninstall.
5. Delete all entries from Start->Run->temp (usually “C:\windows\temp” depending on how your OS was installed) – Select all the files and folders and delete them (Ignore any files that you can’t delete)
6. Delete all entries from start->Run->%temp% (This is the user’s temp folder e.g. “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp”) – Select all the files and folder under that and delete. (Ignore any files that you can’t delete)
7. Reboot the computer.
BEFORE YOU CONTINUE… Reset the Windows firewall to default and then disable the windows firewall before you start the installation.
Installation :
To install the updates for the Total Protection Service, use the Silent installation method.
3. Under the “Installation” tab, select the second option “Silent installation” to download.
4. save the vssetup.exe file to your c: drive.
5. Now click Start –> type cmd.exe into the search field.
6. Then right-click on cmd.exe and click “Run as administrator” to open the command prompt in admin mode.
7. Type cd\ (and hit the enter key)
6.Type or copy this command and paste
VSSETUP.EXE /CK=012345678901234567890123 /P=VFB
You must put YOUR company key in the above command (replace the numbers after CK=) and then run the command (hit enter).
The letter after the “P” parameter, V is the virus scan, F is the firewall and B the browser protection. If you want to install all these features leave the command as it is. if you don’t want a particualr feature installed you need to remove the letter (V, F or B) from the above command.
Run a complete update from the M shield icon (right click) after the install is done with the above method.
I hope this helps you out. If it works for you tweet me to say thanks or
