“Base system device” problem, missing driver and “PCI-Bus 2 Device 6 Function 4” location

After a clean Windows installation on HP 6910p notebook with all the drivers from accompanying DVD there was still a “yellow” node in device tree with an unrecognized base system device (the system is localized in german, so the screenshots are in german as well)

The unrecognized device is located at “PCI Bus 2, Device 6, Function 4” (in german - PCI-Bus 2, Gerät 6, Funktion 4).

Neither Windows Updates nor scan the driver DVD gave answer what device isn’t recognized.

SiSoftware Sandra detected in the notebook the PCI buses and their characteristics:

Next step – detect the attached device and read it’s characteristics:

So, the unrecognized device is the “Ricoh MMC Bus Host Adapter”.

The matching driver was found on the HP driver download page

Download, install, restart, enjoy!

Check and download Windows updates online for domain member computers

Most administrators configure group policy to use a domain internal Windows Update Server (WSUS), so if you take your domain member computer off the domain network (assume notebook or virtual machine image), the system won’t be updated reporting error: cannot check for updates or cannot download updates.

Windows Update control panel displays following information:

“You receive updates:” is configured as “Managed by your system administrator” and “Check online for updates from Microsoft Update” is disabled/grayed out.

The reason is mostly configured group policy, pointing to use a domain update server (WSUS server) as update source.

You can revert your box to get updates online instead of looking for (temporarily?) unavailable update server.

Open regedit on the box and change following registry value

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU\UseWUServer

to 0

 

and retry check for updates:

Refer also Microsoft KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328010 and enjoy!

Problem: "The user name or password is incorrect" if you try to connect to SBS 2003 based network share or Exchange via Outlook

 

Situation: there is a number of client computers in a local SBS 2003 based domain. Every computer but one is domain member and runs Windows XP SP3. All users have access to network share (via explorer) and mailboxes (via Outlook 2003/2010) on the SBS 2003 SP2 server in the domain.

Suddenly the only non-domain computers – a workgroup computer – gets no access to network share and to Exchange mailbox. The user gets repeating error message

"The user name or password is incorrect"

The same username/password pair succeeds on every other computer in the LAN.

The most popular problem is: the clock on the client computer and on the serve are not synchronized. In our case: somebody misconfigured client’s date/time setting the next month as current, so the date/time difference between client and server was 1 month.

After setting client’s date/time same as on the server the access to network shares and Exchange account via Outlook was restored immediately.

So, in case of same or similar error message

• check the date/time settings on the server
• check the date/time settings on the client computer
• compare and synchronize them if required

Enjoy!

Missing tray icon for Windows Live Messenger on Windows Server 2008 (R2) and Windows 7

You may miss the tray icon for Windows Live Messenger on machines running Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7. The process is running, you get – depending on configuration – bubble notifications, but see no tray icon to open messenger window.

Refer to article

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3794-windows-live-messenger-taskbar-notification-icon.html,

set the compatibility for msnmsgr.exe to Vista (on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7) or Windows XP (for Windows Server 2008), restart Messenger (just kill the process and restart) and enjoy!

Internet Explorer 10 Preview: download the testdrive

IE10 is available for download: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

Here is it:

Lot of Demos, Developer Information etc. User Guide is here: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Info/UserGuide/

Developer Tools are already included and can be launched as usual: F12. As expected, browser compatibility mode 10 has been added:

Useful: main menu –> Report Issue –> Run IE Diagnostics. Displays a lot of info about current system and provides 2 protocol options - network and process activity:

The results are written in a cab file.

“Microsoft continues HTML5 commitment and leadership with the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10.” (from here)

IE10 expected to be delivered also for tablets, in perspective probably also for Windows Phone devices.

While there is no support for Windows Vista and older, this preview version does install and run side-by-side with IE9 on the Win7 with all most recent updates and fixes – at least on my machine. The public updates are expected to be available every 12 weeks.

Download and enjoy the exploring of IE10!

Internet Explorer 9 RC to download

Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate can be downloaded at http://www.beautyOfTheWeb.com or at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/downloads/ie.

OS supported are: Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows Server 2008/Windows Server 2008 R2. There are already many languages available.

Finally the old known display mode for XML is back! (see my article: Internet Explorer 9 Beta does not display XML files in tree view ).

The site http://www.beautyOfTheWeb.com offers interesting information about new features and development tools for IE9.

Additionally there are advertised some featured sites tuned/created for IE9. One of my famous sites is BeatKeep: http://www.beatkeep.net/ - online music editor for (hobby) musicians.

Just download IE9 RC, navigate to BeatKeep and enjoy!

Free books from Microsoft Press

Information from Microsoft Press web site:

After the release of Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 in September, here’s an updated list of some of our free eBooks:

• Free eBook: Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (10 chapters by Patrice Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines)
• Free eBook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (10 chapters by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner)
• Free eBook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview) (6 chapters by Charles Petzold)
• Free eBook: Petzold’s Programming Windows Phone 7 (Special Excerpt 2) (newer than the eBook above; 11 chapters by Charles Petzold)
• Free eBook: Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft (8 chapters by Katherine Murray)
• Free eBook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions (Second Edition) (6 chapters by Mitch Tulloch)
• Free eBook: First Look Microsoft Office 2010 (14 chapters by Katherine Murray)
• Free eBook: Windows 7 troubleshooting tips (short eBook by Mitch Tulloch)
• Free eBook: Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 (9 chapters by Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker)
• Free eBook: Deploying Windows 7, Essential Guidance (10 chapters from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and 6 TechNet articles)

Download books and enjoy!