I have been receiving a lot of nuisance calls from 08454122750 recently. The number will ring, and when I pick it up it will just hang up. This will then be repeated a day or so later. After a quick search of 08454122750 and ringing up T-mobile directly, it transpires that it is (as many people say online) part of a T-mobile marketing campaign for mobile broadband. When I reported it the T-mobile representative even tried to sell me the product while I'm on the phone complaining about their marketing practices!

 

How to fix (specific to T-mobile & 08454122750)

• Ring T-Mobile UK on 150. If you are on contract, this is free. If not it's 25p a minute so beware.
• They have changed their IVR system so it's impossible to speak to a general operator using their choices. Just press random numbers until the IVR gives up to speak to someone.
• Tell them about the calls from 08454122750, make sure you call it "harrassment" and that you are "upset by the calls". Let them know you have looked it up on the web and that you know it is a T-mobile phone number. They should remove you from the list. Feel free to let them know that they are alienating their own customers with this disgraceful behaviour!

Other types of nuisance call

(Or if you are not on contract and don't want to pay 25p/per min to talk to T-mobile, or you find that it doesn't work. If you have a recent Nokia mobile (cell)phone, the following should work too. 

A solution for recent Nokia phones 

• Download Best Blacklist Lite from the Ovi store
• Create a blacklist (call it 'Blacklist Nuisance calls')
• Add the phone numbers you want to blacklist, you can have up to 5 for free
• Make the reject type 'Send busy tone'
• Switch the service on, and leave it on. Make sure you restart the service when you restart the phone.

This program selectively makes your phone engaged to the numbers specified. Hopefully after a while the callers will just give up because they are repeatedly getting an engaged tone (and if they don't you won't know it anyway unless you check the log in the Blacklist application)

 

Another solution for most recent mobile (cell)phones.

• On most phones you can create a group ringtone or a ringtone for a certain contact.
• Create a new ringtone that is silent (either with a builtin sound recorder or just download this silent mp3 )
• Just create a nuisance group or contacts with the numbers you want to block.
• Assign the silent ringtone to these numbers
• Now when these numbers ring you up, you won't hear them, and they won't disturb you (your phone may still vibrate)

UK centric solutions for some situations

There is also the Telephone Preference Service, signing up with them will make marketing calls an illegal act if you are not an existing customer of theirs. But this won't help if you are receiving products or services from the company calling you (such as the 08454122750 number above) , or if the company is disreputable enough to ignore it! Also more information and complaints can be made to OFCOM (recommended for the 08454122750 number)



Any other solutions are welcome, just comment at the bottom (no signup required)

 

Given changes to Windows backup formats in Vista/7/2008 the following tools may be rather useful as W7 and 2008 become ever more common:

http://www.jmedved.com/default.aspx?page=vhdattach
http://arainia.com/software/gizmo/overview.php?nID=4

this 2nd one can even allegedly be used [with care] with Vista native VHD backups. or
http://www.winmount.com/mount_vhd.html

which allegedly also allows one to write to the VHD as well.

Alternatively, if you need quick access to VHD backups, you can mount them directly from the 7/2008 Disk Manager, but the mount doesn't survive a reboot.

Also VHDTool - command-line tool which provides useful VHD manipulation functions including instant creation of large fixed-size VHDs.

CLICK HERE FOR THIS ARTICLE UPSIDE-DOWN!

We occasionally get a call that begins 'Help! My screen is upside-down!', this is usually on a laptop, and it can be done inadvertently - it has even been done by cats on the keyboard according to one customer. However, there are simple shortcut key combinations that can put everything back to normal.

If the display has been rotated, it can normally be corrected by pushing the key combination <Ctrl> + <Alt>+  <Up Arrow>. 

This capability to invert/rotate the display is a feature of some of the Intel® Extreme Graphics Chipset driver.  

The following chipsets are affected:

Intel® Extreme Graphics 845GE
Intel® Extreme Graphics 845GV
Intel® Extreme Graphics 845G
Intel® Extreme Graphics 845GL
Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 865G
Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 865GV
Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 855GM

Image rotation is enabled by default and is activated by the default key combination <Ctrl> + <Alt> + <F1>.

Once it is activated, you can rotate the display with the additional "Hot Keys":
 
<Ctrl> + <Alt> + <Right Arrow>
<Ctrl> + <Alt> + <Down Arrow>
<Ctrl> + <Alt> + <Left Arrow>
<Ctrl> + <Alt> + <Up Arrow>
    
To disable this Hot Key Feature, remove the check from the Enable Hot Keys selection box in the Extended Graphics properties.

Trying to install Windows SP3 (Network Installation) on a client machine. It would not install, giving the error message "The system cannot find the file specified." and "The installation could not complete"

Thank you to DataOne on the softwaretipsandtricks.com forum which pointed me in the right direction.

regsvr32 /s wuapi.dll
regsvr32 /s wuaueng.dll
regsvr32 /s wucltui.dll
regsvr32 /s wups.dll
regsvr32 /s wuweb.dll
regsvr32 /s atl.dll
regsvr32 /s Softpub.dll
regsvr32 /s Wintrust.dll
regsvr32 /s Initpki.dll
regsvr32 /s Mssip32.dll 

 

Not sure what to say really. I got this error earlier this month and just stared blankly at the screen for a while.

  

 

And a Windows 7 error (March 2010)

 

I recently encountered a problem when attempting to install ACT! 2009 Premium on a clients computer. Every time I ran the installation program, the following message appeared on the screen.

error 1327.Invalid Drive: N:\  

Then the installer would close itself.

The machine was running Vista Business and had a mapped drive to a NAS called N:\.

Early searches led me to think it was a problem with either a previous installation or the Installer program itself. This did not make sense as ACT! to my knowledge had never been installed before on the machine.

Disconnecting Drive N: did not make a difference nor did running the Sage ACT! special uninstaller program just in case.

A quick phone call to Sage was next, who denied the problem was with their product but with the installer service on the computer itself. However, they did give me some information in passing which eventually helped me fix the problem.

According to Sage, ACT! copies some demo databases to the My Documents folder on the PC which is hardcoded to be on Drive C. This PC had the My Documents folder mapped to the NAS drive for backup purposes. Once I remapped the My Documents back to the local drive, the ACT! installation was able to run and it installed without any further problems.

So if you are seeing this error then check that your system does not have any odd drive name allocations or remapped My Document folders.