Category: Random Fix

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Trying to install QuickBooks Premier Pro 2022 onto Windows Server Essentials 2016 with error code 1603

I have been trying to figure out why QuickBooks Premier Pro 2022 will not install on Windows Server Essentials 2016.

It gets a quarter of the way in and then throws an error 1603.

I’ve searched high and low and HATE Google results. Nothing but handpicked garbage content farm webpages that do not help at all. I miss you could find an obscure blog on the first or second page with a fix right there. Instead, you get this ad-filled almost AI created gibberish with nothing but rehashed “fixes” from every other website that, again, is filled with nothing but ads.

I’ve tried uninstalling the C++, .Net Framework, etc. to no avail.

I just downloaded a trial of QuickBooks Enterprise 2023 and it installed with NO PROBLEMS.

I stood up a Server Essentials 2016 virtual machine and was able to install QuickBooks Premier 2022 OK with no problem.

However, I came across at least three other people who have had a problem with trying to install QuickBooks Premier 2022 onto either Windows 10 or a server operating system.

If you came across this and fixed it, please comment below. I’ll do the same if I find a fix. I know it will make a lot of people happy.

An interesting update happened last night. I downloaded a trial of QuickBooks Enterprise 2023, and it installed within five minutes.

I’m trying to run Process Explorer and Process Monitor, but am coming up short. If you have any expertise in either of these programs and troubleshooting what might be causing the install to fail with error 1603, please leave a comment below.

I FUCKING FIXED IT!

I used RegScan and performed a scan on all registry hives for “QuickBooks” and then exported them out and finally deleted them all.

I rebooted and sure enough it fucking installed. I knew it was a rogue fucking registry key. I hate Microsoft and Intuit!

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Windows 10 start menu not responding/Outlook prompting for password using modern authentication window, but it’s blank

For those of you who encounter the above issue and attempt to use PowerShell to run the Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”} but the process never finishes, check the permissions on these two registry keys: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders – it should have a user called All Application Packages with read permissions.

In particular, the second one. I had an issue where the Get-AppX command would not complete on a Windows 10 Dell OptiPlex machine. I tried restarting to no avail.

I checked on the first registry key and All Application Packages were listed with read permissions for that key.

I checked the second, and All Application Packages were not there at all. I had to go to Advanced, Select a principal, if you’re on a domain, change the From this location: to the actual computer you’re using. Enter All Application Packages into the object name to select the box and hit OK.

Make sure it has read permission on the second registry key.

I rebooted the machine, and the start menu was working. I was also able to input the user’s Outlook password.

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Outlook 365 with Office 365 E3 account Online Archive magically disappears after roughly 10-15 seconds upon loading Outlook

I am back with another crazy problem that only happens to me. I contacted support and of course they don’t know how to fix it. I’m almost certain I am cursed with these extremely unique problems that only happen to maybe .0000000000001% of users using Office 365.

I have tried Googling until my fingers were bleeding to no avail.

Absolutely NO one else seems to have had this problem.

I have an end user with an Office 365 E3 license. They were upgraded from Bus Premium to E3 prior to this since they ran out of space. The E3 license comes with Online Archive and it should work in Outlook as my own Office 365 license is an E3 license and my Online Archive works fine.

I can create a new profile and this fixes it for maybe a few days then it will disappear again.

I have tried /safe /resetnav but nothing helps.

Nothing in the Event Viewer.

The Online Archive shows up in OWA.

My theory is that upon changing the license somewhere along the lines it got screwed up. I even tried removing the E3 license from this end user and then leaving no license and finally putting it back, no luck.

Here’s hoping someone out there has experienced this and might have a fix or point me in the right direction.

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Dell laptop Task Manager CPU stuck at 22%

I had the strangest problem troubleshooting a client’s slow laptop. I ran a full diagnostic, hard drive checked out. The craziest thing was the hard drive was a SanDisk SSD and it was performing nothing like an SSD.

One thing that stood out to me was the CPU being stuck at 22% no matter what I did. It would not go higher or lower. On a hunch, I Googled “22% CPU dell” and came across someone on the Dell forums who had the same problem. It has to do with the power adapter not being able to charge the battery. In the case of the Dell forum and my client, it was the third-party power adapter. I noticed the battery was not going any higher than where it was initially.

I unplugged the power adapter and the CPU usage on Task Manager started going and the laptop started running at its normal SSD speed. I was shocked.

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Edge Chromium protocol handler always open these types of links in the associated app

I’ve moved my daily browsing habits to the new Edge that is based on Chromium. I have been using it since the very first release. I am now using the stable beta version.

I noticed about a month or so ago that whenever I tried connecting to a Screenconnect session, the protocol handler would always ask me: This site is trying to open ScreenConnect Client, but it would not have the checkbox to allow me to always open these types of links in the associated app.

Edge Chromium protocol handler with no Always open these types of links in the associated app option

I finally decided to try and figure out if there was an option within Edge to enable this again. After checking the site permissions area, I could not find a setting that would allow this check-box to return.

I started searching the web, and through all the BS Google search results, don’t even get me started with that, I found a few other threads where people were reporting the same thing.

It appears that as of Chrome 77 which Edge Chromium is based on, they removed the option to always open these types of links in the associated app.

Their reasoning is because there was no way to undo the always remember option, they decided it was insecure and a security risk, therefore, they removed it completely.

Here is the thread I found: https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/14194567?hl=en

In the thread, there is a workaround. It entails modifying the preferences file in your default profile.

Hi All, there is a way around this, you can insert a record into the preferences file
found in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
The file “Preferences”  contains JSON serttings, our example is for a Web Client Print handler, so just added the below:
“protocol_handler”:{“excluded_schemes”:{“webclientprintiv”:false}}

You must close all instances of chrome including any running processes before you do this or chrome will overwrite the file and get rid of your changes.

And it works.
NB: you’ll have to check your own scheme names to add.
Hope this helps.
Jonesi

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/14194567?msgid=15347344

I tried modifying the preferences file for the dev version of Edge that I am running alongside the beta and Canary. I went to: %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge Dev\User Data\Default and tried editing the preferences file found there. When I run Edge, I get an error message saying: Profile error – Your preferences file isn’t valid, or was corrupted. We couldn’t recover your settings. It changes the preferences file to preferences.bad and then creates a new Preferences file.

According to this ConnectWise technical bulletin: https://docs.connectwise.com/ConnectWise_Control_Documentation/Technical_support_bulletins/Constant_prompt_to_open_ScreenConnect_Client_in_Chrome, you should be able to add the following: “protocol_handler”: {“excluded_schemes”: {“sc-xxxxxxxxxxxxx”: false}}, to the Preferences file, and it should always remember your choice that you would like to allow this app to run without having click on Open.

I tried it multiple times, placing the code in different areas, making sure the formatting was right. It never worked. I am going to assume that Microsoft block this change. I really don’t know much about how you can modify open-source browsers, but I’d imagine, most if not all that are based on the same source, follow the same guidelines or standards.

If you figure out how to force the new Edge browser to always allow specific protocol handlers to run instead of having to click on Open all the time, please leave me a comment.

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Outlook is retrieving data from the Microsoft Exchange Server outlook.office365.com

I have a client who has been having this problem for several months now. It started out of the blue. No one else in that site has the same problem. Although the computers are not exactly the same, they all share a commonality in that they are all Dell OptiPlex workstations running Windows 10 Pro and Office 365 Business Premium Office suite.

What happens is while using Outlook, whether it’s changing from one folder to another, Outlook will randomly freeze and up at the title bar it will say (Not Responding) and then down below in the system tray where the Outlook icon is, it will pop up a black notification box that says “Microsoft Outlook Outlook is trying to retrieve data from the Microsoft Exchange server outlook.office365.com.

I cannot re-create the problem at will. It sometimes takes an hour or two for it to randomly appear again.

I have tried the following:

  • Clean Boot
  • Disabling or having the computer prefer IPV4 over IPV6 via Microsoft’s registry fix
  • Disabling hardware acceleration in Outlook
  • Clean install
  • Online repair of Office
  • Multiple new Outlook profiles
  • Outlook safe mode
  • Changing out the network card
  • Tried only via wireless
  • I will come back to this list when I remember what else I’ve tried
  • 11/19 – Replaced the entire network stack, router and switch
  • 11/19 – Replaced the entire workstation with a brand new Dell 7070 with the following specs:
  • Intel Core i9 9900K
  • 32 GB Memory
  • 512 GB PCIe NVME SSD
  • Intel Gigabit PCIe NIC
  • Fresh install of Windows 10 Pro with it being joined to a domain as well as a fresh install of 64-Bit Office 365. The problem has happened on both 32-bit and 64-bit

I have tried using Process Monitor by monitoring Outlook.exe, but nothing of significance is ever shown.

Everything I’ve found online says it might be due to too many items in the calendar. There is a total of 151 items in the calendar.

The other thing I’ve found is that there are too many e-mails. I find that hard to believe since my own Office 365 account has much more than this end-user and I do not see the same problem.

A few people mentioned updating their router’s firmware fixed it for them. I installed all firmware that was available for their router and the problem remains.

I have the end-user’s Exchange account set up in a Windows 10 virtual machine and the same version of Outlook the end-user uses on the Dell OptiPlex.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to recreate the problem. However, I have not used it as a normal end-user would meaning, for eight hours a day, sending e-mails, receiving, etc. so it’s hard to say if it truly does not happen on this virtual machine.

The Dell OptiPlex in question has the following specs:

Intel i5
256 GB Samsung Solid State Drive
8 GB Memory
Windows 10 Pro
Office 365 which is the equivalent to Office 2019

There is a caveat. This entire problem is closely related to something with Quick Books 2019 Pro.

Sending e-mails from Quick Books often times will cause Outlook to freeze up and or it takes a very long time. Sending e-mails via Outlook also tends to cause the error message to occur; however, it does also happen when not using Outlook.

I’ve confirmed the portion that affects QuickBooks and Outlook sending e-mails is a bug on Intuit’s end. That is an ongoing bug with absolutely no fix, other than a workaround, which is to use the send forms feature after queuing several e-mails to be sent.

I am still trying to find a fix for the main problem which is when using Outlook 365 or Outlook 2016 with two Exchange accounts and two shared mailboxes, when just clicking on an e-mail in the inbox, Outlook freezes completely, it says NOT RESPONDING at the top, the bars are greyed out as though it’s about to crash and is not responding to any mouse clicks. On top of that, a small window pops up at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen which says: Outlook is retrieving data from the Microsoft Exchange Server outlook.office365.com.

At this point, the only thing we have not changed out is the cable run that the computer plugs into up to the patch panel. I am having that tested tomorrow with a cable certifier. If it comes back as certified and good, I don’t know what else to try. I am at my wit’s end. I cannot believe that even after a brand new, maxed out computer, it still happens. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

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Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST): The inbox storage driver iastora.sys doesn’t work on these systems and causes stability problems on Windows. Check with your software/driver provider for an updated version that runs on this version of Windows

If you get this error message while trying to upgrade to Windows 10 1903, and you update your storage driver, but this message is still appearing, you have to go into C:\Windows\system32\drivers (WARNING, WHAT I AM ABOUT TO TELL YOU CAN HOSE AND DAMAGE YOUR SYSTEM. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A GOOD BACKUP THAT YOU’VE TESTED. I WOULD CREATE A RESTORE POINT JUST IN CASE YOU GET STUCK, I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES THAT MAY OCCUR TO YOUR COMPUTER BASED UPON THIS INFORMATION) and look for the iaStorA.sys file and rename it to iaStorA.sys_old. However, make sure you are seeing the updated Intel storage driver within Device Manager first.

Once you rename the file, you can go back out and re-run the update. This should get you past this error message.

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iCloud 0x800CCC0E Outlook cannot synchronize subscribed folders after enabling multi-factor authentication

If you’re struggling to try to get your iCloud account with multi-factor authentication enabled to work properly within Outlook, and you’ve tried going to File > Account Settings and tried changing your password there, you’re in luck.

You first have to generate an app password at appleid.apple.com.

Next, you have to go through Control Panel, Mail app and then choose the iCloud account there. Next, click on change and then enter in your newly created app password. Click next and allow it to do a test send/receive. If it sends/receives OK then go ahead and click finish.

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On1 Raw 2019.5 error 1005

If you’re trying to open a file from browse mode in On1 RAW 2019.5 and you receive the icon indicating no photo available, you might need to convert the color space profile of that photo to something other than what it currently is. Try changing it to sRGB and seeing if it opens up properly.

If you don’t have access to a program like Photoshop, you can download Irfanview, which is free.