Not long ago a user of an Office 2013 Pro Plus product, licensed over Office 365 subscription has reported that her Recent Items list was thoroughly obsolete. Here is how and why my research was extended over hours as well as how you can circumvent the problem (for the latter jump straight to the… Continue reading Yet another Recent Items problem in Office

  Symptoms: When you try to backup GPO via GPMC.MSC you receive an error message that contains the description Backup of GPO failed. Error [Invalid pointer] When using Powershells Backup-GPO command the result is even more dubious: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.   Cause: Although searching for "Invalid pointer" in… Continue reading Cannot backup GPO – Error Invalid Pointer

  Recently I came upon a problem where I could not connect to a device attached to the serial port using ttermpro: the application would fail with the "Cannot open COM1" message and show a "Disconnected" state. Trying other applications such as putty or hyperterminal would end up with similar errors, so it was clear… Continue reading Cannot open COM1 resolution

There are numerous ways to announce your absence in a team using Outlook and Exchange, and they have all their weak and strong points. One nifty solution though, is to create a room resource in Exchange / Office 365 and use its calendar as team vacations overview. Some of the advantages that this solution offers… Continue reading PowerShell – create room resource as vacation calendar

  On-premise IT environments often require an internal SMTP server to relay mail notifications to selected recipients. Especially in hybrid clouds where the primary email services are outsourced you don’t want every single computer to communicate directly with the cloud, effectively implementing firewall restrictions to SMTP traffic. In such case IIS 6.0 SMTP Virtual Server… Continue reading Domain based restriction of SMTP relay

  Symptoms: Your device is stuck with a rotating circle of CyanogenMod (CM) during boot. Cause: Ambiguous: Full flash drive, corrupt file(s) or setting(s), etc. can generate such behavior. See below. Resolutions: Note: the resolutions are ordered from least to complete data loss. Use with caution. All operations are executed in TeamWin (TWRP) environment. To… Continue reading CyanogenMod rotating circles – Fix

  Preconditions: You have installed Internet Explorer 11 on a Windows 7 computer. Symptoms: When you run gpmc.msc or rsop.msc the following error appears: (in German) Bei der Analyse ist ein Fehler aufgetreten. Tags: $(string.NoReportSiteProblems) C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\inetres.admx Cause: This behavior may be caused by different language settings on the policy server and the client computer. Resolution:… Continue reading Error inetrex admx

  Symptoms: Bitdefender RescueCD versions 2011 to 2014 randomly require username and password to login to rescuecd.unknown_domain computer console, as described in this blog.   Cause: Unknown to the author. The same CD or USB thumb drive start automatically on other computer systems.   Resolution: Type for username livecd and leave the password empty. After… Continue reading Bitdefender RescueCD requires username password