Category: Advanced

Printer keeps printing pages when pc starts

PCRepairMan

If your printer keeps printing pages when your pc starts, then follow these steps to clear the print queue.

These instructions are for Windows 7 or Vista, and won’t do any harm to your PC. I usually advise this and 99.9% of clients will cure their printer problems this way.

 

  1. Click Start.
  2. In the box above, type cmd
  3. Right-click on cmd.exe (the command prompt shortcut) and select Run as administrator
  4. In the black box that appears, type net stop spooler then press Enter
  5. Type in del %systemroot%\System32\spool\printers\*   /Q then press Enter. (Note there is a space before the /Q)
  6. Type net start spooler then press Enter

 

The print queue on your Windows 7 or Vista PC will now be cleared out. Close the black command window using the cross at the top and restart your PC.

 

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Manage multiple WordPress sites with WPRemote

PCRepairMan

Looking for an easy way to manage updates on multiple WordPress websites? Well there’s a new tool in town and it’s called WP Remote. Here’s a brief review.

This nifty tool installs on WP sites via a small plugin and gives you a single console from which to monitor your sites for plugin updates, theme updates and WordPress updates. You can apply the updates from the console so no need to login to any site after the initial plugin install. Not only that but it allows manual backups of files and MySQL databases in one click. Fiddly and incomplete WordPress backups are a thing of the past, you can expect to add the site to the console, update all plugins and themes and do a complete backup within a few minutes. Stunning.

It’s free, easy to setup, minimalist, stable and incredibly useful. And no, I don’t own the company, just thought you might like it as much as I do. Look out for this company over the next few months as I think this is going to be very popular!

https://wpremote.com

Norton subscription has expired – but it hasn’t!

PCRepairMan

A fairly common fault is for a Norton product such as Antivirus, Internet Security or 360 to report that your subscription has expired when it hasn’t. This can be due to a number of issues and often occurs after some major Windows updates or when there are problems with the Symantec (Norton) subscription servers.

The best methods to address this I have found are to do these in steps in order. If any one works then you have resolved the problem and need to go no further. Before trying these you will need to be connected to the internet.

1. Try a manual update – Open the main program window (double click on the tray icon or open it from the desktop icon) and do a ‘check for updates’.
2. Restart the computer – This ensures you have nothing that is pending a restart and affecting the definition updates.
3. Force a subscription check – In the main Norton window, click “Support” then click on “Subscription Status”. After the “Subscription Status Check” is complete, click “Finish”. This updates the subscription information of your installed product to the status that is stored on the Symantec (Norton) servers.

Norton internet security subscription expired
4. If you still have an issue beyond this then you will need to login to your Norton Account and check your subscription status then raise any issue you have with Symantec support. Use the menu “Support” then “Get Support”. If you didn’t create a Norton Account then you can still talk to support, just try to have your serial number handy from the original installation.

Hope this helps you, please drop me a comment below if it does.  If you want to save a lot of money on renewal then check out my articles on The cheapest way to renew Norton 360 or The cheapest way to renew Norton Internet Security

Disable Google personalized search

PCRepairMan

It’s difficult to get an accurate set of search results these days from Google as they unfortunately personalize far too much, even if you explicitly tell them not to. Now they have integrated Google Plus into the search results, it’s even more difficult.

Google remove personalization

“Aha” I hear you shout, “I can turn that personalization off by clicking on the settings gear at the top right of the Google page, then clicking ‘Search Settings’ can’t I?”. Well, no you can’t, this just makes “Hide personal results” the default. Worryingly, this choice is not saved with your Google profile and it’s forgotten on browser restart.

So how does someone easily make a fresh, unbiased Google search these days? Well, I would recommend you install Yoast’s excellent free plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer here:

https://yoast.com/tools/seo/disable-personalized-search-plugin/

For me, I build websites primarily for US and UK, so I selected “Install for Google.com” and “Install for Google.co.uk”.  Set it as your default and use it for your searches as normal.  It removes personal messages like ‘You visited this site 4 times’ which demonstrate that Google tracks you and weights your search preferences accordingly.

For tracking the actual ranking of websites rather than biased ones, it is an invaluable free tool.

Backup website databases with a free automated tool

PCRepairMan

Backup SQL for freeBackup your web site! If you are using a database driven website such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc you probably know how to FTP files but when it comes to the database many people are baffled.  FTP does not grab the database files (unless Access format) and this is where your backup regime may fail.

Don’t presume that your hosting company will do it all for you. Hard disk drives are mechanical, breakdowns are unavoidable.  And even those who use Raid arrays can end up losing your data.  So who is responsible?  Does it really matter?  That hard work you put in creating the database could take weeks, months or years to recreate.

The answer?  HeidiSQL is a completely free tool which you can download from https://www.heidisql.com

Using this tool, you can backup MySQL databases with ease.  It can also export your MySQL database as a text file onto your PC which is very useful.  You can import or restore any databases provided you have the necessary passwords.

Don’t delay, do it now before you forget!

Mozy discount code for 10 percent off

PCRepairMan

mozy-online-backup-dicount-coupon-code-freeWe have a  Mozy discount code for those of you who want to take advantage of this clever online backup service. Mozy is one of the foremost online backup providers with a very stable, simple and accessible platform.
2 easy steps…

 

1. Click here – MOZY DISCOUNT CODE

2. Type in the PCRepairmansBlog.com promotional code SAVEME10 for a generous 10% off of any Mozy subscription. This offer officially expires on October 1, but may carry on beyond that date.

 

 

Mozy Stash

Mozy is also beta testing a synchronising feature called Stash. If you are a Mozy Online Backup user and you haven’t got Stash already, apply for the stash beta here.

Vista wireless connection drops out after system update

PCRepairMan

vista-logo-smallIf your wireless network adapter was working fine then suddenly dropped or became unreliable there is a chance that it may have been a software driver update that made it stop working reliably.  You may even have opted to download this driver yourself thinking that if it’s from Microsoft then it must be good, right?.

I seem to be seeing this more frequently on Vista than any other operating system. For this, I’ll presume that your problem is the new driver so you need to get back to the original driver and then disable any hardware driver updates within Windows Update so you don’t see this problem again.

To reinstall the old wireless network adapter software driver

Go to Device Manager then under network adapters right click the adapter and go to properties. Click the driver tab then click “Roll back driver”.  When finished, restart the computer and you will hopefully get a stable wireless connection.

Note: If the “Roll back driver” box is greyed out then you do have another option.  Open system restore and roll back your system to a day or so before you installed the driver.  Bear in mind that this will make any program that you have installed since unusable until reinstalled.  It’s also worth backing up your documents too as system restore is quite a critical task.

Driver updates are generally “opt-in” so you shouldn’t get this again.  Make sure that you have only ‘Recommended updates’ turned on.

Change Windows startup sound to a voice

PCRepairMan

Change windows startup soundYou know in all those futuristic films where computers speak to their owners? Ever wondered if you can actually get yours to welcome you in this way? Well let’s have a go at doing this and see what we can use it for.

This should work on Windows from XP upwards. If you have security settings a bit high then running scripts may be an issue but it won’t hurt to try this.

Click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Notepad

In the notepad window, paste the exact code below:

Dim speaks, speech
speaks="Welcome PC Repair Man, what can I do for you today"
Set speech=CreateObject(“sapi.spvoice”)
speech.Speak speaks

Obviously once you have this working, you’ll replace the text with your own!

Save as startmessage.vbs. You can rename this file to anything you like but keep the .vbs on the end. If you can’t see the .vbs then you really should turn on file extensions, it helps you to identify files. Turn on your speakers then double click this file to see if it works.

Copy the saved file and paste it into the following folders (I’m presuming that C is your Windows drive, most are):

  • For XP users: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (in Windows XP)
  • For Windows 7 and Windows Vista: C:\Users\ User-Name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

When you next start your computer, it will welcome you!

NOTE: I’d suggest you don’t turn off the Windows startup sound, it’s best to keep the rest of the system as-is.

To remove, simply delete or move the startmessage.vbs out of your startup folder.

Want to trick a friend? Create a personal message and drop it into their startup folder. Watch as their computer reminds them of something they’d rather not be reminded of like “Hey John, bad luck on the driving test” or “Is that a pimple on your nose, Lucy”.

Don’t be evil, or if you do, don’t tell them it was me that told you how to do it….

 

Disable Livefyre trackbacks in WordPress

PCRepairMan

livefyre review

I was quite a big fan of Livefyre for a while. Yes there have been many comments about how Comment Luv or Disqus are better and it seems everyone has their own preference. A while back I noticed that Livefyre had a quirk that meant that even if you turned off trackbacks via WordPress admin, this was only activated for new posts and not existing ones. For reference, in WordPress this is turned off in the Settings > Discussion menu.

This isn’t a fault in Livefyre, more a problem with the lack of easy control of posts that have already been published or are in draft within the WordPress database.

So if your older posts have trackbacks enabled you could see something like this (a screenshot from one of my posts here):

 Livefyre trackback removal

Hmm, not doing the article a great deal of favours is it really? From a search engine point of view this article now has duplicate content and more outgoing links.  So what can we do to get the older posts to not display trackbacks? Well we could go back in and edit all the posts that we are aware of by unticking the ‘Allow trackbacks’ box. Unfortunately, on larger blogs this is not practical. Time to get our hands dirty with some SQL statements.

Disable Livefyre trackbacks in WordPress using phpMyAdmin and SQL

Login to your control panel and fire up phpMyAdmin. Select your WordPress database and back it up. If you’re not sure how to do this, I wrote a detailed article here:

Backup WordPress MySQL database using phpMyAdmin (opens in a new window).

So now we have a working backup, select your database and click on the SQL tab from the top menu bar. Insert this code into the command box and click on ‘Go’:

UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'post';
UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_type = 'page';
UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status='closed' WHERE post_status = 'draft' AND post_type = 'post';

Note that you need to replace wp_ with your own table prefix if it’s different. You should now have all your old posts that have been published (and any draft posts waiting to be published) disabled for trackbacks.

 

Backup WordPress database tutorial

PCRepairMan

wordpress backup

This is a tutorial on how to backup your WordPress database manually using phpMyAdmin and the SQL export method. It may sound difficult for the non-technical but it isn’t really and is something that is essential for the maintenance of any WordPress site. If you have ever lost any data before you’ll know what a huge and time consuming problem this can lead to so let’s get going.

First off, please bookmark this page in your browser, you’ll probably need to refer to it again for the first few backups!

Login to your cPanel. This is where you will see lots of useful tools and the one we shall use is phpMyAdmin shown below.

php myadmin wordpress backup

Click to open it and you will now have to select your database from the left hand side, usually something like mysite_wrdp1. Don’t select the information_schema as this is not the one we want.

Now you look to the right of the screen and you can see tabs relating to functions we can actually run on the database.

phpmyadmin sql wordpress

We want to select ‘Export’ here. Now for the bit everybody gets wrong…. You should select the ‘Custom export method’ which gives you greater control over the final exported database. For ease of reference, I have compiled a screenshot of the best options to select for the majority of users. Make sure you click to select all tables in your database, I have seen so many people just backup one table within the database and the backup is effectively useless. Here are all the settings you need to have in the latest version of  phpMyAdmin:

database backup wordpress phpmyadmin latest

Notice I have removed the prefix from the table names (shown in blue above) as you or a program may have modified this. By default it is wp_ but many security packages rename it. There is nothing to do here, I’m just pointing this out for clarity.

Now you can click on ‘Go’ and you should be able to download a working copy of your database. You can’t really view this file as it requires a database server (although you can connect to it with a few software tools that exist). You can however upload it to a new installation or use it when the poop hits the fan and disaster strikes on your server.

That’s about all you need to do to have a working backup of your database. Remember to FTP into your server and copy all the files over too as many files and folders are necessary to get back up and running as you were. For example, your wp-content/uploads folder is not backed up automatically and this is where most images used on your blog are stored.

Automatic WordPress SQL backups and file copying features

If you want a click-and-forget solution then I would heartily recommend the excellent WP-Twin which you can download here https://wp-twin.com
This neat program not only backs up your database but also ALL of your files on the server, meaning that any special folders outside of WordPress get copied over too. It has an easy reinstall option that takes the pain out of disasters, well worth it if you aren’t too sure how to go about reinstallation.

I hope this helps you to start a decent WordPress backup regime and I’d be happy to know if this helped you, please drop me a comment below or click the social buttons to share with others.