IT Support - Determining Hardware by ID

This was part of my old blog before it got wiped out, but it is something I think should make a repeat performance.

There are many times I am working on a computer and I see a "?" in the Device Manager and it says Unknown Device or something very generic like VGA Adapter. Items like that are very annoying. The way to fix this is a 2 part process. The first part is getting the hardware codes, the 2nd part is determining what they are.

Part 1 - Finding the hardware code.

• Right-click on the My Computer icon and select Manage
• Select Device Manager
• Right-click on the device in question and click Properties
• Select the Details tab
• Select Device Instance ID(Windows XP) or Hardware Ids(Windows 7) from the dropdown list
• Note the hexadecimal values after the VEN_ and DEV_

Part 2 - Determining the hardware

• Open Internet Explorer
• Go to www.pcidatabase.com
• Enter the value of the DEV_ in the Device Search field and click Search
• Review the results until you find the proper Vendor ID

By using these steps, you can figure out what an unknown device is and download the proper drivers for it.

IT Support - acr_error.htm

I had a user today with this problem. They would open up Internet Explorer(IE) and the webpage would crash and recover repeatedly. The URL would keep growing too. It ws looking like:
http://www.mypage.com
res://ieframe.dll/acr_error.htm#,http://www.mypage.com
res://ieframe.dll/acr_error.htm#,res://ieframe.dll/acr_error.htm#,http://www.mypage.com

With each crash, it would keep adding to the URL.

It seems that this problem is being caused by a bad add-on. Here is what you can do to try to fix this issue.

Disabling Add-ons

• Click Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Internet Explorer(No add-ons)


• Click Tools->Manage add-ons->Toolbars and Extensions->Show: All add-ons


• Select all of the add-ons (Ctrl-A) and click Disable All


• Click Close


• Close IE

Attempt #1
Open IE normally and get to the Toolbars and Extensions like in the previous section. Select them all and Enable them. Close IE and restart and see if you continue to have a problem. It is possible that some add-on had a hiccough and just needed to be reset.

Attempt #2
If the problem persists, we will have to take it in a more of a phased approach. Disable the add-ons once again. Then re-open IE normally once more. Go back to the Toolbars and Extension section like the previous times, but this time select all of the add-ons from a particular company, and enable them. Close IE and re-open it. Browse through several webpages to ensure you are not having problems and proceed to the Toolbars and Extensions section again to re-enable the next company's add-ons. Rinse and repeat until all of the add-ons have been enabled or when you can narrow down the problem add-on.

IT Support - Fixing broken links in Outlook messages after uninstalling Chrome

Lately, a few people have been duped into installing Chrome by not unchecking a box when they installed other software. Then, when they uninstall Google Chrome, the yget an error whenever they click on a web link inside an Outlook email and says you don;t have the access to open the link. You are able to copy and paste the link, but you cannot directly open the link.

Uninstalling Chrome is the culprit which breaks this function. To fix this, do the following steps. Backup your registry first if you are concerned about modifying your registry.

Open the Registry Editor (run regedit)

- Find "HKCU\Software\Classes\.html"
- Right-click the (Default) key and choose "Modify"
- Change the value from "ChromeHTML" to "htmlfile"
- Repeat for the keys .htm, .shtml and .shtm if they are present