I was working on a Dell Optiplex 760 that starting having software issues, and before I could look at it it stopped in the boot process with a blinking cursor. I tried going to the XP Recovery Console, but I received a blinking cursor on reboot. I tried repairing the XP installation and received the blinking cursor again. Finally, I wiped the drive completely and did a clean install of XP. Everything was looking good until the installation finished and the computer rebooted. I was then greeted with a BSOD and a Stop Error 7B. I did a little research and found a page on Tom’s Hardware Forum that discussed this issue. A nice anonymous user posted this:

“go into the bios and change SATA settings from AHCI to ATA
As if by magic!!!-)”

Sure enough, like magic, the computer booted into the post installation setup process. I remember having to change this setting when purchasing Dell laptops which came with Vista that I downgraded to XP. But I don’t know why this computer worked fine until the reload – maybe Dell’s putting an image on the computer bypasses this problem. In any event, I found my solution (thanks Anonymous!) and the computer is operational again.

I have been having trouble for a couple of months doing a full office backup of a specific folder on the server. This folder has 30,000+ files in it and I am trying to copy it to an external hard drive. After copying about half of the files I receive an error 0x80070052 unable to create file or directory. I thought it was a problem with the files on the server, but another backup drive I have attached to the server does not have this problem. I tried copying the files from that backup drive and encountered the same error.

I remembered the FAT limit of files in the root folder so I thought maybe there is a file limit in any folder. I checked my external drive and it was formatted FAT32 so I reformatted it to NTFS and tried again. Not only did the backup work this time, but the speed increased about threefold! Afterward I did a little research and there is a limit of 65,536 directory entries in FAT32 drive folders; each file and subdirectory can use a few to several entries depending on things like long file / folder names. So like me you can run into this problem even if you don’t have 60,000 files in a folder.

Therefore, if you are going to backup folders with thousands of files and don’t need to access an external hard drive from Mac OS or Linux, format the drive NTFS. You may save yourself some headaches.

I just worked on a Dell Inspiron 1501 that was having problems booting into Windows. It could boot into safe mode, but in normal mode it would sit at the Welcome screen twirling its circle. I ran the built-in diagnostics and found a problem with the chipset. I figured it might be a bad motherboard. I used Dell’s support website and found the laptop needed an updated BIOS to fix the problem. The only BIOS they had for download had to be installed in Windows. Since the Windows on the laptop did not work, I reinstalled Windows first. With a new Windows load, I tried to run the BIOS update program, but it failed and said it had to be run as an administrator. The account I was using was an administrator account, but I actually had to right-click and select “Run as Administrator” before the program worked properly. Then I was in for a treat – I had always updated a BIOS through DOS or by running a Windows program that rebooted the computer and updated in DOS. This program from Phoenix actually updated the BIOS in Windows. This was quite scary given the nature of Windows to crash at inopportune times. Someone might want to rethink updating a BIOS with a Windows program since a system crash or blue screen could potentially nuke your BIOS.

Anyway the update succeeded and the error was fixed. However, the laptop gave me a Fixed Disk 0 not found error once before and after reloading Windows and updating the BIOS. I checked the hard drive through the Dell diagnostics and Windows check disk and found no errors. I suspect there may be something flaky on the motherboard, but since the laptop is over 3 years old, I advised the customer of the problem which might occur every once in a while. A reboot bypassed the problem so they decided they could live with the laptop like that as it was only being used for getting on the Internet. I hate having an unresolved problem, but the possible hardware solutions cost as much as a new laptop and the customer was okay with the problem as long as the laptop worked most of the time.

A few days ago I checked a Windows server and its robocopy backup routine was hung (a command prompt showed me where the backup was but it was not progressing). I tried to end all robocopy processes, but they would not close. I tried to do a normal restart from the Start button, but that just kicked me out of my remote session. When I reconnected to the server, nothing had changed. I tried ending the winlogon process because I had read in Technet magazine this would cause a reboot, but the server still would not reboot (maybe that action caused rebooting in pre-2008 servers).  Then I remembered another trick to try. I had also recently read in Windows IT Pro magazine about an administrator using the sc.exe command remotely to solve a hung service problem. I opened a command prompt and used the shutdown command to force a restart. It didn’t happen right away so I thought it wasn’t working, but I checked the server later and it had rebooted. My alternative was having to drive to the office and manually shutdown or restart. So don’t forget that command prompt tools can sometimes work better than GUI tools and might save you a trip one day.

I ran into this problem the other day. A customer who had only XP computers in his office had a PC go out on him. He bought a new PC with Windows 7 64-bit installed. His office printer is shared off of a PC running Windows XP 32-bit. He could see the PC and the printer, and could even connect to the printer, but he could not install the printer driver. When he described the dialog choices to me, I should have known something was up. He was following the steps to connect to the printer, but instead of asking for a driver first the PC would go to Windows Update for the driver, then it would look for an inf file to provide the driver. I downloaded an HP Universal driver (the only driver available for 64-bit Windows for his HP Laserjet 4100) and burned it to a CD. I tried walking him through it over the phone but he would receive an error that a suitable driver could not be found even when he pointed Windows to the CD. I went to his office and tried it myself but still had no luck. I checked his workgroup and it was different from the rest (the rest were using the MSHOME default workgroup instead of WORKGROUP). I changed the workgroup, but still could not load the driver. I finally installed the HP Universal driver and pointed it to the shared printer, but I received a communication error.

After Googling a bit, I found the steps to connect the PC to the printer. Apparently you can’t just connect a 64-bit PC to a printer on a 32-bit PC. Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. In Devices and Printers, click Add a Printer.
2. Click Add a Local Printer.
3. Click Create a New Port.
4. Choose Local Port, then click Next.
5. In the “Enter a Port Name” box, type in the UNC path to the shared printer (\\server\printer), then click OK.

You should now be presented with the choose a driver window. Either choose a Windows printer driver or go to a different location through “Have Disk” to find the driver.

In his case, Windows had a driver for an HP Laserjet 4100. I loaded the driver and he was good to go.

I guess this is another example of Microsoft goofing up an easy to use process everyone has used since Windows 95. I’m sure there is some technical reason they make you load the driver this way, but I feel sorry for all of the small businesses who are still running XP with shared printers who will have to deal with this problem as they replace computers with 64-bit Windows.