If you’ve seen the ‘Could not complete the operation. One or more parameter values are invalid.’ error in Outlook, then you can appreciate it when I refer to it as Outlook Hell!

Apparently, there are a ton of reasons one might get this error. If you google around, you will find all sorts of solutions (which may or may not work for your specific case).

I was seeing this error in Outlook 2003 (no exchange server involved) whenever I did anything with notes. Tried all the recommended solutions with no success until I came across a post here that actually worked for me!

• Tools>options>other tab, then advanced options and unselect “when viewing notes, show time and date”

Thank you so much to Microsoft for giving us one error message that applies to hundreds of possible conditions.

The last two updates to Mediamonkey (3.1.0.1256 and 3.1.1.1261) have both failed. After installing, Mediamonkey gets as far as the splash screen and then dies with the error message “Audio Library Has Stopped Working”.

Seems that this problem is caused by the iPhone plug-in. Disabling the plug-in makes the problem go away. You can disable it by locating the d_iPhone .dll in the plugins folder and renaming it to d_iPhone .dll.old or simply deleting it if you prefer.

Kinda frustrating that this problem hasn’t yet been fixed.

Aarrghh! New laptop with Vista Home. Trying to install python and get this mysterious message “The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed.”. Now, I’ve installed at least a dozen applications since the laptop arrived, some of them were MSI’s, so it is really unlikely that the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. This is a new laptop with the OS installed by the OEM, Toshiba. So you’d think that if it were incorrectly installed at the factory, it would have never worked in the first place.

Some googling turns up all sorts of advice, including messing with the registry, upgrading the installer to the latest version (presumably a brand new machine would have the latest version), and running msiexec.exe /unregister followed by msiexec.exe /regserver.

None of that stuff worked (no, I didn’t mess with the registry – that one didn’t ring true to me). What did work was checking the task manager (ctrl-alt-del then start the task manager) and looking for any instance of msiexec in the processes tab (click the show processes from all users button first). End process any that you find. Once all are gone, close the task manager and retry your installation.

In my case it worked. Apparently a previous run of the installer was hung up on shutdown (hence the need to end the process) so any new attempts to install were failing. No clue why the previous instance hung…. that’s for another story if I ever find out!

Here’s one of those free services that can come in handy when you need to convert a PDF file to a Word Doc and don’t have any tools around to do so.

PDF To Word is just the solution. Online, available anywhere you can get to a web browser, free, and simple to use. Just upload the PDF file, fill in your email address, and five minutes later you will receive the converted file in your mailbox.

I’ve found reasons to use this handy tool several times and have been happy with the results each time. It also supports RTF output for those with word processors other than Word.

New laptop, a Toshiba A505 with Windows Vista Home (ugg) but a free upgrade to Windows 7 is pending.  This one replaces my five year old HP Pavillion, retired now.

Now, I’m a newbie to Vista, but not to laptops. I regularly hibernated the old HP without any major issues (until it died after hibernating with a completely blown partition table, but that’s another story).

Imagine my surprise when I put the Toshiba away at night (in its’ laptop case) and wake the next day to find a very hot laptop in that case with a dead battery.

Seems that something comes on in the wee hours of the morning and wakes up the hardware, even though it is on battery power, and proceeds to run things like Windows update!  The verdict is out on exactly what is causing this (prime candidate is Windows Update itself) , but clearly in my case either Toshiba or Microsoft has dropped the ball in configuring these laptops.

No way should this behavior happen out of the box and no way any normal user should be expected to figure this one out. Poor quality control on someone’s part for sure. Since more than the Toshiba brand seem to be impacted (see article linked to above), my money is on Microsoft as the culprit. Aarrghh!

Dropbox lets you put your important files in a folder on your computer and those files will be automatically backed up and synced with all other computers you share the dropbox folder with. The free account permits up to 2 gb of storage, paid accounts allow higher storage levels.

The free account works great for important files, like your Keepass wallet and things like tax returns or other important documents. The service works seamlessly in the background and supports Windows, Mac and Linux! Recommended.

File Shredder is a handy and free utility you can use to both wipe the free portions of your drive and permanently wipe individual files. Comes in real handy when you are cleaning up a computer to give to someone else (gets rid of any personally identifying information or sensitive things like passwords and logins).

Cool browser add-in that comes in really really handy, particularly in keeping bookmarks sync’d between multiple computers, like your desktop and laptop.

Xmarks is free and works with IE, Safari, and Firefox. No reason not to give it a try, you’ll like it.

Discovered Evernote and love it!

It is basically a service that allows you to collect information, links, files, etc in one place, all synchronized to the various devices that Evernote supports;

• Windows/Mac OSX
• iPod
• Blackberry
• Palm Pre
• Web Clipper

The windows client is a dream. Uses SQLite under the hood to maintain a local database of your stuff that is sync’d to Evernote’s servers.  The real beauty here is that all this stuff is available to you anywhere, from your Blackberry, your laptop, even any place you can get to a web browser. And because there’s a copy on Evernote’s servers, you have built-in painless backup you can get to easily to recover your data from a local crash.

Getting stuff into Evernote is easy;

• The web clipper let’s you send entire pages or parts of pages direct to Evernote.
• The Blackberry client let’s you send pictures and sound recordings, as well as locally produced notes direct to Evernote.
• The Windows client supports drag and drop direct into Evernote.
• You get a special Evernote email address that you can use to email anything you want added to your Evernote database.

Once the stuff is there, you can easily organize it with tags and search it with Evernote’s powerful search capabilities. I love this app,  I’m not all that organized, so having a place to just dump things and later be able to easily search and locate what I am looking for is a delight.

Highly recommended.

OK, rant time. What is with Vizio and their remote controls?

I’ve had a 32″ Vizio for about a year. Until recently I’ve been very happy with it but my recent experience with the remote has me wondering about the company and quality. My remote suddenly stopped working. None of the buttons would get a response from the TV. Put in new batteries, no change. Tried using my wife’s remote, no change.

So, naturally I turned to Google and started some heavy googling of the problem. Turns out there are plenty of posts out there about Vizio remote controls mysteriously not working. A common problem seems to be the control working intermittently, some days it works, some days it doesn’t.

Suggestions for fixing the problem include;

• Remove the batteries for 24 hours, then try again (supposedly this ‘resets’ the control)
• Remove the batteries from the control and unplug the TV for 30 minutes (again, supposedly resets both)
• Replace the batteries (duh!)
• Clear obstructions from in front of the screen (another duh!)

I’ve tried the suggestions and still the remote seems to work only when it decides it wants to, which makes me think the real problem is a defective receiver in the TV.

Anyways, finding so many of these complaints around the internet with no solution offered by Vizio doesn’t leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling about the Vizio brand…. if you are considering buying one, buyer beware!