DevotedIT

Windows 2000 is a pain, especially these days when something goes wrong because none of the information or tools that we used to use are around any more.

Anyway.

Who remembers that issue when you open “Add/Remove Programs” from an oddly positioned control panel only to be greeted by an odd jumble of strings:

“Change or Remove ProgramsAdd New ProgramsAdd/Remove Windows ComponentsSet Program Access and Defaults”

This message is followed by a blank change or remove programs window.

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One of my customers has specialist database software built on the FileMaker Pro database engine.

The unfortunate downside to this is that certain legacy plugins they are using for FileMaker only support Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 and not the latest Office 2010.

This means that any new systems need to purchase legacy versions of Microsoft Office, which seems to be almost impossible apart from purchasing old stock.

I managed to find that a reputable retailer (eBuyer) had some suitable licenses in stock:

• Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 – W/ MS Office Professional 2007 (Trial) – licence – 1 PC – OEM, MLK – Win

As you can see, this is for Microsoft Office Small Business 2007, this include Outlook (unlike the Home and Student version) and Publisher (Unlike the Standard version or below). This license is suitable for their needs.

One major downside to this is that “MLK” means “Medialess License Kit”, which means they do not supply a CD or DVD with this purchase, just the license key.

Perfect, well almost:

Where the heck do you get the media from?

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A client called explaining to me that they were unable to print to their Sharp MX-1800N network printer. Upon inspection it said that the printer was “Offline”.

I checked other computers on the network and they didn’t report this and were able to print to that printer without error.

I checked with Microsoft’s knowledge base to see if this was a common problem. There was a possible solution, which involved changing the value of the “PrinterOnLine” registry key from 0 to 1, but that value was already set. No fix.

I tried reinstalling drivers from scratch. No fix.

I investigated further… Continue reading →