From an earlier post.Is that kosher on Windows?

Check the date. It's part of the folder name.

Turns out it was a bad interaction between the McAfee firewall and a couple windows components. The firewall was blocking all traffic from dashost.exe and spoolsv.exe, and the firewall log suggests both are part of the printing subsystem (well, they were blocked just as I test printed), and both were recently updated by MS.

I imagine McAfee will fix it sometime...

-jk

I've got a Surface Book, purchased at a Microsoft Store, so I could be sure to have a "clean" Windows installation. Well, yeah, it's clean, but the Windows Defender AV is still annoying. Whenever I'd try to upload something from my "Downloads" directory, the file picker dialog with hang forever with a "Working on it..." message rather than a list of my files. After a minute, it would then work.

After a few weeks, it decided that the installer for IntelliJ (2016.2.4) was a malware installer and quarantined it, and then everything worked great thereafter. I'll chalk that up as a false positive. (I hope.)

Yes. Me. It's buried pretty deep in the ribbon configuration page, but it's doable.

Actually... I think it does. But .MOBI files aren't text. They look like this:

™GoldÃupƒxælŠèedé‚Ðcr‚0„óesk‚q€aSportsÅditor‚Ðd÷eˆà‚Àopening�2mail÷hich�àways‚xcumulat‚ðf�ЇàbyŽ8i‡Øs.Ìuke-John̓ ‚pgrun�aƒstretch€pou„Èìanguidè€è,âlinkƒÉvacantŠÐƒÈ‡X‹©isten�À…èsomeoneŒÈt„¨Šˆt€²‹Èˆ¤teleph�ŽØŽ‡’7Ž‡'Yeah...ù€AÂlow‚roofïff,'ƒésaid‚_‚_‚_‚X�ቭ�ý÷a‹Ãnumb�…±poŒÐ…XfÔŒ)un‘’lazeˆ e�HiŒ°cŽYš rt.×hy‘íI�D‹Á�ÿÔimes,퉈ife'síoƒ°r…Ê,’¸‰àa‹˜f‰prag“ó�ÿƒó!€‘yŒPƒJneed‹pm„¨that†Jwhy.Ó�¸considerŒyhi…ˆrr‹�v�˜,’Chenó�Jul‚zac

which makes it pretty unlikely that a Windows search will find a given phrase or even a word.

So I've gotten Office 2016 set up pretty much to my satisfaction now, but there is still one unsolvable problem. Adobe Acrobat version 9 is incompatible with Office 2016. If you try to import a file into Acrobat, it locks up the program. Office 2016 is only compatible with Acrobat DC and later (that's the subscription program where you pay $23 a month to have it on your computer) and Adobe says they have no plans to update earlier versions of the program.

While Adobe Acrobat 9 is not compatible with Office 2016, fortunately Office 2016 is compatible with Adobe Acrobat. So if I need to put an Office 2016 program into Acrobat, I save the MS-Word file as a PDF, and then Acrobat is happy to swallow it.

Bit by bit the computer is coming back to life. I'm probably at 40% of my previous functionality now, but it's the 40% that did at least 90% of the useful work.

tanstaafl.

Do you use Acrobat for anything other than viewing PDF files?

I've made do without any version of acrobat or any kind of PDF viewer on my computer for quite a while now, ever since Google Chrome natively displays PDF files for me.

If I ever need to convert something to PDF, if its native app doesn't have a "save as PDF option" then I use the "PDF995" printer driver.

Yes.

I assemble health insurance claims with it. My retirement health insurance covers us here in Mexico, but the service providers do not deal with insurance, I have to do the claims myself.

I have the insurance form downloaded and saved as a .png file, I fill in the data with my graphics editor (paint.net). I scan in all the relevant receipts, prescription forms, etc., also saved as .png files, sometimes the provider will email me a receipt in .pdf format. I use MS-Word to prepare a letter of explanation to the insurance provider, detailing the necessity of the claim, explaining whatever might not be evident from just perusing the claim form and the receipts. Then I combine all of that information (sometimes as much as 10 or more pages) into a single .pdf file and email it to the insurance provider.

I do a really good job with those claims. Over the past six years, I have achieved a reimbursement rate of 95.3% (counting co-pays and annual deductibles as payment) which I think is fairly respectable. And yes, I do indeed keep records in that much detail. I can reproduce any of the several hundred claims I have submitted over the last six years or so in a matter of one or two minutes.

tanstaafl.

I'm not sure which part of that process requires Acrobat. Is it the part where you take multiple pages and re-assemble them into a single document?

But recent versions of Word can both import and export PDF files, correct? Sounds like you could do all the assembly work in Word and save it as a single 10+ page PDF file directly from Word, without having to touch Acrobat.

I'm only suggesting this because you said you had a problem with Acrobat, and so I'm wondering if ditching Acrobat entirely is feasible.

Even if you don't have a recent version of Word/Open Office/Libre Office then printing from whatever programme to a PDF printer (like Cute PDF or PDF Exchange) will create your PDF file. I find PDF Exchange Viewer much easier than the latest Acrobat Viewer too.

An average of one every week or two? Wow...

That would be itemized, I expect. Suppose Doug and SWMBO have 5 medications between them that have to be ordered on a monthly basis, that's already 360 claims. And then, if Mexico is anything like the US in billing, you don't get "a" bill for an office visit, you get a bill from the doctor, a bill from the office, a bill from the lab, a bill from the radiologist, etc. So a single visit can explode into multiple claims quite easily.

It's a bit more complicated than that.

My brother-in-law generated 42 claims two Christmases ago when he visited us, fell on the stairs and broke his hip.

Even a minor surgical procedure can generate half a dozen claims or more by the time you add in hospital fees, equipment rental, anesthesiologist, surgeon, referring physician, and a bunch of prescriptions for pain, antibiotic, etc.

Some months there are no claims at all. Other months... well, you get the idea.

tanstaafl.

I could... but it is faster and easier to save the single Word document as a PDF, and then let Acrobat do all the combining.

Combining files in Word is a pain, especially having to deal with different file types and sometimes having to rearrange the order of the pages, and the scaling doesn't always work out right... With Acrobat, I just drag the individual files into the "Combine" box in the order that I want them, and it's done. I'm actually finding that the operation goes faster now than it did before, because even when Acrobat would read and combine the older version Word files, it was slow -- taking about 30 seconds for a single Word document. Now that it is combining mostly .png and .pdf files, it is almost instantaneous. It takes only a second or two extra to save the original Word file as a .pdf, so overall it is faster.

tanstaafl.

Wow. I think I would just "die young" in a situation like that -- paperwork and I simply do NOT get along at all.

Kudos to Doug for managing to keep on top of it all though.

Gah! My daughter's win10 computer was, as she put it, "glitching". She restarted it (as I usually ask, yet she usually declines; "I'll have to save my work and find my pages!")

The restart gave her an upgrade. <sigh> After completing, her touchpad was dead (fortunately it has a touch screen, too), and her desktop was all win8 tablet style tiles rather than her few desktop shortcuts (she's also a minimalist).

winver reported version 1607 build 14393.222.

I did a recovery to the prior restore point. Success! (I think it's the first time it's actually worked for me.)

The weird thing is now winver is reporting version 1607 build 14393.351... (And my computer wants to install an update. I think I'll wait a bit.)

I'm confused - going backwards to go forwards.

-jk

I can't answer the touchpad issue (maybe it just needed some driver updates?) but the other problem is familiar to me. I've had several customers get hit with it, and it's annoying. Apparently Windows 10 isn't great at deciding what kind of computer it's been updated on, and says "hey, a touchscreen, I must be a tablet!" And it sets the tablet mode as the default. I have no clue why it wouldn't just use the last mode.

You can change it in Start - Settings - System - Tablet Mode.

Thanks - I'll keep that in mind. For this one, the restore point fixed it.

-jk

Possibly related question:

Back in the summer, when I really needed a new laptop and wasn't about to buy a soon-to-be-obsolete MacBook, I decided to get a Microsoft Surface Book, so Win10 direct from the factory without any third-party cruft. I also installed all the "preview" stuff so I could get the Ubuntu Linux personality, which means near-weekly "hey you need to reboot now for the latest Microsoft update."

Anyway, a week or two ago, the damn trackpad started malfunctioning. It works great after the computer reboots, but after the computer has gone to sleep it's sometimes unresponsive and jumpy. Clicks aren't registered properly. I adjusted all the relevant settings, but no dice. A few weeks earlier, I had the opposite problem, wherein brushing the trackpad with my palm would register as a click, which is hardly ever desirable.

My theory is that somebody at Microsoft got pissed at these errant clicks and over-shot on filtering the trackpad, and subsequently screwed up something that only happens when restoring from a low-power state.

Hunting around online, no obviously useful advice, although there seem to be lots of related complaints, but none exactly like mine.

Update! I decided to try Microsoft's tech support. Hey, I bought this thing from Microsoft, right?

They did the remote management thing on my machine, running some tool that tries to clean up any damaged files, and then since yesterday there was a new build of the OS (Win10 Pro Insider Preview), which wasn't available yesterday. So fine, downloaded, installed, and at least for now everything seems to be working. We'll see if this sticks around.

Fun fact: their remote management tool manages to restore itself after a reboot and pick up right where it left off. Neat.

I use GoToAssist and it does that too. It's pretty great and makes my job so much easier. It's nice to be able to work on computers remotely in the first place, but it's even better to be able to reboot without calling the client again. Half of the tools I use to clean systems off require a reboot, and I can even choose to reboot into safe mode. I can also log the user off and log back in as another account because. I guess that Microsoft's tool and GoToAssist both install as a system service to make that possible.

Glad your trackpad is working again!

Aka. Major security hole.

Why do you say that?

The tool went through a series of serious warnings for me to permit it to do non-standard things. And it's no-longer running now. Also, there was a six-digit PIN that I had to enter somewhere to connect the tool back to Microsoft, and "Jake" who I was texting with seemed pretty knowledgeable.

From a security perspective, the tool was a separate thing I had to download and install. It's not on-by-default, so it's not part of the attack surface of the machine.

Much better than I initially thought from hearing "restore itself after a reboot and pick up right where it left off."

Stuff like that is a real boon for remote support, but it's rarely clear how much autonomous action such a loophole is capable of. Until someone with pure malicious intent uses it to add machines to a botnet or whatever.

Along the lines of the rootkits that Intel has been installing in just about every x86 processor for the past 10 years or so. You know, that fancy little feature "for data centre admins", to automatically power on, update, intercept KB/Mouse/Net, etc.

Perfectly safe of course. Really.

I must admit ignorance of this. Is it outside the perimeter of the motherboard bios/firmware, implemented in the Intel Ethernet chipset?

Does this exposure also exist in Mac computers?

The current form is "AMT", but was preceeded by "MEBx" in earlier chips. I first came across it in a Dell OptiPlex-755 box I was setting up. The box was unreliable in shutting off and rebooting, and "MEBx" was the culprit:

http://rtr.ca/optiplex755/

Here is Wikipedia's article on the current form, "AMT":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology

Sorry, I think that having used the tool myself - and used it as a customer when dealing with my clients' problems - I was just very accustomed to how these tools worked. Like Dan said, you have to get the customer to enter a code, download the install file, run it, and accept the UAC message to connect. Once the session is active, I'm able to restart the computer and maintain the connection, but if anything happens to disconnect me, it's over and I can't reconnect. Neither can anyone else because there's no active session and the process has stopped running. I can't speak to the tool MS used with him, but GoToAssist uses an encrypted connection.

I'm also able, for my clients who request it, to install an "unattended access" application. This has to be accepted on their end, it's still encrypted, and I still need to know the computer login when I connect, but I can connect any time and work on their computer. Some find this uncomfortable, so it doesn't get installed. Most of the people who want this are ones who I help often and don't want to go through the process every time, or who actually want me to connect to their computers when they're not there. Most of these are small businesses, but home users too. Fortunately, I've gained a great deal of trust with my customers.