Greetings to the world.

This is my place to vent, moan, bitch and make fun of the computer illiterate.  Occasionally I'll also give tips, offer up tricks, and other advice for computer users that need help.

Once upon a time, the I.T. field was a great career choice, unfortunately that ended when everyone and their mother decided to get into the field. (literally, I work with a woman who is a 65 year old alcoholic.  She knows as much about a computer as I know about milking a cow, but she went to college for a technical degree, so she has a job).

I compete daily with people who look great on paper but have no real experience at all, and it shows.  Some of my colleagues are excellent at what they do, but they make up about 1% of my department.

Still, the people I work with can be no worse than your average, clueless, Mac user who is out of sorts because their Mac doesn't 'just work' like it is supposed to.

Example:

Mac user: "I have a Mac, and I can't print to my printer."

Me: "Is your printer turned on?"

Mac user: "What? how do I do that?"

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I shit you not, this happens daily with Mac users.


 I'll post something from time to time, usually about some experience with a client that I have had, and then I will post a tip that an end user such as yourself might find useful or helpful.  Consider it a little tit for tat trade.  I get to vent, we get to laugh or roll our eyes, and you get a little help.

Tip #1

I can print, but I cannot scan over the network

If you can print but can't scan over the network, turn off your firewall.  If your firewall is turned off, shut down your antivirus software.  On many printers, scan jobs use different ports than that of print jobs.  Overzealous antivirus suites and firewall settings will block the ports necessary for scanning but leave the ports for printing open.  McAfee and Norton are both major violators when it comes to blocking ports for scanning over the network.  If you want the specific ports used so you can create exceptions and open just those ports, contact the manufacturer of the printer for those port settings.

Tip #2

WMPNETWK.EXE is using up all of my system's resources

This can be an easy or difficult fix depending on how long you've let this go before trying to find a fix for it.  The problem is that a corrupt media file has thrown the WMPNETWK.EXE process into an endless loop causing it to eat up cpu cycles and memory.  (At one point I found it took up to 2.4 gigs of ram and 80%-100% of the CPU).  The offending media file is usually an .AVI of some type.

The solution is simple.  Delete the .AVI file, if you know which one it might be.  In order to delete the file you might have to end the WMPNETWK.EXE process first as when you try to delete the offending .AVI or other media file it will tell you it is in use by another process.  A simple CTRL-ALT-DEL (or SHIFT-ALT-DEL) will get you to the task manager so you can end the process and then delete the file before the process automatically restarts.