replace phone# with your 10 digit number

So you can see that the CPU clock speed drops more than 40% in power saver mode on my Dell Precision 6300.

So if you have ever wondered why your computer was so slow when it is unplugged, go check your power settings.

I was trying to find about the quickest way to look for my CPU speed again. I think i like this little wmi one liner. Processor clock speed should be easier to look up, but MS thinks you want to know the model, stepping number before what it is to a normal person.

Go in the BIOS

Disable Flash cache

Switch from AHCI to ATA disk mode

save and reboot

This will unbluescreeen, allow you to update all of your patches, then go grab all the latest drivers and firmware from Dell Support. 

Linux does this too on certain machines/chipsets. Man it is a pain when they switch interfaces, the OS guys take years to recover.

Works great when you don’t want to trust the words out of your users mouth. Just look at the date and time it last started. not 100% accurate all the time, but I think the fastest check i know right now.

#2 fix – stop using IE and use Opera

#3 fix – stop using IE and  Use firefox

I strongly suggest you expand your horizons if you haven’t use a browser other than IE. You need to be able to troubleshoot problems to see if they are browsers based or not. So use at least 2 browsers at all times.

MS support is USELESS. We did 3 support calls over the span of a few months. Each time a bunch of guys in India were remote controlling the machine. Each time they failed to fix and diagnose the problem.

Here is what we know so far about the problem and workarounds:

This problem is with office 2007 files being downloaded in IE. Mine specifically is downloading an xlsx doc from gmail. It changes the name from file.xlsx to file_xlsx.zip or filexlsx.zip depending on the profile used. If you save the file, unzip and open it is the document. It opens directly from firefox and chrome doing the same.

It is a problem on IE7 and IE8

Machine is running vista, not in a domain

It is not a problem with 7zip or winzip in most cases.

This is a really weird one- your symptom is that when you click on an attachment or try to save a .docx or .xlsx from internet explorer, it saves as filename.docx.zip or filename.xlsx.zip. When you save the file, it is saved incorrectly and will not open. You can’t unzip and open, it shows a bunch of jibberish. When the open/save option comes up, you can see the filename.docx has been changed to docx.zip.

The problem does not occur in firefox or chrome on a broken machine.This problem seems to have 3 distinct causes.

A. Apache Mime types on the server are set incorrectly – basically this is a manual on the server that your browser uses. So if the server says I’m serving pancakes, sausage and OJ, Your client is getting a menu that says 1 thing. Cheeseburgers. Everything looks like a cheeseburger and is downloaded as a cheeseburger.AKA zip file. I have set up an apache server and successfully broken and fixed this problem. No self respecting admin should have this broken. If this is a server at your work, demand to yank the nerd card from the admin. They are playing games with you and trying to force you to another browser, or the are incompetent.

B. I confirmed on several machines in my office this is a problem caused by winzip 12.0. Normally I have users install 7zip becuase it is a nicer, free open source version of winzip. Apparently winzip is hijacking part of internet explorer when it installs. To fix this problem send yourself an email that has a .docx and one that has a .xlsx. Verify that internet explorer is saving as a zip..

Verify that you can NOT open the zip file and extract a .docx etc (if you can extract the office doc inside, this one isn’t your problem, move on)

then:

1. Uninstall winzip

2. reboot, test your emailed test files.

3. If that didn’t fix it, open internet explorer

4. Go to tools>options, click on the security tab, select “internet” , hit custom settings

5. Way down the list look for “Open files based on content, not exception” write down what it is set on, now flip it to the opposite and reboot.

6. DONE! Should be done anyways. That fixed it for me on 4 machines, 2 vista business and 2 vista home premium. Let me know if you have any success. Also I suggest 7zip for your replacement tool.

C. This problem happens in Google Mail!! They insist their mime types are correct. I need feedback on this page if you are having the same problem so that the next time I call I can point to the number of users having the problem. I’ve put many full days into this stupid issue now. Throw me a bone with some data points.

Leave me a comment if this fixes or fails to fix yours. Good luck!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160891.aspx

Grab that little sucker and then look up the wikipedia article on robocopy to refresh your memory on what the switches mean.

robocopy c:\folder1 c:\folder2 /E /XO

Copy files between two servers and maintain permissions

robocopy c:\folder1 \\server\sharename\destination /E /sec

Robocopy is sweet because you can use it to sync folders, copy permissions, copy encrypted files, pretty much every file copy operation you can think of. Just do a robocopy /? at a command prompt to check it all out