App-V, PowerPoint 2007 and SMARTBoard Notebook

Little bit of an interesting issue that I came across today that I thought I would share… One of our staff was having issues working with PowerPoint 2007 which we deploy through App-V 4.6 – basically the mouse would stop working normally acting as if something else was clicking on part of display. When running PowerPoint the entire PC would… Read more



Basic Gaming PC under £350 – Dec 2012

A little while back in response to a poorly researched article on a tech website I decided I would list out the parts I would use of building a basic gaming PC for less than £350. With Windows 8 and AMDs latest FM2 socket processors now out it seemed to make sense to update that article. So for a mere… Read more





Windows Server Remote Desktop won’t let me save credentials

One of the little niggles that you can get with Windows Server (2008 SP2 in my case) is a remote desktop connection will not let you use saved credentials to login remotely with the following error message. Your credentials did not work The server’s authentication policy does not allow connection requests using saved credentials. Please enter new credentials. The fix… Read more



Windows 8 Upgrade – Error 0x80070570

For the past few days I’ve been trying to get Windows 8 Pro (64bit for anyone who is counting) upgrade to install onto a test PC at work, however after detecting the user files the installer gets to about 4% of extracting files then errors out with the message below. Windows cannot install the required files. The file may be… Read more



LSI Nytro Predictor – Please install Windows Performance Analyzer

While trying to run the LSI Predictor on one of my servers I was getting the error message Please install Microsoft (R) Windows (R) Performance Analyzer Version 4.8.7701 It took a while to nail down  what I actually needed to get this installed however the solution is hidden away in the Windows SDK (the link is for Windows 7 but… Read more



Microsoft Surface RT – Getting your Xbox Controller to work

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Microsoft Surface RT

Its hard to not know about Xbox but one thing you may not know about it is that you can use your Xbox Controller with Windows PCs (if you have a wireless controller you will need one of the Windows PC wireless receivers). What makes this even better is you arn’t limited to using it with Windows 8 but also… Read more



Microsoft Surface RT – Drive Encryption

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Microsoft Surface RT

Encryption still seems to be a bit of a dirty word in the world of IT – all to often we hear about a notebook PC being stolen and that it had unencrypted data on it. Luckily the Microsoft Surface RT comes with encryption built in right out of the box and to make things even better it Uses the… Read more



Microsoft Surface RT – Printing

This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Microsoft Surface RT

Lets all face it we don’t live in the paperless office…yet…and from time to time you will find a need to print something. With most modern tablets printing maybe an issue, maybe you will be lucky have you have the latest HP printer next to you with Apple AirPrint (to see the rather short list click here) but if you are… Read more



Microsoft Surface RT – PowerPoint

This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series Microsoft Surface RT

In this video I look at how you can run a full PowerPoint presentation from your Microsoft Surface RT tablet PC. The key thing about Windows RT over other mobile operating systems is the inclusion of a full version of Office 2013 which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This means if you go to present a PowerPoint that you made… Read more