FIX: Internet Explorer 11 OWA Clipboard Paste (Exchange 2013)

Recently started having an issue using my clipboard in OWA (Outlook Web Access). I wasn’t able to paste, either via keyboard shortcut or right-click menu. I would have to first paste into a blank word document and then highlight and drag the text into the OWA editor window. I’m not sure if its related to Windows 8 or the 8.1 upgrade, Internet Explorer 11, or the Exchange 2013 environment. Regardless, this is how I worked around the problem. Read More

FIX: Office 2013 Install (Upgrade) – Error 1921. Service ‘Windows Font Cache Service’ (FontCache) could not be stopped…

I got around to upgrading to Office 2013 from 2010 today on my Windows 8 machine and ran into an issue with the “Windows Font Cache Service.” I didn’t think to screenshot the error, but it occurred right after I chose the options I wanted and clicked the ‘Upgrade’ button. The installer didn’t hang, it just wasn’t able to progress at all and gave me the message about being unable to stop the service.  I tried to stop it manually from the services management console, which failed with an error stating it couldn’t be stopped and to contact my system administrator.

I’m not one to carry on conversations with myself so I did some searching and most of the results said to uninstall the previous version before installing 2013, but there’s an easier way…

Read More

Firefox and its elusive “Temp Directory”…

When you view the web using any browser, whether it be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc., your computer stores all the HTML, images, and other files as you go in a temporary location on your computer.  Typically these files are cleared out once the specified size limit is reached, however more savvy users (see: nerds) prefer to have this done on a more frequent basis.  Some also prefer to change the location where these files are stored to avoid clutter or hard drive performance knocks.  Having an SSD as my OS drive, I choose to store these files on a separate HDD.

For firefox users, changing your “Temp Directory” isn’t quite as easy as it is in Internet Explorer.  In fact, no matter how hard the average Joe looks for it, he’ll find himself either tearing what hair he has left out, or giving up… So here you go!

1. Open Firefox and in the address bar, type: about:config Read More

iStat Menus

iStat Menus will put valuable resource information in your menu.  I only have it showing CPU, memory, and Bandwidth usage, but it also has the ability to show drive usage, temperatures, fan speeds, date and time with more in depth calendar, etc.

My iStat Menu configuration.
My iStat Menu configuration.

The configuration screen is pretty simple to decipher and you can check for updates from here as well.

Configuration screen in System Preferences.
Configuration screen in System Preferences.

Product Type: Freeware (donations accepted by developer).

Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X

Along the way I’m finding some useful utilities that help me better utilize my system how I want.  Because I have a 320GB drive and a 750GB drive, I partitioned the 320GB in half (150GB~ HFS+ for OSX and 150GB~ NTFS for Vista).  I will document how I formatted these volumes this way when I get around to doing the retail installation of OSX.

Anyways, I use the 750GB drive as a data/documents storage volume for both OSes formatted as NTFS.  I formatted it NTFS because out of the box OSX can view NTFS volumes but not write to them, whereas Windows can’t even view HFS+ volumes (out of the box).

Since you can already view NTFS volumes mounted on your desktop in OSX just as you would any other HFS+ volume, the only aspect left is writing to it.  Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X is a lightweight driver that allows you to write to NTFS formatted volumes within OSX just as you would a HFS+ volume, its seemless and doesn’t require launching of an application.

You can also use the included MacBrowser to read/write to your HFS+ formatted volumes while in Windows.

Product Type: Shareware $39.95 // Trial Period: 10 days fully functional.