The incompetence of Xbox support

by Russ Michaels | Aug 24, 2017 | Gaming, Tech Stuff

Dealing with XBOX Support and Microsoft support, in general, is almost always a painful experience, especially if you are a technical person yourself. Very rarely have I dealt with someone who actually seems to know what they are talking about and is actually able to resolve a problem. Most of the time they drive me up the wall and I end up having to explain to them how their own systems work, while they give me pointless suggestions, and repeat themselves over and over again forcing me to do...

More ways to get paid with PayPal

by Russ Michaels | Jul 20, 2017 | News & Gossip, Tech Stuff

Get paid anywhere with PayPal Here Accept card and contactless payments easily without monthly fees using just your mobile phone and the PayPal card reader. I am now setup with PayPal here, and can provide you with an onsite demo (Kent only) and training in using the card reader. If you do not already have paypal, I can help you setup paypal, a full merchant account if you also need online processing and anything else e-commerce related. [button link="/contact"...

Convert VMDK to VirtualBox VDI and compact disk

by Russ Michaels | Jun 1, 2017 | Tech Stuff

I have been testing out Solarwinds MSP backup, and one of the features this has is that you can restore the backup to a virtual disk, which is in VMware vmdk format. I have tended to use Oracle VirtualBox locally for my virtual machines since it is compatible with a lot of appliance templates and vhd images you can download online and is free and has a small footprint. Although Windows 10 now does include a cut down version of hyper-v allowing you to run virtual machines, you do need the PRO...

WIFI problems caused by windows update

by Russ Michaels | Apr 14, 2017 | Tech Stuff

I have been having some WIFI problems the last couple of months where devices would randomly lose access to the internet, some devices couldn't even connect to the WIFI access point, others could connect but were just slow as hell. Even wired devices seemed to be having problems. After trying everything possible, I finally thought that maybe something on the network was sucking all the bandwidth, as some devices did still have a connection. So I logged into my router and checked the connected...

Add MariaDB support to MSP Control

by Russ Michaels | Jan 7, 2017 | WEBBY STUFF, Tech Stuff

I have recently been setting up MSP Control (formerly WebsitePanel) on my new CFML Developer server. Unfortunately, it doesn't support MariaDB out of the box and so won't detect if you have it installed. Fortunately, this is an easy hack. Open up your MSPControl database in SSMS, and open the providers table. Now find the MySQL providerID that matches your MariaDB install i.e. MySQL 5.7 for MariaDB 10.1 Now add a new entry into the SERVICES table, using the providerID you got from the last...

Turn your Android into a Windows Phone

by Russ Michaels | May 3, 2016 | Windows 10, Mobile, Tech Stuff

Windows Phone has received a lot of bad publicity, and the main complaint you see from ignorant reviewers is that there is a lack of apps for windows Phones (WP). While there may be many legitimate reasons to not like WP, lack of apps is not one of them, there are currently over 500,000 apps in the WP store, and there were 300k even when I got my phone, so I would hardly call this a lack of apps. Sure there are some apps you may want that do not exist because most vendors do not bother with WP...

Why ColdFusion is not suited to shared hosting

by Russ Michaels | Jan 19, 2016 | ColdFusion, Lucee, Tech Stuff, WEBBY STUFF

This is a topic I have found myself explaining a lot over the years, not just to customers but to developers as well, and one thing I can say with absolutely certainly from dealing with hundreds of developers of all levels over the years, from newbs to gurus, is that most devs in general do not really understand how things work on the server (they know how to write code and upload it to the server) and most CF devs additionally don’t understand how ColdFusion really works and how/why it...

Microsoft Answer Desk, trained monkeys on demand

by Russ Michaels | Dec 20, 2015 | Windows 10

Since the release of windows 10, users now have access to a free online support service called "Answer Desk". In Windows 10 you access this by typing "contact support" at the start menu, which will allow you to launch a native answer desk chat app. This will connect you an answer desk tech who will provide you with free support for Windows and related apps. While the concept is great, Microsoft's implementation of it is not so much. Having used the answer desk a few times myself now, I can...

Parents Beware! Microsoft Family Safety is broken, your kids are not protected.

by Russ Michaels | Nov 23, 2015 | Security, Reviews, Windows 10, Windows 8

Like many parents, I have been using Microsoft Family Safety on my kids computers for several years now to keep them safe online by restricting what websites they can view, blocking adult content, restrict what apps they can use etc. I also used family safety to control my kids screen time, so that they could not spend all day/night on the computer frying their brains and eyesight, or use it after bedtime. By default, we gave all our kids ZERO screen time each day, and then used the...

Amazon Fire TV doesn’t stream, just gives License_Error

by Russ Michaels | Oct 5, 2015 | Tech Stuff

I got a new shiny Fire TV today, plugged it in, went to play some video and got "License_Error" on every single video, that was just great!!! I noticed that all the prices were showing in $USD, but as I am in the UK this gave me a clue that the Fire TV thought I was in the wrong country, which I was sure was the cause of the license error. Sadly google did not furnish any answers for me today, so I started fishing around in my Amazon account and found my country settings, you can find this...

Tech Stuff

The incompetence of Xbox support

More ways to get paid with PayPal

Convert VMDK to VirtualBox VDI and compact disk

WIFI problems caused by windows update

Add MariaDB support to MSP Control

Turn your Android into a Windows Phone

Why ColdFusion is not suited to shared hosting

Microsoft Answer Desk, trained monkeys on demand

Parents Beware! Microsoft Family Safety is broken, your kids are not protected.

Amazon Fire TV doesn’t stream, just gives License_Error

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