Troubleshooting Quickbooks PDF problems

Here's a good list of steps for troubleshooting problems printing/saving to PDF in Quickbooks.  In my case, I was troubleshooting errors when saving to PDF on Quickbooks 2009 for a user.  I use the PDF repair utility and it solved the problem.

1. Make sure you have the most current revision of your year of QuickBooks, as earlier revisions are more likely to have problems. For example, QuickBooks 2013 R6 has at least 7 fixes that directly relate to correcting PDF problems in various circumstances
2. Try the the PDF Repair Utility from Intuit, which works through a number of different issues with the various drivers and Windows settings. This works for MOST cases.
3. Make sure you have proper access permissions to the “temp” folder in Windows (details for how to do this are in my article on QuickBooks/Windows 8 PDF problems, which has a few additional tips).
4. If this is QuickBooks 2011 or older, check the outline below.
5. If all else fails, try the Intuit support site for PDF problems, which has some other things to try.

Intel cloning tool for future clones

I wrote about using Clonezilla to clone a drive in an upgrade here.  The one obstacle was that the cloning mirrored the drive size on the new drive.  If the old drive was 128 GB and the new drive was 512 GB, Clonezilla would create a 128 GB partition on the new drive and 384 GB of unallocated space.

For my next clone, I'll try Intel's data migration software:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19324

I almost always buy Crucial drives - I don't know if this Intel software will work on the Crucial drives (or if it'll only work on Intel drives), but we'll see.  The person who used the Intel software raved about ease of using it.

Clone with Clonezilla experience

I used Clonezilla to clone my first hard drive the other day.  I was upgrading a 128 GB hard drive in a Dell XPS 13 to a 512 GB hard drive.  I used Tuxboot to download and install Clonezilla to a flash drive (using the i686 pae Clonezilla download version).  Basically, I did this:

plug in nothing but the flash drive to the existing laptop and boot to that device
After the computer boots to the flash drive, plug in the second drive that you are cloning to (typically with some kind of USB to SATA or USB to mSATA adapter)
Choose Clonezilla Live (default settings)
Choose English
Choose Don't touch keymap
Choose Start Clonezilla
Choose device-device (to clone directly from one drive to another instead of using an image as an intermediary)
Choose the source drive
Choose the destination drive
Let it run.
It'll take somewhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on the quantity of data.

In the case of this Dell computer, the clone worked great and once i put the new drive in, the computer booted up normally.  This is in contrast to a Toshiba Portege Z30a-1301 that would give a BSOD on every bootup.  For the Toshiba, even though I followed the exact same steps that worked with this Dell, I had to do things differently.  After failure after failure, I ended up building Windows from scratch using a Windows 7 volume license.

The catch at the of the clone was that the C drive was only 128 GB.  I had 300+ GB in unallocated space.  And I couldn't merge the 128 GB partition with the unallocated space because there were other partitions physically located between the 128 GB partition and the unallocated space.

Here's how I fixed that . . .

The drive looked similar to this where the C drive was not right next to the unused space:

I downloaded and installed Mini Partition Wizard 9.1 from here.

The goal is to move the 449 MB partition to the end of the disk so that the unallocated space is right next to the C drive.  I clicked on the 449 MB partition and chose move/resize:

I dragged the slider all the way to the right.

I hit OK and then applied the changes.  Afterward, the 449 MB partition was at the end and the unallocated space was right next to the C drive:

I right clicked on the C drive and extended the volume and was able to get the C drive the full size I wanted.

adding USB connected Time Capsule printers to PCs

This is more of a self reminder.  If you have a network printer that is connected via USB to a Time Capsule - you need to install Bonjour on any PCs you have in order to see/connect to the printer.  Run Bonjour, and Bonjour will find the printer and then go through the printer installation process.

Internet Explorer proxy settings won't change - "some settings are managed by system adminsitrator"

Credit for this solution belongs here:

I came across a computer with a malware infection that had its Internet Explorer proxy settings configured, but I couldn't remove the proxy settings.  When I went to internet properties, it said "some settings are managed by system adminsitrator"

This computer was not part of a domain and had nothing set in local policies.  The fix was to change the value for ProxySettingsPerUser from 0 to 1 in the registry here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings -> ProxySettingsPerUser

Computer replacement plan

I've often struggled with a hard and fast policy for replacing laptops in a business environment.  Some people swear by a 3 year rotation, some go up to 5 years.  Some use equipment until the old equipment wears out.  I've decided that this is what I'm going to recommend to my clients:

Laptops with conventional hard drives - replace after 3 years
Laptops with SSD hard drives - replace after 4 years
Desktops (aggressive) - replace after 4 years
Desktops (conservative) - replace after 5 years

This is as much about likelihood of failure as speed after a certain amount of time.

Recovering lost Word (or other MS Office) documents

I'm adding a third tool to my chest on recovering MS Word (or other Office documents).

You can access ASD files (autorecover files) here:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word

Other places to look for missing files (per this post):
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook

Or via this method to recover unsaved Word docs:
http://t-solve.blogspot.com/2014/09/retrieving-document-from-office-2010.html