Set Page Numbering for Multiple Excel Sheets

Posted on June 24th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Jay

For the first time I can recall, I had to setup page numbering in an Excel footer. Initially it was driving me crazy that I would set the footer for one tab, but it wouldn’t apply to the rest. For a brief moment I thought I would have to set the footer on each page and remember to adjust the numbering.

Fortunately, I decided to Ctrl-click each of the sheet tabs I wanted to number enter page setup and set the footer in the normal Microsoft Office way. Sure enough it worked. Shift-click will also work to select a range. No doubt this also works for other Page Setup options.

This may be common knowledge, but I never needed to do it until today.

I’m back

Posted on June 7th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Jay

After about a month of an incomplete database, the site’s back. My web host migrated to new servers and failed to migrate large portions of the database back end. There’s something to be said for running your own web server and having total control. This is something I can do at work, but not at home.

Needless to say, my web host is in the dog house. In my opinion the new server did not improve anything and in fact offers less capabilities for an experienced technician than the old server.

I’m examining my options for a new host. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

Daylight Savings Time Update for Windows 2000

Posted on February 3rd, 2007 in Uncategorized by Jay

The United States government has changed the start and end dates for Daylight Savings Time as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The theory is energy will be saved by starting earlier and ending later. Of course our computers don’t know that yet. Unless you fix it, your computer’s clock will be off by an hour when you wake up on March 11th.

If you have a computer running Windows XP or later you’ll be fine if you just go get the patch for your OS from Microsoft. If you have Windows 2000 you have to do it the hard way, unless you have Extended Hotfix Support. Windows 2000 is no longer supported by Microsoft, but they do provide a long knowledge base article to tell you how to do it yourself.

Fear no more. I needed to simplify the process so it can be repeated on hundreds of machines. I’ve wrapped it all up in one self-extracting zip file and I’m sharing it with you. DSTUpdate.exe was created with ZipGenius and if you want to check my work feel free to look inside and check it out.

Make the Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility into a Bootable CD

Posted on January 13th, 2004 in Uncategorized by Jay

In September Microsoft released the Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility at their downloads site. The utility fills a void in my software toolbox I’ve been trying to fill for some time. There are ways to boot into the recovery console and fix the registry but there’s never been an easy way and they often don’t work. This utility has already saved more than one computer I administer.

The instructions provided with the utility require creating six Windows XP Setup Floppy Disks and then running an installer that copies some files to the sixth disk. To run the program you need to boot from the floppy drive and successively insert each disk until you get to the last one. The program then asks which installation to fix and hopefully fixes it.

I wasn’t satisfied with loading six floppies to get the job done. My toolkit only includes one blank floppy. Everything else I need is kept on CDs. If I need a bootable floppy I have images on a CD that I can load to the floppy as needed. So I set out to figure out how to move the utility to CD.

Dual Boot Windows 2000 and Ghost

Posted on November 4th, 2002 in Uncategorized by Jay

For some time now, I’ve been using Norton Ghost to make perfect backups of my computers. The one thing about Ghost that gets old, is you have to boot up to DOS with a floppy disk or CD-ROM in order to make the backup. In addition to requiring a boot floppy, I keep my BIOS set to only boot to the hard drive so I don’t accidently boot up a floppy and risk infecting my computer with a virus.

I decided to figure out how to dual boot Windows 2000 and DOS so I can boot up to DOS on the hard drive and run Ghost without popping in floppy disks and changing BIOS settings to allow the computer to boot to the floppy.

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