Fixing Windows Mail Spell Checker in Vista

Windows Mail in Vista has a very common bug in it. Every so often, the spellcheck feature in it stops works. It gives this error "This language is no longer available for Spell Checking Please select another in the Spelling Options Dialogue". Fortunately, the fix is very easy.

To fix the problem, open Windows Mail. Then click at the menu bar at the top TOOLS -> OPTIONS -> SPELLING. At the bottom is the option to choose which language to spell check, choose any one except English. Then click Apply at the very bottom. Then change the language option back to English and click OK. That will solve the problem.

Posted by Wade Burchette at 9:05 PM - Categories: Computer Repair Notes

Fixing an Internet Explorer Internet Address Issue

Some time ago, I came upon a computer which had a problem when you attempted to enter an web address into Internet Explorer. At first, when you attempted to go to another webpage, Internet Explorer would pop-up an error message with some message. I don't remember exactly what it said, but I do remember it had "(null)" in it, just like that. My first instinct was to try FireFox to see if it was malware causing the issue. This computer already had FireFox installed, but it was not working for some reason. Fortunately, I had a copy of FireFox on one of my CD's. So I installed that copy of FireFox onto the computer. FireFox began to work again, but Internet Explorer was still causing problems. Now, everytime I tried to go to another webpage in Internet Explorer, IE always opened up FireFox and to open the webpage. FireFox was not the default browser, but everything was sent to it.

Fortunately, I found this blog post from Microsoft. Although officially it is an IE7 Beta 1 bug, it manifests itself in non-beta versions of IE7 and IE8. The fix is very simple, a restart isn't required. Simply delete the registry key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{c90250f3-4d7d-4991-9b69-a5c5bc1c2ae6}. Make sure you select the right one.

On a similar note, this problem may also be caused by having two versions of Internet Explorer installed on your computer. I would never do that.

If you are still having issues with Internet Explorer not working, then perhaps you need to do an in-place upgrade. 9 times out of 10, that will fix most problems.

Posted by Wade Burchette at 1:12 PM - Categories: Computer Repair Notes | Windows

Determing Errors With the svchost.exe File

Recently, I cleaned a computer that was infected with two rootkits, one in the Master Boot Record (MBR) and the other that dread UAC rootkit. These rootkits were modifying files as they were executed or when the file performed some action it did not like. For example, on this person's computer, the rootkits corrupted McAfee files and would corrupt anti-malware scanners like HijackThis when it tried to scan. The MBR rootkit was very nasty. I actually had to use virtual Windows XP in my Windows 7 computer because RootRepeal was not fully compatible with Windows 7, which is all I have right now. After I successfully remove the rootkit, I had to do an in-place upgrade (commonly called a repair installation) of Windows XP to repair the damaged system files.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 12:00 PM - Categories: Computer Repair Notes | Windows

The Problem of the Mouse Not Working in Microsoft Word

Recently I had an interesting problem that I have never seen before. The mouse was not working in Word 2007. You could type something in the document, but you could not highlight anything with the mouse and you could not click on anything with the mouse. This included the menu bar and any submenu such as the Word options submenu. The keyboard worked just fine. Further, when you attempt to open a Word document, no matter if it was a .doc or .docx file, Word would open, but the document would not load. If you opened the document within Word, it would open but the mouse was still inoperable. The customer thought this was an issue with Word starting up. If that wasn't enough, whenever Word was closed, Windows would say "Microsoft Office Word has stopped working" and then attempt to restart Word. After the mouse problem was fixed, exiting Word still caused problems but now Windows just terminated Word without restarting.

The customer tried all the easy steps. He performed a disk check (chkdsk), he un-installed and re-installed Office, he used Revo Unistaller to completely un-install Office and then re-install Office again, and he spent many frustrating hours searching. None of these worked.

So what was the problem? An add-on.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 4:41 PM - Categories: Computer Repair Notes

One Annoying Rootkit

On July 19, I had the joy (used sarcastically) of removing one annoying rootkit. With this particular rootkit, I could only work in safe mode. The problem with that is that Microsoft's rootkit revealer program does not work in safe mode. So I had to painstakingly find the find outside of Windows. Malware Bytes was unable to find it. The antivirus software installed, not named to protect myself, kept coming up with firewall warnings asking me if I wanted to block a file from communicating with the internet, but it never once identified it as malware. So the hunt was on.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 4:00 PM - Categories: Computer Repair Notes | Malware

The Mystery of the STOP 0x8E Windows Error

While working on a computer, I encounted a computer that would exhibit the STOP 0x0000008E blue screen but only just after I told Windows to restart. A quick Google search revealed that STOP0x0000008E is a very common problem. In fact, Microsoft had three articles about this very STOP code. These are my notes on how I fixed the STOP 0x0000008E KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error that only occurs during a restart.

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Posted by Wade Burchette at 11:00 AM - Categories: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) | Computer Repair Notes | Windows