Category Archives: Software Tips

Enable remote MySQL access (root non-local access)

Often one of the first tasks after setting up a MySQL server is to enable connections from other IP addresses. Here are a some articles that discuss how to setup a user that can access a MySQL database remotely (non-locally). Between the two of them you will have all the info you need to create user accounts for remote MySQL db access 🙂 If you are in a testing environment you can also enable non-local root access for all databases

Windows Update error 80072f8f [SOLVED]

If you get a Windows Update “error 80072f8f” when you try to Check for Updates, you may need to adjust your computer’s date and time settings! The 80072f8f error generally happens when there is a large discrepancy between your system clock and the Windows Update service…. so when that happens you will get the error and be prevented from receiving updates. 🙁 Thankfully, as mentioned earlier, the fix is generally very easy as you just need to update your computer’s date/time

Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown

Problem signature: Problem Event Name: BlueScreen OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48 Locale ID: 1033 Additional information about the problem: BCCode: 7a BCP1: FFFFF6FC4000BA40 BCP2: FFFFFFFFC000000E BCP3: 00000001FBF93860 BCP4: FFFFF88001748758 OS Version: 6_1_7601 Service Pack: 1_0 Product: 256_1 Files that help describe the problem: C:\Windows\Minidump\020414-8096-01.dmp C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-21325-0.sysdata.xml Read our privacy statement online: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409 If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline: C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt

Chrome ‘Downloading proxy script’ ?! [solved]

If Google’s Chrome web browser seems to take forever to load a web page, you may see a “resolving proxy” or “downloading proxy script” message appears in the lower-left corner of the browser’s window. Thankfully, you can change your proxy setting (for Windows) and fix Chrome’s corresponding behavior: Click the Chrome menu button  on the browser toolbar Select Settings Click Show advanced settings In the “Network” section, click Change proxy settings. This will open the Windows Internet Properties dialog Click LAN settings Deselect

Use Thunderbird to find online transactions for Quicken

Tax time approaches. Thus around the Hodges household we are catching up on our Quicken data entry. We track every cent we spend and anything that can make that process easier/faster is appreciated 🙂 That is one reason why I like Thunderbird so much, it makes it very simple to find emails that contain online transaction info (invoices, receipts, etc.) Here is the basic process: #1 Download the latest transaction info using Quicken This will give us a list of transactions

Thunderbird auto spell check not working [SOLVED]

Thunderbird’s ‘check spelling at you type’ feature quite working for me last month. Since that time I have been working without inline spell check in Thunderbird (and it has been quite annoying ;-)). Today I finally took the time to figure out how to fix the issue! First I tried simply checking my settings: The box was already checked to ‘Enable spell check as you type’ but I went ahead and unchecked/checked it and hit ‘OK’ just to make sure

[Err] 2006 – MySQL server has gone away Navicat/WordPress [solved]

Recently I tried upgrading to the latest version of the WordPress Download Monitor plugin. It did not go well 🙁 Thus, I tried to revert from a backup made using Navicat. Unfortunately, the restore would fail every time while trying to import my wp_posts table (a pretty important table!) I tried exporting the backup to a SQL dump and importing that. No luck. Finally, I tried resolving the actual ‘MySQL server has gone away’ issue itself and I had success. This tip

Dell Windows 8 Unknown Device SMO8800 [solved]

Q. I saw you help people with SMO8800 unknown device issues, but can you help me on my Dell Windows 8 laptop? Thanks! -Wobe A. Here is the download link for a Windows 8 driver for Dell laptops that will resolve the unknown device SMO8800 issue: (free fall sensor) OS Compatibility: MS Windows 8 64-bit, MS Windows 8 32-bit Laptop Compatibility: Dell E5420 Vostro 3450 Vostro 3750 XPS 15 (L502X) XPS 15z (L511z) XPS 17 (L702X) And many other similar