Motorola Android Bluetooth Keyboard not pairing with iPad

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Jack

I had an older Motorola Android Bluetooth keyboard that I decide to give my niece to use with her iPad. I figured it would be simple to pair it and all would be good. Turns out it was not so easy, the iPad could see the keyboard but during pairing would indicate there was an error in pairing and to verify that the keyboard was turned on and visible. Of course I did not have the manual anymore so a little searching on the internet and I found the manual online and the answer. You have to hold the V-A-R keys down on the keyboard while pressing the power button (keep holding the keys down until the keyboard is fully on). This sequence of keys allowed the iPad to see the keyboard and prompt for a pin during pairing. It paired without an issue at this point and with the exception of a few android specific keys, the keyboard works fine with the iPad.

Posted in Android, Bluetooth, Hardware, iPad, Keyboard | Leave a comment

Sleep mode failing on Dell Vostro 200

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Jack

This was strange occurrence. I did a fresh install of Windows 7 and every time it went to sleep, when I went to wake it up, the case fan would whirl up at full throttle and stay on, the screen would remain off and the computer would not acknowledge any key presses. The only option at this point was to do a hard shutdown by pressing the power button for a few seconds. A reboot at this point would work fine but once again if the machine went to sleep it would not waken properly. I reset the bios, tried a few other power options within windows to no avail. I then decided to see if it was a possible hardware conflict and well low and behold it was. unplugging the Logitech trackball I was using allowed the system to shutdown and awaken without issue. It appears this setup has some issues with incompatible peripherals. If you are having this issue, I suggest you remove any extra USB devices except for the bare keyboard and seeing if that solves your problem and then connecting them one by one until you find the offending device.

Posted in Dell, Desktop, Hardware, Windows | Leave a comment

Power issue on Lenovo Lynx K3011

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Jack

This one was an interesting issue. The tablet works great, so I decided to invest in the docking keyboard. The keyboard works great too but then all of a sudden it would not charge. After some head scratching, a few different USB cables and chargers later it still would not charge. Then it dawned on me that I switched to a longer USB cable and i dug out the original short OEM cable and plugged it in and guess what! it started charging. I’m not sure what is different about the OEM charger, maybe it allows a higher amperage, but it seems to make a difference. So if you are having the same problem, try the original USB OEM cable!

Posted in Battery, Hardware, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Windows updates not installing on XP

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Jack

I had to re-install an older laptop the other day and when I went to do the windows updates, it kept failing. A little research lead me to Microsoft website explaining that windows update on XP would only work if you were on SP3. Once locating the download link for SP3 and installing it, the windows updates once again worked. So all you XP users out there, verify your are on SP3 or you might notice you are not getting any of your windows updates.

Posted in Software, Windows | Leave a comment

How to re-enable Adobe Acrobat in Word

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Jack

So every now and then i do something stupid. I was converting a Word document to PDF and right in the middle of the conversion, being the click happy person I am, I click on the “X” and closed Word. This caused Word to crash in the middle of the conversion and when I restarted Word, the PDF menu was no where to be found. I figured maybe a reboot would bring it back but SOL it did not. Clicking around, I found the fix. Clicking on the Office circle icon in Word (the colorful circle in the top left), is “Word Options”. Here you’ll find an option for “Add-Ins”, at the bottom is “manage”, change this to “Disabled Items” and click go. A pop up will come up and you’ll see “Acrobat PDFMaker Office COM Addin”, highlight this and click enable. Close down Word and restart it and the PDF menu item should be there again.

Posted in Adobe Acrobat, Software, Windows, Word | Leave a comment

How to add a two line watermark in word

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Jack

I didn’t think it was possible to have a two line watermark in Word but I accidentally ran across how to do it. First create your watermark via “Page Layout” and watermark. Now double click in the header area to bring up the header and footer editor. At this point you can select your watermark by simply clicking on it (note: the cursor will change to a 4 directional arrow when you hover over the watermark). Once it is selected, right mouse click and select “Edit Text”. Now you can add in line breaks and format the watermark as you need.

Posted in Software, Windows, Word | Leave a comment

How to print to a Dymo or Brother label printer from a PDF

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Jack

Recently I was given a PDF of repeated labels formatted for a standard address size on Avery labels, it was 3 columns by 10 rows. I figured it would be easy to print to a label printer, select file-print, select the label printer, change the page size and presto. Turns out it’s not that easy but still easy non the less. Once the document is open in reader, in the edit menu is “Take a Snapshot”, this allows you to highlight a rectangle area. Highlight the area you want to print to your label printer; you’ll get a message that the area has been copied. Now if you right click in the highlighted area, you can choose to print, change the printer to your label printer and hit print and you should have your label.

Posted in Brother, Dymo, Labels, Printer | Leave a comment

Setting a time limit on a computer

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Jack

I had a client that wanted to restrict how long users could stay on a publicly accessible computer. There are a lot of options out there but I needed to find something fairly in-expensive since they are a non-profit organization. A bit of searching and I found some software by a company in Canada called Romaco Timeout. It allows for a daily time limits, session time limits, site blockers, program blockers and you can monitor web usage. On top of all that it’s free!. The timeout product does exactly what I needed it to do. I set it to alert the user at the 27 minute mark that the session would end at the 30 minute mark and it did exactly that and logged them out at 30 minutes.

Posted in Free, Software, Windows | Leave a comment

Restricting printer access

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Jack

I had a client that wanted to restrict access to a shared network printer on two publicity accessible computers. The printer natively did not have built in password protection and the network was not domain based so setting up active directory security was not an option. A hardware print server was possible but not ideal. After much searching, the only fairly in-expensive option I could find was a product called Printlock. For the most part, it is fairly simple but did exactly what the client wanted. If someone hit the print button from the public computer, it would prompt you for a password which would be entered by a staff member. A great little product that fills a niche need.

Posted in Printer, Software, Windows | Leave a comment

WordPress timing out on Godaddy

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Jack

If you have a WordPress site hosted on GoDaddy, you may notice accessing your admin control panel and even your site may take a long time and even timeout. After a bit of Googling and not finding anything, I broke down and emailed GoDaddy. I was informed that I was using Windows hosting and that WordPress did not work well on Window’s hosted servers. A suggestion was given to move the site to a Linux based hosted server and the problem would be solved. A was reluctant at first because why was the option offered on the windows hosting if it wasn’t supported. Then the realization was that there was little I could do other than move the site. Luckily I didn’t use SQL Server as the database but MySQL so the transition went pretty smooth. Once I was moved over to Linux, the slowness and timeouts went away. Anyone starting a WordPress site hosted by GoDaddy, I would suggest you just immediately select a Linux hosting option.

Posted in GoDaddy, Internet, Linux, Windows, Wordpress | Leave a comment