Tech Support – Luna Systems Corporation’s Blog

Need to Install Microsoft Office 365 apps before Visio

Need to install Microsoft Office before Installing Visio

I have purchased a subscription to Microsoft Office and a subscription to Visio from Microsoft. When I installed Visio first, I was unable to install the Microsoft Office applications. So, I had to uninstall Visio, then install the Microsoft Office application, then re-install Visio.

This isn’t too big a deal, but you would think that you could install Visio first if you wanted. The one complication with my setup is that I accidentally purchased Visio under a different Microsoft User Id because I didn’t remember that I had a previous Microsoft User Id. I am not sure if this having 2 Microsoft User Ids is the cause of this issue or not.

Can’t logon to Business Microsoft Account on main Microsoft Logon Page

Note: There seems to be an issue with the Microsoft logon. If you are logging on to a Business Microsoft User Id, you can’t logon using the basic Microsoft logon page. Instead, you need to go to the Microsoft Office logon page.

Can’t combine 2 Microsoft Accounts

I contacted Microsoft about combining my 2 user ids and it was not possible. I would need to cancel the one with Visio and add Visio to my account that has Microsoft Office. I am going to wait until my Visio subscription expires, then cancel that user id. If I still require Visio I will add it to the other account.

Microsoft Access 2016 very slowT

Recently, I tried to use Microsoft Access 2016 on my Windows 10 computer and it was so slow, it was essentially unusable. I really needed to use Access for a project that I am working on so I had to find out why it was so slow.

My PC is about 7 years old with 8 GB of RAM running the latest Windows 10 64-bit version. I frequently use the SQL Server Management studio and some of the Microsoft Office Applications (Word, Excel, OneNote) with no performance issues. So, my first inclination is that it is an issue with the Access program!

Of course, I started out by doing a Google search. This provided a few results which I started to go through.

64-bit Microsoft Office

The first thing I ran across was to check if I was running the 64-bit version (if I could) because the 32-bit version of Access has a lower (2GB?) memory usage limit. So, I checked which version of Microsoft Access I was running using this procedure:

How to Find out what Version of Microsoft Access you are running.

Start Microsoft Access 2016.
Open an existing Access database or create a new one.
Select File from the Menu.
Select Account from the left-side menu.
Click the ‘About Access’ button. The following screen opens and shows your version.

test

My version was showing 32-bit. So, I made the decision to upgrade it to 64-bit.

This entailed signing onto my Microsoft Account from which I had purchased Office in. The first point I wanted to mention is that I would have to install the entire Microsoft Office 64-bit suite of application, rather than just Access. I selected the 64-bit Office version and started installing it. Then, I received a cryptic error message saying I couldn’t access the server. After researching this error, I did some more research just to determine that I had to uninstall the 32-bit Microsoft Office suite before installing the 64-bit versions.

So, I proceeded to uninstall the Microsoft Office 32-bit version from my PC, then reinstall the 64-bit version. This failed again. At least the error message was better this time. The error message said that I still had some Microsoft Office program on my PC and had to install it. I realized now, that this had to be my version of Microsoft Visio that I had purchased using a second Microsoft account.

So, I uninstalled Microsoft Visio, then installed the 64-bit version of Microsoft Office. This worked successfully!

I tried Microsoft Access 2016 (64-bit) and I had the exact same performance issues as with the 32 bit version. So, this did not fix the issue.

In one of the first posts, it referred to the following Microsoft article:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2768648

This article mentioned a bunch of things to try.

ClearType Text Tuner

First, I did the procedure mentioned in the document to tune the ClearType Text. This had no effect on the performance problem.

Video Drivers

Next, I checked my video drivers, as the document recommended. They all had the latest drivers and my video card did not have any settings that I could adjust. So, this had no effect on the performance problem.

Disable Hardware Acceleration in Office

Next, I checked that I had the ‘Disable hardware graphics acceleration’ unchecked. I did. So, this had no effect on the performance problem

At this point, I didn’t believe that the performance problem was really related to my video. I did some testing and determined that the issue seemed to primarily resolve around the refreshing of the property windows in Access when in design mode on object. You could clearly see the property window slowly refresh whenever you clicked on an object.

So, I did some further research on the internet and tried the following:

Subdatasheet Name to None

A number of sources mentioned that you should change all your database tables to have property ‘Subdatasheet’ as ‘None’. It defaults to ‘Auto’. I only had a couple of Access tables in my database. So, this didn’t fix the performance problem.

Connected Printers are all on

Some sources mentioned that you should have any connected printers turned on when using Access. I turned on my printer. This didn’t fix the performance issue. After this, I changed the default printer to print to PDF just in case this had any impact…which it doesn’t seem to have any!

Trusteer Endpoint Protection

One source, mentioned that they had problems with Trusteer Endpoint Protection when running Access. Trusteer Endpoint Protection is an anti-phising software commonly given away free by banks to their customers to use. I had installed this software a few years ago. So, just on a whim, I turned the Trusteer Endpoint Protection off. This is easily done from the Start menu-All Apps-Trusteer Endpoint Protection-Stop Trusteer Endpoint Protection. So, I tested Access again and the performance problem was gone!

So, it appears that my performance problem was caused by a conflict with the Trusteer Endpoint Protection software. Turning off Trusteer Endpoint protection solved my performance issue when using Access 2016 as a developer.

Update..a few weeks later

The problem re-emerged a few weeks later. I had started/stopped Trusteer Endpoint Protection during this period. However, stopping Trusteer Endpoint Protection did not work this time to correct the problem. I did have Visio installed under a 2nd Microsoft User Id. I uninstalled Visio and the Microsoft Access slow issues disappeared. I think now that an Office Uninstall did something to fix the problem.

How to run the Malicious Software Removal Tool in Windows 10

This blog will tell you how to initiate a scan of your Windows 10 computer by the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. It isn’t as straightforward as you might expect!

The other day I noticed that the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool had tried to download, but failed a few times. I initiated the download again and this time it downloaded successfully. Then I tried to figure out how to get it to scan my computer. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find it in the list of apps in the Start menu or in any settings window.

An initial Google search said that the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool ran in the background. I wanted to run it right away because I just downloaded it.

I did a Google search and mixed in with all the results was actually how I could run it!

It is actually quite easy. To run the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool in Windows 10:

Type “mrt” (only the 3 letters) then enter into the Search Box at the bottom left of your screen (or Windows+S key combination), then press Enter.
Press the Yes button on the window that pops up to say “Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your pc?”. You do need to be an administrator on the PC to run this app. Then the app will open.
Press the Next button and this window opens.
Choose either to run a quick scan, full scan, or to scan a specific folder. Press the Next button to start the scan.

I first ran the quick scan which took only a few minutes. Then, I decided to run a full scan because I always turn off my PC when I am not using it, hence this tool would never be able to complete a full complete scan. And I was correct, the full scan took over 24 hours to run. After all that….no malicious software was found on my PC!

So, it is relatively easy to run a scan of your Windows 10 computer using the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool!

Windows 8 password lost or Windows 8 password forgotten

I was helping a friend today set up his Windows 8 laptop. He is an inexperienced computer user. He had somebody else start the set up for him a few months prior. Now, when I start up his laptop it asks me for a password. Of course, my friend doesn’t remember the password that the other person set up. I contacted the other person and they didn’t remember the password used either.

So, it did show the correct email address for my friend on the log in screen which implied that a password was set up. Being fairly new to Windows 8, I didn’t see any option to reset the password so I thought I might be hooped and have to re-install the whole operating system. This would have been a problem because the operating system came pre-installed on the laptop and I had no compact discs and no software keys.

So, I began trying a bunch of possible passwords that my friend may have used. None of them worked! Then, out of the blue, a message appeared that said the password could be reset at: account.live.com/password/reset . So, I went to this page and selected ‘I forgot my password’, then clicked Next. Then I had to enter some characters to prove that I was a human. Then, it asked me to confirm my friend’s email address. It sent an email to my friend’s email account. He told me the CODE to enter onto the screen. I entered the code and it let me create a new password.

Then, I proceeded to log in to the laptop using the new password and it worked! I was at the main Windows 8 screen!

I am just documenting this so if others have problems logging onto Windows 8 this might help them out.

How to delete extended absence greeting on Virgin Mobile voice mail

I was changing my Virgin Mobile voice mail greeting and pressed the key(2) to record an extended absence greeting. After pressing the key, it would not let me cancel out so I proceeded to record the greeting. After recording the greeting, I tried every option, including recording a new regular greeting, but was unable to delete the extended greeting.

I went online and could not find the answer to this question. I am writing this blog post so that it is available online if somebody else has this same problem. I even called the Virgin Help Desk and they just told me to re-record the greeting. I knew that this didn’t work. So, how did I fix it…I exited my voice mail, then got back in. Immediately, it told me that I had the extended greeting on and asked me if I wanted to keep it or delete it. I proceeded to delete it which got rid of the extended absence greeting.

The extended absence greeting was interesting because when you called my number, it gave a greeting and did NOT allow anybody to leave a message. I could see a use for this to prevent frivolous messages being left on my phone, such as ‘I called you’..obviously I know that you called because I see you as a missed call!!!

To actually get rid of voice mail completely you would have to remove the feature from your calling plan.