Fix Services MMC Error “One or More ActiveX Controls Could Not Be Displayed”

When you open the Services MMC (services.msc), the following errors appear, and the list of services may or may not display after dismissing the error message dialog boxes.

One or more ActiveX controls could not be displayed because either:
1) Your current security settings prohibit running ActiveX controls on this page, or
2) You have blocked a publisher of one of the controls.
As a result, the page might not display correctly.

… followed by the error Object doesn’t support property or method ‘ConnectTo’ in URL mmcndmgr.dll/views.js.

Resolution

[Windows 7 Users] Download the Fix it solution by clicking the image above, and run the executable. The problem should be taken care of, automatically.
To Fix the Problem Manually
1. Click Start, type Regedit.exe and press {ENTER}
2. Navigate to the following branch:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Internet Settings \ Zones

 

3. Under the Zones key, delete the subkey shown with an ASCII character, as in the above graphic. If it doesn’t exist, ignore and proceed to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Internet Settings \ Zones \ 0

 

4. Double-click the DWORD value named 1200, and type 0 as its value data.


The DWORD value 1200 corresponds to IE Security Zone setting "Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins". Setting the value to 0 permits ActiveX controls and plug-ins.

5. Exit the Registry Editor.

6. Logoff and login back to your account.

Linux: Delete user password

Command to delete user password under Linux

Type the following command to delete a user password:

# passwd --delete username

OR

# passwd -d username

Above command delete a user's password (make it empty). This is a quick way to disable a password for an account. It will set the named account passwordless. User will not able to login. It is also a good idea to setup user shell to nologin to avoid security related problems: 

# usrmod -s /sbin/nologin username

For example to delete password for user sweta, Type:

# passwd -d sweta

# usrmod -s /sbin/nologin sweta

Reset Your Forgotten Ubuntu Password in 2 Minutes or Less

If you’ve ever forgotten your password, you aren’t alone… it’s probably one of the most common tech support problems I’ve encountered over the years. Luckily if you are using Ubuntu they made it incredibly easy to reset your password.

All it takes is adjusting the boot parameters slightly and typing a command or two, but we’ll walk you through it.
Reset Your Ubuntu Password
Reboot your computer, and then as soon as you see the GRUB Loading screen, make sure to hit the ESC key so that you can get to the menu.

Root Shell – Easy Method
If you have the option, you can choose the “recovery mode” item on the menu, usually found right below your default kernel option.

Then choose “Drop to root shell prompt” from this menu.

This should give you a root shell prompt.
Alternate Root Shell Method
If you don’t have the recovery mode option, this is the alternate way to manually edit the grub options to allow for a root shell.
First you’ll want to make sure to choose the regular boot kernel that you use (typically just the default one), and then use the “e” key to choose to edit that boot option.

Now just hit the down arrow key over to the “kernel” option, and then use the “e” key to switch to edit mode for the kernel option.

You’ll first be presented with a screen that looks very similar to this one:

You’ll want to remove the “ro quiet splash” part with the backspace key, and then add this onto the end:

rw init=/bin/bash

Once you hit enter after adjusting the kernel line, you’ll need to use the B key to choose to boot with that option.

At this point the system should boot up very quickly to a command prompt.
Changing the Actual Password
You can use the following command to reset your password:

passwd <username>

For example my username being geek I used this command:

passwd geek

After changing your password, use the following commands to reboot your system. (The sync command makes sure to write out data to the disk before rebooting)

sync
reboot –f

I found that the –f parameter was necessary to get the reboot command to work for some reason. You could always hardware reset instead, but make sure to use the sync command first.
And now you should be able to login without any issues.

How to block Facebook using the Hosts file

The location of the hosts file depends on your operation system.

Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Note! Make a backup of the hosts file and put it somewhere safe, in case you mess up.

1. Open the hosts file using Notepad or other plain text editor.

2. Copy the following:

   # block facebook
   127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com
   127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
   127.0.0.1 blog.facebook.com
   127.0.0.1 apps.facebook.com

3. Paste it into the Hosts file after 127.0.0.1 localhost

4. Save and close the Hosts file.

5. Reboot your computer to apply the changes.

6. Try to open Facebook in a browser.

How to Cancel or Delete a Stuck Print Job in the Windows Print Queue

If you tried to print, but the job just got stuck in the queue without being able to cancel it, you’re experiencing a stuck print job. There’s a simple way to clear out the print queue, but it’s not always the most obvious thing. Here’s how to do it.
Note: we encountered this problem earlier today but forgot to take a screenshot of the print queue with a stuck job, so we substituted with a picture of a regular job sitting in the queue.

Clearing a Stuck Print Job in Windows

The first thing you’re going to want to do is open up Services through the start menu search, find Print Spooler in the list, and click the Stop button.



Now open up Windows Explorer and put this into the location bar:

%windir%\System32\spool\PRINTERS

You might be prompted for UAC to allow access to the folder, which you’ll want to accept. Now you’ll see a bunch of files in the folder, and you’re going to want to delete all of them. Don’t delete the PRINTERS folder itself, just the files.



Now go back to Services and click the Start button to start up the service again.



At this point your stuck print job should be gone.

Fixing "The Event Log is Full" Error on Windows XP

I was working on a project for work when I suddenly got the strangest error: “The Event Log is Full”. Seriously? What I didn’t remember is that Windows XP doesn’t automatically overwrite events less than 7 days old from the event log, so when it’s full, most applications that try and write to the event log are going to break.
You can easily fix this problem by changing the event logs to overwrite old events regardless of the date, or just increase the size that the log is allowed to grow to.
Note: If your event log is so huge within 7 days that you are getting this error, there’s probably something seriously wrong. You should inspect your event log to understand what is causing all of the errors… more on that in a future article.

Increasing Event Log Size

Open up Event Viewer by typing in eventvwr into the Start \ Run box, or you can find it under Administrative tools section of Control Panel.
You’ll notice over on the right-hand side of the window that the current size of my Application and System Event Logs are 512 KB…



Now you can right-click on one of the Event Logs in the list, and choose Properties from the menu.





In this dialog you can do a number of things… you could clear the log, increase the size, or just set the system to overwrite events as needed.



I chose to increase the maximum size of the event log, and then also to overwrite events as needed.



For those of you using Windows Vista, you’ll notice that the default settings in Vista are to overwrite as needed, and the maximum size is way bigger. Guess my setting choices make sense then…



Again, if your Application or System event logs are growing so gigantic that you are getting this error, you should really look into the root cause by carefully examining the entries in the logs.

Short cut for shutdown and Restart on desktop

On the desktop right click ----> New----> shortcut .

In the location area type (without quotes) "shutdown -r" to reboot, "shutdown -l" to logout,

"shutdown -s" to shutdown.

In the name for the shortcut type in any name you are comfortable with e.g SHUTDOWN or

RESTART etc.

Click Finish and its done.

Now double-click the icon created to perform the actions