Moderated and reported by Sean Henderson.
Q – My Windows 7 laptop gets the “blue screen of death” if I walk away from it for 30-60 minutes, when I do not have USB audio interface attached.
A – Initial thoughts were that the USB audio interface was out-of-date and lacking DDM (Dynamic Device Management) functionality. After further discussion. another possibility offered was not setting the audio configurations when the interface was not attached. Others offered that possibly the Wi-Fi card was old-or-failing and that could cause some network interruptions. Further discussion ensued and the exact BSOD error was found and searched online – the result was that laptops with large hard drives can experience BSOD if the spin-up takes too long after power management has shut down the drive. Suggested solutions then turned to adjusting power management to refraining from shutting down large hard drives.
Q – I was at a hotel and my personal hotspot was not working. Could the hotel be jamming the signal? Is this legal?
A – Yes, it is possible. No it is not legal – for now. Hotels, hospitals and universities are looking to this jamming technology to protect their own Wi-Fi services against “rogue wireless hotspots that can cause degraded service, insidious cyber-attacks and identity theft”, said a spokesperson for a large hotel chain involved in a recent incident. This large hotel chain was fined over US$500k by the FCC for jamming conference attendees’ Wi-Fi networks in the conference area only. The chain was not jamming inside the rooms. Nor was it all hotel locations of the chain. A search on this topic using ‘hotels jamming hotspots’ in a major search engine will bring up relevant articles. There was some additional discussion regarding the exact definition of ‘jamming’ versus ‘malicious interference’, and the extent to which businesses have the right to monitor and manage their network environment, including wireless networks.
Q – What would cause approval status to sometimes go unrecorded in MS SharePoint document workflow?
A – Initial discussion was about role of other app servers vs MS SharePoint. After that discussion it was identified that ‘workflow’ was the real topic, and why SharePoint sometimes does not record approval status. For those new to the concept of ‘workflow’ in corporate environments, some documents and tasks require multiple sign-offs. This is called ‘workflow’. In SharePoint, workflow is related to document approvals. One solution offered for the issue of approvals not being kept by the SharePoint system was that there was a permission setting or other user configuration setting causing the problem. Another solution offered was that possibly the server was set to auto-update and that a recent update may have caused a configuration issue. A search on SharePoint workflows after the meeting yielded information from support.office.com that SharePoint 2013 does not support some lists and other workflow settings that are supported on SharePoint 2010. The other possible explanation is that the workflow was set to reject the document on the first disapproval, and if the workflow had parallel (two-stage) setup, the 2nd approver’s setting may not have been recorded since the document was rejected already.
Q – Why did it take my MacBook 6 days to connect to Web after changing ISP from AT&T DSL to Charter?
A – Attendee indicated that the technician who was onsite to do the change-over was able to get online by directly connecting his Dell laptop to the cable modem. However, after the technician left, when the attendee plugged in his MacBook he could not get on the Web. Some other attendees asked if it was just the Web, which would likely mean a DNS issue, or if he could not ping a Web server which would be an actual Internet connectivity issue. The attendee could not answer, but did offer that prior to the change-over, he had 10 years free of networking trouble. Some discussion ensued about default gateway, cached Internet settings, and other possibilities. In the end, the discussion was taken offline since the matter was moot because the attendee did eventually get the Web connectivity after about a week. MacBook users who experience connectivity issues after changing ISPs would be advised to have the technician verify connectivity on their equipment, not just the technician’s Windows-based equipment.