A woman bought me her Vista laptop because an error message box kept popping up with the message (sorry no screen shots):
McUICnt.exe Entry point Not Found.
The procedure Entry point BCryptDerivekeyPBKDF2 could not be located in the file bcrypt.dll (maybe not exact wording)
Every time I clicked on OK to close the box it immediately opened again. I could still login and use the computer normally otherwise. So I knew it was either a corrupted startup program or a program uninstalled that didn't get all the bits of it removed properly. So I decided first to search for the program McUICnt.exe
I found out that the file is usually associated McAfee products, in this case the McAfee Security Scan Plus. Luckily, like I mentioned, except for a box I couldn't close, it didn't interfere with the other operations of the computer so I uninstalled the McAfee program, restarted the computer and problem solved. I did run a few scans for adware and spyware, just to be sure and everything came out clean.
I was watching a video I downloaded from YouTube when suddenly it seemed like the audio cut out. Then I realized that the background music was still playing, but the narration was gone. The first thing that came to mind was a bad download.
Then I noticed it was a problem with all the videos I had on my system. I found a simple solution. I was using headphones to listen to the videos, so I just unplugged them and plugged them back in again. I guess the equivalence of turning them on and off in this case.
Anyway, that cleared it out. If I'm remembering correctly, I believe I had this problem once before. Awhile ago and I remember having to replace the headphones.
A nephew, who is into gaming, had spilled some wine on his Razer Blackwindow Te Chroma v2 keyboard. They cleaned out the keys, but then it seemed like the A key got stuck. It wasn't sticky or anything, it's just that when I plugged it into my computer and opened up notepad it just automatically started typing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... All the other keys seemed to work OK.
So I went online. One suggestion was a firmware update, but the update available wasn't for this model. I really didn't want to fool around with it anyway. A failed firmware update could have bricked the entire keyboard.
Another suggestion to disassemble the keyboard, but when I saw the instructions for doing so... lets just say I don't have my degrees in Rocket Science yet. :-)
A third option that he might have accidentally recorded a macro. This is where you could record a series of keystrokes to one key. So what I did I pressed on the Fn key then F9 (it has small m symbol on it). Then Esc. This seems to have worked. Either that or the keyboard was just drunk thenand just sobered up. :-)
A woman called me because her laptop wasn't staying on. She said it would stay on for a few seconds and then go off. She also mentioned a clicking sound. My first impressions was that the hard drive had crashed. I asked her to bring it to me, which she did. This was a Vista Toshiba laptop.
I turned it on and after the BIOS logo, the screen went black just as she claimed. So I tried to boot of a flash drive or CD/DVD. If I could boot of one or the other and check the hard drive, then at least I could confirm that the computer was still working even if the hard drive had crashed.
So I tried going into the BIOS, but nothing was coming up on the screen at all. The first time I turned it on the BIOS boot logo displayed but then it didn't. I traced the clicking to the computer checking or trying to access the CD/DVD drive. I first thought this computer might be a goner, but then it struck me to hook up a monitor to see if it was the screen that was gone and not the computer itself.
Sure enough, the computer was starting up and the screen was the culprit. Most laptops have a connector, older models more likely VGA and newer ones HDMI, so you could hook up a laptop to an external monitor. This one had a VGA port. At one time you had to press a key combination to send the video to an external monitor, but it seems to be more automatic these days.
This is why I don't enjoy trying to diagnose computer issues over the phone. It's hard to see what's going on without some trial and error diagnosing. I have had people call me and say their computer isn't working and usually it turns out they just can't get into Facebook or something.
So, if someone calls me and says that their computer isn't working, I now assume it means Facebook isn't working. And you know what happens when you ASSUME something. Until next time.