Month: December 2016

How to find scheduled task history on Windows Server 2003

I recently needed to look at the history for a particular scheduled task on a client’s Windows Server 2003 machine. In newer versions of Windows Server, this is easy: open Task Scheduler, select the appropriate task, and go to the History tab.

On Server 2003, this information is somewhat less obvious, but blogger Guarang Patel pointed me in the right direction with a post explaining how to find the task history. Essentially, after opening Scheduled Tasks, you go to the Advanced menu and choose View Log, and then you’re where you need to be.

The task history on Server 2003 is unfortunately very short indeed; in my case, I could only find two entries for the task I was researching because a different task is scheduled to run and gets written to the log far more frequently. Nevertheless, it’s helpful to know where to look.

How to prevent corrupt profile message in Cars video game on Windows 10

Playing old video games can be fun. Getting them working properly on newer hardware, however, is sometimes a challenge. In a prior entry, I explained how to run NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition on Windows 10. Today, I want to focus on THQ’s 2006 Cars game based on the Disney-Pixar film of the same name.

I recently installed Cars on my Windows 10 box and was able to launch the game with no problems. Beautiful scenery, just like in the movie, and still a great deal of fun. Everything looked like it was working perfectly.

The next time I went to play it, however, the game advised me that the profile I saved during my previous session was corrupted. Boo, I thought. It’s not as though I had made a lot of progress during my first session, but still.

To work around this problem, I right-clicked the Cars shortcut on my desktop and chose to troubleshoot compatibility, then chose to troubleshoot program. I checked the checkbox labeled The program requires additional permissions, then moved on to test the program.

I ran a race and saved my profile, then exited the program. In the compatibility troubleshooting window, I clicked Next, prompting Windows to save the settings. Since then, when I launch Cars, it loads my profile without any trouble, and I’m able to save my progress as I go along.

How to delete .cab files from Windows Temp folder and prevent them from regenerating

I recently noticed at work that my Windows 7 virtual machine’s C: drive was down to its last couple of gigabytes of free space. What’s up with that? I wondered. After doing a bit of poking around, I discovered that the Windows Temp folder was clogged with multiple .cab files, nearly 32 GB of them in this case. Not cool!

It seems that all of these files are related to Windows updates not installing correctly, or something along those lines. The solution given by Microsoft forum user 5kyFx is this:

  1. Delete the .log files from %systemroot%\Logs\CBS (which prevents the .cab files from being regenerated)
  2. Delete the .cab files from %temp% (which clears space on the drive)

In my case, this appears to have solved the problem.

How to compare two spreadsheets in Excel 2010 and earlier

I recently needed to compare the results of two spreadsheets to check for differences between them. Although newer versions of Microsoft Excel have this functionality baked in, I was using a computer with Excel 2010 installed.

Thankfully, Svetlana Cheusheva at AbleBits wrote a blog post earlier this year that explored the different options for this sort of task. The approach I took involves having both spreadsheets in a single workbook, then inserting this in a third spreadsheet:

=IF(Sheet1!A1<> Sheet2!A1, "Sheet1:"&Sheet1!A1&" vs Sheet2:"&Sheet2!A1, "")

You then copy that formula from cell A1 to all the other cells where, in the first two spreadsheets, there might be data.