Category: Technology

Number pad / Numeric keypad not working in Ubuntu 10.10

This was really annoying me until I found the cause of the problem……

I have a virtual machine running Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat).
They keyboard has always worked perfectly until some updates a few days ago.
After running the updates, I found that my numeric keypad had stopped working.

To fix this, click System > Preferences > Keyboard
Select the Mouse Keys tab and uncheck the “Pointer can be controlled using the keypad” option.

Screenshot

 

Setting timezone on PCs using a batch file

 

For some testing recently I had to reset all our test PCs to use UTC (GMT) instead of BST.
This meant that our LoadRunner log files and test results would tie-in with the log files on the UNIX systems which we were testing.
It’s worth noting that W3C log files (web server loig files) all use UTC time as well, so this is useful if you want to synchronise your times with the rest of the “non-Windows” world.
Use this command to set your timezone to UTC…. (tested on Windows XP and Windows 2003 server).
[code]RunDLL32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL timedate.cpl,,/Z (GMT) Coordinated Universal Time[/code]

For some testing recently I had to reset all our test PCs to use UTC (GMT) instead of BST.

This meant that our LoadRunner log files and test results would tie-in with the log files on the UNIX systems which we were testing. It’s worth noting that W3C log files (web server loig files) all use UTC time as well, so this is useful if you want to synchronise your times with the rest of the “non-Windows” world.

 

Use this command to set your timezone to UTC…. (tested on Windows XP and Windows 2003 server).

RunDLL32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL timedate.cpl,,/Z (GMT) Coordinated Universal Time

 

Problems with RDP clipboard – solved

I regularly use RDP sessions to connect to systems which I am testing.

I’ve noticed lots of problems with the clipboard on my PC when I do this. This seems to be more of a problem when I connect to older operating systems (such as XP) from a new OS (like Vista or Windows 7).

After a while it becomes impossible to use the clipboard and copy and paste between RDP sessions. In addition it becomes impossible to paste on the local machine as well. This is a complete pain in the ~@*% and until now the only way that I’ve been able to “clear” the problem is to reboot my PC and re-establish the connections to the remote systems.

The problem is caused by the rdpclip process on the remote PC taking control of the clipboard on the local PC and not releasing it. It is possible to kill and restart the process which causes this problem. This fixes the problem without having to restart RDP sessions or reboot your PC.

These are the commands.
taskkill /f /im rdpclip.exe
rdpclip.exe

The first line kills the rdpclip process and the second line restarts it.
These commands should be run on the remote system.