In our company, we have several Windows 98 systems connected to our domain. These systems are mainly there for some old programs that couldn’t be migrated to Windows XP. When it comes to printing, these Win98 machines are connected to printers that are shared from a server that is running Windows Server 2003. The printings have been working fine until yesterday when all Win98 machines receives the following error.

There was a problem printing to the printer due to an unknown system error. Restart Windows, and then try printing again.

The printing wouldn’t start and restarting Windows didn’t help it.

After doing some research on the internet about the error message, it came to an easy fix. All you need to do is to remove all the files inside the spool/printer folder on the server. If you are sharing your printers from a Win XP or Win 2003 Server, then you can find that folder in here:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS

You should see a lot of .SPL files in there. You need to remove all of them to get your Windows 98 machines printing again.

I have recently bought an ASUS P835 mobile phone that uses the Windows Mobile operating system. It has built-in Wi-Fi connectivity which makes it an all-in-one solution for quick mobile computing.

The Problem – Memory Low

After using the new phone for a few weeks, the phone started to complain about running low in memory. I have not installed any other programs on to the ROM yet and most applications and settings are defaults. I started to wonder why would the device complain.

The Memory Eater

As I recall, the first time the memory low message appeared was when I was using Opera to surf the web. So I started digging into the settings to see if there’s any clue. Right away, there is the cache settings where you can set how much memory allocated for caching website files and there’s the clear cache button. It is the same functions you would find on a notebook or desktop operating system. However, there is so much hard disk space on a desktop nowadays and you wouldn’t bother clearing the cache of your web browser. On the other hand, handheld devices have so little ROM space and it gets filled up easily. After clearing the cache, as well as the browsing history and cookies, I have reclaimed about 1/5 of my memory space.

You may not only have one web browser installed, as I also have Internet Explorer on my device (of course it’s there since it’s Windows). And I remember I have used it to view some web pages too. Clearing its temporary Internet files, my handheld device is back to 1/4 memory free.

From time to time, I have experienced some sort of corruptions to my Windows taskbar. Sometimes it is due to viruses messing it up while sometimes it is because I have played too much with it. Right now, my taskbar looks like this.

The most difficult part is adjusting it back to its default layout. How can I easily restore it to default look?

It is actually quite easy because I have found a script on the Internet that will do this for you in just a couple seconds. The script is written by Kelly Theriot and Doug Knox. You can find it on their website. On their website, you can download the script with the link that says “Restore Taskbar to Default Functionality”. After saving it to your computer, you can double-click it to run it. Right away, your taskbar is restored to default.

There are also many other useful scripts and registry tweaks on their website. You should bookmark their site as you will probably find other scripts that solves your other problems.

If you are still using an older version of the WS FTP Pro client and all of a sudden your remote system pane has disappeared, there is a very quick way to solve this issue.

Click on “Tools”, then “Options”. On the “General” tab, click on the button that says “Reset Window Locations”. By resetting the window locations, the remote system directory list will reappear.