Non-existent fax extension causes Outlook error

Posted on By Mark Wilson

My clean installation of Windows Vista and Office 2007 has been presenting me with a strange error on the first time that I reply to an e-mail in Outlook:

Microsoft Office Outlook

The Add-in “FaxExtension” (C:\Windows\System32\fxsext32.dll) cannot be loaded and has been disabled by Outlook. Please contact the Add-in manufacturer for an update. If no update is available, please uninstall the Add-in.

After clicking OK, everything is fine until the next time I open Outlook and reply to a message. It’s all a bit odd, because I don’t have a fax extension installed. Then I found a newsgroup post which commented that sometimes deleting the FaxExtension key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Extensions will prevent this error from occuring.

I checked the registry and sure enough, there was the key, with a value of 4.0;C:\\Windows\\System32\\fxsext32.dll;1;00000100000000″.

I shut down Outlook, removed the offending key, restarted Outlook and haven’t seen the message since. Guess that’s a bug then.

Do IT qualifications really matter?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few days back, I received an e-mail from a young man in Pakistan who had found my website on the Internet and wanted some advice. This is what he had to say (edited for grammar and spelling):

“I have a Bachelors degree in Computer Sciences and am studying for MCSE certification.

[…]

My question to you as a newbie in the networking field is are certifications necessary to jump and fly high in this field and even if it’s true then do I have to stick to Microsoft or can I do a mixture of Cisco and Microsoft certifications. Lots of “thinktanks” here in Pakistan say that a person with MCSE, CCNA AND CCNP certifications is a much needed guy for IT companies.

I am sooooooooooooooo confused as to where I should move.”

The reason I’m blogging about this is because he raised some interesting points. I too have a bachelors degree in Computer Studies and I don’t consider that it’s been of any practical use to me in my work. The process of leaving home and going to university helped me progress from home life to becoming an independent young man (actually, it was a Polytechnic when I started my course – reflecting the vocational nature of its tuition – but don’t get me started about how all the Technical Colleges and Polytechnics have become “Universities” and what a bad idea that is) and it set me up with some valuable first-hand experience about managing personal finances (i.e. debt… and that was 13 years ago – I feel really sorry for today’s young graduates who have no access to grants and have to pay tuition fees too).

My degree was simply a means to join the career ladder at a certain level. Please don’t misunderstand me – I’m sure that has opened some doors that might otherwise have been closed (or would at least have been harder to force my way through) but it was by no means essential to reaching the position that I have today (perhaps I should have aimed higher?) and I have not used any of the Computer Studies skills that I learnt along the way so I could have studied anything (given the amount of writing I do today – perhaps I should have studied English, or journalism? Who knows – back then I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life!).

IT certifications are similar. I hold a variety of IT certifications but none of that matters if I don’t have experience to back up the qualifications. Sometimes you have to admit your shortcomings too – I didn’t feel comfortable being flown in to one potential customer as an expert earlier this week because I haven’t done anything practical with the associated technology for a long time now. The customer would have seen through me and that would have damaged both mine and my employer’s credibility.

I learnt a few days back that a colleague, whose advice and experience I hold in very high regard, holds no IT certifications. Equally I have friends and colleagues who left school at 16 or 18 and that’s not prevented them from reaching the the same (or a higher) position within the company as myself.

I understand that the UK government has a target for 50% of all school leavers should go to university (Why? Do 50% of all jobs require a degree? How about 50% or more of all school leavers going on to some form of further or higher education – whether that be vocational or academic). When I meet new graduates I recognise how wet behind the ears I was when I started out all those years ago. Which nicely illustrates my point – that it doesn’t matter how highly qualified you are – what really counts is experience, even if the company does still insist that you have the letters after your name before you can get through the door.

Windows fast user switching + Zone Alarm = bad IT day

Posted on By Mark Wilson

My poor colleagues had to put up with a lot of complaining yesterday. I was having a bad IT day (when nothing seems to go well). And it seems to be continuing today.

I recently rebuilt my company notebook PC to run Windows Vista and Office 2007. That’s going well but then there’s all the stuff that goes on top (anti-virus software, corporate VPN client, etc.). My colleague and trusted advisor, Garry, helped me to get all that in place, an administrator added my machine to the corporate domain and before I left last night I logged on so that I had a profile for my domain account with cached user credentials (for working at home today).

It should have been fine but I didn’t log out from my original account because I was in the middle of something – I used the fast user switching feature instead and then waited… and waited… and waited… as Windows tried to set up my profile.

In the end I gave up and logged out, only to find a load of Zone Alarm messages popped up under the original account.

“Blah blah blah is trying to do something… do you want to allow this?” I don’t know – probably! Just let me get on with logging in.

Today it’s more of the same, as switching back to my old (non-domain) profile to run Windows Easy Transfer resulted in the same problem.

I think Garry was quite disturbed to see how I (and another colleague) quickly tired of reading these incessant firewall popups and just clicked the “allow” button (and the “don’t bug me again” checkbox) every time – which proves a point I made about firewall messages almost two years ago. And anyway, what’s wrong with the Windows Firewall? If I didn’t have to use Zone Alarm to meet VPN access policies then I wouldn’t. Grrr.

The good news is that Windows Easy Transfer was really useful for migrating my application settings from my old profile to the new domain profile (I didn’t use it for the files as it’s easier to just drag and drop them in Explorer).