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Bob99, I’m going to investigate your suggestion also, just to see how my computer is set up, there.

It turns out you’re right, PKCano: all three of those settings have to be turned on/checked. Help is now working in Office 356 apps.

Interestingly, the Privacy settings are in three places: Account, Options\General (in Word or Excel) and also in the Trust Centre. I suspect they’re linking to the same place. Also, in the online Microsoft “Manage account” centre (link from the computer’s Settings for a Microsoft Account), these settings are also present.

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IT Manager Geek

So, I uninstalled Office 365, did a restart, and downloaded/installed it again. I’m still getting that message about the administrator having turned off the service required to access the help feature.

Here are the details of my Windows version:

Rats, that service does seem to be running:

Yes, PKCano, that rings a bell. I glanced through my Running and Stopped services, and don’t see it at all. In Windows set-up, there was a place where one could turn off all telemetry, and perhaps I did this when I was setting up this laptop. I will investigate further, and come back with more questions/answers.

Thanks, Susan. I did try that, and I tried it again — just to be sure — after reading your suggestion last night. The same message still pops up.

I was pretty sure that I (as administrator) set a Group Policy that doesn’t allow “connected experiences” by the regular user (also me) at some point. However, I’ve looked through all the Group Policies and can’t see anything likely. Maybe a registry key? If nothing comes to mind among the Ask Woody Office experts, I might try uninstalling and reinstalling Office 365, but if there’s been a Group Policy or registry change, that wouldn’t solve the problem, would it?

This has been an interesting discussion! Manufacturers of computing hardware (computers, smart phones) seem to be trying to appeal to the aging consumer by supposedly making these things pair with hearing aids through “accessibility” settings. If you only have one such device, but end up going down the rabbit hole of accessibility settings, you may be amazed how difficult and productivity-killing every so-called “upgrade” of these settings can be, particularly for vision-impaired people.

When pairing your hearing devices with anything, the first rule of thumb (I ignored it at my peril) is to check the manufacturer’s website to ensure they will work with the hardware you want to use. I spent a pile of money because my old Google Pixel 3a was no longer getting security updates, and I selected the new Pixel phone that Google offered me in their online store. The Pixel I bought (7) happened to be just about the only Pixel phone ever made that wasn’t compatible with the sound processor of my cochlear implant! After almost a year of struggling with garbled sound and dropped calls, I gave up and bought a different Pixel. (By downgrading, and trading in my 10-month-old Pixel 7, luckily I only had to spend a couple hundred dollars.)

Even with a supposedly compatible Pixel 7a Android phone, I had bluetooth pairing issues. When I transferred my data from the previous Pixel to the 7a, I deleted the two apps for the cochlear implant and hearing aid before starting the transfer, then reinstalled them on the new phone. I went through all the pairing instructions properly — so I thought. The hearing aid seemed to pair okay, but the CI sound processor didn’t. I wasn’t getting any notifications through the latter, and it kept dropping from the live bluetooth connection to the phone. I redid everything several times, changing the sequence slightly each time, to no effect. Finally, after another deletion of the app, shutdown/restart/and running through the pairing sequence again, I realized something had been missing before: there was a sort of acknowledgement sequence from the System of the phone that showed up, which I had never seen before.

If you have a desktop computer you want to pair with, of course you can’t bring it in to your audiologist or technician so they can run through the pairing sequence with you. So perhaps your best alternative is the plug-in streaming device Susan described.

With my computer, I’ve found the plug-in (mic jac) streaming device compatible with the past three laptops, for two different cochlear implant sound processors and the GN ReSound hearing aid I wear in the other ear. It’s a ~$250 device (manufactured by GN ReSound) that I’ve been using since 2016, so well worth the money spent.

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Casey H

[LPKing]

The screen on the Asus ZenBook UX305 is *still* occasionally blacking-out for a split second. Oh well…

In more interesting news, the latest (November) updates for Windows 10 completely broke the notebook keyboard on the Asus ZenBook 490U. A several-hour marathon of troubleshooting ended with a good result which seems completely random.

The 490U updated itself as scheduled overnight on Nov. 26. (Updates had been paused to that date.) Though the touchpad worked fine afterwards, the keyboard was unresponsive. I tried everything I could think of, plus all the troubleshooters that would seem to apply, and a few suggestions resulting from searching the topic of Asus notebook keyboards suddenly ceasing to work. The Asus website even provided a BIOS flash that didn’t have any effect.

Finally, in desperation, I grabbed a USB with a Windows 10 2004 ISO, plugged it in, and tried to totally re-upload the OS. It couldn’t get past the “Accept License Agreement” screen without a functioning keyboard.

I did a hard reset (hold down power button 10 seconds — second one of the day — the first had been done early on in the process of troubleshooting) and the keyboard miraculously worked again!

Apparently it sometimes does pay to forget to disconnect from the internet before rebooting with a portable version of the OS… 🙂

Post-game analysis lead to the conclusion this seemed to have been an issue with the Windows updater itself. It most likely didn’t completely go through all the required shutdowns and rebootings, then looked like it was totally finished with the update when, in fact, it wasn’t.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by LPKing.

I checked yesterday for further activity in this topic since I posted, and subsequently decided to flash the BIOS on my Asus Zenbook UX-305CA. I haven’t noticed a black flash since! You might try doing so. If you have MyAsus working on your machine (I don’t), I think it would be pretty easy. However, I would have thought MyAsus would be automatically updating your BIOS through that app, so perhaps you don’t have it working. If not, there are some rather convoluted instructions available in Asus Support. The instructions are much worse than the actual task, however, and it’s not too terribly difficult to do yourself. I managed to cook supper at the same time. 🙂

Incidentally, I get the same “Warning” you logged in MMC, multiple times a day:

“The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID… (etc.)”

I have no idea why, and it’s happened since yesterday when I did the BIOS flashing, so it’s possible it doesn’t relate to the black screen you get intermittently and frequently. I don’t worry about it too much, as my machine has Remote Access disabled and our local security is pretty good.

Good luck with Nirsoft!

I have an older ZenBook UX305 and it’s done exactly the same thing for as long as I can remember. (Lately, I’ve been playing an old XP version of Windows Solitaire out of pandemic boredom, and I often notice it then.) I bought a newer ZenBook UX490U, and we don’t notice it on that one. I await with interest any discoveries/diagnosis in this thread.