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The Ethernet cable rating, printed on the outer insulation (jacket), is the key to choosing the right cable. For “FastEthernet” (100MBps), CAT-5e is designed to deliver rated speeds and good communication up to 312 ft. CAT-6 is primarily deployed in 1000MBps (Gigabit) networks. CAT-7 not a ratified standard meaning that there may be engineering changes in cable specs or communcation capabilites. CAT-7 is deployed in 10 Gigabit networks — it generally will not add any performance improvement over CAT-6 or CAT-5e cable in your application unless your modem and router are Gigabit capable. CAT-5e is least expensive, not cheaply made.
Ethernet cables usually use non-PVC insulated wires, primarily due to communication advantages over PVC. Probably more than you wanted to know….

I believe FileMaker Pro requires Bonjour to network properly.

There is no need to remove any patches. The backup is protection against the upgrade going wrong, allowing you to return to a working system after any problems.

cheers, Paul

Thanks, Paul. Image backups are my best PC friend!;)

Outlook, in most any version (2000 thru 2013) has occasional problems with profile corruption. It can come at any time. Recently, I configured Outlook with POP accounts, for two staff members at an office that has seven users who use OWA (webmail) from their Internet provider. One user’s Outlook worked great “out-of-the-box”, while the other user had occasional messages hanging in the Outbox folder. Everything I changed (SMTP servers, authentication types, port numbers) failed to fix the problem. Only when I created a new profile, this this user’s problem go away.
This is often a last-try effort that almost always fixes various Outlook problems — after years of supporting Outlook users, you’d think I’d catch on and try this sooner in the troubleshooting process! Guess I’m getting too old…

If you haven’t resolved your issue, this may help: Is there a hardware firewall behind your Internet modem/router? If so, it may be an older model that “counts” or meters the number of hosts (PCs) needing Internet access, and refuses this access if the # of hosts exceeds the number that are permitted/licensed by the firewall. I’ve supported SonicWALL firewalls since the late ’90s — many of the earlier models were limited to 5, 10 or 25 hosts. You can confirm this by power-cycling the hardware firewall and trying to access the Internet on some of those questionable laptops. They all should connect if they meet the licensed count.

John, I’ll take your advice…for now! It’s tough to slow down when frustration sets in — especially when I’ve made my career from supporting Windows PCs & servers for the last 17 years. Most everything seems so easy (until Windows 8 came out!) working with the desktop Windows versions. How difficult can e-mail be for a company like Microsoft, when you look at Outlook (2002 – 2010)? I think the problem is Windows Phone is like Windows Home anything. Maybe we need Windows Phone 8 Pro! Meanwhile, back to the manual….

According to the KB article in post #2 a Unicode PST file for Outlook 2007 can be up to 20GB in size. That should last a while. See the last section at Create and use .pst data files in different versions of Outlook for instructions on creating a Unicode PST file and then moving data to it.

Joe

I agree with JoeP517, as the link he provides gives “Decann” the best way to increase the capacity of his Outlook PST file. The process to increase the capacity is not a pretty one, but it is very workable. I support many small business users who use Outlook as their e-mail client, and this issue pops up often.
I usually start by deleting all messages in “Deleted Items” and running “ScanPST.exe” (search for this in “Program Files (x86)” to remove corruption. To confirm your bottleneck is the file type, first close Outlook. The easiest way to determine if the PST type is limited to 2 GB of storage is to go into the “Mail” icon in Control Panel, choose “Data Files..” and double-click on the “Personal Folders” data file. Look at the “Format” field — if it displays “Outlook 97-2002” your file type is limited to 2 GB. Your fix is to create a new PST then import (transfer) your Inbox, Saved, Sent, etc. contents to this new file. From the “Data Files..” window, click on Add.. button, insure “Outlook Data File” show in “Save as type” field, give your file a unique name (such as New Personal Folders), then Save. Next, make this the Default file by highlighting the new file and clicking on “Set As Default” — this insures new messages will be flowing into the new file.
Next, the fun starts: Open Outlook, then expand (clicking the “+”) “Personal Folders” and “New Personal Folders” (if that’s what you named the new PST above) so the mail folders are displayed. Starting with “Inbox” in Personal Folders, select all messages (CTRL-A) — all will highlight. Right-click any highlighted message and choose “Move” (there may be a delay of 5-60 seconds as Outlook “captures” your selection), then select the Inbox just below the “New Personal Folders”. Repeat this process with “Saved”, “Sent”, Contacts, etc. When you are satisfied that all the “Personal Folders” subfolders’ contents are transfered and empty, go back into Control Panel, Mail and “Remove” the original “Personal Folders” PST file. Your wife will now have capacity to save an additional 18 GB of messages!

I know it’s been several weeks since the last post, but I don’t see any indication that this problem was solved. So, here is my contribution:
I’ve encountered this symptom many times over the past two years in my consulting practice. I’ve found that, more often than not, one of the apps in the context (right-click) menu is faulty or corrupt. The most common offender, I’ve found, is your zipping utility. The easy way to find out is simply to uninstall whatever you use (WinZip, FilZip, 7Zip, etc.) — if the delays go away, you’ve found the cause. Just install a newer version or the same type of utility from another vendor. Hope this helps!

According to Microsoft:

“Note: The current version of the tool supports repairing the .NET Framework 4, this will be extended to include other versions of the .NET Framework in the future.”

I was hoping for what most are hoping for: a repair tool that addresses ALL versions of .NET Framework.:(

I’ve seen a good number of Windows 7 PCs have a problem with right-clicking on files and folders, with the symptom generally being “my system hangs” or “I get a long delay (90 secs) before I can do anything”. Many times, the problem is an app or feature on the right-click menu being the problem. One of the apps that I’ve frequently found to be the problem is Zip programs (not WinZip). Reinstalling the zipping/unzipping program was found to be a temporary solution. Replacing that particular app with one known to be reliable, such as 7zip or WinZip, solved the problem. 7zip is free, WinZip is not — you choose!

Well, the “first” PC that started exhibiting this mysterious behavior is now fixed. An old nemesis, namely corrupt sound files, combined with a real weird driver update solved part of it. Just clicking thru the “punch list” of possible causes led to turning off Windows System sounds and updating a RAID driver eliminated the “Saving your settings…” hang. Turning off the screensaver apparently (couldn’t replicate so I can’t say for sure) killed the “hangs after indetermined period of inactivity” problem.

Now, on to the next PC…!

We have to look at the facts to come to the right conclusion about this issue: it is affecting a growing number of PCs, starting several weeks ago and increasing rapidly (in my world alone). If this were a one-PC issue, I could be looking at and considering seriously a hardware-related problem source. Instead, I believe what we are seeing is OS or other software-component that has recently changed (updated, replaced, etc.). The common factors that have been identified are 1) Windows XP, 2) some undetermined pause in user activity initializes or contributes to symptoms and 3) secondary symptoms of logoff hang in every case.

Consider, perhaps, all of MS’s patches pushed out over WindowsUpdate over the past few weeks. Are any of these related to ACPI, screensaver action, sleep mode (all of the PCs I know experiencing this issue have hibernation disabled) or some other subsystem that kicks in when inactivity is present? Were there any Flash, Java, or TCP/IP stack updates that may be involved?

Joe, I’m not attempting to devalue your suggestions. Instead, I am hoping we begin to reign in the focus to start heading down the proper trail.

I’ve used this utility quite a lot over the past several years to speed up the logoff/restart/shutdown process and it works very effectively, especially if one uses the latest version (earlier versions BSOD’d occasionally). But this round of “saving your settings…” problems is unaffected by this utility. All PCs affected have received ALL WindowsUpdates, are all XP SP3, have been scanned (& found to be clean) with Malwarebytes/GFI’s Vipre, all have perimeter SonicWALL hardware firewalls, and most are in business AD domains. The problem does not lend itself to being repeatable other than randomly or after a significant period of inactivity.

I miss Windows NT Backup!!!! This app was so useful, flexible, reliable and free! Sob:(- it is no longer available or will it run on Windows 7. My main complaints with Windows 7 backup and imaging is that one is unable to create backups in specific folders (for multiple redundant backup copies), unable to create multiple full or diff images without fear of deleting prior images, or to schedule image backups. Ever have a corrupted backup? I have, many times, and having only one is reckless and dangerous.

All of these shortcomings are resolved in free (to non-commercial users) with great 3r party products such as GFI Backup (gfi.com) and others. Don’t waste your time and risk data loss or loss of ability to restore a corrupted system by depending on Windows 7 backup.

BTW: I don’t mention Vista even though these comments apply because Vista is basically irrelevant!

Navmed: Since the problem seems to be just on the wireless-connected PC, and occurred after the firmware upgrade to improve security, could your PC’s wireless adaptor need updated drivers or a firmware upgrade to handle your new security settings? You could try downgrading wireless security to WEP temporarily, or even OFF temporarily to see if problem goes away. Once you have a clear picture of whether your new security settings are impacting performance, turn security back to WPA or WPA2 (preferred).
Have you tried connecting a cable from the router to the now wireless-connected PC, then disabling the wireless adaptor and see how your PC performs?