Solved: What to do when your Taskbar disappears on Windows 11 ?? / Refresh Windows 11 Taskbar

 Hello All,

Just noticed the Taskbar disappeared on my Windows 11 Laptop for some reason this morning.

From my XP times I knew there was a command to refresh the Taskbar via command prompt. But I was not able to recall the command, so I started to google. I found a quick way of doing it.

Documenting the same in following points for future use and assisstence to anyone who requires it.

1. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Esc to bring up Task Manager.
2. On the Task Manager Window, find Windows Explorer under Process Tab. If the Process tab is sorted then it would be very last process.
3. Select the process Windows Explorer, right click on it and select restart.

Above steps should resolve the issue for sure, if not then a system restart will be required.

Best

Anshumaan Bakshi

Aarush Bakshi School Work

SpiderMan No Way home Trailer

SOLVED : boAt Airdopes 131 Bluetooth Headset Windows 10 Connection issue

 Hello,

I received my new boAt Airdopes 131 Bluetooth Headset on the 31st of December 2020. They were working fine and seamlessly connected to any mobile device. 

But when I tried to connect it with my laptop, a Windows 10 Dell it was able to connect but my laptop was not accepting it as an audio device. Although it was showing as connected but for some reason as a peripheral device. Check the attached image 

The options as displayed in the above box was missing.

I searched the net for a solution and mostly found a similar kind of problem with Apple Airpods. And because I got no other solution so I started to troubleshoot with what I had. So, tried the following 3 prominent solutions.

1. Remove the device and add it once again, switch on and off the Bluetooth service and try again. Restarting of course
2. Uninstall and reinstall the driver for the Bluetooth device.
3. Add on an entry in RegEdit as Value 24 so that the connected Bluetooth device is never disconnected.

I tried all the above and no joy. As none were addressing the main issue of the device was not recognized as an audio device.

I did some R&D on my own and resolved this issue. 

And I would like to see if someone else is facing a similar problem or not. 

Please post one comment on this post and I will post the complete solution with process screenshots. 

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

Excel Time Formula! Show 30 min as 0.50

Hello,

Recently, I wanted to convert time in numbers in a way, so that

• 30 mins will be shown as 0.50 
• 1 hour as1.00
• And 1.45 as 1.75 

The requirement is to record my time spent and find out how much it is in numbers. After reviewing the problem for some time and searching on the net, I found if a number is in proper time format and if multiplied by 24 then we can get a number equivalent as I want it to be. But need to make sure the resulting cell is in number format. 

Like 1:15 * 24  = 1.25 

Following is a screenshot of my actual worksheet for everyone's reference.

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

Westeros World Title Sequence

Joomla SEF URL Problems [SOLVED 404 Error]

Hello Everyone, 

Recently my team and I worked and delivered a small Joomla website. After the site went live, I turned ON the SEF URL from the backend. But the URLs was still non-search engine friendly. I started to troubleshoot, finally, it started to work. I decided to document the steps through which it worked for me and the following are the steps. My intent is to educate.

Please note,

• These steps are for an Ubuntu machine running Apache2 and I am using Joomla  3.X
• Application is hosted at folder /var/www/html/JoomlaApp/
• Demo URL for my site will be http://siteurl.com/JoomlaApp/

Preliminary checks or requirements 

1. MOD_REWRITE: Very first step is to make sure mod_rewrite is enabled. By use of phpinfo(); one can verify if it is enabled or not. If it does not then use the command
   sudo a2enmod rewrite and then restart the web server.



2. Rename htaccess.txt: Joomla provides its users with a default htacess.txt file. In order to enable SEF URL's this file needs to be renamed to .htaccess



3.  Apache Configurations: The apache configuration needs to change so that it allows URL rewrites. I made changes for both HTTP & HTTPS configuration that is port 80 & 443.
1. /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
• <VirtualHost *:80>
• ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
•         DocumentRoot /var/www/html
•         <Directory "/var/www/html">
•         AllowOverride All
•         </Directory>
2. /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl.conf
• <VirtualHost _default_:443>
•          ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
•         DocumentRoot /var/www/html
•         <Directory "/var/www/html">
•         AllowOverride All
•         </Directory>



4. Joomla Admin Configuration change

1. Log into Joomla Admin console
2. Go to System > Global Configuration  
3. Locate SEO Settings and set the Use URL Rewriting option to Yes

As per Joomla documentation, the above steps should enable the SEF URL for your website, if it doesn't work then follow are the troubleshooting steps.

1. Apache Configuration: As a habit, I copied the AllowOverride All code directly from the net and pasted it on the Apache configuration file. Which was a mistake. Apache configuration is very particular about the double quotes. "".  Hence please type it, do not copy paste it.



2.  I made the following changes to my .htaccess file.
1. Uncommented       # RewriteBase /      to        RewriteBase /


2. My Joomla application exists inside another directory, like /var/www/html/JoomlaApp/. So I made the following change on Rewite Base
1. RewriteBase /JoomlaApp/


3. Added following piece of code after RewriteEngine On
• ## Mod_rewrite in use.
• 
  
• RewriteEngine On
• RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^siteurl.com/JoomlaApp/ [NC]
• RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://siteurl.com/JoomlaApp/$1 [L,R=301]


4. Finally added following line of code at the very end of the file.
• RedirectMatch 301 ^/index.php/(.*)$ http://siteurl.com/JoomlaApp/$1



3. Another change I made was to the configurations.php file. I initialized the Live site variable as following, I am not sure, how helpful this particular change was, but it is there in the mix.
• var $live_site = 'http://siteurl.com/JoomlaApp'; 

With all the above changes, the URL SEF for Joomla started to work for me. Please feel free to ask me any questions.

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

AWS EC2 Apache File upload and move issue [RESOLVED]

Hello Everyone,

If you have purchased a fresh new instance on AWS which runs RHEL 7+.

And you are running PHP based application and trying to upload a file and also to move the uploaded file from tmp folder to a desired folder using. PHP functions like

copy() or move_uploaded_file() 

Now while trying to achieve above you are getting permissions errors and warnings.

You have tried everything like giving all folder permission  as 777 and made Apache the user and group owner for every file and directory under /var/www/html. And if still no joy then my friend you are a victim of SELinux.

I banged my head for hours figuring  why this simple and straight forward is not working. Finally found RHEL 7+ got SELinux installed and enabled by default. And SELinux blocks Apache to move files irrespective it is part of the same group as the folder permissions are set.

So you have same issue then start by checking if it is enabled by command:

/usr/sbin/sestatus 

The first row will say the status of SELinux, if enabled it will say enabled. And if it is enabled then most probably the reason for Apache not able to move files.

For fixing the issue just need to disable it, open the config file for SELinux:

vi /etc/selinux/config

And find a variable named SELINUX and set it as 

SELINUX=disabled

I tried SELINUX=permissive but no joy with it.

Then need to restart the system to take effect. Following works well on AWS.

shutdown -r now 

After restarting it did resolved the problem.

I did server hardening like, Permissions and ownership's I changed,  I changed them back and checked once again and everything worked well.

Do check and let me know in comments if any other issue you faced,

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

MySQL group_concat is causing trouble in getting output

Hello,

I was trying to get a long list of IDs against some value together by using group_concet comnad but there was some issue as the list I was getting was incomplete and every time I executed the command some values were missing.

I Googled for this issue and found that there is a MySQL session variable named group_concat_max_len which has a limit enforced by default to 1024, and it will not let anything beyond the enforced limit.

So, simple solution was to increase this limit to suit my need,

the command is I used is following:

SET SESSION group_concat_max_len = 1000000;

This needs to be executed for every MySQL session or needed to be declared in my.ini file for permanent usage.

Tested it works like a charm.

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

Unable to enable crypto on TCP connection api.xxx.com make sure the sslcapath option points to a valid SSL certificate directory

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SQLSTATE[21S01]: Insert value list does not match column list: 1136 Column count doesn't match value count at row 1

Hello,

Got this error message

SQLSTATE[21S01]: Insert value list does not match column list: 1136 Column count doesn't match value count at row 1

We tried everything to insert in one table but this error didn't budged even for the simplest query we  wrote.

Then I found that there was a "TRIGGER" applied on this table which on insertion updates another table.

So the problem was with the stored procedure. There was some additional field in it.

I discovered the root cause as soon as I deleted the Trigger.

So the issue was with the error message, this error was not pin pointing that the field was missing on which table, due to the language of the error it seems like the error is with the immediate table but actually it can be with a connected one.

Hope this will help someone.

Thanx
Anshumaan Bakshi

Connection Failed: 'host' is not allowed to connect to this mysql server

Hello,

If you are getting following error while trying to connect your (PHP) application to a MySQL database

Connection Failed: 'host' is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server

Then this may due to limited privileges given to the user through which one s trying to connect with the server. Although a correct username and password is been used to connect still we have this error.

What happens is when a new MySQL user is added to a DB then the hostname name like localhost is added by default to user like user1@localhost. Now this user can access the DB for sure but while he is on the same machine not remotely.

The solution for this issue is to create a new user which has Any Host privileges "%" like

mysql> CREATE USER 'user2'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user2'@'%' -> WITH GRANT OPTION;


Thanx
Anshumaan Bakshi

Windows 7 Aero Peek not working

Hello Everyone,

If you are on Windows 7 and due some update or some other issue the temporary view of the minimised windows or desktop is missing, which you normally get when you do a mouse over on the icons on your desktop then you have the issue known as Aero Peek not Working.

Actually you get to know about Aero peek if you right click -> Task Bar -> Properties, then you will know Aero Peek is the responsible module for this functionality, and if its not working then it would seems like disabled on the box just opened.


So the next step is to enable it.

Simple steps.

1. Verify what's really the issue is
1. Click on Start menu.
2. Type Aero and locate the option which says "Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects"
3. Wizard will be opened and click next to initiate it.
4. The Wizard then will point out any issues, if it points out "desktop window manager is disabled" then we can proceed with the following solution.
2. Click Start
3. Type Services.msc
4. Scroll down until you locate the entry that is labelled "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager".
5. Right-Click on this service. Select Stop if already running else Start if it is stopped.
6. Once Windows is done with starting then right click "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager" and select properties.
7. On General Tab make sure the Start Type should is set to Automatic.
8. That's it.

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

Windows 7 Blue Screen uTorrent / µTorrent is running FIX

Hello,

If you are running Windows 7 and you had left the system running as some things are been downloaded from uTorrent / µTorrent. After some time you see a Blue Screen of Death with some error number and only way the system would work further is by hard restarting it.

If one thinks by restarting the system or reinstalling uTorrent / µTorrent will fix this issue then one has mistaken,

From my research on the net I found this issue comes due to access number of connection opened by uTorrent / µTorrent for downloading stuff, it very common if the there are many seeders for a specific file, in Windows 7 this will happen instantly.

If you download and install a Blue Screen Reader Tool from download.com then for this particular problem you will find the cause of blue screen which will appear as

Probably caused by : NETIO.SYS

On the net one will find different solutions of installing a windows patch / upgrading, changing some windows configuration, even upgrading RAM and uninstalling few softwares like MaAfee. But as the problem started with uTorrent / µTorrent so the solution has to be with its configuration.

I tried an tested this solution and it is working fine for me.

1. Got to uTorrent / µTorrent and open Options -> Prefrences -> Bandwidth.
2. Set the numbers in Number of connections as minimum as you like
1. Global maximum number of connection 15
2. Maximum number of connected peers per torrent 12
3. Number of upload slots per torrent 1

You can play with numbers as per your requirement, but try to maintain the number in between minimum limits and you will be fine and safe from blue screen of death.

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 47 bytes) in C:\wamp\www\workspace\MegaStore\lib\Zend\Db\Statement\Pdo.php on line 312

Hello,

If you get and error message like

 Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 47 bytes) in C:\wamp\www\workspace\MegaStore\lib\Zend\Db\Statement\Pdo.php on line 312


And no matter how much you change the php.ini file the error persists, then you need to add

ini_set('memory_limit', '2042M');

On top of the script which is throwing this error message, as this takes effect more properly when you are using some architectures like Zend or Magento the above simple fix can save a lot of your time.

Thanx
Anshumaan Bakshi

WAMP PID 4 Port 8 busy

Hello,

If you are on Windows 7 and WAMP is not working.You have closed SKYPE, changed its default ports etc, and any other related software which can possibly use port 80, and still WAMP doesn't start. Specifically Apache.

A little bit of Goggling can tell you that Port 80 is taken by Windows 7, Pid 4 in Task Manager, further you can find out that its a system process and it cannot be killed.

I found that there is service named http.sys which captures  port 80 on start-up and it needed to be stopped in order to release port 80.

It has to be disabled through REGEDIT, following are the steps for the same,

1. Launch regedit, run-> type regedit
2. Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP
3. Locate Start
4. Change the value to 4 which means disabled.
5. Restart your system.
6. Now your WAMP should work.
7. 
   

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

ERROR 2006 (HY000) at line 8245: MySQL server has gone away

Hello,

If you are trying to import an SQL file through command line on windows and you get this error message

ERROR 2006 (HY000) at line 8245: MySQL server has gone away

then you need to open your my.cnf or my.ini and update as

max_allowed_packet = 3000M

more than the size of the file you are trying to import, like I was trying to import a 2.2 GB file.

Thanx
Anshumaan Bakshi

WAMP phpMyAdmin error #2002 - No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

Hello,

If you get an error #2002 - No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it when you try to access phpmyAdmin on a WAMP.

Then it is due to your 3306 port is already occupied by some other application. For me it was Skype today, I just needed to close Skype and restart the WAMP server once again and the issue was fixed. Skype will anyways take another vacant port so restart it as well.

You can make changes to my.ini so that it listens to another port, but easier to close Skype.

Try it.

Thanx
Anshumaan Bakshi

Magento Correcting the default taxing module for calculating tax based on discounted price

Hello,

Lets assume your client has a requirement of calculating tax based only on the discounted price.

Like,

The price of the item with tax is 100

Discount on this item with tax is 25

The remaining amount with tax is 75

If I consider 14% as tax then the tax should be shown as 9.21 and this is already part of 75. So if I subtract 9.21 from 75 then I will get 65.78, if I calculate 14% of 65.78 then I will get 9.21 to be exact.

In Magento this seems to be difficult to achieve by default configurations as if you enter item price without tax and discount is entered or calculated with tax.

I have checked it is not possible without a custom module.

Unfortunately cannot paste the entire module here but here are few pointers for resolving such issue.

1. Main change we need to make is in the Quote Taxing module which is responsible for all the configuration based tax calculations, like in my case I was using unit based taxing so we have switch case which needed to be edited. This is the module which will return the actual tax amount so by changing it we are making the core change for recalculating the tax.
2. Because of the above change we have our grand total all messed up, which needed to be corrected in Quote/address/grand file.
3. Above 2 file will ensure that the new way of calculating tax has been enforced on frontend, but back end still needed to be changed
4. The way Magento calculates row totals is, it adds the base price with the tax amount and hence we get row totals, but if the tax is based on the discounted price then adding it to the product price will give an incorrect result, fortunately this happens only at adminhtml template level, so as it being cosmetic change only we need to change the order, invoice view and create templates.
5. Also we need to change the invoice subtotal calculation file as the final calculations is effected as I explained earlier.

If all the above changes are in place properly then the desired change will be achieved, I have tested and developed this module.

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

Import MySql DB through command prompt on WAMP

Hello,

If we have a very large file to import on WAMP and PHPMyAdmin is dying due to various reasons then you can import the big file using CLI or through Dos

Follow the following steps.

1. Run cmd command
2. Assuming you have installed wamp on C: drive.
3. C:>cd wamp
4. C:\wamp>cd bin
5. C:\wamp\bin>cd mysql
6. C:\wamp\bin\mysql>cd mysql15.5.8
7. C:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql15.5.8>cd bin
8. C:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql15.5.8\bin>mysql.exe -u root -p dbname < sqlDump.sql
9. Now we need to have the sqlDump.sql file inside C:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql15.5.8\bin\ for direct execution of this command.
10. If everything is fine, then this command will ask for the mysql password for username root and it should start importing the file on the mysql database.

Now what we are doing here is we are moving to WAMP's bin directory to locate the mysql.exe file. This command file is similar to the one we have on Linux and it behave s the same way, so we provide the information like username db and import sql file and it can easily be imported in our db.

Please note: We can also use direct path from any location as soon as we come to cmd like C:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql15.5.8\bin\mysql.exe -u root dbname < sqlDump.sql

but need to be sure of the path which is hard to locate.

Thanx

Anshumaan Bakshi

Kohana Framework: My Experience

Hello everyone,

Recently I went for an interview, the job was for a Magento development position.

After the initial screening the interviewer said they will test me on something which not many people use, so that they know I work with a new framework, this was the first time I heard of Kohana framework.

Anyways, the task was to develop this small module in Kohana, which is done.I also thought I should record what I have learnt in last 2 days.

Kohana is an HMVC(Hierarchical model–view–controller) PHP5 framework.

Official website: http://kohanaframework.org/ which has a download link as well. Latest stable version is 3.3.0 'badius' right now.


Installation:

Download the package and extract it where you have your webserver's webroot. There is no requirement of database setup, if your application doesn't require any database then you don't need to set it up ever.

After extraction if you open up the framework folder through your browser like http://localhost/kohana then the framework will provide you with information on setup and if its requirements are fulfilled or not.
If everything is fine then it will ask you to rename / remove the index.php file. If you are at this stage then we are pretty much done with the installation.

Few posts on the net says to play with \kohana\application\config\config.php file for some configuration, believe me the framework has evolved since then and nothing is required as such. Infact in the latest version of Kohana you won't even find a config.php in \kohana\application\config.