Notes

MS Office activation window keeps popping up

I tried to install Microsoft Office 2016 on a computer with a preinstalled evaluation version of Office. The installation was successful and I was able to activate it, but on every start the activation window popped up and I was not able to close it.

On the first time this happened, I tried to remove all remains of Office using the uninstall tool, but it didn't work.
After doing some research, I found some forum posts stating that I have to remove all oncurrences of a certain ID from the registry. This did the trick.

Unfortunately, I didn't note down what registry keys I had to remove. When this happened on another computer, I did not find the forum post again. Fortunately, I found another post in a Microsoft forum. As it turns out, all you have to do is to delete the following registry key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OEM

This worked perfectly for me. The activation window didn't pop up again.

Published on 2022-05-14, 11:53 +0000

I like Dell servers

You can say what you want about Dell, but I have to admit that I like their servers! I was able to mount a server in less than 5 minutes thanks to the very simple rackmount rails!
And also the iDRAC management interface is very fancy :)

Published on 2022-04-28, 06:06 +0000

"Imagine" cover by arising music

Great "Imagine" cover by arising music, featuring Lena Thon, a friend of mine (click on the image to watch the video on YouTube):

Imagine Cover 2022 | arising music

Published on 2022-04-17, 09:39 +0000

110 years since the sinking of the Titanic

Today it's been 110 years since the Titanic sank.

I recently discovered this real time animation of the sinking and I like it (click on the image to watch the video on YouTube):

Titanic Sinks REAL TIME

Great work by the people of Titanic: Honor and Glory!

Published on 2022-04-14, 18:26 +0000

Electronic billboard in Bochum: No boot device

Saw an electronic billboard in Bochum, that was not able to boot its operating system (click to view larger version):

No boot device on eletronic billboard

There are two possible explanations for this:

  1. There is a local boot disk like a hard or a flash drive that failed.
  2. The billboard boots using PXE. The billboard could not load its boot image from the central server, possibly because the internet or VPN connection failed.

Published on 2022-04-11, 10:12 +0000