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Troubleshooting

Approval buttons not working in SAP interface in Chrome

If you’ve found some SAP approval buttons are no longer working in Chrome the issue may be down to a feature implemented in Chrome 88 but only enabled by default in recent versions of Chrome (versions 115 and 116)

The origin-agent-cluster header isn’t a security feature but a http header (for browsers that support the origin-agent-cluster feature/flag) that web developers can implement to change the default behaviour for a web page, putting it into an origin keyed agent cluster so that it is grouped with other pages that have the exact same origin

Same site but cross origin pages will then be excluded from the agent cluster. Your browser will then decide (if it has the origin-agent-cluster-default enabled and if your device has enough resources) to allocate same site but cross origin pages their own process or seperate threads

This can benefit web based applications such as video conferencing or other web based applications that can be resource intensive so each “instance” of a cross origin page don’t impact another cross origin page running in the same browser

If you’re affected by the SAP approval issue, depending on what you use SAP for in your organisation you’ll find you’re no longer able to approve items like invoices, expenses, holidays etc.

No error messages appear when you click on the buttons normally used to approve the above, they just seem to be completely unresponsive in Chrome versions 115 and 116

Try disabling the chrome://flags/#origin-agent-cluster-default flag in Chome and restarting your browser and this will most likely resolve your issue

You may need to go back and disable the chrome://flags/#origin-agent-cluster-default flag later if Chrome is updated in the future (I can’t confirm this as I already have the latest version of Chrome installed)

I found the workaround for the issue here but it wasn’t very well documented https://answers.sap.com/questions/13949753/enterprise-portal-problem-after-chrome-115116.html

More information here: https://web.dev/origin-agent-cluster/#when-to-use-origin-keyed-agent-clusters

Edge has yet to enable its equivalent edge://flags/#origin-agent-cluster-default flag by default so Edge can be used as an alternative browser if you don’t want to disable the chrome://flags/#origin-agent-cluster-default flag in Chrome

Here’s a related Oracle Enterprise issue

Smart View cannot be started in the Samsung Flow Windows 10 app though Samsung Flow indicates “Device connected”

Like an issue I described in a previous post this issue only appears when you resume your PC/laptop from a hibernated state

If you’re affected by this problem the Samsung Flow Windows 10 app will attempt to connect to your mobile phone after you click on the “Smart View” option but will then display 4 spinning coloured dots and finally fail to connect to your phone

If you restart your laptop then launch Samsung Flow and try the “Smart View” option in the app you should then be able to reconnect to your mobile phone

Teamviewer Bomgar remote desktop sessions hangs or disconnects

If your Teamviewer, Bomgar or any other remote desktop service is hanging or disconnecting the fix may be as simple as switching off Wifi channel optimisation on the broadband router your target computer is connecting to the internet on

This was required to resolve remote desktop session interruptions to a user with a Virgin Media Hub 3 device in their home

Uncheck the box highlighted in red below and “Apply Changes” to resolve the issue

Wifi Channel Optimization setting to disable

IPTV SAP Announcements won’t appear in VLC on Windows 10

I found the resolution to this issue last year (May 2019) but didn’t think to do a write-up at the time. Another issue involving WireShark refreshed my memory of this IPTV VLC problem on Windows 10 which is why I’m only drawing up this guide now

If you run into this problem you’ll be able to double click on “Network streams (SAP)” in VLC (like you had been able to on Windows 7), however when you try to open your IPTV channel list from the “All” dropdown nothing appears i.e. no channels appear for selection…

No SAP IPTV channels appear for selection in VLC when SAP steams is clicked on and the "All" dropdown is opened
No SAP IPTV channels appear for selection

To troubleshoot this I monitored Wireshark captures in Windows 7 and compared them to Windows 10 with VLC running and found port 9875 opens on Windows 7 to listen for SAP announcements. This traffic however is dropped by the Defender firewall in Win 10 (confirmed by checking the Win 10 Defender Firewall logs)

Once VLC finds and lists all multicast IPTV streams available and the user selects an IPTV channel, port 5000 opens on Windows 7 to actually play the IPTV stream for the channel chosen. Traffic on port 5000 however is also dropped by Win 10’s Defender firewall

You may have spotted you can still connect to the IPTV stream via udp://@<encoderIP>:5000 in VLC (which confirms the stream is being broadcast) but the IPTV channels themselves aren’t being advertised in VLCs SAP announcements on Win 10

The key here is to understand that Win 10’s Defender firewall is lot stricter in the types of traffic its accepts by default

If there’s no rule in place for ports 9875 and 5000 Win 10’s Defender will drop that traffic. You can test this by disabling Defender then starting VLC again and the IPTV channel list will appear fine on Win 10 (just like it does in Windows 7)

So you’ll need to allow incoming traffic on ports 9875 and 5000 via Group Policy to allow traffic on those ports through (or open them yourself in Defender if your PC isn’t joined to a domain)

Can’t get Your Phone Companion to connect to Windows 10

If you run into this issue there’s a simple fix to re-initiate the connection to Windows 10 if for any reason you’ve had to reinstall the Your Phone Companion app on your phone or had to reinstall the Your Phone app on Windows 10

If your phone indicates it’s “Reconnecting to PC” but never connects the below instructions should fix this issue

Go into Settings – Apps – Your Phone Companion

Select the Storage option then click on Clear Data

Launch the Your Phone Companion app once more and it should now be able to connect to your Windows 10 PC again

The above instructions may differ depending on phones manufacturer

How to fix “Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress” error on Bluehost

If you use Bluehost and tried updating PHP to counter the error messages WordPress generates indicating the version of PHP your running is out of date, you may have subsequently came across the following error message after updating PHP from V5 to 7:

“Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress”

There’s a simple fix for this issue but its not documented anywhere on Bluehosts Support pages

Just login to the CPanel access the File Manager and rename your PHP.ini file to PHP.ini.bak

Can’t add a https search property to Googles Search Console in Google Webmaster

So you may have heard Bluehost enabled free SSL certificates for WordPress users on Shared plans and gone ahead and enabled it

But you ran into the same issue I had when adding your new fangled https:// enabled domain name into Google Webmasters Search Console

It just won’t take your new https://www.mysite.com domain name saying it’s already been added

Try adding an ending forward slash to your https://www.mysite.com domain instead

https://www.mysite.com becomes https://www.mysite.com/

Windows Store and apps failing to launch after upgrade

If you’ve been having problems launching the Windows Store or launching windows metro apps after upgrading from Windows 8 and none of the other troubleshooting suggestions have worked, this probably means the upgrade has caused registry permission issues.

The following registry path indicates a typical registry location associated with a Metro app:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\SystemAppData
\WinStore_*examplemetroapp*

What you’ll need to do is check all the “PSR” folders in any sub folders of
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel
\SystemAppData\WinStore_*exampleapp*\
To see if you’re denied access to any of the PSR folders
If you are go and grant yourself ownership of the PSR folders you’re denied access to

That should sort the Metro app/Windows Store launch issues.

Hopefully you don’t have lot of Metro apps installed otherwise re-granting ownership can become a bit tedious.

If you do have a lot you can of course re-grant yourself ownership of the root folder and enable inheritance so the permission change get’s applied to all folders under the following registry location and to all PSR folders as a result:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\SystemAppData

Note: Very important – If you don’t know what the registry is please don’t modify it.

How to open corrupt or damaged PDF files

If you’re having problems opening PDF files that have been damaged or corrupted you may have some luck with MuPDF.

I found this lightweight PDF reader when a colleague at work was having trouble opening a PDF sent in via e-mail. Adobe Reader, Adobe Pro, Foxit Reader and GScript all failed to open the file in question – MuPDF was the only one to succeed.

Plus there’s nothing to install – just extract the exe from it’s zip archive and run.

The Blog of Martin Birrane