Ejecting a Slot Load CD

I found myself in a rather ironic predicament. I was trying to be proactive and burning a Windows recovery CD. I put a blank CD in the drive and while Windows was creating the recovery CD... it crashed.

After this, I was not able to remove the CD from the laptop. The eject button did not do anything. The eject option on the drive in Windows Explorer did not do anything. And there was no mechanical button to forcibly eject the CD like there is for some tray-based CD devices.

I was able to eject the CD by doing the following:
1. Shut down the computer
2. Start the computer
3. Press F2 to go to the BIOS setup screens
4. Now press the eject button on the laptop while on the BIOS configuration screen

The CD ejected and I exited the BIOS configuration to complete the standard startup sequence.

Outlook 2013 Email Stuck in Outbox with Google Apps Sync Client

I was helping a user who could not send e-mail. She was using the Outlook 2013 thick client connected to a Google Apps account using the "Google Apps Sync" tool in Windows 8. The e-mail would get stuck in her Outbox, visible in both the Outlook client and the Google Apps web client.

The problem was caused by an Outlook plug-in of the Kapersky anti-virus software. She was running another anti-virus program, so I uninstalled Kapersky from the computer and this fixed the problem.

Skype Broken Sign-in on Mobile App

I have the Skype Mobile App running on my Samsung Galaxy S3 android phone. I have used it many times and did not having any issue until today.

Today when I launched the app, it asked me to sign in (which it generally does not do). So I assumed that maybe it ran an update that logged me out.

I signed in with my correct username and password and got the error message "Unable to sign in". It gave me an option to reset my password, but I did want to do this because it would break my Skype connection that I was presently using in my desktop clients.

I did the following to fix this issue:

1. Confirmed that my username/password were correct by going in a browser to skype.com and successfully logging in

2. On the phone, go to Settings / Application Manager / Skype

3. Click "Clear Data". I got a warning that it was going to delete every piece of data that I own in the universe. I clicked ok. In fact, it only deletes the cached Skype data on the mobile device. I can confirm that this did not delete any of my contacts or saved chat messages on the Skype server or in my other clients.

4. Launch Skype again and now I was able to successfully log in!

If this works for you, please leave a comment so it can be used by others who search for this same issue.