Category: Windows

  • Windows 10 under Fusion sluggish

    If you made the mistake of upgrading your virtual copy of Windows under Mac OS X using VMware Fusion (version 8 here), you may find Windows 10 runs painfully sluggish. The answer? Disable 3D graphics acceleration.

    • Shut down the virtual machine.
    • Bring up the virtual machine settings (⌘E).
    • Select “Display”:

    • Deselect (remove the checkbox for) “Accelerate 3D Graphics”:

    • Close out the settings, and restart the virtual machine.

    If you’re like me, you’ll find it far, far more usable.

    UPDATE:

    Having purchased a more modern i7 based Mac I can thankfully say this is no longer necessary.


  • Get rid of annoying “People Pane” in Outlook

    I wouldn’t mind the “People Pane”, except that in our organization is shows nothing useful. Moreover for a reason I cannot fathom, it always gets opened up, taking enormous reading real estate. So from this (Outlook 2010 at least):

    Click the “View” tab:

    Select “People Pane” and set it to “Off”:

    Voila!

    UPDATE:

    Same two steps work on Outlook 2013.


  • Make Excel text fit row height

    As part of my job I for better or worse have to deal with Excel on a regular basis. One of the issues I have is the sizing of rows (the cell height) not properly expanding, or conversely shrinking, when I add or remove data in the cell.

    It turns out there is a very easy way to clean the row height spacing:

    First, select the rows you want to fix the spacing on. For most spreadsheets without fancy formatting, the simplest bet seems to be to select all cells by clicking the left corner of all the cells (examples here are from Excel 2013):

    Then assure you are on the home tab:

    Then select “Format / AutoFit Row Height”:

    Voila! Sane cell height spacing again.

    This is particularly useful with “Wrap text” set in cell “Alignment”. Note with wrapping you may have to expand the size of some columns to get Excel not to think there needs to be extra height underneath with text that is very close to the right edge of the cell.


  • Four keyboard shortcuts you should know…

    I’m writing this because I see so many people who use computers regularly who don’t know these basic keyboard shortcuts. They’re easy – learn them and your computer life will be much better. Most work on pretty much any GUI (Windows, Unix, even Mac substituting the CMD key for the CTRL key).

    So with no further ado (hold down the CTRL key while typing the key that follows it, kind of like the SHIFT key):

    • CTRL-C = copy the selected text
    • CTRL-V = paste the prior copied text
    • CTRL-X = copy the selected text and then delete it
    • CTRL-Z = undo the last change

    There are quite a few more worth learning, but some aren’t as guaranteed to work (for instance CTRL-SHIFT-Z which does a “redo” of the last “undo”). However, if you simply learn the 4 above your work will be remarkably improved in terms of streamlining.

    As a final note, these DO NOT work in Unix command line (shell) windows. In fact you’ll get completely different and potentially ugly behavior. They will however work in the Unix GUI (X Windows and/or browser windows etc.).


  • Forcing a Window Media Player library rescan

    If you’re using your Windows Media Player (WMP) as a Windows Media “server” to share your music library, yet don’t use WMP directly to manage your media (I use the much more rich MediaMonkey) then you may want to force a library rescan when you add new tracks to your file-store(s).

    This isn’t very hard, but it isn’t entirely intuitive either. However it’s simple enough. Select the WMP window, hit the “ALT” key and a menu will pop up. Select “Tools / Apply media information changes”, eg:

    Windows Media Player menu

    Should do the trick.


  • Useful Intel links…

    Two links from Intel are particularly useful for desktop/laptop users. First, this tool will find out if the Intel drivers you’re using are up-to-date:

    http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect

    since many if not most desktops/laptops include some Intel based chipset (even if it isn’t the main CPU), then this is a pretty useful site to use.

    If you’re interested to know what Intel chipsets your system uses without checking for updates, this downloadable tool is useful:

    http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/sb/cs-009266.htm

    When run it lets you know what at a minimum your mainboard chipset is (assuming it’s Intel).

    Of course AMD users mileage will undoubtedly vary. Note that both of these are Windows only apps (sorry).


  • 1 Reason Why Microsoft Bing Is Gaining on Google

    eWeek has this “fluff” piece on why Microsoft Bing is “gaining” on Google:

    10 Reasons Why Microsoft Bing Is Gaining on Google

    I don’t usually like to go this far, but frankly it’s pretty shameless pandering.

    Bing may or may not be a good search engine, personally the results it pulls just don’t cut it for me, but it’s quality or not has little to do with why it’s gaining market share (if it is in fact doing that – there’s good reason to believe it’s mostly cannibalizing Yahoo!).

    No, instead it has one and one reason only for any increasing market share:

    Microsoft made it the default browser for Internet Explorer.

    Simple as that.

    Coming up with 9 other reasons, mostly cobbled from Microsoft PR talking points, is a sad excuse for journalism and eWeek can (and often does) do better.

    If Bing wins here, the fact that it’s the better search tool (which is dubious) is ultimately secondary. Just like Microsoft killed Netscape by making IE the default browser, Microsoft aims to do the same to Google via Bing. If Microsoft truly believed in the product, then they wouldn’t make it the default and would let the user decide up front what search engine to use.

    Unfortunately, regardless of any positives that Microsoft brings to the industry, this is another example of its anti-competitive, no holds barred, behavior.


  • Why Internet Explorer rules…

    This article about the growth of Chrome has a little gem in it that shows just how anti-competitive installing IE by default as the only browser on Windows is. It says:

    NetApplications reported, Microsoft’s [Internet Explorer’s] 61 percent is a record low for the company as its market share continues to decline.

    A key reason for that is the European Union’s recent enforcement of a rule that requires Microsoft to give European Windows owners the opportunity to choose between several browsers upon boot-up, rather than require them to use Internet Explorer out of the box. Although the program just started, that ruling could have a profound effect on which browser will lead the way going forward.

    So the European Union requires browser alternatives to be offered and surprise, surprise, IE drops in usage. If IE really were the better mousetrap, the one everyone would want regardless, then you wouldn’t expect to see a drop. Also, if it’s so easy to download say Firefox or Chrome, as is your only choice in the States, then one wouldn’t expect the numbers to change either.

    No, as Microsoft well knows, if you put it on as a default, it’s likely that no one will change it because it’s easier not to – that’s why their numbers got so high. This is also why it’s also concerning that the default search provided for IE is now Bing. They know damn well they can take the market from Google through this technique.

    Frankly IE isn’t a bad browser and for some Bing is probably a passable search engine (personally I can’t stand it, but we all have our preferences), however my concern is more about the anti-competitiveness these efforts represent. It really is playing hard ball with the market. If you doubt that, remember the Netscape had a viable for-pay browser that Microsoft effectively killed through bundling the extremely buggy IE at the time.


  • Outlook email verbosity…

    I write HTML in Thunderbird because I like some rich formatting (an area I am sad to admit Thunderbird is weak on). In particular I do a lot of indented stuff, which Thunderbird translates to simple “<blockquote>” tags. However, when I moved to Outlook 2007 (which I don’t use for mail, but was just checking) and looked at my mail, I saw the “<blockquotes>” were ignored, instead Outlook, which uses “Word” for its HTML formatting, expects to see these done through CSS “<div>” tags (yikes!).

    So, I got to looking and sent myself a simple one line, “Hello world” email from Outlook. Here’s what Outlook rendered it as:

    Yikes again!

    I’ll grant you Word offers a lot more in terms of formatting, but that’s out of control. I guess these guys may have a point!:

    http://fixoutlook.org/
    http://www.email-standards.org/

    Hilarious!


  • Favorite free Windows toys…

    Though I’m a Linux bigot, I work generally on a Windows laptop. Below is a list of my favorite free toys/tools that I use regularly. I’ve had good luck with all of them:

    • Unlocker Assistant – for unlocking pesky locked Windows files or drives.
    • I8kFanGUI – for controlling your laptop fans
    • TrueCrypt – for creating a mountable encrypted drive from a file or external media
    • CCleaner – cleans up your registry and other crap.
    • Cygwin – Unix emulation with complete Unix command set and environment for Windows
    • Malwarebytes – finds malware that most major AVs don’t.
    • TweakUI – free Microsoft tool (“PowerToy”) to tweak your system
    • Process Explorer – free system monitoring tool
    • Putty/WinSCP – great SSH tools (does telnet and FTP too)<
    • RealVNC – VNC remote desktop sessions
    • SolarWinds TFTP – standalone TFTP server useful for upgrading the IOS on a Cisco router
    • TeraTerm Pro – a much better replacement for serial Hyperterm (see UTF-8 version here for one with Windows installer). NOTE: The latest Putty now supports serial, so for basic uses that may be all you need.
    • WindDirStat – find where all your disk space is going.
    • Wireshark/WinPcap – for snooping networks
    • MBSA – Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer to find your big security holes
    • Windows Installer CleanUp Utility – Microsoft tool to remove unremovable/uninstallable program entries
    • PowerBooster 2k – Hitachi laptop disk performance tool
    • Google Earth – just a cool way to look at the world
    • MediaMonkey – one of the best MP3 player/burner/managers I’ve seen.
    • Fat32Format – format FAT32 drives of any size
    • HDD Health – monitor SMART drive output (may also want to see SpeedFan).
    • UltraISO – great for unpacking/manipulating CD ISO images
    • FastStone Image Viewer – very quick JPEG/GIF/TIFF/RAW viewer and editor (good for single images).
    • Picasa – Very nice and fast image organizer and editor (good for directories of images)
    • SyncToy – Microsoft disk-to-disk, directory-to-directory synchronizer (faster than backups). Personally I actually use the for-pay ViceVersa PRO but…

    Enjoy!


  • The unfortunate truth about Exchange

    Up until the last year my workplace used IMAP servers running on Linux and Solaris to manage and deliver mail. Then we decided because of the collaborative benefits, particularly with mobile devices like Blackberrys, to move to Exchange. The results have been dramatic, and this chart made by Google to espouse their GMail product reflects what we saw (taken from this post):

    Google Email Chart

    As you see the “unplanned” outages go up dramatically with Exchange.

    While it’s true that this doesn’t show self-hosted IMAP services, the people I talk to seem to believe that the self-hosted IMAP solution is somewhere near or below Gmail in terms of outages. My own personal IMAP email, hosted at this site, basically never goes down.

    These figures also unfortuantely reflect conversations I’ve had with numerous other companies that have gone through similar transitions. While all enjoy the benefits of integrated calendaring and tasks, the email capability and reliability suffers significantly. And let’s face it, what is ultimately most important to a business – calendaring or email?

    Moreover, in one example email required a single server to maintain the IMAP email for an entire organization. Now with Exchange it takes six. The installation is also dramatically more complicated, requiring not one admin, but two. Also the data files are in MS-SQL, making them harder to fix and manage.

    Do these issues outweigh the benefits of Exchange collaboration? Personally I’m not sure either way. There certainly are advantages to Exchange. However I do feel Microsoft has built a product that is too complicated and too “heavy” for its own good. This particularly considering that much simpler applications can pretty much do the same thing.

    In the end I would pass a warning to shops thinking of moving to Exchange because “it’s the thing to do”. Make sure you are really aware of what you’re giving up. Those used to the unreliability of Exchange may think, “Oh, that’s just the way email is,” but those who have come from other solutions, will realize what they’ve given up.


  • How to convert to/from DOS format in VIM…

    It’s very easy, but also easy to forget how to convert to or from a DOS format file in Unix using “vim” (Vi iMproved), the Open Source “vi”. If the file is in DOS format and you want to convert to Unix, use the command:

    :set ff=unix

    note that “ff” is an abreviation for “fileformat” which you can also use.

    If the file is Unix and you want to write DOS format, use the following command:

    :set ff=dos

    In both examples it is assuming you are ESCaped out of edit mode and the leading “:” is required.

    Note that the difference between the two formats is that:

    • DOS format ends each line with a CRLF (carriage-return line-feed) pair.
    • Unix format ends each line with a simple LF (line feed).

    Neither of these forms should be confused with the C language string delimiter ‘NUL’ which is an ASCII “zero”. That however is an entirely different subject.


  • Where to find the Windows XP “hosts” file

    Just like Unix you can add a static host to the Windows system. On Windows XP the file is usually found in the “intuitive” location here (may change depending on where you loaded Windows):

    C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

    This is also where the “lmhosts” file is found.

    The format is in standard ARPANET format. For more information see this Wiki page.

    Be warned though, putting entries in here essentially makes them static and thus if the target IP is changed in the real owner’s DNS, your local host entry may be pointing to the wrong place. That is why this is best avoided unless really necessary.


  • How to disable “dumprep.exe”

    If you’ve ever had a program spontaneously self destruct in Windows XP and/or you did a forced kill from the task manager for a “Not responding” application, you may have found it takes forever for things to come back to normal and meanwhile your drive is being banged on like crazy. Worse things usually drag to a halt.

    The culprit? “dumprep.exe”, a Windows built in that prepares a log file to send to Microsoft to report the “issue”, even if you don’t want to report the issue (like they’re going to read it anyway?).

    Fortunately it’s easily disabled:

    • Go to “Control Panel” (classic mode).
    • Double click on “System”, which will bring up the “System Properties” panel.
    • Select the “Advanced” tab.
    • Click the “Error Reporting” button near the bottom.
    • Choose the radio “Disable error reporting”.
    • Click “OK” to all the windows until you’re out.

    Done – “dumprep.exe” is disabled. If you ever have an actual issue to report to Microsoft, you can reverse these steps to turn it on again. The default is kind of dumb really as there’s no way Microsoft could ever keep up with all the output from their (bug laden) OS.


  • Disabling Firefox Resume From Crash

    Though to many it’s handy, personally I find Firefox‘s “Resume from Crash” function, well, annoying.  This function makes it so that if Firefox is killed prematurely that the next time you start it you get an (annoying) popup that asks you if you want to restore the previous state/page(s) that Firefox was viewing.

    I can understand the advantage, particularly if Firefox is crashing a lot, but for me it’s stable and 99% of the time when it’s been killed prematurely it’s because I wanted/expected it to. Even when it isn’t expected, 99% of those times I don’t really care that I lost what I was viewing. So, for 1/100th of a 1/100th of a chance of being useful, it isn’t worth it. Particularly since any time you reboot with Firefox up, it’s going to pop this up the next time you run it.

    Fortunately it’s easy to disable. Simply:

    • Bring up Firefox.
    • Enter “about:config” as a destination URL and go to it.
    • If it warns about the end of the world coming if you touch the configs, say “Ok” and move on.
    • Search for the key “browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash“. By default this will be set to “true”.
    • Double click on this line. This should switch it from “true” to “false” and should also turn the line to bold.

    Done. You probably want to close the browser or browse to another URL to prevent accidentally messing with anymore items in “about:config”.

    More on “browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash“, can be found here:

    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash

    mozillaZine probably being the definitive source of Mozilla project documentation.


  • CrossLoop – secure remote access

    A friend of mine showed me what looks like a nice (free) secure remote access solution for visually managing a remote PC:

    http://www.crossloop.com

    It’s based on TightVNC and therefor has the advantage of using encryption on the control session, helping reduce the risk of prying eyes. It also has a pretty cool way of letting the user choose to delegate or not delegate control by reading you a generated key. In particular it looks pretty handy to maybe manage those pesky (note, I’m smiling when I say that) friends and family when they get into trouble.

    Definitely worth looking into. From what I undestand it works on both Unix and Windows.


  • That dang “Unused Icons” popup…

    Drives me crazy when Windows XP pops up the “There are unused icons” balloon and unfortunately it isn’t as intuitive as you’d think to turn it off.

    Fortunately the guys at “HowToGeek.com” have the directions to turn it off here.