Today I get a frantic call from a client who’s experiencing a little bit of trouble with his laptop.
“When it all loads up, it’s not the same as normal, my Outlook icon is missing, I can’t get to my email and my favourites are gone from Internet Explorer.”
He’s using Windows 2000, so my immediate suspicion is that he’s logged on as another user by mistake, so, it should be nothing more than a 5 minute job right?
Today I was given a machine that has Windows ME installed (Yes, Windows ME sucks, I know).
Outline of the situation:
Today I got handed a machine riddled with a virus that avast! detects as “Win32 Virtob“, also known as “Win32 Virut“.
Why would you want to disable Windows Messenger?
Well you may notice that nobody uses the old Windows Messenger anymore, this is because it is abandon-ware, its no longer updated or maintained by Microsoft. This is because we all use MSN Messenger, Messenger Live or third party software (trillian or such).
Often when I am browsing files using explorer I will come across a file that is an avi, when I move my cursor over the file or click on it, explorer will crash with the following message (or similar):
explorer.exe - Application Error
The instruction at “0×04080db8″ referenced memory at “0×00000000″. The memory could not be “written”.
Click on OK to terminate the program
Click on CANCEL to debug the programOK/CANCEL
This is a question that I get asked very often.
My response is never very clear, simply because it’s mainly a matter of personal preference.
Open your registry and find or create the key below.
Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value, called “MinToTray” and set it according to the value data below.
Exit your registry, you may need to restart or log out of Windows for the change to take effect.
Registry Settings
User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Preferences]
Value Name: MinToTray
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (1 = System Tray, 0 = Taskbar)
outlook.txt
For years now, for whatever reason I have used WinZip. I don’t really know why I continued to use it for so long as from WinZip 8 onwards, I was under the impression that it was going down hill.
Over the year’s i’ve used other compression formats other than “.zip”, including “.rar” and “.ace”. The problem I soon discovered with WinZip is its inability to allow me to open some of these types of archives.
I added a word to my Mozilla Firefox spell check personal dictionary by mistake the other day, and could not figure out how to remove it. Firefox seriously lacks custom dictionary management.
To open your profile directory do the following or use the “Open Profile Folder Firefox Add-on“…
Simply go to Start -> Run, enter:
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
Locate the profile you’re using (usually default.something).
Then, inside the folder you will find a file named “persdict.dat”.
Open that, and there you have it, your custom list of words.
Edit it how you like save, and restart Firefox.
All done!
Its not very often I have to do this, but sometimes I do because I end up purchasing a bunch of matching machines, loading the software onto one, and ghosting to the rest.
So here’s a short guide on how to change your Windows XP serial number or product key.
Here’s the batch file I created to achieve the task. Simply create a new file called “update.bat”, and enter the following:
@echo off
echo.
echo Select “Yes I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate windows”,
echo click “Next”, then click “Change Product Key”, now enter your new key, then click “Update”.
@echo REGEDIT4 > %TEMP%\oobetimer.reg
@echo [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WPAEvents] >> %TEMP%\oobetimer.reg
@echo “OOBETimer”=hex:ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff >> %TEMP%\oobetimer.reg
@regedit /s %TEMP%\oobetimer.reg
@del %TEMP%\oobetimer.reg
%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\oobe\msoobe /a
That’s it!
change_winxp_key.txt