Category: windows

A Better Windows Command Prompt

This month I have been fooling around with ConsoleZ. ConsoleZ by Christophe Bucher is the open sourced Windows Command Prompt replacement and is a fork of the more popular replacement application, Console2 by Marko Bozikovic. Since I was already using Console2 I already had customized tabs for Windows Command prompt, Ipython, Powershell, MinGW shell, and some custom DOS/Powershell applications. One of the tabs I wish I had was a DOS prompt with Administrator access. So I searched the web and found that Ben Garrett had solved that problem and few others I did not know I had in his post, Create A Better Windows Command-line Prompt. So I added an Administrator console tab, ANSI color, a DOSKEY macro to start Notepad++, GOW, and a colorized version of ls. It is almost as functional and colorful as a Linux prompt now. 😉 Here is what it looks like.

ConsoleZ

Fixing a Blank Icon in the Start Menu for Evernote

I am not sure when this happened but I have a blank icon for Evernote in my Start Menu. It is one of those Start Menu shortcuts that does not allow you to change the icon. Someone called it a “msi shortcut”. Today I finally got annoyed with it to fix it. I tried re-installing Evernote but I still had a blank icon. I found the icon in a folder under C:\Windows\Installer so I don’t understand why the re-installation did not point to the icon. This is how I fixed it.

  1. I opened Explorer as an Administrator
  2. Since I had a good Evernote shortcut(i.e. one with the correct icon) on my desktop I copied it into the folder, C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Evernote, and replaced the existing shortcut that had the blank icon.
  3. Now when I open the Start Menu Evernote has the correct icon.

Is the end of Internet Explorer closer than we think?

I have been using Google Chrome for the last month at work. It started out as a frustrated response to Internet Explorer crashing random tabs. Then it became an experiment since although it was much faster than IE there were some applications that did not play nicely with Chrome. Now that I have worked through the problems, it is my production browser. On the other hand I still use Internet Explorer at home since I do not have the crashing tab problem. Considering the size of the smartphone and tablet market, if Internet Explorer cannot decisively when the desktop market the end is drawing near.

Going Back a version of Adobe Flash

Recently I started getting some Flash display problems. The Flash graphics was appearing in the upper left corner of the screen and flashing intermittently. I believe these problems started occurring when I upgraded to the most recent version, 10.3.181.14. Here is what I tried and what worked for me.

  1. I tried reinstalling the current version and the symptoms remained.
  2. I tried a forced uninstall and a manual install of the current version. The symptoms remained.
  3. I uninstalled the current version and installed the previous version, 10.2.159.1. I got the previous version from Archived Flash Player versions page. Now my graphics are working properly.

Error code "0x80070646," "646," or "1606" running Windows Update

Windows Update was failing to install several updates Office 2003( KB2502786, KB2509503, KB2522981, and KB2464588). I eventually found the answer. I opted to manually update the registry. I only had to apply the first registry change described in KB2258121 for the updates to work.

This article (KB2258121) provides a fix for a problem in which you receive error code 0x80070646, error code 646, or error code 1606. This update issue occurs when you install Office updates by using Windows Update or Microsoft Update. For detailed information, see the “Symptoms,” “Cause,” and “Resolution” sections of this article.

Error code "0x80070646," "646," or "1606" running Windows Update

How to remove the Windows.old folder that is generated when you install Windows 7

I am not sure how I got this 2.2 GB folder on my “C”  partition but it was not necessary. With free space on my “C” partition down to 5% it was time to clean house. The Vista instructions will work as written if you run the Disk Cleanup utility as the Administrator. If you happen to run the utility as a “mere mortal” there is a button in the Windows 7 version to restart the utility as an Administrator if you want to “Clean up system files”.

How to remove the Windows.old folder that is generated when you perform a custom installation of Windows Vista

Windows 7 Upgrade from Windows XP Home

I think I can finally say that I have finished the upgrade, Free Cell is installed ;). This summer I installed Windows 7 RC and was pleased with the performance and the look and feel on my 3 year old laptop. It would have been nice if I could have just upgraded  the RC version but I was going the Professional version rather than to the Ultimate version. Since I had previous partitioned my disk and cleaned up the disk space I was in pretty good shape for a clean install. The hardest part of the install was install the device drivers for the old QMS printer and Epson scanner. Support for these devices was not included in Windows 7 so I had to install the old XP drivers using the XP compatibility mode.

Windows Vista cannot obtain an IP address from certain routers or from certain non-Microsoft DHCP servers

 

Consider the following scenario:

  • You connect a Windows Vista-based computer to a network.
  • A router or other device that is configured as a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server is configured on the network.
  • The router or the other device does not support the DHCP BROADCAST flag.

In this scenario, Windows Vista cannot obtain an IP address.

Consider the following scenario:

  • You just bought your son a new Toshiba tablet with Vista Business pre-installed on it. You want to make sure that when the tablet goes off to school it has all critical patches applied.
  • You are using pfSense as a DHCP server.
  • The XP, Linux, and Windows 7 computers are able to connect to the network and get an IP address.

You would have thought DHCP problems were solved twenty years ago but here is the solution.

Windows Vista cannot obtain an IP address from certain routers or from certain non-Microsoft DHCP servers

Welcome to Windows 7

Last weekend I took the plunge and installed Windows 7 RC. The hardest part was freeing up some disk space and partitioning the hard drive. After a few defrag runs I was ready to partition. Dual booting is the way to go. There are no special tricks. Just let Windows 7 install in the unpartitioned space. The installation was pretty uneventful. My laptop is about three years old, it has 2 GB of ram, and it passed the Windows 7 compatibility check. The installation found drivers for everything although it had to get the Ricoh drivers off of the Internet.

The part I was most interested in was what would I install first. The first four programs were were the virus checking software, FeedDemon, Windows Live Writer, and Flash. I chose a trial version of AVG available at http://free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition. I like AVG but it triggers a PC issue message in Windows 7. I guess AVG and Windows have a few things to work out. It did not take to long after running FeedDemon that I ran into a web page requiring Flash. When I decided to write a post about my Windows 7 experience I installed Windows Live Writer. To setup Windows Live Writer I needed KeePass since that is where I store my passwords.

To transfer files from Window XP into Windows 7 I am using two methods. With the first method I created a shared folder at the root of the Windows 7 drive and copied files into the folder using XP. I could not browse the XP version of the “My Documents” folder using Window 7  and was not into the “take ownership” thing. The second method uses Dropbox.

So far my experience has been very positive. The interface is nice and the computer seems as fast as it was under XP. I think Microsoft has a winner if they price it right. The interface of Linux and the Mac are nice, too!

Script all data of a table – SQLServerCentral

I made a couple of minor changes to the provided script and I got Script all data of a table – SQLServerCentral to work with SQL 2000. I like the idea of creating scripts to transfer/update/re-create tables. I have been using Excel to create scripts to update shipping costs for some time. Nice work Florian!

Recovering from registry 51 error

For the last couple of months I have been trying to fix an old ThinkPad that failed on us. It was a low priority item but we were pretty sure we would need it fixed eventually. In an unfortunate sequence of events the battery ran down, the LCD failed, and the disk/registry got corrupted. Under most circumstances we would buy a new laptop and re-install the necessary programs. In this case we pretty sure there were some custom programs on the laptop we would need in the future. I had a backup of the data but I did not have a plan for re-installing the custom programs. Frankly none of us knew what programs we needed to save.

With the beginning of the new year I was informed that one of the custom programs that existed only on the laptop was a custom interface to QuickBooks and a SQL database. It was used in reconciling annual inventory and we needed to reconcile the inventory for tax purposes. The Boss had been thinking ahead and bought an almost identical ThinkPad laptop off of eBay. The plan was to take the old disk drive and put it in the newly acquired laptop. So I made an image copy of the drive, inserted the drive into the laptop, and then booted the laptop. Within a short period of time I was looking at a BSOD, Registry Error. So I tried to repair the installation using the XP installation disk. I surprised when it gave me a BSOD, too. Since re-installing the programs was an option we did not want to pursue at this time, I went searching for a way to repair the corrupted registry. I found this Microsoft Knowledge Base article, How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting.

I had never seen this KB. Over the years I had almost no success going back to the last known good configuration so I was game. I followed the instructions and restored to an old system restore point. When I booted all of the installed programs worked as expected! This would have been the end to the story but after the laptop was running for awhile I started getting BSODs with a PFN_LIST_CORRUPT error message. A quick search of the Internet said this error was frequently associated to memory errors so I booted off my copy of the Ultimate Book CD for Windows and ran Memtest86. Sure enough, I got a bunch of memory error messages. I tried to swap out the memory but I kept getting memory error messages. This was not good! This laptop was bought to fix problems not replace old problems with new problems. In a strange turn of events I finally solved this problem by taking the drive out, putting it back into the old laptop, and hooking up a spare monitor to the laptop. It is not the way we wanted to run the system but it works. Hopefully we will finally migrate all of the important stuff off before we need to use it again.