Tip: A process using a lot CPU time? Suspend it.

Did you know that you can suspend a running process temporarily so you can focus on something different and resume it later, so that it doesn't steel your CPU time while you are working on something else?

You can use Process Explorer (by sysinternals) to suspend and resume processes easily.

Download or run online: Process Explorer

[Remote Desktop] Quickly copying files when using Remote Desktop

  Did you know that you can copy files from:

• a remote computer to your local computer or
• a remote computer to another remote computer

using Remote Desktop (Windows XP or higher) by simple right-clicking the file and selecting Copy and then selecting Paste on your local machine/the other remote computer?

From the Microsoft KB article 300698:

Copy and Paste Files

You can copy and paste the files between the remote session and local computer, or vice-versa, by using the Copy and Paste feature.

Read the full article at: TechNet

Caution: You should not use the clipboard while a file is being copies using this method, otherwise the file transfer will be cancelled immediately. Additionally you should know that this is not a very fast way to copy large files over the network.

Undelete Files with the free Undelete Plus

You urgently need a tool to undelete files you accidentally deleted?

I had the situation and was quite happy with Undelete Plus. It's free and you don't need to install it.

Save space: Remove the Vista SP1 uninstallation files

Start » Run » Vsp1cln.exe

Vsp1cln.exe is the Windows Vista SP1 File Removal tool.

Warning: You won't be able to uninstall Vista SP1 anymore after this operation.

IFilter for enabling PDF full-text search on 64-bit Windows Vista

Not Microsoft. Not Adobe. But Foxit.

Read about it: here.

Download it: here.

Nokia Software Updater: 'Sorry, Microsoft Windows Vista is currently not supported.'

If you update your version of Nokia Software Updater the most recent version quits working by displaying this message:

"Sorry, Microsoft Windows Vista is currently not supported."

One could think that large companies like Nokia would be able to support the Windows Vista operating system since it's around for over a year now.

Error on ClickOnce install: Application download did not succeed. Check your network connection, or contact your system administrator or network service provider.

Error when trying to install ClickOnce application

Application download did not succeed. Check your network connection, or contact your system administrator or network service provider.

[Link]

Increasing the speed of Windows Search indexer by updating to version 4.0

Windows Search 4.0 includes the following improvements:

• Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems
• Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost)
• Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes
• Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations
• Improved indexing performance
• Faster previewer updates for Windows XP
• Per-user Group Policy settings
• Windows software updates for Watson errors
• Support for the following new enterprise Group Policy objects.

[Download]

Sidebar Gadget to monitor and control the Windows Search indexer

Information from the author, Brandon Paddock:

Features

• Monitor the current state of the indexer
• See how many items need to be processed
• View the total count of indexed items
• Stop and start the indexing service
• Open the Indexing Options control panel
• View the installed Windows Search version number
• Multiple backgrounds / color combinations

[Download]

[IFilter] Indexing contents of RAR files

I'm using this RAR IFilter from the IFilterShop.com (free for non-commercial users) and my RAR files are now indexed including the contents.

They also offer interesting IFilters for ASPX, CHM, MSG, MS Project, Mind Manager, and many more other file types.

Note from the readme file:

In Vista Windows Search and Windows Desktop Search you need to configure a custom temporary directory:

1. Open registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IFilterShop\RarFilter"
2. Add new String value named "TempPath" and enter the full path to the new temporary directory
3. Restart Indexing Service

PRB: Using Jet provider on 64-bit machines

If you experience the error message:

The 'Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0' provider is not registered on the local machine

this is caused by the Jet provider not being available in native 64-bit.

You will have to target x86 with your .NET apps to make it work.

WORKAROUND: EPSON Status Monitor under Windows Vista

Since EPSON Status Monitor does not work properly under Windows Vista I recommend extracting the installation files and simulate an old operating system (Windows XP SP2) by using the compatibility tab for all EXE files in the folder.

Then install and enjoy!

P.S. You can force a cartridge change on a EPSON Stylus Color printer even without using the EPSON Status Monitor software. Read here.

Optimizing VMware virtual machines with PerfectDisk 2008 grows, instead of shrinks, the virtual disk

Prerequisites:

• Product: PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware
• VMware: Virtual Machine *with* linked disks

Situation:

• After "optimizing" the VM the file grows (in my case from 13 GB to 100 GB, which is the maximum size of the dynamic disk)

Workaround:

• Create a full clone of your VM (this copies all the linked disks + your VM into a target disk). You are not using the base disks from that moment on. But the resulting VM will be nice and small and in the future you can use PerfectDisk again to optimize and shrink your VM.

Background:

• VMs with linked disks are not available for SHRINK operations.
• WIthout linked disks this works perfectly.

Not enough free space to create a full clone out of a linked clone with VMware

Situation:

• You have a linked clone.
• You do not have any snapshots, just the current state.
• You want to create a full clone out of the base image(s) and the current state using the VMware Wizard.
• You get the error message that you need (3.5 GB) of free hard drive space.
• Freeing space on the source and target drive does not seem to help.

Solution

• Just create a snapshop and re-try the full-clone-creation.

Enjoy!

A central place for Visual Studio hot fixes

can be found here:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?TagName=Hotfix

WORKAROUND: "Show window contents while dragging" appearance option deactivated after every restart

You are sure a Dell user!

And you are certainly not alone:

http://www.5starsupport.com/xp-faq/1-67.htm

http://help.lockergnome.com/windows/Show-window-contents-dragging-problem-ftopict7815.html

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/9300-show-window-contents-while-dragging-option-doesnt-stick.html

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/9293-show-window-contents-while-dragging.html?highlight=dragging

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-319387.php

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=104214

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/25218-35-show-window-contents-dragging-work

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=100264&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=98039&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=118786&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_video&message.id=106470&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=137349&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics/2004-02/0411.html

http://www.tutorials-win.com/MaintainXP/Show-window/

Possible Workarounds:

• Uninstall Dell Media Experience
  (seems to be cause for the most of the links above, but I handn't installed it)
• Use MSCONFIG to disable the services of your video and audio drivers.
  (this solved it in my case on a Dell XPS M1330 64-bit)
• Add this small tool to your autostart programs

HTH!

WORKAROUND: Mail icon missing in Control Panel of Vista 64-bit

You need to open the item "View 32-bit Control Panel Items". And there it is. :)

Enjoy!

Header area is not showing when creating a new Word Document

... and even resetting the normal.dot won't help you there.

But it's soo simple. A double click between the border between your document and the rulers will display them. Read the full story here.

INFO: Administrative shares (c$, d$, etc.) disabled by default in Windows Vista

You need to make a registry change to make it work.

1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
2. New DWORD: LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy = 1

 

Update (2012-05-23): Download a ready-to-use .REG file here.

Driver: Broadcom 57XX/59XX Gigabit Integrated Controller for Dell XPS M1330 running Vista 64-bit

Thanks to Shad, I have now found Vista 64-bit drivers for my network card as well as a generic driver for the touchpad for my Dell XPS M1330.

Tip: .REG files can also delete keys and values

.REG files can not only add and modify but also delete keys and values from the Windows registry.

To delete a registry key

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Test]

To delete a registry value

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Test
"TestValue"=-

INFO: Access denied on SendTo folder under Windows Vista

If you get the message that the access for "C:\Users\<Username>\SendTo" is denied it doesn't mean you don't have the necessary permissions - but rather that you are looking at the wrong place since the SendTo folder was moved to:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

At the old location there is a NTFS junction which redirects read/write access to the SendTo folder. Unfortunately Windows Explorer won't follow this link and doesn't show you want's in there (stating the access was denied).

WORKAROUND: Installing Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 breaks your XAML Intellisense

A nasty one, you will probably realize in front of customers.

The workaround can be found on the Windows SDK blog.

Enjoy!

PRB: Clean Vista x64 installation freezes with blue screen on Dell M1330 after first reboot

You need to turn off the computer completely (restart won't work). Vista should start now and you need to install "Intel Matrix Storage Manager" (provided by Dell) and after the next restart everything worked fine for me.

Another tip would be to turn off ACHI in your BIOS.

PRB: Hibernate option gone in Windows Vista?

Run the command (using admin privileges):

powercfg /hibernate on

Read more about it.

Update: Although in some scenarios the "Hibernate" menu item does not appear, "shutdown /h" works from the command line.

INFO: Edit and Continue works only against .NET apps that target 32-bit (x86)

You cannot use Edit and Continue on a Windows 64-bit machine by default.

Workaround: For development and testing change the target platform from "Any CPU" to "x86" in order to get Edit and Continue support.

Workaround: Unable to load DLL 'sqlceme35.dll': The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

If you get that nice error message change your solution configuration to target 32-bit (x86) using configuration manager.

For more information read this.

What's the difference between Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007?

The answer lies in a very detailed Excel sheet:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA101978031033.aspx?pid=CL100636421033

(Thanks to Richard for pointing me to it)

Enabling or disabling Large Fonts for Internet Explorer

As documented here [1] you need to change this following registry value to 1 (= enabled) or 0 (=  disabled) and restart IE.

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER

  • Software
    • Microsoft
      • Internet Explorer
        • Main
          UseHR = dword:00000001

 

[1] http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa770067.aspx

FIX: Performance too slow when doing web development with Visual Studio 2008?

Microsoft released a hotfix [1] for Visual Studio 2008 (also targeting Visual Web Developer Express) that corrects several issues with the web development features.

At this time the hotfix is only available for the English and Japanese versions.

List of things that were corrected according to this post [2] by Vinaya Reddy:

HTML Source view performance

• Source editor freezes for a few seconds when typing in a page with a custom control that has more than two levels of sub-properties.
• “View Code” right-click context menu command takes a long time to appear with web application projects.
• Visual Studio has very slow behavior when opening large HTML documents.
• Visual Studio has responsiveness issues when working with big HTML files with certain markup.
• The Tab/Shift-Tab (Indent/Un-indent) operation is slow with large HTML selections.

Design view performance

• Slow typing in design view with certain page markup configurations.

HTML editing

• Quotes are not inserted after Class or CssClass attribute even when the option is enabled.
• Visual Studio crashes when ServiceReference element points back to the current web page.

JavaScript editing

• When opening a JavaScript file, colorization of the client script is sometimes delayed several seconds.
• JavaScript Intellisense does not work if an empty string property is encountered before the current line of editing.

Web Site build performance

• Build is very slow when Bin folder contains large number of assemblies and .refresh files with web-site projects.

Make sure to read the installation instructions at [2].

Enjoy!

[1] https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=10826

[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/02/09/downloadable-hotfix-performance-and-editor-fixes-for-microsoft-visual-studio-2008-and-visual-web-developer-express-2008.aspx

PRB: Dell Dimension freezes periodically for approx 30 seconds on Vista

Usually I try to blog things that interest many people, but there are some cases where the audience is knowingly extremely small, but nevertheless these people will be very glad to have found a solution to their problem.

If you own a Dell Dimension 9xxx and install Windows Vista, which at least in my case is not officially supported, but Dell Support did a very good job in helping me out, and your system periodically freezes (music stops etc.) and after approximately 30 seconds it's like is has never happened and after 2 or even 10 minutes it starts over.

There can be different reasons for this behavior, I can name two of them:

1. Install the firmware for your Philips DVD 6316 [1]
   
2. Install Intel Matrix Storage Software (this one solved it in my case). [2]

I'm looking forward to hearing success stories. :-)

 

[1] http://ftp.us.dell.com/rmsd/DROM6316_ODFN.zip

[2]ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/R139843.EXE

PRB: Windows DreamScene reappearing under Windows Update

Do you happen to know the situation as well? No matter how often you install Windows DreamScene it keeps reappearing as a "new" update?

However the solution is easy: first uninstall it (Control Panel > Software > Installed Updates) and rerun Windows Update.

Now install it once more and it should not appear again (but instead you'll see the content packs with more "dream scenes" [2]).

Enjoy!

[1] http://windowsultimate.com/blogs/extras/archive/2007/03/14/windows-dreamscene.aspx

[2] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931133