I caved and joined the latest cult - I got an iPhone.  I thought it would be nice to start sharing my favorite apps.

Today I want to mention just a few that I use to run my business as a computer networking consultant and system administrator.

Mobile Air Mouse - a remote mouse pad for controlling the mouse of your computer over the WiFi.  Simple to use and setup - just download and install the server portion to your computer and then install the free app from the app store.  www.mobileairmouse.com  (Free)

Hours Tracker Lite - I use this to login and out of jobs for time tracking.  The results can be emailed for entry into time system.  (Free)

Mochasoft RDP Lite - used to connect via VPN or WiFi to a Microsoft computer running Remote Desktop (Free)

Mochasoft VNC Client - used to connect via VPN or WiFi to a computer running VNC server (Free)

Dragon Dictation - a GREAT app for dictating voice to text.  The text can be copied to clipboard or imported automatically into an email or text. (Free)

IP Network Scanner - Tool for scanning the local WiFi network for other devices from 10base-t Interactive.  My favorite scanner because it can save and store custom icons and names for devices (Free version limits to 5 devices on scan list - 4.99 for full version)

More app reviews to come - subscribe and stay tuned!

Just wanted to share this.  Below is a great low-level illustration of what actually happens when a computer is infected by a virus.

The latest viruses are those pesky ones that try to tell you there is a virus on your machine and try to get you to buy software, etc.  These are all FAKE and intended to get you to put in your credit card number so it can be STOLEN.  However, some people are under the false assumption that if they ignore the issue, it will go away.  This is horribly wrong.  ANY (I said ANY) piece of rouge software installed on your machine is dangerous.  This illustration shows just one of the things that the rouge software can can do - it can turn your machine into a remote-controllable BOT intended to be used to send out SPAM or do other large-scale attacks often without you ever even knowing.  If you ignore these issues you leave yourself wide open for Identity Theft, data theft, etc.  We all store information on our computers and most if not all of us in the modern world use the computer to do some sort of financial transactions on the Internet.  If one of the components of the rouge software is a keylogger, without knowing, you are sending every single letter you type to an off-site location to be collected, indexed, and inappropriately used by cyber criminals.  This all happens in "a blink of the eye".  I just watched a Sophos web seminar on the latest rouge/fake antivirus viruses.  There are reports that these viruses are now mutating at a rate of 10,000 - 20,000 TIMES A DAY.  The engine at the core of these viruses can enter your machine and search for 15-20 application vulnerabilities (Adobe, Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, etc) and attack any one of the vulnerabilities that it finds within seconds - all because you viewed a "safe" web page that had malicious code injected into it.

What can you do?  Get Clean, Get Protected, Stay Clean. 

Get clean - hire someone competent to professionally clean and check your computer.  Viruses hide everywhere and the only way to ensure a successful clean is a multi-pass scan solution using several different scanning products.  Your cousin, neice, son, nephew, neighbor, husband, wife, etc is NOT sufficient unless they are in the industry and are constantly studying these viruses and how to clean/prevent them.  Its YOUR DATA.  It HAS VALUE.  Do NOT COMPROMISE.

Get protected - purchase an AntiVirus solution or use one of the free solutions provided by Avast, AVG, etc.  These programs are changing almost daily - use the Internet to search for reviews of the latest "top 10" or hire a professional to consult you on what is best for you.

Stay clean - Even the best Anti-Virus may not catch everything because of the high volume of mutations.  If you notice any infections or weird pop-ups, etc, - chances are, your computer is infected.  DO NOT IGNORE IT - it will only get worse.  Once a small piece of any rouge software has infiltrated Windows, it will talk back to its "home-base" and teach itself how to hide from even the best AntiVirus programs, inform "homebase" that it has conquered a machine and wait for "homebase" to send additional software, etc to the machine, or to remote control the machine, or to gather data from the machine and send it back to "homebase".  One small rouge piece of software can be the pin-hole in any security strategy that allows more and more malicious software to be installed.

I recently had a user clean up a lot of pictures on their computer by moving and deleting them.  The next time the user went into Office Picture Manager, the splash screen would appear but it would never bring up the program (never meaning within 5 minutes - I have read reports that it will eventually open it just takes time).

The problem seems to be the catalog file that OIS.exe (the Picture Manager executable) uses.  Follow these directions to reset the picture manager catalog:

Browse to %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\OIS. Locate the file named OIScatalog.cag, and double-click on it. When asked what you want to open the file with choose Notepad from the list. When it opens you will see a file that looks like the following. Remove any lines that start with mru path. Make sure to remove the entire line including the opening/closing tags. You can also just delete the OIScatalog.cag file, and it will be re-created the next time you open a picture.

I had an issue with a Small Business Server SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration where once everything was up and running, I had problems with Outlook 2007 Clients giving certificate errors.  Also, OWA Outlook Web Access would redirect to http://sites/owa.  The problem was the internal and external URL settings on the various transports in Exchange 2007.  This powershell script helped to fix the problem.  Note, some errors occurred for me but I was able to just step through the code and issue the commands to the Exchange Shell manually to get the job finished.  The main problem was the AutoDiscover Internal URI - once that was fixed the rest fell into place.

# Script to allow you to set all virtual directories to a common name like mail.company.com

Start-Transcript

# Variables

[string]$UMExtend = "/UnifiedMessaging/Service.asmx"
[string]$OABExtend = "/OAB"
[string]$SCPExtend = "/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml"
[string]$EWSExtend = "/EWS/Exchange.asmx"
[string]$ConfirmPrompt = "Set this Value? (Y/N)"
[string]$NoChangeForeground = "white"
[string]$NoChangeBackground = "red"

Write-host "This will allow you to set the virtual directories associated with Autodiscover provided services to the name you provide."
Write-host ""
[string]$base = Read-host "Base name of virtual directory (e.g. mail.company.com)"
write-host ""
# =======================================================
# Validate if a third party trusted certificate is being used
# because BITS won't use untrusted certificates
[string]$set = Read-host "Is the certificate being used an internally generated certificate? (Y/N)"
Write-host ""

if ($set -eq "Y")    {
    [string]$OABprefix = "http://"
}    else    {
    [string]$OABprefix = "https://"
}

# =======================================================
# Build the Autodiscover URL and set the SCP Value

Write-host "Setting Autodiscover Service Connection Point" -foregroundcolor Yellow
write-host ""

$SCPURL = "https://" + $base + $SCPExtend

[array]$SCPCurrent = Get-ClientAccessServer

Foreach ($value in $SCPCurrent) {
    Write-host "Looking at Server: " $value.name
    Write-host "Current SCP value: " $value.AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri.absoluteuri
    Write-host "New SCP Value:     " $SCPURL
    [string]$set = Read-host $ConfirmPrompt
    write-host ""
    
    if ($set -eq "Y")    {
         Set-ClientAccessServer -id $value.identity -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri $SCPURL
    }    else {
        write-host "Autodiscover Service Connection Point internal value NOT changed" -foregroundcolor $NoChangeForeground -backgroundcolor $NoChangeBackground
    }
}

# =======================================================
# Build the EWS URL and set the internal Value

Write-host "Setting Exchange Web Services Virtual Directories" -foregroundcolor Yellow
write-host ""

$EWSURL = "https://" + $base + $EWSExtend

[array]$EWSCurrent = Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory

Foreach ($value in $EWSCurrent) {
    Write-host "Looking at Server: " $value.server
    Write-host "Current Internal Value: " $value.internalURL
    Write-host "New Internal Value:     " $EWSUrl
    [string]$set = Read-host $ConfirmPrompt
    write-host ""

    if ($set -eq "Y")    {
        Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -id $value.identity -InternalURL $EWSURL
     } else {
        write-host "Exchange Web Services Virtual Directory internal value NOT changed" -foregroundcolor $NoChangeForeground -backgroundcolor $NoChangeBackground
     }

    Write-host "Looking at Server: " $value.server
    Write-host "Current External Value: " $value.externalURL
    Write-host "New External Value:     " $EWSUrl
    [string]$set = Read-host $ConfirmPrompt
    write-host ""

    if ($set -eq "Y")    {
        Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -id $value.identity -ExternalURL $EWSURL
    } else {
        write-host "Exchange Web Services Virtual Directory external value NOT changed" -foregroundcolor $NoChangeForeground -backgroundcolor $NoChangeBackground
    }
}

# ======================================================
# Build the OAB URL and set the internal Value

Write-host "Setting OAB Virtual Directories" -foregroundcolor Yellow
write-host ""

$OABURL = $OABprefix + $base + $OABExtend

[array]$OABCurrent = Get-OABVirtualDirectory

Foreach ($value in $OABcurrent) {
    Write-host "Looking at Server: " $value.server
    Write-host "Current Internal Value: " $value.internalURL
    Write-host "New Internal Value:     " $OABUrl
    [string]$set = Read-host $ConfirmPrompt
    write-host ""

    if ($set -eq "Y")    {
        Set-OABVirtualDirectory -id $value.identity -InternalURL $OABURL
    } else {
        write-host "OAB Virtual Directory internal value NOT changed" -foregroundcolor $NoChangeForeground -backgroundcolor $NoChangeBackground
    }

    Write-host "Looking at Server: " $value.server
    Write-host "Current External Value: " $value.externalURL
    Write-host "New External Value:     " $OABUrl
    [string]$set = Read-host $ConfirmPrompt
    write-host ""

    if ($set -eq "Y") {
        Set-OABVirtualDirectory -id $value.identity -ExternalURL $OABURL
    } else {
        write-host "OAB Virtual Directory external value NOT changed" -foregroundcolor $NoChangeForeground -backgroundcolor $NoChangeBackground
    }
}

# =======================================================
# Build the UM URL and set the internal Value

Write-host "Setting UM Virtual Directories" -foregroundcolor Yellow
write-host ""

$UMURL = "https://" + $base + $UMExtend

[array]$UMCurrent = Get-UMVirtualDirectory

foreach ($value in $UMCurrent) {
    Write-host "Looking at Server: " $value.server
    Write-host "Current Internal Value: " $value.internalURL
    Write-host "New Internal Value:     " $UMUrl
    [string]$set = Read-host $ConfirmPrompt
    write-host ""

    if ($set -eq "Y") {
        Set-UMVirtualDirectory -id $value.identity -InternalURL $UMURL
    } else {
        write-host "UM Virtual Directory internal value NOT changed" -foregroundcolor $NoChangeForeground -backgroundcolor $NoChangeBackground
    }

    Write-host "Looking at Server: " $value.server
    Write-host "Current External Value: " $value.externalURL
    Write-host "New External Value:     " $UMUrl
    [string]$set = Read-host $ConfirmPrompt
    write-host ""

    if ($set -eq "Y") {
        Set-UMVirtualDirectory -id $value.identity -ExternalURL $UMURL
    } else {
        write-host "UM Virtual Directory external value NOT changed" -foregroundcolor $NoChangeForeground -backgroundcolor $NoChangeBackground
    }
}
Stop-Transcript

(http://www.exchangeninjas.com/set-allvdirs)

I had a situation where I had a non-booting Windows XP but did not know what service pack it was to know which CD to use to repair it.

Using MiniPE and a remote registry tool, navigate to this key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

The sub-keys and values under this location will help determine OS and Service Pack versions.

As you probably knew, or do now since you are searching for this information, Exchange 2007 requires a UCC Multi-Domain SSL Certificate to properly function.  Here are some tips for setting it up.

-Pick your favorite vendor to purchase the UCC SSL from and make the purchase

-Generate the request from the Exchange 2007 Server.  To do this, open the Management Shell and issue the New-ExchangeCertificate command.  A great tool is provided here: https://www.digicert.com/easy-csr/exchange2007.htm.  You can use this tool to generate the request and it will save the information to a file in the path you can specify or leave default

   For Example:  Lets say we have an Exchange 2007 Server whos Internet Address is mail.rockabilly.com and its local domain address is exch07.rockabilly.local.  I would also include remote.rockabilly.com, rockaserver.rockabilly.local, autodiscover.rockabilly.com, autodiscover.rockabilly.local in the list of requested names.  Feeding this into the tool yields the following request:  "New-ExchangeCertificate -GenerateRequest -Path c:\mail_rockabilly_com.csr -KeySize 2048 -SubjectName "c=US, s=Utah, l=YourTown, o=RockABillyDoodles, ou=IT, cn=mail.rockabilly.com" -DomainName remote.rockabilly.com, pcrserver.rockabilly.local, autodiscover.rockabilly.com, autodiscover.rockabilly.local -PrivateKeyExportable $True"  Copy and paste this request into your Exchange Server Management Shell and it will spit out the request to c:\mail_rockabilly_com.csr.  Open this in Notepad and copy and paste the request into the request fields at the site where you purchased the SSL cert. 

-Once the request is received by the registering entity, an email will be generated to approve this request.  The email will go to the contacts on the WHOIS record for the domain.  Ensure you have access to those email accounts so you can approve the request.

-Once the request is approved and you are able to download the certificate, the next step is to install it into the Exchange 2007 server.

It seems like this problem is related to an iTunes or Firefox update.  If you search the system drive for CoreFoundation.dll and simply rename the copy in the Adobe directory to something else (old-corefoundation.dll for example), it seems to fix the problem.

Mine was in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 6.0\

Check out this latest chat with an HP representative.  He tries to mask a hardware problem (faulty switch) by locking out the On Screen Display.  He insists this is the fix as well as claims I am incompetent.  LOL  Finally, "Ryan"'s supervisor "Shane" gets on the chat and replaces the monitor.  This is totally unacceptable and the average person would have settled for the band-aid instead of a full fix.  Sad how bad customer service has gotten.

Customer : The on-screen display on this monitor keeps popping up randomly - seems like the button is defective.

[An agent will be with you shortly.]

[You are now chatting with Ryan .]

Ryan : Welcome to HP Total Care for Desktop PCs. My name is Ryan.

Ryan : Hello Customer. How are you doing?

Customer : Good thanks

Customer : I am contacting on behalf of my client.

Customer : Their monitor keeps popping the on-screen display

Ryan : You are most welcome.

Ryan : Customer, may I know the monitor model number?

Customer : HP 2009m

Serial # CNC9100XXS

Product # FV583AA

Manufactured 3/2009

Ryan : Customer, may I have the monitor owner's email address and name?

Customer :

Customer : Actually, let me give you his wife's info -

Customer :

Ryan : Customer, we'll try some basic steps in this regard and see what happens.

Ryan : To lock the OSD, press and hold the Menu button while the monitor is off, and then press the Power button to turn the monitor on.

Customer : I am not in front of it right now. Do you have a list of steps I can send to her?

Ryan : To unlock the OSD, repeat the locking procedure.

Ryan : Yes Customer, infact above given are the only and ultimate steps for such issue.

Ryan : This sometimes may not work on a single try.

Customer : So this is the permanent fix? To lock it?

Ryan : So you may need to try it 2 to 3 times only if it doesn't help in the first time.

Ryan : Yes, that's correct.

Ryan : Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Customer : What is the cause of the problem?

Ryan : Customer, infact OSD (On Screen Display) is a feature given on most of the new monitors i.e. LCD monitors.

Ryan : And sometimes it gets activated by its own.

Ryan : That's what has happened here.

Customer : seems to me like a faulty switch

Ryan : So there is nothing to worry.

Customer : i've owned LCDs of all brands for 10 years and have not experienced one that pops the menu randomly

Ryan : This is a normal procedure and the steps are quite simple to sort it out.

Ryan : Alright.

Customer : my worry is that this is a hardware problem with the switch and HP should replace the monitor because of this defect.

Ryan : Customer, as I informed OSD is a feature and no way it's a hardware defect or failure.

Ryan : And infact the troubleshooting for it is very simple.

Customer : having the OSD as a feature is not the issue

Ryan : I thought you'd be knowing about this simple thing as you are a technician for a long time.

Customer : having it pop up randomly without pressing any buttons is the issue

Ryan : However now you can remember the steps and can provide her the same.

Customer : popping up randomly is NOT NORMAL

Customer : it SHOULD NOT do that

Ryan : Please rest assured. It's no way an issue and once you try the steps and see the changes.

Customer : so the button is defective and to mask the issue HP's decision is to lock it out?

Customer : I used to think HP was quality. Guess I need to stop reccommending HP products because this is not acceptable.

Ryan : Customer, do you have the monitor besides you to try these suggested steps.

Customer : again, that is not the issue, Ryan

Customer : the issue is HP is not fixing the problem, just masking it.

Ryan : Unfortunately never ever you've come across such an issue and that's the reason such a simple step is unknown to you.

Ryan : Do you want me to escalate the case to my supervisor?

Ryan : I believe you don't have any knowledge on computers at all.

Ryan : And that's the reason you are totally ignorant of computers.

Ryan : And of such a simple issue.

Customer : yes

Customer : escalate

Customer : do he speak clear english unlike you?

Ryan : Thank you.

Ryan : Yes, he writes better English than you.

Customer : i have been doing this for 15 years and have sourced all brands of computers.

Ryan : Please allow me 4-5 minutes while I escalate the case.

Customer : i have never encountered a hardware problem like this where the manufacturer wanted to mask the issue instead of fixing it.

Ryan : Still you don't have adequate knowledge on computers.

Customer : Can I have your supervisor's phone contact information as well as your employee identification information? i've got my local HP rep on the phone and they are asking these questions.

Ryan : Thank you for being online.

My supervisor will join you in 5 minutes.

Customer : please send me this information as the local HP rep is requesting it.

Ryan : My supervisor will join you in 5 minutes.

Ryan : And you can clarify your issues with him.

Customer : You are embarrassing the company you are representing.

Customer : I have a local representative on the phone and they are requesting your identification

Shane : Hi Customer, I am Steve supervisor of the floor.

Customer : Hi Shane

Customer : Please review the chat session.

Customer : #1 - I can't believe HP's response to this problem is to mask it

Customer : #2 - I can't believe the way your "tech" is speaking to me

Customer : I have a local representative now working on this case.

Shane : Please stay online I will check with chat session.

Customer : They are requesting your contact information so they can further investigate.

Shane : Iam sorry for inconvenience

Shane : Customer, I have checked with issue. It shows that problem is with menu button of the monitor.

Customer : Correct. So shouldn't this be replaced/repaired under warranty and not just masked by locking it out?

Customer : My problem is that if this goes out of warranty and the other buttons start failing, what is the client to do?

Customer : This is a problem with the button and it should be repaired/replaced instead of masked.

Shane : Customer, If understand you are techinican representing onbefalf of your client, is that right?

Customer : correct.

Shane : Customer, If you are intersted we can create service order which is free of cost because your pc is under warranty.

Customer : Don't you agree that this is the best thing to do in the interest of the client?

Customer : Please create the order and let me know the next steps.

Shane : Yes, Please gohead we are ready to do that.

Shane : For that please provide me shipping address and email address including the phone number of the customer.

Customer : hang on while i get that info for you...

Shane : Take your time I will be with you.

Shane : I will let you know this, Please stay online.

Shane : Thank you for staying online.

Shane : For this service oredr we have called collateral policy:

Shane : We would be happy to process the request for a replacement part. However, the monitor drive is a collateral part. This implies that the replacement of monitor drive entails returning the faulty one. If the faulty monitor drive is returned within 15 calendar days of shipment, the replacement would be free of cost under warranty conditions. If however, the faulty monitor drive is not returned within the stipulated time, applicable charges would be levied. We would therefore need your credit card details. We do not seek credit card information through email as a policy. Please DO NOT provide any credit card information via email. Such sensitive information is sought only through phone. Please provide us with the convenient date (2 dates) and time so that we can contact you for the credit card information. Additionally, provide us with the shipping details to which we can send the part to.

=== HP warranty conditions for collateral parts ===

* All returned spare parts must be in "as new condition", and returned in the original packaging.

* In cases where HP did not receive the defective part within 30 calendar days of shipment of the exchange part from you then you will be charged for the exchange part. Return instructions and pre-paid shipping label are included. No charges are assessed if the unit is returned within the required time.

=== Additional information needed ===

Please provide the following information about when we can contact you:

* Dates and Days (2 days):

* Time to call:

* Telephone Number to call:

Shipping Information:

* Name:

* Organization:

* Mailing Address (No P.O. Boxes):

* Apartment/Building/Mailstop:

* City:

* State:

* Zip/Postal Code:

* Phone Number (including area code):

Shane : Please check with above policy and let me know is okay with you for that or not.

Customer : that looks fine.

Customer : please call  at the number listed to obtain credit card information.

Customer : anytime during the day is fine

Customer : the sooner the better

Shane : Thank you I will do it.

Shane : You will recieve call regarding this in 24 hours.

Customer : thank you

Shane : Is there anything else I can help you with?

Customer : i still need yours and Ryan's contact and/or employee identification information - my local HP representative is requesting that information.

Shane : Customer, sorry for that we cannot share our personal and offical data with customers.

Customer : The representative says there is an identification number you can give me to relay to him.

Customer : He wants to investigate this issue.

Customer : Ryan's conduct was unacceptable and he wants to pursue the issue.

Shane : Okay the chat refernece id is 1062581

Customer : Thank you. He will be in contact regarding Ryan's unacceptable customer service.

Shane : Please also provide me your client's email address.

Customer : its in the chat session above

Shane : Thank you for the information.

I had a problem recently with a failed RAID-5 set on an older PowerEdge 1600SC.  During the recovery process, I installed an IDE drive to be the C: drive of the recovery installation.  I tried several times to install Windows 2003 using different hard drives and different BIOS configurations; Each time the install would finish copying and when it was starting to finish the initial copy install, it would hang at loading DMREG.INF.  This also happened when using the Dell Open Manage Installation and Server Manager CD.  I researched the problem and found nothing productive.

I decided to install Windows Server 2008 on the box to act as the recovery host.  Server 2008 installed and booted.  All drivers loaded properly (it appeared).  As I was installing the Backup Exec software, it kept crashing.  I opened IE to research the problem, and it, too crashed.  I scanned the drive for errors - none found.  Researched the problem.  Noticed serveral errors in the SYSTEM log from ATAPI saying bad blocks on the drive.  After further research, I discovered the problem - the IDE chipset on the ServerWorks® GC-SL is not compatible with Windows Server 2008.  In the BIOS, the highest the drive would go was ATA-33 - anything more and the box reported invalid cabling and would automatically downgrade the speed back to 33.  I assume this is the problem - the 33 transfer rate is just not enough for Server 2008.  I am assuming this was the problem with the Windows 2003 installation as well.

Router - LinkSys WRT54GS v5

Modem - Speedstream 5100

In the initial setup that had worked for several years, the modem was doing the PPPOE authentication to ATT DSL.  After this problem occurred, we put the modem into bridge mode and setup the router to do the PPPOE authentication.  VOILA.  This solved the problem and now all computers on the LAN can connect to the VPN.

To Make these changes:

Step 1: Put the modem in Bridge Mode:  Connect to the DSL modem directly and reset the configuration to factory defaults.  To get to the configuration page of the modem goto 192.168.0.1 (or whatever address the modem shows on the bottom) from a web browser and click the advanced button on the left.  Then click on the Reset Modem button below.  You will be asked for your modem access code which is a yellow sticker on the bottom of the modem.  Once the modem has been reset, close the browser window and reinstall the router.

Step 2: Setup PPPOE on router:  With the router connected, open a web browser and goto 192.168.1.1 (or whatever the address of your router is - use IPCONFIG and use the Gateway address if unsure) and enter your password to access the router, (by default, the password is "admin" and the User ID is left blank). Once in the router, on the Setup page, select PPPoE as the login type and enter your DSL UserID and password. Set the Time Zone setting and click Save Changes. 

Step 3: Setup your wireless configuration and security as you normally would.

Try your VPN Connection.

If you use the power options in Control Panel, you can turn off hibernation. However, the hibernation file remains. To disable hibernation and delete the hibernation file, you have to use powercfg command line tool. Follow these steps.

1. Open up an elevated command prompt (run command prompt as administrator)
2. Type this command:
   powercfg -h off

To fix this issue: STEP ONE:
Logon to the Computer

WARNING

You must be logged on to an administrator account from step 1 or 2 below before you can move on to do either the OPTION ONE or OPTION TWO sections.

1. Logon to another Administrator account.
NOTE: If you do not have another Administrator account, then proceed to step 2.

A) Go to OPTION ONE or OPTION TWO.

2. Boot into Safe Mode.
NOTE: You may not need to enable the built-in Administrator account. If this was the only normal administrator account you had, then Safe Mode should automatically boot into the built-in Administrator account.

A) If Safe Mode did not boot into the built-in Administrator account, then enable the Built-in Administrator account. If it did , then go to step 2C.

B) Logoff in Safe Mode, and then logon to the built-in Administrator account to logon with that account in Safe Mode.

C) Go to OPTION ONE or OPTION TWO.

OPTION ONE:
Fix the User Account Profile

1. Open the Start menu.

2. In the white line (Start Search) area, type regedit and press Enter.

3. If prompted, either click on Continue or enter the password for the Administrator account.

4. In regedit, go to: (See screenshot below step 5)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

5. In the left pane, look for the S-1-5..... folder (SID key) with the long number that has .bak at the end of the numbers.
(See screenshots below steps 6A and 7B)
NOTE:
A) In the right pane, look at the ProfileImagePath to verify that this is the user account profile that has the error.
B) You may have another S-1-5..... folder (SID key) above it with the exact same number without the .bak at the end of it.

6. For Two S-1-5..... folders (SID key) with the same Number -
NOTE: This is if you have two S-1-5..... folders (SID key) with the exact same numbers, but the second (below) one has the .bak at the end of the numbers.

A) In the left pane, right click on the first (top) S-1-5..... folder (SID key) that does not have .bak at the end of the numbers and click Rename. (See screenshot below)

B) Add .bk to the end of the numbers. (See screenshot below)

C) In the left pane, right click on the second S-1-5..... folder (SID key) with .bak at the end of the numbers and click Rename. (See screenshot above)

D) Remove only .bak from the end of the numbers and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

E) Now go back and Rename the first one with .bk to .bak now at the end of the numbers and press Enter.

F) Go to step 8.

7. For Only One S-1-5..... Folder (SID key) with .bak -
NOTE: This is if you only have one S-1-5..... folder (SID key) for your user account with .bak at the end of the numbers.

A) In the left pane, right click on the S-1-5..... folder (SID key) with .bak at the end of the numbers and click Rename. (See screenshot below)

B) Remove only .bak at the end of the numbers and press Enter. (See screenshot below and below step 10)

8. In the right pane of the one without .bak now, right click on RefCount and click on Modify. (See screenshot below step 10)
NOTE: If you do not have RefCount, then right click on a empty space in the right pane and click New and DWORD (32 bit) Value, then type RefCount and press Enter. This value for this entry will reset and return back to the original value after you have restarted the computer and logged on to the account.

A) Type 0 (number) and click on OK. (See screenshot below)

9. In the right pane of the one without .bak now, right click on State and click on Modify. (See screenshot below step 10)
NOTE: This value for this entry will reset and return back to the original value after you have restarted the computer and logged on to the account.

A) Type 0 (number) and click on OK. (See screenshot below)

10. The registry will now look like this for the one without .bak now. (See screenshot below)

11. Close regedit.

12. Restart the computer.

13. See if you can logon now.
NOTE: If this still does not help, then either try OPTION TWO below or see the yellow TIP box at the top of the tutorial.

OPTION TWO:
Delete the User Account Profle

WARNING

You can do this option if you do not care about losing the user account and the contents in the user folders. Your programs will still be installed, but you will need to create new shortcuts for them afterwards.

1. Delete the User account profile that this error is for.
NOTE: See: How to Delete a User Account in Vista

2. Open the Start menu.

3. In the white line (Start Search) area, type regedit and press Enter.

4. If prompted by UAC, click on Continue.

5. In regedit, go to: (See screenshot below step 7)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

6. In the left pane, click on one of the S-1-5..... folders (SID key) with the long number in it.
NOTE: It may have .bak at the end of it.

A) In the right pane, look at the ProfileImagePath to see if this is the same user account that you deleted in step 1 above.

B) Repeat step 6 until you find the one that you deleted in step 1 above.
NOTE: If the user account is not here, then it has already been removed when deleted in step 1. Go to step 9.

7. To Backup the Registry SID Key -
WARNING: You should backup this SID key to be safe in case you delete the wrong one in step 8 below.

A) Right click on the SID key, and click on Export.

B) Type in a name and save the REG file to a safe location.
NOTE: This is your backup. To Restore the Backup, right click on the REG backup file and click on Merge.

C) Continue on to step 8.

8. To Delete the Registry SID Key -

A) Right click on the SID key, and click on Delete. (See screenshot above)

B) Click on Yes to confirm deletion. (See screenshot below)

9. Close regedit.

10. Now, just create a new normal Administrator account.
NOTE: See: How to Create a New User Account in Vista

11. Restart the computer, and log on to your new account.
NOTE: If this still does not help, then either try OPTION ONE above or see the yellow TIP box at the top of the tutorial.

(http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/130095-user-profile-service-failed-logon-user-profile-cannot-loaded.html)

I ran across a problem with running updates for Microsoft Silverlight KB974331.  Since the client did not need Silverlight at this point, I wanted to uninstall it.  It would not uninstall from Add/Remove Programs - error said it could not find the package installation information. 

This tool helps with the removal of MS Silverlight:

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Try resetting windows update components here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058

SN Margin (AKA Signal to Noise Margin or Signal to Noise Ratio)
Relative strength of the DSL signal to Noise ratio. 6dB is the lowest dB manufactures specify for modem to be able to synch. In some instances interleaving can help raise the noise margin to an acceptable level. The higher the number the better for this measurement.

6dB or below is bad and will experience no synch or intermittent synch problems
7dB-10dB is fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions
11dB-20dB is good with no synch problems
20dB-28dB is excellent
29dB or above is outstanding

Line Attenuation
Measure of how much the signal has degraded between the DSLAM and the modem. Maximum signal loss recommendation is usually about 60dB. The lower the dB the better for this measurement.
20dB and below is outstanding
20dB-30dB is excellent
30dB-40dB is very good
40dB-50dB is good
50dB-60dB is poor and may experience connectivity issues
60dB or above is bad and will experience connectivity issues

My strong dislike for AT&T as a company continues to grow.  DSL is dropping sync "all of the sudden" after ATT trucks were in the neighborhood last week.  They sent "Your Company's Computer Guy" (who happens to have 8TB of movies -over 1200 of them - on his home server blah blah blah) to diagnose.  He said it was a short in the line.  Disconnected one of my jacks in the house.  Said it was fixed and if it happens again, replace the modem (You can buy one at our local ATT stores!).  Had a new modem in my box of goodies and replaced it.  Same problem (of course).  He also argued with me on who my ISP was.  "We serve your DSL" "No, you don't! I wouldn't have ATT if you paid me" "Well it shows here we do" "Look again" "Oh - you're right"  DUH.  I guess the carnival season is coming to a close and the carnies are working for ATT now!  So, here I sit, trying to work remotely on client computers to earn a living and I get interupted randomly every 1-15 minutes.  What a joke.  I think the term "going postal" could soon turn into "going telco"

I recently ran accross a new MalWare variant posing to be an AntiVirus program.  The program was called Total Security.  It actually integrated tight enough to alert Windows Security Center that it was out of date.

So far, Malware bytes and SuperAntiSpyware is not detecting this variant.

To remove - Open Task Manager and find TSC.EXE and Kill the process.

Then, locate the file on the hard drive (usually at c:\program files\ts).  Delete the TS directory. 

Reboot.  Fixed.  Run your favorite scanner to clean up any residual crud.

I was on Facebook today and started seeing a lot of people posting that the Facebook Fan Check application was virus and to remove it.

After doing some research, I found that the application is probably not a virus.  The spin to the apparant hoax is that there are several malware sites that have the keywords "Fix Fan Check virus" in their portfolio.  So, people use the app, see the posting that it was a virus, search google on how to fix it, then end up on an infectuous site that tricks them into installing malware on their computer which claims to fix the problem that never really existed.

Interesting social study for sure.

In my opionion, all of the apps and quizzes, etc, on Facebook are meant to drive advertising dollars by driving up usage and page impression counts.  I will admit I play MobWars and FarmTown occasionally, but I ignore nearly ever other quiz, test, app, etc.  The smaller my footprint on Facebook, the better in terms of possibility of contracting malicious software from the site.  Its called safe FaceBooking maybe.

Additional reading and sources:

http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/09/14/is-facebook-fan-check-a-virus-careful-whom-you-ask/

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fan-Check-Developer-Rebuts-Malware-Claims-121319.shtml

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/facebook-fan-check-virus-rumours-are-driving-users-to-more-danger-633935

http://mashable.com/2009/09/07/facebook-fan-check-virus-hoax/

Since the release of Battlefield 2 1.5 Update (http://blog.freedriversite.com/2009/09/06/Battlefield215UpdateAvailableNow.aspx), I have been able to successfully play BF2 on Windows 7 64-Bit Build 7100.  After applying the patch, I played the game for about an hour and then got kicked off the server and received the message  "Visit www.evenbalance.com to update your security files".  I then went to EvenBalance and manually updated my PunkBuster files using PB Setup: http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=pbsetup.php.

Since applying the patch and updating Punkbuster, I have been able to play the game repeatedly with no errors.

The most recent update for BattleField 2 is available now.  At first look it seems to fix the problems with BF2 and Windows 7.  I have been successfully playing BF2 on Windows 7 64-bit for a day or so now.

Here is the link to the official release page at EA:  http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/bf2_2142/archive/2009/09/01/battlefield-2-update-v1-50-available.aspx##

Here are links to the download mirrors:

Australia
iiNET Australia - http://ftp.iinet.net.au/games/bf2/patches/BF2_Patch_1.50.exe
Internode - http://games.on.net/file/29153/Battlefield_2_Patch_v1.5
Mammoth - http://www.ausgamers.com/files/details/html/46763

Europe & UK
BSN Gaming - http://dl2.bsngaming.eu/BF2_Patch_1.50.exe and http://dl2.bsngaming.eu/BF2_Patch_1.50.exe
Gaming.fi - http://www.gaming.fi/keskustelu.php?kat_id=9999&ketju_id=1361&tyyppi_id=7
i3D - http://forum.i3d.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=2436
Killercreation - http://files.killercreation.co.uk/win/games/battlefield-2/patches/1.50/BF2_Patch_1.50.exe
Fileplay - http://www.fileplay.net/features/52-bf2-patch-v1-5
NextGenTel - http://broadparkgames.no/downloads139.html - User registration required
Pelikaista.net - http://forum.pelikaista.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=327
TV2 Battle.no - http://www.battle.no/?section=download&get=129

USA
BSN Gaming - http://www.bsngaming.com/bf2/BF2_Patch_1.50.exe and http://dl1.bsngaming.com/BF2_Patch_1.50.exe
Fileplanet - http://www.fileplanet.com/files/200000/204626.shtml
GamersLifeLine - http://www.gamerslifeline.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=602
Hypernia - https://support.hypernia.com/index.php?_m=downloads&_a=viewdownload&downloaditemid=97&nav=0,2,56,61,62
WOLF Servers - http://redirect.wolfservers.com/wolfservers/BF2/sks71z59w/

First Look: Windows 7 Shapes Up as Microsoft’s Best OS Yet

Good news, everyone! If you’ve been stuck in a time loop using Windows XP, which is nearing eight years old, or Windows Vista, which is just annoying, you can finally break free: Windows 7 is almost here. Microsoft delivers a slickly designed, vastly improved OS that will warp you to the world of today. This upgrade is big, and it’s hugely recommended for Microsoft users.

When we say big, we mean really BIG — so we’re not going to bombard you with an epic overview covering every single aspect. Rather, today we’ll guide you through an early look at some major new features and enhancements we tested in the almost-final version released last week. And in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 22 launch of Windows 7, we’ll continue posting our impressions, testing more features of the OS on various types of hardware.

We’ll start with interface, move on to performance and usability, and then we’ll conclude with the “funner” stuff. Let’s begin exploring, shall we?

Revamped Interface With Improved Presentation
Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 will be like ditching your old Toyota Camry for a sexy, new Nissan GT-R. Everything from the typography to the icons, and from the toolbar to the windows, has been refined with some extra detail, polish and shadows. Finally, Microsoft creates a clean, modern look that competes with Apple’s finely designed Mac OS X Leopard.

To accompany the new look, there are three new features that make the Windows 7 interface pretty groovy: Aero Peek, Aero Snap and Aero Shake. They’re window-management tools, similar to Apple’s Exposé in Mac OS X. Aero Peek is the most significant: When triggered, the feature displays outlines of all your open windows behind your active window; each outlined box contains a thumbnail previewing its corresponding window to help you choose.

Aero Snap (see screenshot above) is pretty cool, too: Drag a window to the right side of the screen, for example, and Aero Snap will automatically adjust the window into a rectangle that takes up the entire right side (same happens if you drag to the left). And Aero Shake is a cute feature: You click and hold onto a window and give it a shake, and any visible windows behind it will disappear (minimize, not close).

A major change appears in the main toolbar glued to the bottom of the screen. Rather than clutter the bottom of your screen with annoying rectangular tabs, your open applications are instead contained in a small square displaying only the icon of each active app. With AeroPeek activated, you can also preview thumbnails of the activity of apps by hovering over their corresponding taskbar icons. That’s certainly a welcome change now that many of us multitaskers enjoy running a multitude of apps at once

If Internet Explorer 8 is your browser of choice, there’s a bonus: Hovering your mouse over the Explorer icon, you’ll be able to preview all the tabs you have open in a stacked view, letting you go directly to the tab you wish to browse.

Then there’s the Start button at the bottom left corner — a feature Windows fans have grown to love. It’s very similar to the old one, functioning almost exactly the same. The main difference is the addition of a gradient to give it a fresher aesthetic. As for functions, a very useful addition to the Start menu is a search bar that instantly appears at the very bottom. This will make finding and launching files a snap.

Performance and Usability
You’ll immediately notice Windows 7 feels a lot faster than its predecessors, and that’s because memory management has been smartly re-engineered. In older versions of Windows, every application you have open is sucking up video memory, even if the windows are minimized. This isn’t the case in Windows 7: The only windows and apps using video memory are those visible on your screen. Windows users are accustomed to closing applications to boost performance, but that’s going to be unnecessary with Windows 7.

Smoother performance would be a waste if usability weren’t improved, too. Windows 7 won’t disappoint. Remember in Windows XP when you hooked up an external hard drive and it was unrecognized, requiring you to search the web to find that stupid effing software driver? Windows 7 includes up-to-date files, which should automatically recognize your device, and in most cases it’ll “just work.” If, for some reason, Windows 7 isn’t compatible with your attached device by default, it’ll search a database for you in an attempt to find a file to install.

Similarly, Windows 7 tries to streamline networking of peripherals, such as printers and scanners, with a feature called HomeGroup. Let’s say you’re running Windows 7 on computer B in your household, and computer A is the one hooked up to a printer in another room. If computer B is on the same network as computer A, Windows 7 will search for the printer driver on computer A and share it with computer B. The same networking feature will also allow you to share folders and files between networked computers. There’s a catch to this seamless networking: HomeGroup is an exclusive Windows 7 feature. So if your other machine is running the Mac OS, or Linux, then forget about it.

There are also some annoyances that will remind you, “This is still Windows.” When plugging in a thumb drive, for example, Windows will ask you what you want to do with it: Play audio, play a movie, or open the folder to view its files. It’s a thumb drive, for God’s sake: Recognize it and just open the damn folder! After receiving such notifications you can tell Windows 7 to automatically perform one of the aforementioned functions when a specific type of device is attached (see screenshot at right), but we wish the OS would just know what to do.

We also found the software-compatibility checker to be kind of lame. For example, when we downloaded TweetDeck, a .air file which requires Adobe Air, Windows 7 didn’t recognize the file extension and offered to do a search for compatible software. That search did not discover Adobe Air — a pretty popular format — so we were disappointed.

“Funner” Stuff

Microsoft improves on the entertainment experience, too. Windows Media Center gets a utilitarian makeover that looks a tad like Apple’s Front Row (and we’re not complaining). The revamped program makes it easy to browse your movies, photos, music and so on by tapping a few keys. Nice big thumbnails display previews of your media to make your collection look nice and perdy.

A feature we have yet to test (once we get the proper hardware) with Windows Media Center is the new media-streaming capability. If you have a Wi-Fi enabled TV, you’ll be able to seamlessly stream your Windows Media Center content onto the television set. This should make piracy a blast.

I recently had problems with Windows Vista locking the local domain user account when it was connected to another domain's VPN for a period of time. 

This is a method to solve this issue:

1. Locate the .pbk file that contains the entry that you dial. To do so, click Start, type *.pbk in the Research Bar, and then press Enter.

             (This file is probably in C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk)

2. Open the file in Notepad.

3. Locate the following entry: UseRasCredentials=1

4. Modify the entry to the following: UseRasCredentials=0

5. On the File menu, click Save, and the click Exit.

Adding and Replacing Parts

Dell™ Inspiron™ 6400/E1505 Owner's Manual

Before You Begin

This chapter provides procedures for removing and installing the components in your computer. Unless otherwise noted, each procedure assumes that the following conditions exist:

• You have performed the steps in "Turning Off Your Computer" and "Before Working Inside Your Computer" (see Before Working Inside Your Computer).
  
  
• You have read the safety information in your Dell™ Product Information Guide.
  
  
• A component can be replaced—or if purchased separately—installed by performing the removal procedure in reverse order.
  
  

Recommended Tools

The procedures in this document may require the following tools:

• Small flat-blade screwdriver
  
  
• Phillips screwdriver
  
  
• Small plastic scribe
  
  
• Flash BIOS update (see the Dell Support website at support.dell.com)
  
  

Turning Off Your Computer

NOTICE: To avoid losing data, save and close any open files and exit any open programs before you turn off your computer.

1. Shut down the operating system:
   
   
   1. Save and close any open files, exit any open programs, click the Start button, and then click Turn Off Computer.
      
      
   2. In the Turn off computer window, click Turn off.
      
      

The computer turns off after the operating system shutdown process finishes.

2. Ensure that the computer and any attached devices are turned off. If your computer and attached devices did not automatically turn off when you shut down your operating system, press and hold the power button for several seconds until the computer turns off.
   
   

Before Working Inside Your Computer

Use the following safety guidelines to help protect your computer from potential damage and to help ensure your own personal safety.

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

CAUTION: Handle components and cards with care. Do not touch the components or contacts on a card. Hold a card by its edges or by its metal mounting bracket. Hold a component such as a processor by its edges, not by its pins.

NOTICE: Only a certified service technician should perform repairs on your computer. Damage due to servicing that is not authorized by Dell is not covered by your warranty.

NOTICE: When you disconnect a cable, pull on its connector or on its strain-relief loop, not on the cable itself. Some cables have a connector with locking tabs; if you are disconnecting this type of cable, press in on the locking tabs before you disconnect the cable. As you pull connectors apart, keep them evenly aligned to avoid bending any connector pins. Also, before you connect a cable, ensure that both connectors are correctly oriented and aligned.

NOTICE: To help prevent damage to the computer, perform the following steps before you begin working inside the computer.

1. Ensure that the work surface is flat and clean to prevent the computer cover from being scratched.
   
   
2. Turn off your computer. See Turning Off Your Computer.
   
   

NOTICE: To disconnect a network cable, first unplug the cable from your computer and then unplug it from the network wall jack.

3. Disconnect any telephone or network cables from the computer.
   
   

NOTICE: To help prevent damage to the system board, you must remove the battery from the battery bay before you service the computer.

NOTE: To avoid damage to the computer, use only the battery designed for this particular Dell computer. Do not use other batteries designed for other Dell computers.

4. Disconnect your computer and all attached devices from their electrical outlets, slide and hold the battery-bay latch release on the bottom of the computer, and then lift the battery from the bay.
   
   

1

battery-bay latch release

2

battery

5. Remove the optical drive, if installed, from the optical drive bay. See Optical Drive.
   
   
6. Press the power button to ground the system board.
   
   
7. Remove any installed cards from the ExpressCard slot (see Removing an ExpressCard or Blank) and the 5-in-1 media memory card reader (see Removing a Media Memory Card).
   
   
8. Close the display and turn the computer upside down on a flat work surface.
   
   
9. Remove the hard drive (see Hard Drive).
   
   

Optical Drive

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

1. Turn the computer over.
   
   
2. Remove the optical-drive security screw.
   
   
3. Insert a scribe into the notch and push it to the side to release the drive from the bay.
   
   
4. Slide the drive out of the bay.
   
   

1

optical drive

2

optical-drive security screw

3

notch

Hard Drive

CAUTION: If you remove the hard drive from the computer when the drive is hot, do not touch the metal housing of the hard drive.

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

NOTICE: To prevent data loss, turn off your computer (see Turning Off Your Computer) before removing the hard drive. Do not remove the hard drive while the computer is on, in standby mode, or in hibernate mode.

NOTICE: Hard drives are extremely fragile; even a slight bump can damage the drive.

NOTE: Dell does not guarantee compatibility or provide support for hard drives from sources other than Dell.

NOTE: If you are installing a hard drive from a source other than Dell, you need to install an operating system, drivers, and utilities on the new hard drive. See Restoring Your Operating System and Reinstalling Drivers and Utilities.

To replace the hard drive in the hard drive bay:

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. Turn the computer over, and remove the hard drive screws.
   
   

1

screws (2)

2

hard drive

NOTICE: When the hard drive is not in the computer, store it in protective antistatic packaging. See "Protecting Against Electrostatic Discharge" in the Product Information Guide.

3. Slide the hard drive out of the computer.
   
   
4. Remove the new drive from its packaging.
   
   

Save the original packaging for storing or shipping the hard drive.

NOTICE: Use firm and even pressure to slide the drive into place. If you use excessive force, you may damage the connector.

5. Slide the hard drive into the bay until it is fully seated.
   
   
6. Replace and tighten the screws.
   
   
7. Install the operating system for your computer. See Restoring Your Operating System.
   
   
8. Install the drivers and utilities for your computer. See Reinstalling Drivers and Utilities.
   
   

Returning a Hard Drive to Dell

Return your old hard drive to Dell in its original or comparable foam packaging. Otherwise, the hard drive may be damaged in transit.

1

foam packaging

2

hard drive

Memory

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

You can increase your computer memory by installing memory modules on the system board. See Specifications for information on the memory supported by your computer. Install only memory modules that are intended for your computer.

NOTE: Memory modules purchased from Dell are covered under your computer warranty.

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. Turn the computer over, loosen the captive screws on the memory module cover, and then remove the memory module cover.
   
   

NOTICE: To prevent damage to the memory module connector, do not use tools to spread the memory-module securing clips.

NOTICE: To avoid electrostatic discharge, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by periodically touching an unpainted metal surface (such as a connector on the back of the computer).

3. If you are replacing a memory module, remove the existing module:
   
   
   1. Use your fingertips to carefully spread apart the securing clips on each end of the memory module connector until the module pops up.
      
      
   2. Remove the module from the connector.
      
      

1

memory module

2

securing clips (2 per connector)

NOTE: If the memory module is not installed properly, the computer may not boot properly. No error message indicates this failure.

4. Ground yourself and install the new memory module:
   
   
   1. Align the notch in the module edge connector with the tab in the connector slot.
      
      
   2. Slide the module firmly into the slot at a 45-degree angle, and rotate the module down until it clicks into place. If you do not feel the click, remove the module and reinstall it.
      
      

1

notch

2

tab

5. Replace the memory module cover.
   
   

NOTICE: If the cover is difficult to close, remove the module and reinstall it. Forcing the cover to close may damage your computer.

6. Insert the battery into the battery bay, or connect the AC adapter to your computer and an electrical outlet.
   
   
7. Reinstall the hard drive. See Hard Drive.
   
   
8. Turn on the computer.
   
   

As the computer boots, it detects the additional memory and automatically updates the system configuration information.

To confirm the amount of memory installed in the computer, click the Start button, click Help and Support, and then click Dell System Information.

Modem

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

If you ordered the optional modem at the same time that you ordered your computer, the modem is already installed.

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. Turn the computer over, loosen the captive screws on the modem cover, and then remove the modem cover.
   
   

3. Remove the existing modem:
   
   
   1. Remove the screw securing the modem to the system board, and set it aside.
      
      
   2. Pull straight up on the attached pull-tab to lift the modem out of its connector on the system board, and disconnect the modem cable.
      
      

1	modem screw	2	modem pull-tab	3	modem connector on system board
4	modem	5	modem cable

4. Install the replacement modem:
   
   
   1. Connect the modem cable to the modem.
      
      

NOTICE: The connector is keyed to ensure correct insertion. If you feel resistance, check the connector and realign the card.

2. Align the modem with the screw holes and press the modem down into the connector on the system board.
   
   
3. Replace the screw that secures the modem to the system board.
   
   
5. Replace the modem cover.
   
   

Hinge Cover

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

NOTICE: To avoid electrostatic discharge, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by periodically touching an unpainted metal surface (such as a connector on the back of the computer).

NOTICE: To help prevent damage to the system board, you must remove the battery from the battery bay before you begin working inside the computer.

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. Remove the hinge cover.:
   
   
   1. Open the display all the way (180 degrees) so that it lies flat against your work surface.
      
      

NOTICE: To avoid damage to the hinge cover, do not lift the cover on both sides simultaneously.

2. Insert a scribe into the indent to lift the hinge cover on the right side.
   
   
3. Ease the hinge cover up, moving from right to left, and remove it.
   
   

NOTE: When replacing the hinge cover, first insert the left edge and then press from left to right until the cover snaps into place.

1

hinge cover

2

scribe

Keyboard

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

NOTICE: To avoid electrostatic discharge, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by periodically touching an unpainted metal surface (such as a connector on the back of the computer).

NOTICE: To help prevent damage to the system board, you must remove the battery from the battery bay before you begin working inside the computer.

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. Open the display.
   
   
3. Remove the hinge cover. See Hinge Cover.
   
   
4. Remove the keyboard:
   
   
   1. Remove the two screws at the top of the keyboard.
      
      

NOTICE: The keycaps on the keyboard are fragile, easily dislodged, and time-consuming to replace. Be careful when removing and handling the keyboard.

2. Lift the keyboard only enough to hold it up and slightly forward to allow access to the keyboard connector.
   
   
3. To release the keyboard cable from the keyboard connector on the system board, rotate the plastic bar on the keyboard connector to the front of the computer.
   
   

1	screws (2)	2	keyboard cable	3	plastic bar on keyboard connector
4	tabs	5	keyboard

NOTICE: To avoid scratching the palm rest when replacing the keyboard, hook the tabs along the front edge of the keyboard into the palm rest, and then press on the right edge near the top to snap the keyboard into place before replacing the two screws.

Wireless Mini-Card

If you ordered a Mini-Card with your computer, the card is already installed.

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

NOTICE: To help prevent damage to the system board, you must remove the battery from the battery bay before you begin working inside the computer.

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. Remove the hinge cover. See Hinge Cover.
   
   
3. Remove the keyboard. See Keyboard.
   
   
4. If a Mini-Card is not already installed, go to step 5. If you are replacing a Mini-Card, remove the existing card:
   
   
   1. Disconnect the two antenna cables from the Mini-Card.
      
      

1

Mini-Card

2

antenna cables (2)

3

antenna cable connectors (2)

2. Release the Mini-Card by pushing the metal securing tabs toward the back of the computer until the card pops up slightly.
   
   
3. Lift the Mini-Card out of its system board connector.
   
   

1

system board connector

2

Mini-Card

3

metal securing tabs (2)

NOTICE: The connectors are keyed to ensure correct insertion. If you feel resistance, check the connectors on the card and on the system board, and realign the card.

5. Install the replacement Mini-Card:
   
   
   1. Insert the Mini-Card connector into the system board connector at a 45-degree angle, and then press the other end of the Mini-Card down into the securing tabs until the card clicks into place.
      
      

NOTICE: To avoid damage to the Mini-Card, never place cables under the card.

2. Connect the two antenna cables to the Mini-Card (black cable to the connector labeled "aux" and the white cable to the connector labeled "main").
   
   

1

system board connector

2

antenna cables (2)

3

antenna cable connectors (2)

Coin-Cell Battery

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

NOTICE: To avoid electrostatic discharge, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by periodically touching an unpainted metal surface (such as a connector on the back of the computer).

NOTICE: To help prevent damage to the system board, you must remove the battery from the battery bay before you begin working inside the computer.

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. Remove the hinge cover. See Hinge Cover.
   
   
3. Remove the keyboard. See Keyboard.
   
   
4. Insert a plastic scribe into the guide on the side of the coin-cell battery compartment, and pop the battery out.
   
   

When you replace the battery, insert it at a 30-degree angle under the clip with the positive (identified by a plus [+] symbol) side up, and then push it into place.

Display

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

NOTICE: To avoid electrostatic discharge, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by periodically touching an unpainted metal surface (such as a connector on the back of the computer).

NOTICE: To help prevent damage to the system board, you must remove the battery from the battery bay before you begin working inside the computer.

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. Remove the hinge cover. See Hinge Cover.
   
   
3. Remove the six screws securing the display (two on the top, two on the bottom, and two on the back).
   
   
4. Disconnect the antenna cables from the Mini-Card.
   
   
5. Loosen the captive grounding-wire screw.
   
   
6. Disconnect the display cable, using the pull-tab.
   
   
7. Dislodge the display cable from the display cable channel.
   
   

1	screws (6)	2	display cable	3	display cable pull-tab
4	grounding-wire screw	5	antenna cables	6	standby switch
7	display cable connector on system board	8	display cable channel

8. Lift the display up and away from the computer.
   
   

NOTICE: The standby switch is fragile and easily broken. Avoid knocking the switch when removing and replacing the display.

When you replace the display, ensure that the display cable is lying flat in the display cable channel and securely tucked underneath the tabs.

Also, ensure that the antenna cables are not twisted and that they are lying flat in the antenna cable clip.

Internal Card With Bluetooth® Wireless Technology

CAUTION: Before you begin any of the procedures in this section, follow the safety instructions in the Product Information Guide.

NOTICE: To avoid electrostatic discharge, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by periodically touching an unpainted metal surface (such as a connector on the back of the computer).

NOTICE: To help prevent damage to the system board, you must remove the battery from the battery bay before you begin working inside the computer.

If you ordered a card with Bluetooth wireless technology with your computer, it is already installed.

1. Follow the procedures in Before You Begin.
   
   
2. If you have not already removed the battery, do so now.
   
   

Slide and hold the battery-bay latch release on the bottom of the computer, and then remove the battery from the bay.

3. Open the card door and remove it from the computer.
   
   
4. Pull the card out of the compartment so that you can disconnect the card from its cable and remove it from the computer.
   
   
5. To replace the card, connect the card to the cable and then carefully insert it into the compartment.
   
   
6. Replace the card door by inserting the small center tab into the notch at the base of the compartment and snapping the card into place.
   
   

1

card door

2

cable

3

card

So will Google Chrome OS be any better? Is it going to be a useful alternative or just another way for Google to pull more people into Google's suite of online products like Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader?

There are still a lot of questions out there about this new OS, but here are the top five questions on my mind.

Is Google Chrome OS really practical for anything more powerful than a Mobile Internet Device (MID)?

When I first read Google's announcement for Chrome OS, two products immediately came to mind: Crunchpad and the rumored Apple tablet. To be honest MIDs are the only plausible reason I can see for wanting to use this OS. Google says Chrome OS is designed "to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds." The company also says that for applications "the web is the platform" not the OS. In other words, this OS isn't for running Microsoft Word or other desktop apps.

That's a problem in my view. Sure Google Docs is a great application for typing up a basic document, but it is far from the powerful tool that Microsoft Word is. So while Google says this OS is ideal for netbooks, I don't see why you would want to handicap yourself by using a less-functional OS on a piece of hardware--like a netbook--that has a nearly full-sized keyboard and a good processor. Google also says the OS can be used on desktops, which could be ideal for a public Internet terminal, but for the home user? Forget it. The only plausible use I can see for Chrome OS on your home computer would be under a dual-boot scenario to get on the Web quickly without waiting for Windows or OS X to startup. That's a similar scenario another cloud operating system, Good OS, was also envisioned for.

Will Chrome OS keep Microsoft up at night?

Don't make me laugh. Chrome OS is about as much a threat to Microsoft as a mosquito is to a bear--assuming the mosquito doesn't have Malaria that is. It's hard to envision Chrome OS significantly impacting a full-featured OS like Windows. Microsoft and Google aren't even on the same page when it comes to defining a cloud OS so they're unlikely to compete in that arena either.

Microsoft's cloud OS, Azure, is a "scalable hosting environment on which developers can build and host their applications." In other words, Azure runs on servers not home PCs, and is a tool for businesses that want to build Web applications and services. Google, on the other hand, is advocating Chrome OS as a solution for the home computer.

Google says virus free. Really?

Here we go again with another company building the myth of a virus-free operating system. The fact is you just can't build an operating system that is fully immune to malware and viruses. Yeah, yeah, I know you've owned a Mac for the last 10 years and have never had one virus, but when you owned a Windows machine it was always down for maintenance.

We've all heard that story, and we all know about the Mac vs. PC security argument. Believe it or not there are Mac viruses out there; it's just that Mac malware is so scarce that it's highly unlikely you'll ever come across one, but a Mac is far from being perfectly secure. Don't forget that Safari running on a Mac was the first Web browser to go down at this year's PWN2OWN competition at CanSecWest. The truth is a computer's security is primarily dependent on a security conscious operator (you) and a hacker's reluctance to discover security compromises for that machine.

The same principle will apply to the Chrome OS. It's highly unlikely we'll see viruses for the new OS since it will start out as a such a niche product anyway. However, if Google's new operating system somehow gains widespread appeal, you can bet on seeing viruses and other malware tailor made for Chrome OS.

Will Chrome OS-powered devices be cheaper?

If Android is any guide, I'm not sure we'll see Chrome OS devices being that much cheaper. I can imagine we'll see netbooks and MIDs with 3G or 4G capability, making it a perfect fit for carriers looking to branch out beyond cell phones. So you're likely to find subsidized Chrome OS devices, that are in fact cheaper.

But if you buy a device straight out, how much cheaper will it be compared to a Windows machine? Google will probably make Chrome OS available to hardware makers in a similar method to its Android platform for mobile phones, which means it will be free with some subtle restrictions based on the licensing agreement between Google and the manufacturer.

But if Android is free how do you explain the fact that Android devices have such high full retail prices? To give you an idea of the difference consider that the out-of-contract retail price for the Android-powered G1 $399.99, while the recently released Windows-powered Samsung Jack costs $349.99. For fifty dollars less, the Jack has arguably greater functionality than the G1, and you get a maximum of 16 GB of expandable storage, versus the G1's 8 GB. As for the newest Android-powered phone, the myTouch 3G, I expect it to have a comparable or even higher no-contract price than the G1, but we won't know for sure until the myTouch launches later this summer.

It may not be entirely fair to judge the cost of Chrome OS based on Android prices, but I'm just saying there's no guarantee that Google-powered devices will be cheaper than their Windows counterparts.

Will you be able to download Chrome OS like you would any other Linux build?

Common sense says yes, but notice that Google didn't mention anything in their announcement about downloading Chrome OS straight from their site. Google's blog post focused primarily on making Chrome OS available through third-party manufacturers. I'll take a pass on this one until Google makes their intentions clearer.

Chrome OS must search for a niche

Google's announcement is very interesting, and Chrome OS is another indication that Internet-focused devices are becoming more important to hardware and software developers. That being said, I'm still not convinced the world is ready to jettison their desktop-centric computers and reach for the clouds. I guess we'll know for sure when the first Chrome OS devices hit the market in the second half of 2010.

Connect with Ian Paul on Twitter (@ianpaul).

(http://www.pcworld.com/article/168039/five_questions_about_google_chrome_os.html)

In my case, the Microsoft Windows Update web server SSL cert was untrusted due to a missing root CA cert.
GTE CyberTrust Global Root cert was not installed. (It needed to be in the Trusted Root Certificates store)
Rather than mess with the individual missing certificates, I decided to directly download the current (July 2008 CAs).
I bypassed windows update and download the current certificates directly based on this KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931125

CAUSE

This issue may occur if the date and time on the computer varies too much from t...

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, use the following methods in the order in which they are...

Method 1: Verify and adjust the date and time settings

Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type Timedate.cpl, and then click OK.
3. On the Date and Time tab, make sure that the computer's date and time are correct. If the settings are incorrect, adjust them to the correct date and time.
4. Click OK to close the Date and Time Properties dialog box.
5. Try to install updates again.

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

1. Click the Start
   Collapse this imageExpand this image

   
   , type timedate.cpl in the Start Search box, and then click Timedate.cpl on the programs list.
2. On the Date and Time tab, make sure that the computer's date and time are correct. If the settings are incorrect, click Change date and time.
   
   
   Collapse this imageExpand this image

   
   If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password, or provide confirmation.
3. In the Date and Time dialog box, use the following procedures:
   • To change the date
     
     Under Date, click the left or right arrows to find the current month in the calendar, and then click the current date.
   • To change the time
     
     Under Time, double-click the hour, minutes, or seconds that you want to change, and then click the arrows to increase or decrease the value.
4. When you finish changing the date and time settings, click OK.
5. Try to install updates again.

Method 2: Install the most current Microsoft root certificate update

Method 3: Click to clear the "Check for server certificate revocation" check box

1. Start Internet Explorer.
2. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
   
   Note If you do not see the Internet Explorer menu bar, press the ALT key to display the menu.
3. Click the Advanced tab, and then locate the Security section.
4. Click to clear the Check for server certificate revocation check box, and then click OK.
5. Restart the computer.
6. Try to install updates again.

Method 4: Register Windows .dll files that may be causing the issue

Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type the following file names. Click OK after each file name:
   • regsvr32 Softpub.dll /s
   • regsvr32 Wintrust.dll /s
   • regsvr32 Initpki.dll /s
   • regsvr32 Mssip32.dll /s

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

1. Click Start
   Collapse this imageExpand this image

   
   , type regsvr32 Softpub.dll /s in the Start Search box, and then click OK.
   
   
   Collapse this imageExpand this image

   
   If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Continue.
2. Repeat step 1 for the following file names:
   • regsvr32 Wintrust.dll /s
   • regsvr32 Mssip32.dll /s

This script will attempt to fix common problems with the Windows XP Background Intelligent Transfer Service.

• It fixes the cause of several Windows Update stop code problems.
• It fixes issues with Windows Update time codes not matching the server.
• It will also fix specific BITS corruption caused by the Symantec SymNRT Removal Tool.
• The latest version also attempts to repair registry damage done by some viruses.

Version History:

• Version 1.6 (General Release)
  • Includes a more comprehensive registry fix.
• Version 1.5 (Initial Release)

Operating systems:

• Windows XP Home Edition
  • Will fix problems as described in this document.
• Windows XP Professional Edition
  • Will fix problems as described in this document.
• Windows 2000
  • Can be run safely and may help with Windows Update problems.

Installation:

Download the WinXP_BITS_Fix_v1.6 Zip file below, unzip all files to the same folder on the problem computer and run the batch file. By downloading you confirm your agreement to the disclaimer below.

Disclaimer:

1. You download and use this batch file at your own risk.
2. The author cannot be held responsible in any way for your use of this batch file.
3. Do not download the file if you do not agree with these terms.

Download and Contents:

• WinXP_BITS_Fix_v1.6.zip (Version 1.6)
  • Readme.txt
  • WinXP_BITS_Fix_v1.6.bat
  • bits.ini
• WinXP_BITS_Fix.zip (Version 1.5)
  • Readme.txt
  • WinXP_BITS_Fix.bat

Instructions for use:

1. Run the WinXP_BITS_Fix_v1.6.bat file.
2. Press a key to start the fix.
3. The script will halt on errors.
4. You may be prompted to over-ride existing registry entries.
5. The program will close automatically 30 seconds after completion.

When the program is complete you can attempt to install Windows Updates from http://update.microsoft.com/

You will need to be logged in as an administrator and using Internet Explorer for this to work.




Original content at http://www.philmorgan.net/techie-tools/windows-update-bits-background-intelligent-transfer-service-fix-batch-file-for-windows-xp

Display Assembly, Display Latch, and Hinge Covers

Dell™ Latitude™ C610/C510 Service Manual

  Display Assembly

  Display Latch

  Hinge Covers

Display Assembly

NOTICE: You must remove the display assembly before you remove the palm rest.

NOTICE: Disconnect the computer and any attached devices from electrical outlets, and remove any installed batteries.

NOTICE: To avoid ESD, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by touching an unpainted metal surface on the computer.

NOTICE: Read "Preparing to Work Inside the Computer" before performing the following procedure.

Display Assembly

1	M2 x 3-mm screws (4)
2	top cover
3	center control cover
4	M2.5 x 5-mm screws (5)
5	bottom case
6	EMI shield bracket

1. Remove the hard drive.
   
   
2. Remove the center control cover.
   
   
3. Remove the keyboard.
   
   
4. Close the display.
   
   
5. From the back of the computer, remove the five M2.5 x 5-mm screws labeled "circle D."
   
   
6. Open the display assembly approximately 180 degrees and support the display assembly so that it does not open past this position.
   
   
7. Remove the two M2 x 3-mm screws on the EMI shield bracket, which is attached to the display-feed flex cable (see "Display Assembly").
   
   
8. Remove the two M2 x 3-mm screws that secure the display-feed flex cable to the system board (see "Display-Feed Flex Cable Connector").
   
   

Display-Feed Flex Cable Connector

NOTICE: When reconnecting the display-feed flex cable connector to the system board, push down on the top left and right ends of the connector. Pressing on the center of the connector may damage resistors and compromise EMI protection in the computer.

1	M2 x 3-mm screws (2)

9. Pull up on the pull tab that is attached to the display-feed flex cable connector to remove it from the interface connector on the system board.
   
   
10. Lift the display assembly up and out of the bottom case.
    
    

14.1-Inch Display Bezel and Panel

1	rubber screw covers (6)	5	M2 x 4-mm screws (5)
2	M2.5 x 5-mm screws (6)	6	display-feed flex cable
3	display bezel	7	flex-cable retention bracket
4	top cover	8	display panel

Removing the 14.1-Inch Display Bezel

NOTICE: Disconnect the computer and any attached devices from electrical outlets, and remove any installed batteries.

NOTICE: To avoid ESD, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by touching an unpainted metal surface on the computer.

NOTICE: Read "Preparing to Work Inside the Computer" before performing the following procedure.

1. Remove the hard drive.
   
   
2. Remove the display assembly.
   
   
3. Use a plastic scribe to pry the six rubber screw covers out of the screw holes located on the front of the bezel.
   
   
4. Remove the six M2.5 x 5-mm screws located on the front of the bezel.
   
   

NOTICE: Carefully separate the bezel from the top cover to avoid damage to the bezel.

5. Starting at the bottom of the display panel (by the Dell™ logo), use your fingers to separate the bezel from the top cover by lifting up the inside of the bezel while pushing in on the outside.
   
   

Removing the 14.1-Inch Display Panel

NOTICE: Disconnect the computer and any attached devices from electrical outlets, and remove any installed batteries.

NOTICE: To avoid ESD, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by touching an unpainted metal surface on the computer.

NOTICE: Read "Preparing to Work Inside the Computer" before performing the following procedure.

1. Remove the hard drive.
   
   
2. Remove the display assembly.
   
   
3. Remove the display bezel.
   
   
4. Remove the hinge covers.
   
   
5. Remove the two M2 x 4-mm screws on the left side of the display panel and the two M2 x 4-mm screws on the right side of the display panel.
   
   

NOTE: If you have a Hitachi display panel, remove the two M2 x 4-mm screws from the center of the left side of the display panel.

6. Remove the M2 x 4-mm screw that secures the display-feed flex cable to the display assembly through the black plastic flex-cable retention bracket (see "14.1-Inch Display Bezel and Panel").
   
   
7. Lift from the top and rotate the display panel out of the top cover.
   
   
8. Disconnect the bottom flex cable connector from the inverter connector by pulling straight up on the attached pull tab (see "Display-Feed Flex Cable Connections").
   
   

Display-Feed Flex Cable Connections

1	display panel connector
2	top flex cable connector
3	pull tab
4	bottom flex cable connector
5	inverter connector

9. Remove the tape that secures the display panel connector and the tape that secures the middle of the display-feed flex cable to the display panel.
   
   
10. Pull the top flex cable connector down and away to remove it from the display panel connector.
    
    

Replacing the 14.1-Inch Display Panel

1. Reconnect the top flex cable connector to the display panel connector.
   
   
2. Reconnect the bottom flex cable connector to the inverter connector.
   
   
3. Replace the tape that secures the display panel connector and the tape that secures the middle of the display-feed flex cable to the display panel.
   
   
4. Place the bottom edge of the display panel in the bottom of the top cover and elevate the top of the panel with your hand.
   
   
5. Lay the display panel in the top cover.
   
   
6. Reinstall the five M2 x 4-mm screws that secure the display panel to the top cover.
   
   

Display Latch

NOTICE: Disconnect the computer and any attached devices from electrical outlets, and remove any installed batteries.

NOTICE: To avoid ESD, ground yourself by using a wrist grounding strap or by touching an unpainted metal surface on the computer.

Removing the Display Latch

1. Remove the hard drive.
   
   
2. Remove the display assembly.
   
   
3. Remove the display bezel.
   
   
4. Remove the two M2.5 x 5-mm screws and the two M1.7 x 3.5-mm screws that secure the display latch and bracket to the top cover.
   
   
5. Lift the display latch and bracket up and out of the top cover.
   
   

Display Latch Removal (14.1-Inch XGA Panel Shown)

1	M1.7 x 3.5-mm screws (2)
2	M2.5 x 5-mm screws (2)
3	display latch
4	bracket

Replacing the Display Latch

1. On 14.1-inch XGA panels, place the display latch on top of its screw holes, and then place the bracket on top of the display latch, aligning the bracket and display latch screw holes.
   
   

On 14.1-inch SXGA+ panels, align the screw holes and place the display latch and attached bracket in the top cover.

2. Replace the two M2.5 x 5-mm screws and the two M1.7 x 3.5-mm screws that secure the display latch and bracket to the top cover.
   
   

Hinge Covers

Removing the Hinge Covers

1. Remove the display assembly.
   
   
2. Rotate the hinges forward at an angle of approximately 90 degrees to the front of the display assembly.
   
   
3. To remove the hinge covers, slide them off the hinges.
   
   

Hinge Cover Removal

Replacing the Hinge Covers

1. Attach the display assembly to the bottom case.
   
   
2. Close the display assembly.
   
   
3. Snap the hinge covers in place over the hinges.
   
   

NOTE: The right plastic hinge cover label includes an "R," and the left plastic hinge cover label includes an "L." The hinge cover labels face the back of the computer.

Hinge Cover Replacement

These instructions will help you remove hard drive, memory, wireless card and keyboard from a HP Pavilion dv9000 series laptop. All these components, except the keyboard, can be accessed through the bottom of the laptop.

In the next guide I will explain how to disassemble laptop display panel and remove inverter board with LCD screen.

Do not disassemble your laptop if it’s still covered by the manufacturer’s warranty or you loose the warranty. Are you looking for spare parts for your HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop? Search here.

First of all, remove the battery. Remove screws from the 1st hard drive and memory covers. Remove both covers.

Under the memory cover you will find the wireless card and RTC battery.

In order to remove the hard drive, lift up the right side of the drive assembly (move 1) and then pull it to the right (move2). If you are replacing the hard drive, you’ll have to transfer the caddy and connector to the new drive.

Before you remove the wireless card, you’ll have to disconnect both antenna cables pointed with green arrows. Simply unsnap both antenna cables from the wireless card with your fingers. After that remove two screws securing the wireless card and pull it from the slot by the edges.

Some Pavilion dv9000 laptops have only one hard drive installed. As you see, in my case there is no second hard drive under the cover.

If you would like to install second hard drive into your notebook, you’ll have to purchase a new SATA drive, SATA connector and drive caddy. You’ll find step by step hard drive installation instructions in this guide.

we will refer to all HP Pavilion dv9000, dv9000t, dv9100, dv9200, dv9300, dv9400, dv9500, dv9600 & dv9700 notebooks as the “dv9000″ since adding a hard disk drive (HDD) to all above mentioned notebooks are similar.

In order to remove the CD/DVD drive you’ll have to remove the securing screw (1) and then carefully pull the drive from the laptop.

KEYBOARD REMOVAL INSTRUCTIONS

Remove six green screws securing the keyboard bezel and one red screw securing the keyboard.

Carefully start removing the keyboard bezel with a small flathead screwdriver.

Be very carefull, the bezel is attached to the motherboard with a flat ribbon cable. The cable location is pointed by the green arrow. Do not disconnect this cable. Simply place the bezel as it shown on the picture below.

Remove three screws securing the laptop keyboard.

Lift up the keyboard. Be carefull, it’s connected to the motherboard.

In order to release the keyboard cable, you’ll have to unlock the connector as it shown on the picture above.

1. Slide the connector lock to the direction shown by two green arrows with your fingernails.

2. Pull the keyboard cable from the connector.

Set-ReceiveConnector "Connector Name" -ProtocolLoggingLevel verbose

Set-SendConnector "Send Connector Name" -ProtocolLoggingLevel verbose

Set-TransportServer "TRANSPORT SERVER NAME" -IntraOrgConnectorProtocolLoggingLevel verbose

Set-TransportServer "TRANSPORT SERVER NAME" -ReceiveProtocolLogPath "C:\New SmtpReceive Log File Directory"

Set-TransportServer "TRANSPORT SERVER NAME" -SendProtocolLogPath "C:\New SmtpSend Log File Directory"

Open the Exchange Management Shell:

# To check the Content Filter configuration, type in:

Get-ContentFilterConfig

# To set the Bypassed Senders (example):

Set-ContentFilterConfig -BypassedSenders donotspamme@calazan.com, jdoe@abc.com

# To set the Bypassed Sender Domains (example):

Set-ContentFilterConfig -BypassedSenderDomains calazan.com, *.xyz.com

Important Note: BypassedSenders and BypassedSenderDomains are multivalued properties. When you use the Set-ContentFilterConfig cmdlet, it will overwrite the values of those properties. If you just need to add more senders or domains, please follow the example below.

# To add Bypassed Senders:

$x = Get-ContentFilterConfig

$x.BypassedSenders += “jsmith@google.com”, “bhope@yahoo.com”

# To remove Bypassed Senders (can only be done one at a time):

$x = Get-ContentFilterConfig

$x.BypassedSenders -= “jsmith@google.com”

# To empty the list:

Set-ContentFilterConfig -BypassedSenders $null

Configure the outbound Send Connector

• Logon to the server hosting the Hub Transport role


• Open the Exchange Management Console (EMC)


• Expand Microsoft Exchange\Organization Configuration\Hub Transport


• Click the Send Connectors tab


• Double-click your outbound SMTP connector to open its properties. 


• Click the Network tab


• Select "Route email through the following smart hosts" and click the Add button


• Select "Fully qualified domain name (FQDN)" and enter [domain name of your smarthost] as the smart host. Click OK
  
• Select Basic Authentication (do not check Basic Authentication over TLS)


• Enter your  username (i.e., username@mydomain.net) and password. Click OK

Configure the Edge server to use the corrrect port

• On the Hub Transport server, open the Exchange Management Shell (EMS)


• Type Get-SendConnectors and make note of the name of the send connector you just configured. 


• Type Set-SendConnector "name of the send connector" -port xxx to change the port. Obviously, change the name in quotes to the name of your Send Connector.


• Type Start-EdgeSynchronization to force a sync with the Edge server

Force the Send Connetor to Retry

• Open EMC on the Edge server and click Toolbox


• Double-click Queue Viewer


• On the Queues tab, select the outbound SMTP queue and click the Retry action

We were not able to deliver postal package you sent on the 14th of March in time because the recipient’s address is not correct.

Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office.

Your United Parcel Service of America"

"Hello!

We were not able to deliver postal package you sent on the 14th of May in time

because the recipient's address is not correct.

Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office.

Your United Parcel Service of America"

Here is example of the effects if the attachment has been opened already:

"I tried to open the so called invoice and the effect was dramatic.  I started to get explore windows opening every 10 seconds or so.  As fast as I deleted them more appeared. Also the screen background change to black with a flashing warning that I had a virus and needed professional software to remove it.  Then a web page opened offering virus software at a price to remove all viruses.  And when I deleted it - I wasn't going to be caught twice!!  Every minute of so if reloaded.  I also found that Windows TaskManage had been switched off so I could not attack the problem there.  I had such little control of my PC that I could only stop things by switching off.  On restart it resumed the same activities.  With all this going on couldn't get my virus software to run!"

Sources: http://msmvps.com/blogs/donna/archive/2009/04/13/malware-spam-united-parcel-service-of-america-ups-nr1-zip.aspx

Here's a decent article on how to create and add Gadgets to Vista or Windows 7:

Creating Your First Gadget

One of the criticisms leveled at Microsoft (and yes, believe it or not some people have criticized Microsoft in the past) is that many of our products were apparently designed to be used by robots or by aliens from the planet Omicron IV; at any rate, they were not designed to be used by human beings. Happily that’s not the case for Microsoft gadgets. (Although if you happen to be either a robot or an alien from the planet Omicron IV rest assured that you can easily create gadgets as well.) To create a gadget you need only two items:

•	A “manifest” file named Gadget.xml. This manifest contains all the settings for your gadget, including the gadget name, author and copyright information, and information about the HTML page that makes up the actual gadget.
•	An HTML file (for example, Test.htm). Although they might not look like it, gadgets are really nothing more than HTML files: you simply create an HTML file, add the appropriate tags and script code, and you’ve got yourself a gadget.

Note. Yes, we know: you have no idea what we mean by “the appropriate tags and script code.” Relax; that’s what the rest of this article is for.

Those are the only items required to create a gadget. Granted, as you create more sophisticated gadgets you will find yourself dealing with icon files, graphics files, settings files, and other elements. But we’ll cross those bridges as we come to them.

See how easy that is? What do you mean, “Sure, so far”? Point well taken: this would seem to be the time when you have to do some sort of horrendously-complicated compilation process, probably using some proprietary compiler that the Scripting Guys will sell you for just $39.95 plus shipping and handling. (Actually, now that you mention that we wish we would have thought of doing something like that.) But instead of using some proprietary compiler here’s how you gather up all your files and then “compile” them into a gadget:

1.	Place all the files in a gadgets folder.

That’s it: put all the files in a folder and you’ve got yourself a gadget. No compiling, no compilers, nothing more tedious or technical than simply copying files to a specified folder.

Incidentally, if you still want to send us $39.95 we’ll be happy to take it.

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The Gadgets Folder

Of course, there is a slight catch here: you can’t just put your files in any old folder. Instead, you have to follow this procedure:

To begin with, bring up the Gadgets folder. A quick way to access your Gadgets folder is to type the following in the Run dialog box:

%userprofile%\appdata\local\microsoft\windows sidebar\gadgets

Note. What do you mean you can’t find the Run command on the Start menu? Oh, that’s right: for some reason this command is hidden by default. But that’s OK; to get the Run command back just right-click the Start button and then click Properties. In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, on the Start Menu tab, click Customize. Still with us? Good. Once you’re in the Customize Start Menu dialog box scroll down and check the Run command check box. Click OK a couple times and the Run command will be back to its rightful place. And, yes, usually the Scripting Guys do charge $39.95 for this kind of inside information. But we’ll let you have this one for free.

Inside the Gadgets folder create a new folder. Give this folder any name you want, provided that the name ends with a .gadget file extension (for example, Test.gadget). Obviously it will make your life easier if the name of the folder bears some resemblance to the gadget contained within. However, the operating system merely uses this folder to identify that the files inside make up a gadget; the gadget name is derived from information found in the manifest, not from the folder name (as the Scripting Guys discovered the hard way).

All you have to do now is place all your files (such as Gadget.xml and Test.htm) in the folder. Does that mean you now have a Microsoft Gadget? You bet it does. In fact, with Windows Sidebar up and running click the + button to bring up the set of gadgets found on your computer. Your gadget will show in the gadget picker dialog box.

Note. What’s that? You can’t find the Windows Sidebar, either? That’s OK; if you can’t find the Windows Sidebar just do this: click the Start menu and then click All Programs. Click Accessories, and you should see a link to the Sidebar.

Installing a Gadget

Assuming your gadget really does show up in the list of available gadgets, you can install the thing simply by dragging the icon onto the Windows Sidebar and then releasing the mouse button. (Or just right-click the gadget icon and then click Add.) The gadget will be displayed, and you’ll be ready to start using it. If you decide to remove the gadget from the Sidebar just hold the mouse over the thing and click the little X that appears in the upper right-hand corner. If you aren’t sure which little X we’re talking about, well, it’s this one:

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The Manifest File

As we noted earlier, to create a gadget you need only two things: a manifest file and an HTML file. And we know what you’re thinking: sure, on Omicron IV you guys probably use manifest files all the time. (Some of us do, some of us don’t.) But what do system administrators know about manifest files?

Well, one thing you know (or at least now you know) is that “manifest file” is simply a high-falutin’ technical term; in essence we’re really just talking about something like an .INI file, a simple text file (in this case, one done in XML) that contains configuration information for the gadget. Admittedly, the idea of having to write things in XML might send a shiver or two up and down your spine. Listen, don’t worry about it; this is about as simple and barebones an XML file as you’ll ever have to deal with.

Here’s what we mean:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<gadget>
    <name>My First Gadget</name>
    <author>The Microsoft Scripting Guys</author>
    <copyright>2006 Microsoft Corporation</copyright>
    <description>Sample gadget that returns the name of the installed operating system.</description>
    <icons>
        <icon>icon.png</icon>
    </icons>
    <version value="1.0.0.0" MinPlatformVersion="0.1"></version>
    <sidebar>
        <type>html</type>
        <permissions>full</permissions>
        <code>test.htm</code>
        <website>www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter</website>
     </sidebar>
</gadget>

Before you ask, yes, you can simply copy this file and use it pretty much as-is, just making changes (as needed) to a few of the tag values. (And don’t forget, you must name the file Gadget.xml.) The tags you might want to/need to modify are specified in the following table:

Tag	Description
<name>	Name of the gadget as it appears in the gadget picker dialog box.
<author>	Name of the person who wrote the gadget. The author, copyright, and description tags all appear in the gadget picker when you click on a particular gadget. For details, see the illustration shown below.
<copyright>	Copyright information, including name of the copyright holder and copyright date.
<description>	Brief description of the gadget and what it does.
<icon>	Name of the icon file (the icon is the graphic displayed in the gadget picker). For more on icons, see Creating an Icon in the following subsection of this document.
<code>	Probably not the most intuitive tag name in the world, but this is the name of the HTML file that makes up your gadget.
<website>	Web site associated with the gadget.

To help make this all a little plainer, here are the manifest file elements mapped to the items displayed in the gadget picker dialog box:

Creating an Icon

It’s up to you whether you want to supply a custom icon with your gadget; if you don’t supply an icon (or if you don’t specify an icon in the manifest file) the gadget picker will provide you with a default icon. (At no charge to you.)

If you do decide to supply a custom icon, keep in mind that “icon” is just a name given to a regular old image file; these are not true Windows icons, graphics that must be created using special software. Instead an icon is just a picture file, be it a .GIF, .JPG, or .PNG graphic. The sample gadgets that ship with Windows Vista all use .PNG graphics; that’s probably because .PNG graphics allow for transparent backgrounds, giving you the ability to make very cool-looking pictures. (Assuming you have the requisite artistic talent.) However, you don’t have to save your icons as .PNG files. Instead, load up Paint, create an icon, and save it as a .JPG file; your icon will show up just fine in the gadget picker.

Good question: what size should you make your icon? The optimal size is 64 pixels by 64 pixels. The gadget picker will resize your image to fit, but creating a 64x64 icon in the first place will help guard against any image distortion created if the gadget picker needs to shrink or stretch the image to fit the allotted space.

In case you’re wondering, here’s the icon we used for this article:

We liked it, too.

Note. You might have noticed that, the in the manifest file, the <ICON> tag is embedded within an <ICONS> tag: <icons> <icon>icon.png</icon> </icons> Does that mean you can add additional icons to the manifest file? Probably, although, to be honest, we aren’t sure what you would use those additional icons for. That’s something we’ll look into.

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The HTML File

The HTML file that makes up the gadget itself is actually no different than any Web page that uses dynamic HTML; in fact, to create the HTML file you simply use any valid HTML tagging (including CSS styles) plus script code. We’ll show you a sample HTML page in just a moment. Before we do that, however, we need to take a brief side trip and talk about how you incorporate WMI code into a gadget.

Working with WMI

As a system administrator you’re used to writing scripts that make heavy use of WMI. That’s understandable; after all, WMI is the technology that helps you manage everything from printers to disk drives to mice and monitors. Best of all, WMI is easy to use. For example, suppose you’d like to know the name of the operating system installed on the local computer. No problem; here’s a WMI script that will return that information for you:

strComputer = "."

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")

For Each objItem in colItems
    Msgbox objItem.Caption
Next

If you plan on creating gadgets for system administration we’ve got some bad news for you: the WMI scripts you’re used to writing won’t work in a gadget. (Wait, don’t do anything drastic: the news will get better in just a moment, promise.) That’s because, at heart, a gadget is nothing more than a Web page, and, for security reasons, Web pages aren’t able to make use of GetObject. If you place the preceding code in a gadget all you’ll end up with is this error message:

ActiveX component can’t create object: 'GetObject'

Uh-oh.

But don’t panic. You can still use WMI scripts within a gadget; you just can’t use GetObject and the winmgmts: moniker. Instead, you need to use CreateObject to create an instance of the WbemScripting.SWbemLocator object, then use the ConnectServer method to connect to the WMI service. In other words, you need to write a script that looks like this:

strComputer = "."

Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")
Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(strComputer, "root\cimv2")

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")

For Each objItem in colItems
    Msgbox objItem.Caption
Next

See? Like we said, no need to panic. (Although, in all fairness, it was probably our fault that you panicked in the first place.) The only difference between a script that uses the WMI moniker and a script that uses ConnectServer comes when you make a connection to the WMI service. You’re used to making that connection using a single line of code:

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Now you have to use two lines of code to make the connection (yes, doubling your workload!): you create an instance of the WbemScripting.SWbemLocator object, then you use the ConnectServer method to bind to the WMI service. Notice that we pass ConnectServer two parameters, the name of the computer to connect to (represented by the variable strComputer) and the WMI namespace we want to connect to (in this case, root\cimv2):

Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")
Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(strComputer, "root\cimv2")

Got all that? Good. Now let’s return to our regularly-scheduled article.

Creating an HTML File

As we’ve already noted, a gadget is just an HTML file. That means that any elements (including dynamic elements) you can use in an HTML page can also be used in a gadget. As you’ve probably already figured out, this includes VBScript code; although most of the early gadgets made available through the Microsoft Gadgets Web site use JScript or JavaScript, VBScript works just fine (as you’ll soon see).

We’ve already shown you a WMI script that returns the name of the operating system installed on the local computer; with that in mind, let’s see if we can turn that script into a gadget. We’ll start off very simple, creating a gadget that consists of a single button that, when clicked, displays the value of the operating system Caption property in a message box. Here’s the HTML code for our gadget:

<html>

<head>
    <title>My First Gadget</title>

    <style>
        body{width:120;height:160}
    </style>

</head>

<script language="VBScript">

    Sub RunSub
        strComputer = "."

        Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SwbemLocator")
        Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(strComputer, "root\cimv2")

        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")

        For Each objItem in colItems
            Msgbox objItem.Caption
        Next
    End Sub

</script>

<body>
    <input type="button" value="Run" name="run_button" onClick="RunSub">
</body>

</html>

As you can see, there’s nothing “gadgety” about the code; this is rudimentary HTML that doesn’t do much more than display a single button on a page. When that button is clicked, a subroutine named RunSub is executed; that subroutine then uses WMI to determine the name of the operating system installed on the computer.

Note. OK, maybe this is rudimentary HTML for some people, but what if you have no background with HTML coding? If that’s the case, then you might want to take a look at our two-part HTA Tutorial. That will help bring you up to speed on things such as <SCRIPT> tags and <INPUT> tags.

About the only thing we need to make special note of here is the <STYLE> tag. As we start creating more sophisticated gadgets we’ll discuss the <STYLE> tag in detail; for now, however, we’ll simply point out that we use this tag to configure the default height and width of our gadget:

<style>
    body{width:120;height:160}
</style>

This tag simply says that we want our gadget to be 120 pixels wide (the Windows Sidebar is approximately 130 pixels wide) by 160 pixels tall. For this particular gadget 160 pixels might be too tall; if that’s the case, then we can simply assign a different value to the height property:

<style>
    body{width:120;height:40}
</style>

When you install this gadget it will look like this in the Windows Sidebar:

And here’s what happens when you click the button:

Go ahead and write home to Mom, telling her all about the cool gadget you just created. Just let us know when you’re done and then we’ll move on to something else.

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Displaying Data in a <SPAN>

So far we’ve created a gadget that, when we click a button, displays the name of the operating system in a message box. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there will likely be times when your gadget returns so much information that you have no choice but to display that information in a message box, an Internet Explorer window, or some other location.

On the other hand, sooner or later you will also create gadgets where it makes no sense to display information in a message box, and where it makes no sense to have to click a button in order to return that information. For example, suppose you decided to create a clock for your Windows Sidebar. That’s great, but do you really want to be forced to click a button each time you want to find out what time it is? And when you do, do you want that time to pop up in a message box? Sure, on Omicron IV we like that sort of thing. But human beings find that a bit tedious, not to mention downright silly.

In other words, we need the ability to create gadgets that can:

•	Display data within the bounds of the gadget itself. Later in this series we’ll show you ways to display this information graphically, but for now we’ll focus on text-based displays.
•	Retrieve data automatically, without requiring user interaction of any kind.
•	Periodically update that information. For example, a gadget that monitors available memory on a computer (a gadget we’ll create shortly) can’t just retrieve available memory at the time it loads and then call it good. Instead, it needs to periodically take a new, up-to-date memory sample.

That sounds like a lot, but we’ll make it easy by learning these skills one-at-a-time. Let’s start by discussing the <SPAN> tag, a simple and easy way to display information within the body of the gadget itself.

Here’s a revised version of our HTML file. In this new gadget you still click a button in order to call the subroutine RunSub; however, this time around the operating system name is not echoed back in a message box but is, instead, written to the gadget itself:

<html>

<head>
    <title>My First Gadget</title>
    <style>
        body{width:120;height:160}
    </style>
</head>

<script language="VBScript">

    Sub RunSub
        strComputer = "."

        Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SwbemLocator")
        Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(strComputer, "root\cimv2")

        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")

        For Each objItem in colItems
            DataArea.InnerHTML = objItem.Caption
        Next
    End Sub

</script>

<body>
    <input type="button" value="Run" name="run_button" onClick="RunSub"><br>
    <span id="DataArea"></span>
</body>

</html>

When we click the button on this gadget the returned information is displayed within the gadget itself:

Cool.

An Extra Bonus: Spiffing Up a Gadget’s Background

We’ll talk more about creating fancy-looking gadgets in future installments of this series. For now, we thought we’d mention a few simple little techniques you can use to spiff up your gadgets. For example, suppose you have a graphic that you think will make a good background for a gadget. In that case, all you have to do is set the background attribute of the <BODY> tag of your HTML file. This line of code causes your gadget to use a file named Background.jpg as the gadget background:

<body background = "background.jpg">

Just make sure that Background.jpg is stored in your gadget folder.

Alternatively, you can create a gadget with a different background color by adding the bgcolor parameter to the <BODY> tag. Dying to have a gadget with a bright red background? Hey, why not?

<body bgcolor = "red">

Finally, you can give your gadget a gradient background by using one of the Microsoft multimedia Web filters. In this gadget, we’ve modified the <BODY> style in two ways:

•	We’ve set the font to be white, 8-point Arial.
•	We’ve added a gradient filter.

Here’s what the code for our modified gadget looks like:

<html>

<head>
    <title>My Gadget</title>
    <style>
        body{width:120;height:160;font:8 pt Arial;color:white;
        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(GradientType=1, StartColorStr="#000000",
            EndColorStr="#0000FF")}
    </style>
</head>

<script language="VBScript">

    Sub RunSub
        strComputer = "."
        Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SwbemLocator")
        Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(".", "root\cimv2")
        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")
        For Each objItem in colItems
            DataArea.InnerHTML = objItem.Caption
        Next
    End Sub

</script>

<body>
    <input type="button" value="Run" name="run_button" onClick="RunSub"><P>
    <span id="DataArea"></span>
</body>

</html>

And here’s what the gadget itself looks like:

It’s not a work of art, but it’s better than just having a plain white box plopped down in the Sidebar.

Note. For more information about using the gradient filter see the HTA Developer’s Center.

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Creating an “Auto-Run” Gadget

Having a gadget display information in the body of the gadget (as opposed to in a message box) is a nice step forward, and more in tune with the spirit of gadgets. However, we still have to click a button in order to get that information. Surely there must be a way to have that information automatically gathered and displayed the moment the gadget is loaded.

You bet there is. And stop calling us Shirley.

Here’s a gadget that automatically retrieves and displays the name of the installed operating system, no button-clicking required:

<html>

<head>
    <title>My First Gadget</title>
    <style>
        body{width:120;height:160}
    </style>
</head>

<script language="VBScript">

    Sub Window_OnLoad
        RunSub
    End Sub

    Sub RunSub
        strComputer = "."

        Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SwbemLocator")
        Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(strComputer, "root\cimv2")

        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")

        For Each objItem in colItems
            DataArea.InnerHTML = objItem.Caption
        Next
    End Sub

</script>

<body>
    <span id="DataArea"></span>
</body>

</html>

As you can see, this looks very similar to our previous gadget. In fact, there are only two differences:

•	We removed the button from the gadget. That means there’s no longer any need to click something (for that matter, there’s no longer anything to click).
•	We added a Window_OnLoad subroutine.

As many of you know, the Window_Onload subroutine – when included in a Web page – is designed to run any time that Web page is loaded or refreshed. This subroutine functions exactly the same way when included in a gadget: it automatically runs any time the gadget is loaded up. That’s how we create an auto-run gadget: we simply create a subroutine named Window_OnLoad and put the code we want run at load time into that subroutine.

For this particular gadget our Window_OnLoad subroutine looks like this:

Sub Window_OnLoad
    RunSub
End Sub

As you can see, all we do in this particular subroutine is call a second subroutine: RunSub. We should point out that we don’t have to put our WMI code in a separate subroutine; we could have put our WMI script in the Window_OnLoad subroutine and directly executed that code upon startup. So why did we create a superfluous second subroutine? That’s easy: it makes for a nice transition to our next gadget.

In case you’re wondering, here’s what our “button-less” gadget looks like:

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Creating an “Auto-Refresh” Gadget

Undoubtedly gadgets will earn their keep in large part by serving as monitoring devices, dutifully keeping tabs on anything and everything from free disk space to network connectivity to available memory. Gadgets are perfect for tasks like this: they are small and unobtrusive, yet gadgets can still display visual cues that provide information at a glance. Equally important, gadgets can be programmed to take action when specific conditions arise. By combining small size and graphical capabilities with custom script code you can create incredibly useful tools for monitoring the health and well-being of your network.

Of course, the ability to do that hinges on the gadget’s ability to constantly update its information. It’s important that, at startup, a gadget can ping a server and verify that server’s availability. However, as a monitoring tool your gadget is of little use if it can only ping the server at startup. Instead, the gadget needs to periodically refresh itself: at regular intervals it needs to retrieve up-to-date information. In other words, it needs to do something like this:

<html>

<head>
    <title>My Gadget</title>
    <style>
        body{width:120;height:40"}
    </style>
</head>

<script language="VBScript">

    Sub Window_Onload
        GetMemory
        iTimerID = window.SetInterval("GetMemory", 10000)
    End Sub

    Sub GetMemory
        Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SwbemLocator")
        Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(".", "root\cimv2")
        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")
        For Each objItem in colItems
            DataArea.InnerHTML = objItem.FreePhysicalMemory
        Next
    End Sub

</script>

<body>
    <span id="DataArea"></span>
</body>

</html>

Before we discuss how this script works we should note that this particular script doesn’t display the name of the operating system installed on the computer; instead, it displays the amount if available memory on the computer. Why did we suddenly drop the operating system gadget in favor of an available memory gadget? Well, we’re assuming that you don’t need to constantly monitor the name if the installed operating system; its safe to say that the name of the operating system doesn’t change anywhere near as often as available memory does. We figured that monitoring available memory might be a bit more realistic than monitoring the name of the installed operating system.

Incidentally, the subroutine for actually determining the current amount of available memory (a subroutine named GetMemory) looks like this:

Sub GetMemory
    Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SwbemLocator")
    Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(".", "root\cimv2")
    Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")
    For Each objItem in colItems
        DataArea.InnerHTML = objItem.FreePhysicalMemory
    Next
End Sub

What we’re interested in here, however, isn’t the GetMemory subroutine but the Window_OnLoad subroutine:

Sub Window_Onload
    GetMemory
    iTimerID = window.SetInterval("GetMemory", 10000)
End Sub

As you can see, we do two things in this subroutine. First, we call the GetMemory subroutine; we do that to ensure that, upon loading our gadget, the available memory is immediately displayed in the gadget. The second thing we do is a bit more interesting:

iTimerID = window.SetInterval("GetMemory", 10000)

With this line of code we’re using the SetInterval method to create a timer. What this timer does is cause our gadget to call the GetMemory subroutine every 10 seconds (10,000 milliseconds). This is how we cause the gadget to auto-refresh itself: every 10 seconds the gadget calls the GetMemory subroutine, which means that every 10 seconds the gadget will use WMI to get the current amount of available memory and then display that data in the gadget body. If 10 seconds is too long between measurements, then change the parameter 10000 to a smaller number; for example, setting the parameter to 5000 will cause the gadget to update itself every 5 seconds (5000 milliseconds). Likewise, change the 10000 to a larger number if you’d prefer to have a longer interval between measurements.

Here’s our new gadget in action:

We never said it was a work of art. But now that we understand the basics behind creating gadgets (particularly gadgets of interest to system administrators) we’re about ready to start creating works of art. We’ll talk about incorporating graphics into gadgets soon; in addition, we’ll also explore the Gadget object model and some of the really cool things you can do with that.

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A Preview of Coming Attractions

In order to give you more of a taste for what gadgets can do, here’s a slightly (with the emphasis on the word slightly) more complicated gadget, one that does two things: it monitors available memory and also displays (in a Web page) more detailed system information when the Information button is clicked. Needless to say, this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what gadgets can do, but it does give you a better sense for the range of capabilities that can be included in a single gadget.

You’re on your own to figure out the whys and wherefores of this particular gadget (we’ve already run out of space for this month) but here’s the code:

<html>

<head>
    <title>My Gadget</title>
    <style>
        body{width:120;height:80}
    </style>
</head>

<script language="VBScript">

    Sub Window_Onload
        GetMemory
        iTimerID = window.SetInterval("GetMemory", 10000)
    End Sub

    Sub GetMemory
        Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SwbemLocator")
        Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(".", "root\cimv2")
        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")
        For Each objItem in colItems
            DataArea.InnerHTML = objItem.FreePhysicalMemory
        Next
    End Sub

    Sub RunSub

        Set objLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SwbemLocator")
        Set objWMIService = objLocator.ConnectServer(".", "root\cimv2")

        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_ComputerSystem")
        For Each objItem in colItems
            strHTML = "Computer Name: " & objItem.Name & "<br>"
            strHTML = strHTML & "User Name: " & objItem.UserName & "<br><br>"
        Next

        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_OperatingSystem")
        For Each objItem in colItems
            strHTML = strHTML & "Operating System: " & objItem.Caption & "<br>"
            strHTML = strHTML & "Service Pack: " & objItem.ServicePackMajorVersion & "<br><br>"
        Next

        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_Processor")
        For Each objItem in colItems
            strHTML = strHTML & "Processor: " & objItem.Caption & "<br><br>"
        Next

        Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
            ("Select * From Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration Where IPEnabled = True")
        For Each objItem in colItems
            strHTML = strHTML & objItem.Caption & "<br>"
            For Each strAddress in objItem.IPAddress
                strHTML = strHTML & "IP Address: " & strAddress & "<br>"
            Next
        Next

        Set objIE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
        objIE.Navigate("about:blank")
        objIE.Toolbar = 0
        objIE.StatusBar = 0
        Set objDoc = objIE.Document.Body
        objDoc.InnerHTML = strHTML
        objIE.Visible = True
    End Sub

</script>

<body>
    <span id="DataArea"></span><p>
    <input type="button" value="Information" name="run_button" onClick="RunSub">
</body>

</html>

From: (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/vista/gadgets-pt1.mspx)

I use i-Catcher to monitor cameras.  When I use the i-Catcher console from Windows 7 64bit build 7100 in Internet Explorer 8, it forces Aero to shut down.  i-Catcher uses Java to render the camera views so I assume that the java control for the video is the problem but have yet to find a work-around.  Anyone else having this problem and/or found a solution?

As I find myself testing Windows 7 and going through articles of "new stuff" to test out and like or not, I keep coming back to a common theme: The worst part I've found so far in Windows 7 is Internet Explorer 8.  Win 7 itself seems to run smoothly and, albeit with the right hardware, fast.  I have been running 64-bit Windows 7 for over 2 weeks now and have been skeptically happy.  The only major problems I keep running into are glitches in Internet Explorer 8.  What gives?  The latest Firefox build does not seem to have the same issues.

Is it just me or are there some bugs in IE8?  I am getting weird scroll patterns in Facebook - none of which can I recreate in Firefox.  It seems like there is a problem with the scrolling keeping up with the screen draws.  Anyone else notice this pattern?

1. Windows Management. By now, you’ve probably seen that Windows 7 does a lot to make window management easier: you can “dock” a window to the left or right half of the screen by simply dragging it to the edge; similarly, you can drag the window to the top of the screen to maximize it, and double-click the window top / bottom border to maximize it vertically with the same horizontal width. What you might not know is that all these actions are also available with keyboard shortcuts:
   • Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock;
   • Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes;
   • Win+Shift+Up Arrow and Win+Shift+Down Arrow maximizes and restores the vertical size.

   This side-by-side docking feature is particularly invaluable on widescreen monitors – it makes the old Windows way of shift-clicking on two items in the taskbar and then using the context menu to arrange them feel really painful.

2. Display Projection. Had enough of messing around with weird and wonderful OEM display driver utilities to get your notebook display onto an external projector? In that case, you’ll be pleased to know that projection is really quick and simple with Windows 7. Just hit Win+P, and you’ll be rewarded by the following pop-up window:
    
   Use the arrow keys (or keep hitting Win+P) to switch to “clone”, “extend” or “external only” display settings. You can also access the application as displayswitch.exe.
   
   If you want broader control over presentation settings, you can also press Win+X to open the Windows Mobility Center, which allows you to turn on a presentation “mode” that switches IM clients to do not disturb, disables screensavers, sets a neutral wallpaper etc. (Note that this feature is also available in Windows Vista.)
   
3. Cut Out The Clutter. Working on a document in a window and want to get rid of all the extraneous background noise? Simply hit Win+Home to minimize all the non-active background windows, keeping the window you’re using in its current position. When you’re ready, simply press Win+Home again to restore the background windows to their original locations.
   
4. Multi-Monitor Windows Management. The earlier tip on window management showed how you can dock windows within a monitor. One refinement of those shortcuts is that you can use Win+Shift+Left Arrow and Win+Shift+Right Arrow to move windows from one monitor to another – keeping them in the same relative location to the monitor’s top-left origin.
   
5. Command Junkies Only. One of the most popular power toys in Windows XP was “Open Command Prompt Here”, which enabled you to use the graphical shell to browse around the file system and then use the context menu to open a command prompt at the current working directory. In Windows 7 (and in Windows Vista, incidentally – although not many folk knew about it), you can simply hold the Shift key down while selecting the context menu to get exactly the same effect. If the current working directory is a network location, it will automatically map a drive letter for you.
   
6. It’s a Global Village. If you’ve tried to change your desktop wallpaper, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a set of wallpapers there that match the locale you selected when you installed Windows. (If you picked US, you’ll see beautiful views of Crater Lake in Oregon, the Arches National Park, a beach in Hawai’i, etc.) In fact, there are several sets of themed wallpapers installed based on the language you choose, but the others are in a hidden directory. If you’re feeling in an international mood, simply browse to C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and you’ll see a series of pictures under the Wallpaper directory for each country. Just double-click on the theme file in the Theme directory to display a rotation through all the pictures for that country. (Note that some countries contain a generic set of placeholder art for now.)
   
7. The Black Box Recorder. Every developer wishes there was a way that an end-users could quickly and simply record a repro for the problem that they’re running into that is unique to their machine. Windows 7 comes to the rescue! Part of the in-built diagnostic tools that we use internally to send feedback on the product, the Problem Steps Recorder provides a simple screen capture tool that enables you to record a series of actions. Once you hit “record”, it tracks your mouse and keyboard and captures screenshots with any comments you choose to associate alongside them. Once you stop recording, it saves the whole thing to a ZIP file, containing an HTML-based “slide show” of the steps. It’s a really neat little tool and I can’t wait for it to become ubiquitous on every desktop! The program is called psr.exe; you can also search for it from Control Panel under “Record steps to reproduce a problem”.
   
   
8. The Font of All Knowledge. Long Zheng will be happy: we’ve got rid of the Add Fonts dialog that has served Windows faithfully for the last twenty years. (Of course, for most of that time, it’s been deprecated – the easy way to install a set of fonts has simply been to drag them into the Fonts folder via Control Panel.) But now font installation is really easy – we’ve added an “Install” button to the font viewer applet that takes care of the installation process:
   
   There are lots of other new features built into Windows 7 that will satisfy those of a typographic bent, incidentally – grouping multiple weights together, the ability to hide fonts based on regional settings, a new text rendering engine built into the DirectWrite API, and support in the Font common file dialog for more than the four “standard” weights. For example:
    
   
9. Gabriola. As well as the other typographic features mentioned above, Windows 7 includes Gabriola, an elaborate display type from the Tiro Typeworks foundry that takes advantage of OpenType Layout to provide a variety of stylistic sets, flourishes and ornamentation ligatures:
   
   
10. Who Stole My Browser? If you feel like Internet Explorer is taking a long time to load your page, it’s worth taking a look at the add-ons you have installed. One of the more helpful little additions in Internet Explorer 8 is instrumentation for add-on initialization, allowing you to quickly see whether you’re sitting around waiting for plug-ins to load. Just click Tools / Manage Add-ons, and then scroll right in the list view to see the load time. On my machine, I noticed that the Research add-on that Office 2007 installs was a particular culprit, and since I never use it, it was simple to disable it from the same dialog box.
    
11. Rearranging the Furniture. Unless you’ve seen it demonstrated, you may not know that the icons in the new taskbar aren’t fixed in-place. You can reorder them to suit your needs, whether they’re pinned shortcuts or running applications. What’s particularly nice is that once they’re reordered, you can start a new instance of any of the first five icons by pressing Win+1, Win+2, Win+3 etc. I love that I can quickly fire up a Notepad2 instance on my machine with a simple Win+5 keystroke, for instance.
    
    What’s less well-known is that you can similarly drag the system tray icons around to rearrange their order, or move them in and out of the hidden icon list. It’s an easy way to customize your system to show the things you want, where you want them.
    
12. Installing from a USB Memory Stick. My wife has a Samsung NC10 netbook (very nice machine, by the way), and we wanted to install Windows 7 Beta on this machine to replace the pre-installed Windows XP environment. Like most netbook-class devices, this machine has no built-in media drive, and nor did I have an external USB DVD drive available to boot off. The solution: I took a spare 4GB USB 2.0 thumbdrive, reformatted it as FAT32, and simply copied the contents of the Windows 7 Beta ISO image to the memory stick using xcopy e:\ f:\ /e /f (where e: was the DVD drive and f: was the removable drive location). Not only was it easy to boot and install from the thumbdrive, it was also blindingly fast: quicker than the corresponding DVD install on my desktop machine.
    
    It’s also worth noting in passing that Windows 7 is far better suited to a netbook than any previous operating system: it has a much lighter hard drive and memory footprint than Windows Vista, while also being able to optimize for solid state drives (for example, it switches off disk defragmentation since random read access is as fast as sequential read access, and it handles file deletions differently to minimize wear on the solid state drive).
    
13. I Want My Quick Launch Toolbar Back! You might have noticed that the old faithful Quick Launch toolbar is not only disabled by default in Windows 7, it’s actually missing from the list of toolbars. As is probably obvious, the concept of having a set of pinned shortcut icons is now integrated directly into the new taskbar. Based on early user interface testing, we think that the vast majority of users out there (i.e. not the kind of folk who read this blog, with the exception of my mother) will be quite happy with the new model, but if you’re after the retro behavior, you’ll be pleased to know that the old shortcuts are all still there. To re-enable it, do the following:
    • Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar
    • In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:
      %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
    • Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.
    • Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.

    If it’s not obvious by the semi-tortuous steps above, it’s worth noting that this isn’t something we’re exactly desperate for folks to re-enable, but it’s there if you really need it for some reason. Incidentally, we’d love you to really try the new model first and give us feedback on why you felt the new taskbar didn’t suit your needs.

14. It’s a Drag. Much play has been made of the Jump Lists feature in Windows 7, allowing applications like Windows Live Messenger to offer an easy task-based entry point. Jump lists replace the default right-click context menu in the new taskbar; another way to access them (particularly useful if you’re running Windows 7 on a one-button MacBook) is by left-clicking and dragging up in a kind of “swooshing” motion. This was designed for touch-enabled devices like the beautiful HP TouchSmart all-in-one PC, where the same gesture applies.
    
    Another place where you can “swoosh” (not an official Microsoft term) is the IE 8 address bar, where the downward drag gesture brings up an expanded list containing the browser history, favorites and similar entries. The slower you drag, the cooler the animation!
    
15. Standards Support. Every review of Windows 7 that I’ve seen has noted the revamped WordPad and Paint applets that add an Office-like ribbon to expose their functionality. Few, however, have noticed one small but hopefully appreciated feature: WordPad can now read and write both the Word 2007-compatible Office Open XML file format but also the OpenDocument specification that IBM and Sun have been advocating:
     
    
16. Windows Vista-Style Taskbar. I wasn’t initially a fan of the Windows 7 taskbar when it was first introduced in early Windows 7 builds, but as the design was refined in the run up to the beta, I was converted and now actively prefer the new look, particularly when I’ve got lots of windows open simultaneously. For those who really would prefer a look more reminiscent of Windows Vista, the good news is that it’s easy to customize the look of the taskbar to more closely mirror the old version:
     
    To achieve this look, right-click on the taskbar and choose the properties dialog. Select the “small icons” checkbox and under the “taskbar buttons” setting, choose “combine when taskbar is full”. It’s not pixel-perfect in accuracy, but it’s close from a functionality point of view.
    
17. Peeking at the Desktop. While we’re on the taskbar, it’s worth noting a few subtleties. You’ve probably seen the small rectangle in the bottom right hand corner: this is the feature we call “Aero Peek”, which enables you to see any gadgets or icons you’ve got on your desktop. I wanted to note that there’s a keyboard shortcut that does the same thing – just press Win+Space.
    
18. Running with Elevated Rights. Want to quickly launch a taskbar-docked application as an administrator? It’s easy – hold down Ctrl+Shift while you click on the icon, and you’ll immediately launch it with full administrative rights (assuming your account has the necessary permissions, of course!)
    
19. One More of the Same, Please. I’ve seen a few folk caught out by this one. If you’ve already got an application open on your desktop (for example, a command prompt window), and you want to open a second instance of the same application, you don’t have to go back to the start menu. You can simply hold down the Shift key while clicking on the taskbar icon, and it will open a new instance of the application rather than switching to the existing application. For a keyboard-free shortcut, you can middle-click with the third mouse button to do the same thing. (This trick assumes that your application supports multiple running instances, naturally.)
    
20. Specialized Windows Switching. Another feature that power users will love is the ability to do a kind of “Alt+Tab” switching across windows that belong to just one application. For example, if you’ve got five Outlook message windows open along with ten other windows, you can quickly tab through just the Outlook windows by holding down the Ctrl key while you repeatedly click on the single Outlook icon. This will toggle through each of the five Outlook windows in order, and is way faster than opening Alt+Tab and trying to figure out which of the tiny thumbnail images relates to the specific message you’re trying to find.
    
21. Walking Through the Taskbar. Another “secret” Windows shortcut: press Win+T to move the focus to the taskbar. Once you’re there, you can use the arrow keys to select a particular window or group and then hit Enter to launch or activate it. As ever, you can cancel out of this mode by hitting the Esc key. I don’t know for sure, but I presume this shortcut was introduced for those with accessibility needs. However, it’s equally valuable to power users – another good reason for all developers to care about ensuring their code is accessible.
    
22. The Widescreen Tip. Almost every display sold these days is widescreen, whether you’re buying a notebook computer or a monitor. While it might be great for watching DVDs, when you’re trying to get work done it can sometimes feel like you’re a little squeezed for vertical space.
    
    As a result, the first thing I do when I set up any new computer is to dock the taskbar to the left hand side of the screen. I can understand why we don’t set this by default – can you imagine the complaints from enterprise IT departments who have to retrain all their staff – but there’s no reason why you as a power user should have to suffer from default settings introduced when the average screen resolution was 800x600.
    
    In the past, Windows did an indifferent job of supporting “side dockers” like myself. Sure, you could move the taskbar, but it felt like an afterthought – the gradients would be wrong, the Start menu had a few idiosyncrasies, and you’d feel like something of a second-class citizen. The Windows 7 taskbar feels almost as if it was designed with vertical mode as the default – the icons work well on the side of the screen, shortcuts like the Win+T trick mentioned previously automatically switch from left/right arrows to up/down arrows, and so on. The net effect is that you wind up with a much better proportioned working space.
    
    Try it – in particular, if you’ve got a netbook computer that has a 1024x600 display, you’ll immediately appreciate the extra space for browsing the Internet. For the first day you’ll feel a little out of sync, but then I guarantee you’ll become an enthusiastic convert!
    
23. Pin Your Favorite Folders. If you’re always working in the same four or five folders, you can quickly pin them with the Explorer icon on the taskbar. Hold the right-click button down and drag the folder to the taskbar, and it will be automatically pinned in the Explorer Jump List.
    
24. Starting Explorer from “My Computer”. If you spend more time manipulating files outside of the documents folders than inside, you might want to change the default starting directory for Windows Explorer so that it opens at the Computer node:
     
    To do this, navigate to Windows Explorer in the Start Menu (it’s in the Accessories folder). Then edit the properties and change the target to read:
    %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
    
    If you want the change to affect the icon on the taskbar, you’ll need to unpin and repin it to the taskbar so that the new shortcut takes affect. It’s worth noting that Win+E will continue to display the documents library as the default view: I’ve not found a way to change this from the shell at this time.
    
25. ClearType Text Tuning and Display Color Calibration. If you want to tune up your display for image or text display, we have the tools included out of the box. It’s amazing what a difference this makes: by slightly darkening the color of the text and adjusting the gamma back a little, my laptop display looks much crisper than it did before. You’d adjust the brightness and contrast settings on that fancy 42” HDTV you’ve just bought: why wouldn’t you do the same for the computer displays that you stare at every day? 
    
    Check out cttune.exe and dccw.exe respectively, or run the applets from Control Panel.
    
26. ISO Burning. Easy to miss if you’re not looking for it: you can double-click on any DVD or CD .ISO image and you’ll see a helpful little applet that will enable you to burn the image to a blank disc. No more grappling for shareware utilities of questionable parentage!
    
    
27. Windows Movie Maker. Windows 7 doesn’t include a movie editing tool – it’s been moved to the Windows Live Essentials package, along with Photo Gallery, Mail and Messenger. Unfortunately, Windows Live Movie Maker is currently still in an early beta that is missing most of the old feature set (we’re reworking the application), and so you might be feeling a little bereft of options. It goes without saying that we intend to have a better solution by the time we ship Windows 7, but in the meantime the best solution for us early adopters is to use Windows Movie Maker 2.6 (which is essentially the same as the most recent update to the Windows XP version). It’s missing the full set of effects and transitions from the Windows Vista version, and doesn’t support HD editing, but it’s pretty functional for the typical usage scenario of home movie editing.
     
    Download Windows Movie Maker 2.6 from here:
    http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc 
    
28. Hiding the Windows Live Messenger Icon. Hopefully your first act after Windows 7 setup completed was to download and install the Windows Live Essentials suite of applications (if not, then you’re missing out on a significant part of the Windows experience). If you’re a heavy user of IM, you may love the way that Windows Live Messenger is front and central on the taskbar, where you can easily change status and quickly send an IM to someone:
    
    On the other hand, you may prefer to keep Windows Live Messenger in the system tray where it’s been for previous releases. If so, you can fool the application into the old style of behavior. To do this, close Windows Live Messenger, edit the shortcut properties and set the application to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode. Bingo!
    
29. Enjoy The Fish. I’m surprised that not many people seem to have caught the subtle joke with the Siamese fighting fish that is part of the default background, so I’ll do my part at keeping the secret hidden. Check out wikipedia for a clue.
    
30. When All Else Fails… There are always those times when you’re in a really bad spot – you can’t boot up properly, and what you really want is something you can quickly use to get at a command prompt so you can properly troubleshoot. Windows 7 now includes the ability to create a system repair disc, which is essentially a CD-bootable version of Windows that just includes the command prompt and a suite of system tools. Just type “system repair disc” in the Start Menu search box, and you’ll be led to the utility.

Special Thanks to http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2009/01/12/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx for providing this list.

I installed Windows 7 64-bit RC1 two weeks ago today and so far I have been impressed by the performance.  My test workstation is a Dell Inspiron 530.  Processor is an Intel E4500 Core 2 Duo Conroe at 2.20GHz.  Initially I installed the system with 2GB of RAM (PC2-6400) and a 128MB Nvidia GeForce 8300GS.  In this configuration, I achieved a Windows Experience Index of 3.9 with the video card being the lowest index.  I added 2GB of RAM and replaced the video card with a 320MB Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS.  In this configuration, I get a 5.4 experience with the processor and RAM being the bottlenecks (Video is now at 5.9).  Aero is performing well in this configuration.  Installation took 15 minutes from start to finish (8x DVD player and 7200RPM 320GB drive).  One note - Windows Experience Index locked up using the MS drivers for the video cards.  I had to install the driver upgrade from Nvidia for the Experience Index program to run to finish.

So far I have been happy with the new features and performance seems well above Vista.  One of my biggest pet peives in Vista was the networking subsystem.  Now, instead of waiting for a pop-up window to populate when you call on Network Connections (such as VPNs), you click an already present icon in the system tray and the list pops straight up as if it is buffered and not trying to build when called upon. 

I have Office 2007 Ultimate installed with no glitches there yet.  I also have all of my administration tools installed (VPNs, Angry IP Scanner, VNC) and so far all of these apps are running flawlessly. 

The major glitches I have uncovered are in Internet Explorer 8.  Some pages do not load properly (the compatability button can be helpful here at times, but not always).  Screen draws are strange on some sites - I've noticed that text and boxes do not always line up on FaceBook especially when scrolling.  I have Firefox installed and have not yet noticed any problems with it.

I really like the new taskbar.  You can dock icons on the taskbar and when the windows open, the icons stack off the original icon so you always know where it is.  You can also "Pin" program options to the icons.  For instance, I have Remote Desktop docked on the taskbar.  I can then pin all of my most used workstation/server destinations to that icon.  Left-click, and a list of my most used destinations are right there to be picked.

I have started getting used to the sticky notes feature as well.  It can be docked to the taskbar and the notes will always be there until deleted.

So far it seems like UltraVNC server is running well.  Aero automatically disables when remote-controlling the machine with VNC. 

The idea of Libraries was also introduced in Windows 7.  Instead of the usual MY DOCUMENTS, you can have Libraries.  Say I have a bunch of folders on the network that have to do with drivers.  I create a Library called drivers and then add all of the possible locations on the network, locally, or on external drives to that library.  Now, when I need a driver, I search that library instead of all of the individual directories.  One catch is that the server running the network shares must be running Windows Search 4.0 for the search features to work properly.  My server is Windows 2003 with Windows Search 4 installed and seems to work ok (a few glitches here and there).  My guess is that the library feature will work better with Server 2008 shares.

Overall I think the final product is going to be a big improvement over Vista.  I can see companies pushing to this in 2010 as they retire older XP machines that have been doing overtime duty because IT managers did not want to port over to Vista.

You receive the message "error 1324 the path contains an invalid character" when installing software