Portable Browsers

Are you a webdeveloper,
or do you need to run some sites in a specific version of Internet Explorer (or Firefox or ... )

Or do you just want to try a new browser version without installing it?

Earlier I put up an article about IETester which allows you to run Internet Explorer 6 (and others) on Vista.
Now I found a new (and better) way to run different browsers without the need for installation :


http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/

Currently they have the following browsers :
- Internet Explorer 8, 7, 6
- Firefox 3, 2
- Google Chrome
- Opera
- Safari

From the site :

Xenocode WebApps do not require any software to be installed and allow multiple application versions to run side-by-side on any version of Windows.

So they should run on any version of windows (not yet tested, only on vista).

Have fun!
It works fine here, and I have

Menu Selection Gets Stuck on Screen

At work,

when I chose an item in a right click menu it stuck on screen,
It dissappeared when I locked and then unlocked the pc,
but reappeared the next time I selected an item. This does not work in windows 7 (and maybe 8), the quick workaround there is Start > Run :

tskill dwm

Right clicking the desktop and closing the menu also helped, but this were only workarounds.

I finally solved it :
Go into Windows Performance Options and de-select the option for "Fade out menu items after clicking."

In Vista, you can find it by right clicking My Computer > Properties > Advanced system settings (link on the left) > Advanced (tab) > Performance settings (button) > Visual effects (tab).

To cure it one in windows 7 you can set the corresponding monitor from 32 bit to 16 bit and back again, to remove one item. If it keeps happening, use the above solution.

Windows Needs to Format this device when you plug in usb stick

I recently bought myself a Sandisk Cruzer stick for on the road.
Everything worked fine untill windows (vista) began to complain when I plugged in the stick : Windows needs to format this device (or something very similar)

Having some data on the stick I didn't want to format it, so I started looking around. I found the solution :

With the usb stick plugged in (it does not really matter but it makes it easier)
go to Start / Control Panel
Here depending on whether you have the classic view or not :
Classic view : System / Device manager (left side)
Standard view : Hardware and Sound / Device manager / View hardware and devices

Here find the usb stick driver in the device manager (should be under Disk Drives),
be sure to select the correct one!
Right click it and choose uninstall

After this unplug and replug the usb stick, vista will now install 'new' drivers and that did the trick for me.

I also read somebody who had to redo this when he restarted vista, but in my case this was not needed.

Run as different user in Vista and Server 2008

When you shift + right click in Vista (or Server 2008) you will not find the trusted Run As ... Item, all you find is Run as Administrator. But this is not always what you need.
You can use the command prompt and the Runas command but this is not so easy as the old right click command.

Enter Sysinternals, they release a little tool called ShellRunAs that you can find here

After you downloaded it copy the ShellRunas executable to the windows\system32 folder and run shellrunas /reg

From this moment the run as different user item is back in your rightclick menu (or in your shift right click menu)

Thanks Sysinternals!

Using Internet Explorer 6 on vista

There is probable a few people who would want to run ie6 on vista,
probably the webtesters (like me), or people who don't like ie7 (like me) but do not want to use opera or firefox (unlike me). And since the normal XP portable editions do not work, it seemed there was no answer.

Searching the google did not reveal much,
only that a lot of people were trying the same thing.

Luckily I found a great program IETester which makes this possible
(I did not test yet if it does everything IE6 does, but for my case, it was perfect).

the link is : IETester homepage

This program allows you to run your (or other) sites in
internet explorer version 5.5, 6, 7 and since the latest version 8 beta 2.

I hope this helps somebody!

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

Microsoft has opened up the second beta for Internet Explorer 8

Some new features are :
- Accelerators : Select some text and a new Icon pops up, allowing you to search it with Google, mail it, ...
- Search bar improvements : Sizable, and it can show the first result for seaches on eg. wikipedia
- Web Slices
- Stability : Crash recovery and each tab has its own thread, so crashes should close only one tab.
- Tab groups : When opening a link from a tab, both tabs will get a color, indicating at a glance which tabs belong together.
- Inprivate Browsing (a.k.a. the porno modus) : When activated IE will not remember any cookies, or leave traces from the sites you have visited.
- And more (click here for the tour)

I installed it on vista, and it seemed a little faster (maybe my perception). Tabs groups seems very nice and useful. The first look is very nice, better than IE7, but I guess it will not yet replace my Opera :)

You can download the beta :
Here for XP
Here for Server 2003
Here for 64 bit XP/Server 2003
Here for 32 bit Vista/Server 2008
Here for 64 bit Vista/Server 2008

Enjoy :)

Vista SP1 RC1

Microsoft has released a script that will make Vista SP1 RC1 appear in Windows Update.
The script changes a registry key to make the SP1 RC1 visible.

You can find a full changelog here, or a shortened version here.

You can download the script here.

I will download the SP1 RC1 as soon as possible and post my findings.

Pricey Vista Boxes

Amazon is selling empty vista boxes, and although the design is nice,
the price is a bit much :)

Vista needs your pc at 110%

100%  is not enough :)

Missing CD/DVD rom drives in Windows?

Trying to write a cd,
I noticed my DVD writer was missing,

Looking in device manager i got the following error message :

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

very strange, as this device has always worked perfectly before.

After some googleing I tried things to update the drivers, deleting the device from device manager etc.

Finally i found the answer :

Open regedit
Go to key :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Find the "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" (and "UpperFilters.bak" "LowerFilters.bak", if they exist) values and delete them.


After that reboot or delete the devices one more time from device manager and voila they were back!

WARNING : some CD / DVD writer programs may have to be reinstalled!!! but that's a small price to pay i find :)

Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 Beta 1

Kaspersky has released a new beta version of their antivirus & internet security suite.

I have just updated the virusscanner on my Vista x64 machine and my XP SP2 machine,
and it is working great!

New things are  (this list is for the KIS suite):
what's new from v6:
1. Application GUI has been enhanced.
2. New heuristic analyzer detecting unknown threats has been added.
3. An opportunity for quick application setup with default settings has been added.
4. A new protection component (Parental control) has been added for supervision of user access to Internet resources.
5. Privacy control (Anti-Spy) has been supplemented with a module protecting confidential data and guarding against unauthorized access and transfer of such data.
6. Security wizard has been added for quick correction of problems in the application settings and operation.
7. Delivery of news from Kaspersky Lab via a new component (News Agent) has been implemented.
8. Proactive defense has been enhanced with a mechanism for detection of the newest keyloggers.
9. Protection against new types of leaktests has been added.
10. Extended search for the new generation rootkits has been added.
11. Firewall kernel has been improved and optimized for performance.

You can find the information to the beta FTP server in this forum thread : 
http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showtopic=11188


Be aware that this is an early beta and may contain bugs !

Vista slowing you down?

vista file actions (delete, copy, move, ... ) are very slow (calculating time remaining)

Not anymore!

When I reinstalled vista it had made a windows.old folder on my c: drive,
and when I was cleaning it out it took ages to delete a folder, 
then I found the solution ! 

HotFix 931770 (normally intended for network copying) fixed my local worries also,
it's blazing fast now !

Install at your own risk, it is not officially released,
but I didn't have any negative side effects, and I didn't read about somebody else having any. ..

You can find it at : http://thehotfixshare.net/download/index.php?dir=Language%20Neutral/Vista

Hidden network connections and other usefull shortcuts

Can't find the network connections in the new Vista? They are somewhere hidden in the new start menu,  the fastest way is to type in the search field in the start menu and type ncpa.cpl and you are there!

Some other things you can reach faster :

Ncpa.cpl : network connections

Eventvwr : Event viewer

Diskmgmt.msc : disk management.

Regedit : registry editor

inetmgr : iis manager

services.msc : services panel

…

If you know others, just let me know
By the way they should also work on XP (and maybe earlier)

Lost the menu in Vista?

Can't find the things you want to do in Vista?

The menu gone with the wind?

Don't fear, in most programs, you can just press the Alt key to make the trusted menus visible.

This will not work in all programs,
but it will work in a good number of them (mediaplayer, Internet Explorer, folder windows, ... )
but not in office 2007

Automatic updates bugging you to restart?

Getting tired of having to click away the restart later button every 10 minutes when there is an update? 
I was,  and after some searching I found a solution on the internet,
you can't turn it off, but you can make it appear only once a day 

(that way you can shut down at the end of the day and the next day the reboot is done, 
when you boot the computer)

press Start, run
type in gpedit.msc
at the left side of the screen,  under the Local Computer Policy, choose Administrative Templates,   Windows Components, Windows Update

at the right side of the screen, doubleclick  Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations

You can disable it (Thanks to Charles : disabled means the default 10 minutes.),
or put a value in the enable field, I put it at the maximum value : 1440, so it will only bug me once per day.

Unfortunatly, this is only active when windows restarts, so you may still have the annoying screen for the moment.

To get rid of that temporarily :
press start, run, services.msc

then right click the Automatic Updates service en choose 'stop', it will now stop bugging you :)
(it is best to leave it at automatic, so it will restart when you reboot your pc, and the other 'fix' is active)

I could only test this on a Windows XP Professional with SP2, 
I don't think the home version has the gpedit.msc tool. If I find something for that I will post it.

Edit: This also works in Vista Ultimate (I tested it on the X64 Ultimate edition), but Vista lets you select to notify only every 4 hours