Friday, September 14, 2007

Vista Service Pack 1 News

There is a beta release out now for Vista SP1

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Posted by: Jethro | 9:55 AM |

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta

Windows News

Now is the time and the time is now: let's talk about Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).

In addition to updates we’ve previously released, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues we’ve identified via customer feedback, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. SP1 also makes additional improvements to the IT administration experience. We didn’t design SP1 as a vehicle for releasing new features; however, some existing components do gain enhanced functionality in SP1.

A Beta release of Windows Vista SP1 is slated for availability in the next few weeks. A small group of testers has been putting a preview of the SP1 Beta through its paces to help prepare for broader release. We made the choice to start with a very small group of testers because we think it’s better for both our customers and for Microsoft to keep the beta program small at the start.

Nick White

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Posted by: Lena | 10:13 PM |

Friday, June 15, 2007

Sharepoint IE Browser crash

We have been experiencing a weird problem with a client where they had a mixture of Office 2007 and Office 2003 installed.

Scenario is this.
Full Office 2003 install, One Note 2007 (rocking product) installed.
Open sharepoint 2003, or MOSS2007 in IE and try and open files - word, powerpoint, excel, PDF etc.
Browser crashes with Memory Exception Error

We found the solution from a mixture of websites, primarily LOST

The solution we foud to work was
Go to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12” and Delete “OWSSUPP.DLL”
Go to start>control panel>add/remove programs and find the Office 2007 product that you have installed.
Highlight the product and select the "Change" button that becomes available. From the next screen that appears, choose "Repair" and hit OK. This might take longer than you expect - be patient.
Reboot your machine

Delicious Tags MOSS2007 Sharepoint2007 Office2007

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Posted by: Jethro | 11:19 AM |

Monday, June 11, 2007

SBS2003 Service Pack 2 and WSUS 3

Well I wish I had read Susan's "Before you install Service Pack 2 guide" first. Fortunately nothing major went wrong.

2 weekends ago I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my SBS2003 server to service pack 2. In case you were unaware, there was a fair amount of angst about this service pack within the SBS community. Susan had written numerous articles, and I had decided not to upgrade until this kerfuffle had died down.
Anyway I backed up the server first, and read through pages and pages of how to's and install notes before finally just going what the heck and doing it. As it happened, the server behaved itself perfectly. I thought I was home free!

Well nearly.

I had one PC that refused to connect immediately, but eventually I fixed its network card drivers and got it back on the network. I have had 1 other PC that also struggles to connect and 3 PC's that will only connect at 100mbs even thought they have 1GB cards and are on a 1GB switch. Very annoying. However in the light of what could have gone wrong not too bad a result. And I WILL fix them ... eventually!

I decided to go for broke and installed WSUS 3 immediately afterward. Surprisingly this also worked smoothly. My SBS box just loved it. Over the next few days as PC's reported in I got heaps of updates sorted for PS that had refused to download updates from the old WSUS 2 server. I don't have all my pcs with absolutely perfect update health yet, but I'm almost there. At the time of writing I have 2 pcs looking for 1 patch. Should be able to get that sorted soon!

Check out my delicious tags, SBS2003, Patches

Susan also has written a short post about installing the SQL server 2005 SP2

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Posted by: Jethro | 10:45 AM |

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Tech Links for Today

Embed Your LinkedIn Profile on a Webpage

If you wish to display your LinkedIn profile on your blog or website, here's something much better - LinkInABox.The buttons are sleek, interactive and done in Macromedia Flash. The site visitors can read the summary of your personal LinkedIn profile without leave your website.And every part of the button is customizable including the background color. You can also decide what sections of your LinkedIn
Profile should be displayed on the badge. Very cool.


K-Lite Codec Pack 64-bit add-on

This is a bundle of 64-bit DirectShow filters that can be used together with 64-bit players, such as Vista Media Center. This pack can co-exist without problems with the regular (32-bit) K-Lite Codec Pack.
Contents:

  • ffdshow
  • AVI splitter
  • MP4 split
  • Matroska splitter
  • Ogg splitter
  • DirectVobSub
  • Audio Switcher

[ Version 0.4.0 beta | 3.92 MB | April 2nd 2007 ]
Type: Location: Hosted By: Speed:
HTTP Mirror 1 BetaNews ****
HTTP Mirror 2 netzwelt.de ****
ED2K eMule


MAPILab Toolbox for Microsoft Outlook

MAPILab Toolbox is a set of eighteen Microsoft Outlook add-ins in one package. Do you want to add the senders of certain e-mail messages to your mailing list or to a certain folder with contacts? The Mailing List Service add-in will allow you to do it with just one button. The Subscription Manager add-in will provide you with the features of a subscription server, allowing users to remove themselves. The File Send Automatically lets your price list to be automatically sent to a certain list of recipients each time it is updated. Do you need this price list to be sent out each Monday? This task is for E-mail Scheduler. And can users request an up-to-date price list from your computer? Yes, they can. There is a special Outlook add-in for that – File Fetch. And so on, another thirteen components – make sure you have examined all of them!


Live Search Maps Add-In for Microsoft Office Outlook

Overview
Add maps and directions to your meeting requests – and much more!

imagini

Communicating with images


RyanVM's Windows XP Post-SP2 Update Pack



This pack is designed to bring a Windows XP CD with SP2 integrated fully up to date with all of the latest hotfixes released by Microsoft since SP2's release. It accomplishes this task via direct integration, where files on the CD are directly overwritten by the updated files. This method has numerous advantages over other integration techniques:

1. Since the files are being directly overwritten on the CD, there is no period of vulnerability between when the files are copied to the hard drive and the hotfixes are run. This guarantees maximum stability and security.
2. All necessary registry entries needed by Windows Update, QFECheck, and Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer are imported during Windows setup, meaning that the integration is transparent to Windows.
3. Security Catalogs necessary for Windows File Protection to recognize the updated files as digitally signed are installed, once again ensuring maximum transparency to Windows.
4. Since the updated files are being directly overwritten on the CD, this pack has the minimum possible amount of overhead associated with integrating hotfixes in comparison to other methods - both in space used on the CD and in Windows installation time.
5. This pack works regardless of whether or not the Windows installation is unattended.


YackPack

Live voice, presence, voice and text messaging. Perfect for keeping teams in touch.

See at a glance who is available and hold a conversation as if your right there, instant effortless communication.

Cut through the clutter of email, VOIP and instant messaging clients, and finally communicate directly with your team, class, family, or group, anytime and anywhere.

Visual VOIP™, voice and text messaging with presence. Visually assign levels of access and prioritize contacts (coming soon). So you can focus on what you want to say.

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Posted by: Lena | 8:48 PM |

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Outlook addins and Microsoft Office tips

Addintools

Classic Menu for Office 2007

  • bring back the Office 2003 menus and toolbars to your copy of Microsoft Office 2007
  • All new features items of Microsoft Office 2007 have been added into the classic menu and toolbars.
Addintools create for Excel

  • Use your own marketing analysis chart and a worksheet with a 1000 rows of data. Addintools Create generates a marketing analysis chart for each row. That’s 1000 new charts!
  • In just minutes, convert rows in a Microsoft Excel worksheet to Charts, Diagrams, AutoShapes, Drawings, WordArts, Reports, Cards, Labels, Forms and Sheets. You can decide how many data rows each result refers to!
Addintools assist for Excel

  • Convert data formats between Date, Numeric, or Text.
  • Will convert any number or date format to text: August 3, 2004, 08/03/2004 00:00:00, 12345678.90%, US$123,456.79, 1.23E+05…
  • Can safely merge cells or perform a smart Unmerge.
  • See Invalid Data Types quickly by viewing those cells in color!
  • View all locked or unlocked cells by color.
Addintools Mechanic

  • Clean, repair, defrag and compact the Windows Registry to increase PC overall performance immediately.
  • Enhances System Stability – regular maintenance helps stop system crashes and break-ups.
  • Easily undo any operation
  • The scanning is fast and smart

Microsoft Office Outlook
Copy Autocomplete name list to another computer

Important You must exit Outlook before starting the following procedure. The names will be included in AutoComplete when you restart Outlook.

  1. On the computer with the saved AutoComplete names, go to drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.
    Note: Depending on your file settings, this folder might be hidden. To view the files in this folder, do one of the following:
    ShowMicrosoft Windows XP
    1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
    2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
    3. Click the View tab, and then, under Advanced settings, under Hidden files and folders, click Show hidden files and folders.

    ShowMicrosoft Windows 2000
    1. Double-click My Computer on your desktop.
    2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
    3. Click the View tab, and then click Show hidden files and folders.
  2. Right-click profile name.nk2, and then click Copy.
    Tip You can copy the file to removable media, such as a floppy disk or a CD, and then copy the file to the correct location on the other computer. Or you can attach the file to an e-mail message and send the message to yourself. On the new computer, open the attachment in Outlook, and then save it to the correct location.
  3. On the computer where you want to populate the AutoComplete feature, copy the file to drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.
  4. If the Outlook user profile name is different on the computer where you are moving the .nk2 file, you must rename the file with the same Outlook user profile name after you copy it to the correct folder. For example, if you move Kim Akers.nk2 from the original computer with an Outlook user profile name of Kim Akers, and you copy the Kim Akers.nk2 file to the new computer, you must rename it with the Outlook profile name being used on the new computer.
  5. When prompted about replacing the existing file, click Yes.
  6. Open Outlook to view changes.


Outlook Performance Update

Last Friday, we released an update to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 that will help to address some performance issues that are discussed in Knowledge Base Article 932086. You can find a description of the update and a link to the appropriate download page for your version of the update in Knowledge Base Article 933493.

Davton Contact Synchroniser
The Davton Contact Synchroniser will synchronise contacts in one contact folder to another. It is designed to synchronise contacts from a shared Microsoft Outlook ‘Public Folder’ to a personal folder - so that the contacts can be synchronised to a PDA using ActiveSync.

It is a one way synchronization - changes made in the local folder or on the PDA will not be reflected back to the Public folder.

The synchroniser can filter the contacts it copies to your local folder, based on a categories. So for example if you just want the contacts with category 'Customer' to be moved to your local folder, Davton Contact Synchroniser can handle this.Download here (6.3MB installer file)

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Posted by: Jethro | 7:38 PM |

Cool Tech Links for today

123Renamer

File And MP3 Tag Renamer is a powerful, easy-to-use multiple files renamer and mp3 file renamer .With this powerful program,you can quickly and easily batch rename files and mp3's with a number of possibilities and options, including change case, change the file extension,insert string,delete string,replace/remove string,set the file attributes&time stamps,and enumeration renaming allows you to add number sequences to your filenames.

stintercorp
Batch Rename.EXE allows you to run dynamic lists of files through an extensive array of filename filters to ensure that your files are labeled and organized exactly how you want them. Use filters to add information (Prefixes, and Suffixes), remove spaces, change capitalization and more. The file selection wizard allows you to build a list by using both file directories and drag and drop list creation. You can dynamically add single files, directories and sub-directories to their evolving file list.Use the renaming wizard with six variable fields to add information such as a formatted dates and identification numbers to file names.Finally, use the wizard to virtually review you filename corrections. You can rename the files into their original folder, or select a new destination folder for them.

Plug-n-Play Hardware KeyLoggers - Useful but Dangerous
Check the connection between your keyboard cable and the desktop - the white AA battery sized hardware device is actually a keystroke logger. These deceptive KeyGhost hardware keyloggers plug-in between your keyboard and Desktop PC and will largely go unnoticed by the computer user. Once plugged in, it tracks and records all computer keystrokes in it's internal Flash memory. The keystrokes can later be retrieved using any text editor.While most antivirus and antispyware can safely detect and block software keyloggers, hardware keyloggers that attach to the PC or Mac via USB ports or PS/2 keyboards may be tough to discover since they do not install any software on the computer.If you suspect that the computer is running keylogger software in the background, use the virtual on-screen keyboard to type your important usernames and passwords.

Picasa 2.7 No Longer a Memory Hog, Supports Google Video
Google has just updated your favorite photo management software to version 2.7 and the new release is lightning fast when compared with Picasa 2.6.Picasa 2.7 has better integration with Blogger and also allows you upload videos directly to Google Videos from Picasa.Picasa 2.7 has better integration with Blogger and also allows you upload videos directly to Google Videos from Picasa.Picasa 2.7 is available for XP, Vista and Windows 2000.

filehippo Download Free Software

Free Fonts

Tabblo
Share your trip. Remember the wedding. Laugh with your family. Your photos tell your story. It's easy, and it's free.

Free Online File Conversion

The PC Decrapifier

Your brand spanking new PC boots up only to greet you with a plethora of pop up advertisements pestering you to pay for anti-virus software or sign up for a music service. Your desktop is littered with website links for 'special offers.' The system tray is already full of programs that continuously use your internet connection to make sure that you're 'up to date.'"When did I ask for this?" you ask. Well, you didn't and that's where the PC Decrapifier comes in. The PC Decrapifier attempts to remove all of the crap on your PC that you never asked for or wanted. To manually remove all of this stuff by hand can take at least an hour (depending on the severity of the infestation.) The PC Decrapifier will detect the 'crap' on your system, you choose what to uninstall, then sit back and let the PC Decrapifier work its magic.

Steve tells how he set up a PC for his Mum!

To date I have worked mainly with IT professionals and super users, I haven't really any experience of working with people who have spent all of their lives without touching personal computing, here are a few things I learned:

Function Lock?!

Who’s bright idea was it to come up with the Function Lock key? It’s really annoying. Here I’ll talk about my experience with a couple F-Lock “enhanced” keyboards and what I did to “fix” them.

Microsoft Natural Keyboard
The MS Natural MultiMedia Keyboard has the F-Lock off at power up, and with F-Lock off, the F-Keys aren’t F-Keys, they are their alternate function. Every time I boot my PC I need to hit the F-Lock key to get Insert to work instead of PrtScn.

Logitech Office Comfort Keyboard
The F-Lock is still off at power up, but the F-Keys are opposite of the MS keyboard. Meaning, with F-Lock off, they act like F-Keys not the goofy alternate function. The other thing I like is that they use a more normal layout for the PageUp, PageDown, Home, End, and Delete keys. The downside is that you still must press F-Lock to use Insert, like the MS keyboard.

The Fix
If found this awesome little utility called KeyTweak. It makes use of Microsoft’s Scancode Map registry key to remap your keyboard. This means that it doesn’t run any silly program in your system tray all the time. It just modifies the registry and then it’s done.

With the Logitech keyboard I created very simple mapping and effectively swapped Insert and PrtScn keys. That way I don’t have to touch F-Lock unless I want to use PrnScn and everything is as it should be.

Windows Media Player Plug-in for Firefox
Today I am very proud to announce that we have released another official Microsoft plug-in. It shows another level of interoperability and eagerness in working with the Community to get this released. This plug-in allows you to use Windows Media Player inside of Firefox. It is designed to support the following Windows platforms:

  • Windows XP SP2 (x86)
  • Windows XP SP2 (x64)
  • Windows Vista (x86)
  • Windows Vista (x64)


Port25 is hosting it, and you can download it from here; Media Player Firefox Plugin - DownloadWindows

Preview of upcoming RSSOwl 1.2.4 available

The RSSOwl Team is happy to announce that a preview of upcoming RSSOwl 1.2.4 is now available for download. We are very busy working on the 2.0 release, but there was some time left to adopt the latest version of SWT from the Eclipse 3.3 development cycle. Windows Vista users will benefit from a much better look and feel and those that don't want to use the Internet Explorer as embedded browser on Windows can now switch over to Mozilla (XULRunner). For a complete list of changes in this preview, please consult the changelog.

Userform - Splash screens

When you have made that project that you are proud of and want to give it that finishing touch then why not give it a professional view and finish it off with a splash screen. The key to this is to remove the Top caption or Title area. If you have a look at all applications that have a splash screen you will see that they have no Top caption.

The following technique has these basics that you can use in your splash screens.

  • No Top Caption
  • Hides application, so that all that is viewed is your splash screen
  • Fades in, waits a few secs then fades out with a new image.
  • Closes the userfrom and then loads up your spreadsheet.

All you need is to design your Userform and add images etc, then use via import the 3 modules into your project.

AutoPatcher Status Report
We're nearly there now, i'd say at very least 95% of the work has been completed on the new releases. Really sorry it's taking so long to complete them, especially to those who are waiting for CD/DVD orders to be fulfilled. You can find precise details of exactly whats left to be done in the new progress report.

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Posted by: Lena | 7:05 PM |