From Piriform, the makers of CCleaner, comes a very useful and promising system information summary tool.

It’s called Speccy:

You can Download Speccy Here , including a handy portable version

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On Windows Vista 64 and Windows 7 64, there is a 32 bit version of Remote Desktop Connection (Microsoft Terminal Services Client, mstsc.exe) in %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64.

Running this mstsc.exe will launch the 32 bit process but it will instantly launch the 64-bit mstsc.exe from System32 and shut itself down. This makes it impossible to run Remote Desktop Connection 32 bit.

This is a problem when you have 32 bit Terminal Services add-ins (which won’t run under 64 bit).

Solution: Rename the 64-bit mstsc.exe from System32 to prevent it from replacing the 32-bit process.

This is simple if you have rights to rename that file. If you’re on NTFS you may get a “You require permission from TrustedInstaller to make changes to this file” error.

To get by this error, you can take Ownership of the file and give yourself full permissions:

1. Browse to %SystemRoot%\System32
2. Right click mstsc.exe and choose Properties
3. Go to the Security tab
4. Click Advanced
5. Go to the Owner tab
6. Click Edit
7. From the “Change owner to:” list, choose your user name
8. Click OK
9. Go to the Permissions tab
10. Click Change Permissions…
11. Click Add
12. Enter your user name and click OK
13. Tick the box in the Allow column for Full control
14. Click OK
15. Click OK
16. A Windows Security warning will come up; click Yes to proceed
17. Click OK

Now, you can rename the file mstsc.exe to something like mstsc.exe.bak

Then, you can launch mstsc.exe from %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64 and you will have 32-bit Remote Desktop Connection running.

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Microsoft Security Essentials is a free anti-virus program.

All of the free anti-virus programs out there have usually pretty quickly fallen out of favour with me, in particular the previous community darling AVGFree.

Having a free option from Microsoft, that performs extremely well with minimal resource usage, is a boon.

For privacy reasons, you might want to opt out of the Microsoft SpyNet. Opting out is a very manual process though, with instructions here

Download Microsoft Security Essentials

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I find I have to generate GUIDs often (mostly due to using WiX) and the in-built Tools > Create GUID tool is too cumbersome for this.

I found a blog post that has a simple macro you can customize to bind a keyboard shortcut to paste in a new GUID

Here are some full instructions, using their simple macro code:

1. Tools > Macros > Macro Explorer (or hit ALT+F8)
2. Right click Macros, choose New Macro Project…
3. Choose a location for the Macro project and give it a meaningful name then click Add
4. Rename Module1 to something more meaningful, then double-click to edit the module
5. Insert the code to paste a new GUID into the current cursor position / selection:
   
Public Sub PasteNewGuid()
DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection.Text = "{" & System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString("D").ToUpper() & "}"
End Sub
6. Save the macro project and close the Macro IDE
7. In Visual Studio: Tools > Options, select Environment > Keyboard
8. Find the macro command you created (you can use the Show commands containing: to search on guid)
9. Select the command in the list
10. Ensure Use new shortcut in: has Global selected
11. Place the cursor in Press shortcut keys: and hit the shortcut (ALT+G for me)
12. Hit OK
13. Test it out

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As promised, Opera 10 final was released on Sep 1st

http://www.opera.com/

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Problem(s):

• When attempting to open a folder in Windows Explorer, the folder opens in a new window, even if “Open each folder in the same window” is selected in Folder Options.
• Some links in Internet Explorer don’t open correctly
• Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio: An error with a message like “Unable to cast COM object of type ‘System.__ComObject’ to interface type ‘Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IServiceProvider’. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID ‘{6D5140C1-7436-11CE-8034-00AA006009FA}’ failed due to the following error: No such interface supported (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80004002 (E_NOINTERFACE)). (Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop)
• Visual Studio Team Explorer: When browsing using the Team Explorer window, you may get COM errors similar to those in the SQL Management Studio error above

Explanation:

I’m not sure of the exact details, but this is what I think I’ve found. Perhaps someone at Microsoft would correct or elaborate on this.

Previously, actxprxy.dll (ActiveX Interface Marshaling Library) was used as the proxy for a multitude of system interfaces, such as IShellFolder and IServiceProvider.

In Windows 7 (and probably Vista also), the GUID of this library has changed from {B8DA6310-E19B-11D0-933C-00A0C90DCAA9} to {C90250F3-4D7D-4991-9B69-A5C5BC1C2AE6}

Secondly, there is also a new Proxy/Stub provider found in ieproxy.dll of Internet Explorer (IE ActiveX Interface Marshaling Library). Some interfaces that previously used actxprxy.dll are now registered to use ieproxy.dll.

Now various problematic software (such as Vault 3.x) will try to register against actxproxy using the old GUID, and for interfaces now proxied by ieproxy.dll.

Solution

You must use regsvr32 to re-register the two proxy DLLs, then reboot

You can use the below batch file to do this.

You must run this batch file with administrative privileges (right click on the file and choose Run as administrator):

If you don’t run the batch file as an administrator, you will get an error as pictured:

[Download RegisterActxprxyAndIeproxy.cmd]

RegisterActxprxyAndIeproxy.cmd source:

@echo off

:: 32 bit and 64 bit
IF EXIST "%SystemRoot%\System32\actxprxy.dll" "%SystemRoot%\System32\regsvr32.exe" "%SystemRoot%\System32\actxprxy.dll"
IF EXIST "%ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\ieproxy.dll" "%SystemRoot%\System32\regsvr32.exe" "%ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\ieproxy.dll"

:: 64 bit only (32bit on 64 bit)
IF EXIST "%WinDir%\SysWOW64\actxprxy.dll" "%WinDir%\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe" "%WinDir%\SysWOW64\actxprxy.dll"
IF EXIST "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Internet Explorer\ieproxy.dll" "%WinDir%\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe" "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Internet Explorer\ieproxy.dll"

Don’t forget to reboot after re-registering the DLLs!

Edit: The script has been updated to support 64-bit Windows

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From Using batch parameters [microsoft.com]:

Cmd.exe provides the batch parameter expansion variables %0 through %9. When you use batch parameters in a batch file, %0 is replaced by the batch file name, and %1 through %9 are replaced by the corresponding arguments that you type at the command line

These batch parameter modifiers variable arguments are immensely useful.

That document is missing some examples, so I’ve put together a simple table:

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Opera 10 Beta 3 is out! The timing is uncanny because the last time I did a clean install of Windows 7, Beta 2 came out hours after I had done a new install.

Today I installed Windows 7 RTM on my machine at work, and then hours later, a new beta of Opera 10. What the?

[Opera 10 Beta 3 @ opera.com]

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I had a bit of trouble getting WC3Banlist (mainly due to its dependency on WinPcap) on Windows 7

This is working on Windows 7 RC1, with User Acount Control (UAC) on (set to Default)

I did quite a few things when troubleshooting so it’s hard to replicate the exact steps, but here’s some instructions on how I have it set up now:

Install WinPcap

1. Download WinPcap 4.1
2. Right click the downloaded installer exe and choose Properties
3. Go to the Compatibility tab
4. In Compatibility mode, Tick “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and choose Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) from the drop-down
5. Tick “Run this program as an administrator” in Privilege Level
6. Hit OK
7. Run the exe and go through the normal installation

Install WC3Banlist

1. Download WC3Banlist
2. Right click the installation file and choose Run as administrator
3. Untick “Install WinPcap 3.1 (required)” when you get to the “Select additional tasks” step and proceed as normal

Run Wc3Banlist

1. Browse to where you installed banlist and open up file properties for wc3banlist.exe
2. Go to the Compatibility tab and tick Run as an administrator
3. Click OK
4. Run wc3banlist.exe

Verify

1. Go to the Preferences tab in Wc3Banlist
2. Select Network in the list on the left navigation pane
3. Ensure your network card(s) are listed in the drop-down
4. You can click Diagnostics to verify banlist can receive TCP packets

Troubleshooting

If this still isn’t working, I would recommend turning off UAC and trying again.

1. To turn off UAC, open the Control Panel (Start > Control Panel)
2. Click System and Security
3. Under Action Center, click Change User Account Control settings
4. Drag the slider down to Never Notify
5. Click OK
6. You have to restart for this to take effect

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Opera 10 Alpha last night prompted me to automatically update, and lo and behold it installed the Beta 1.

The most noticeable change is the default skin, which is lighter and more consistent, using some new etching effects and icons everywhere. More changes are on the horizon for this for Beta 2, from the skin designer John Hicks.

A cool new enhancement is you can drag down the tab bar to get thumbnails for all the tabs, known as Visual Tabs:

There’s now an interface to customize the Speed Dial (rather than manually editing ini files)

Opera Turbo, the Opera proxy service that offers compression of web pages (suitable for low-bandwidth connections) is built in and can be switched on or off or set to auto mode (turning itself on if it detects you’re on a slow internet connection). I have tested this out while I’m on 64kbps, and it’s ok but it’s probably not worth it unless Opera have some New Zealand or Australia proxies. I suspect it would work great in Europe.

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