Found this great patch to remove ads from Windows Live Messenger.
The patcher does a lot of other stuff, but I haven’t really messed with the other settings.
I just hate seeing those ads down at the bottom of Messenger.
Plus I just found this cool skin for Messenger that makes it look like the Vista.
Very cool.
First off I saw the above icon on Google images and thought it was cool.
Secondly I was listening to cnet’s Buzz Out Loud podcast and they mentioned a couple of cool Firefox keyboard shortcuts that I’m digging. Here are some of them:
Close a tab = Ctrl + W
New tab = Ctrl + T
Move to address bar = Ctrl + L
Move to Google Search box = Ctrl + K
Open downloads tool = Ctrl + J
Those are the major shortcuts that I use. Here are a bunch more.
I figured someone would get this working soon enough. While browsing news over at Google news I thought I’d see what popped up if I searched for Zune. About the second link down was “Use the Microsoft Zune as a hard drive” I gasped a bit (because this is one of the main issues I have with the Zune) and clicked the link. This took me to PVRWire to a post that had only been up for 4 hours. From that post there was a link to a site called Phaleux with the directions. I will repost the instructions here in case the previous site goes missing. But be sure to visit his site. I’ve tried the hack but so far it does not let me get anything off, nor put anything onto the drive. My computer has acted a bit funny a couple of times while browsing the Zune as well. I’ll update this later as I experiment further.
Update 11/26/06:
After playing a bit I am able to drag and drop music from the Zune to my computer using Windows Explorer. But I am not able to write any new data to the Zune. I get an error message “Not able to write the new folder to this location. Either the device has been unplugged or is not responding.” Even though I can continue to browse the folders on the Zune immediately following this error message. So we are close, but not quite there.
From Phaleux’s site:
“I highly recommend backing up these registry values before modifying anything. If you don’t know how to do that, I don’t recommend that you even attempt this right now =)
Function Rpad(ByVal MyValue$, ByVal MyPadCharacter$, ByVal MyPaddedLength%)
Dim x As Integer
Dim PadLength As Integer
Padlength = MyPaddedLength – Len(MyValue)
Dim PadString As String
For x = 1 To Padlength
PadString = MyPadCharacter & PadString
Next
Rpad = MyValue + PadString
End Function
Function lpad(ByVal MyValue$, ByVal MyPadCharacter$, ByVal MyPaddedLength%)
Dim x As Integer
Dim PadLength As Integer
PadLength = MyPaddedLength – Len(MyValue)
Dim PadString As String
For x = 1 To PadLength
PadString = PadString & MyPadCharacter
Next
lpad = MyValue + PadString
End Function
I’ve noticed in recent weeks a new thing show up in my Windows Explorer called “My Sharing Folders.” Apparently it’s something that the new version of MSN Messenger sets up.
Why do all these manufacturers think that they need to add so much junk to my computer without telling me they are going to do so. Then, why not have an easy way to get rid of it let’s say in the options for the program?
I’m very particular about my computer. I use it every day for many hours and I know every detail about what it’s doing, so when little annoyances like this show up I notice them pretty fast.
I found the following instructions on this site to remove the new pesky icon.
If you have some sort of beta version, type this in your start > run:
regsvr32 -u “C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger\fsshext.dll”
If you changed the MSN installation folder, type that instead of the path.
Use this command for the official version:
regsvr32 -u “C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger\fsshext.8.0.0xxx.00.dll”
where “xxx†is your version. (found in help > about Live Messenger)
ps. What does the polar bear have to do with this? Nothing, I went to the zoo recently and it just cracks me up.
Recovering items that have been deleted from the deleted items folder is only available in Microsoft Outlook if you are using an Exchange Server email account.
By default you can only get to the “Recover deleted items” option on the tools menu if you have the deleted items folder selected.
This doesn’t really make much sense because you can shift-delete an item from any folder and that permanently deletes it bypassing the deleted items folder.
The retention times for keeping these deleted items is set on your Exchange Server, I think the default might be only 1 day, so if you permanently deleted items beyond that retention time you are out of luck. I changed our retention time to 14 days. The settings for this are found when you right-click on your mailbox store
With the following registry change you can get to the “Recover deleted items” option on the tools menu from any Outlook folder:
Caution If you use the registry editor incorrectly, you might cause serious problems that might require you to reinstall your operating system. Use the registry editor at your own risk.
1. Exit Outlook.
2. Open the Windows registry editor.
3. Browse to My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options.
4. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type the name DumpsterAlwaysOn.Note Do not type any spaces in the name.
6. Set the DWORD value to 1.
7. Restart Outlook.
The Tools menu now has the Recover Deleted Items command for every Outlook folder.
You’ve got a PC out there running Windows XP or a 2003 Server. You want to do a remote desktop session to it and mess with a users computer. The “allow users to connect remotely to this computer” is not enabled. You don’t want to get up and go to the users computer. Open regedit, goto file/connect remote registry. Enter the name of the computer you want to enable the remote desktop on. Navigate to the following registry key:
HKLM\System\CCS\Control\Terminal Server\fDenyTSConnection
Change the value data to 0. Wait a minute or two and you should be able to connect to the remote computer.
I recently exchanged my Motorola Razr for a Treo 650 with a data plan through Alltel. So far I really like it. There are a couple of things that annoy me about the Palm OS, but there are just as many things about the Pocket PC OS that annoy me too.
So, I setup the Palm Hotsync to sync my Outlook calendar, contacts and such with the Treo 650. After messing with installing applications and playing around a bit the sync began to take a really long time.
A normal sync only takes at most 30 seconds and the sync began to take as long as 4 to 5 minutes. After these sync’s I figured there would be some sort of error message or something but there wasn’t. The log didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. I began uninstalling applications even to the point of nuking the thing and starting over. This worked once, but the long pauses returned.
I messed with the Palm desktop software a bit and tried renaming my Hotsync user, this seemed to work and then the pauses returned and this time renaming the user didn’t work.
What on earth is going on? I have the latest firmware and the latest Palm Desktop. Finally a moment of brilliance hits me and I wonder if it has anything to do with Outlook itself. I open Outlook, which I have setup to connect to an exchange server through cached mode. In cached mode you don’t have to be connected to the exchange server to open outlook and see your current data, you just don’t have the most current data that’s on the exchange server.
Then I connected to my VPN and allowed Outlook to connect to the server and this time the Hotsync returned to normal. Close Outlook, disconnect from the VPN and try Hotsync…long pause returns.
So it looks like if you are syncing with Outlook setup to communicate directly with an exchange server (not through Pop3 or SMTP) and are using cached mode you need to have a live connection to the exchange server, which in my case is done using a VPN connection when I’m not in the office. Live and learn huh?
If you use Microsoft Exchange for your email you should take some time to run the Exchange Best Practices Tool. I ran it on our Exchange server and luckily didn’t find any major flaws in our configuration, but the tool did point out several things that we could be doing differently.
One thing that we didn’t have configured was the Exchange Intelligent Message Filter which we were not utilizing. I recently found out about this filter because of a Microsoft Exchange class I am taking. Any added tools to combat and reduce the amount of spam entering our organization is certainly welcome. This best practice tool told me I didn’t have it enabled and how to turn it on. Just since turning it on I’ve already seen a handful of emails it has blocked that were truly spam and hadn’t been stopped by our third party spam filter Open Relay Filter by Vamsoft (which does do a great job of stopping most spam.)
The tool also pointed out several services that were running on my exchange box that were un-necessary. I was a bit nervous when I went to run it thinking I’d find a bunch of big bad things we had with our Exchange. The tool is available for download for free and is a great tool in securing and maintaining the health of Exchange email systems.
Something happened to one of my Pixelpost installations making my password not work. No problem, I figured I’ll just do the forgot password thing and it should reset my password. Except that didn’t work, I keep getting a error message that says “Database error: Updating the new password failed.” Hmmmm….what now. I remember reading somewhere that if you lose your password you are pretty much hosed.
So I went to the Pixelpost forums and poked around. Joey from team Pixelpost had left this SQL command for someone else who was having a problem with their password:
UPDATE pixelpost_config SET `password`=MD5(‘*****’)
Change the asterix to your desired new password. You’ll need to run this from within something like phpMyAdmin where you can run SQL commands. Once I did this I was able to get in and work. The reset password function still doesn’t work, but it’s no big deal since I can do it this way.