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By hayami.wai, August 2, 2008 9:07 pm

When you try to double click on drives inside Windows Explorer, nothing happens. However if you try opening them by right clicking on them and select Explore, or by using the Run command, they open with no problem. This is probably that your computer had been infected by some virus which creates an autorun.inf file in the root directory of each drive. There are various solutions to this problem.

Deleting the autorun.inf file in each drive

1. Click on the Start button then select Run.
2. Type in cmd and click Ok.
3. In the command prompt window, type cd/ then Enter.
4. Type c: then Enter.
5. Type attrib -r -h -s autorun.inf then Enter.
6. Type del autorun.inf then Enter.
7. Repeat step 4-6 and substitute c: with other hdd drive letter that you have.
8. Restart your computer and try opening the hdd drives in Windows Explorer.

Deleting MountPoints2 registry key. This requires administrators privilege.

1. Click on the Start button then select Run.
2. Type in regedit and click Ok.
3. In the regedit windows, click on Edit on the toolbar and select Find.
4. Type in MountPoints2 and click on Find Next.
5. Delete any MountPoints2 entry you find.
6. Repeat step 4-5 until all MountPoints2 are deleted.
7. Restart your computer and try opening the hdd drives in Windows Explorer.

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By hayami.wai, May 10, 2008 12:36 pm

When you try to boot your Vista PC up and ended with the error which says “BOOTMGR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart. blah blah”. and so, being an obidient person, you proceed to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, only to find that you are back to the same screen. So common sense tells you that when something is missing, unlikely that it will come back from no where. The next thing you do is to pop in the Vista DVD and proceed formatting your PC, totally skipping the diagnostic tools that Microsoft had given you to make your life somewhat easier.

Microsoft had actually included a tool in the Vista DVD to fix BOOTMGR file problem, and its quite a handy tool to save your trouble of reformatting your PC.

1. Boot up your PC using the Vista DVD.
2. At the language selection screen, click Next.
3. On the next screen, click on Repair your computer.
4. In the System Recovery Option screen, select the Windows installation and click Next.
5. In the Choose a recovery tool screen, select Startup Repair.
6. The recovery tool will the proceed to find the problem and fix it. When the recovery process is completed, remove Vista DVD and reboot your computer.

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By hayami.wai, March 17, 2008 12:16 pm

SCSI disk are usually faster than IDE disk. This too applies to virtual hard disk. But if you ever got into a situation where you have deployed your VHD as IDE disk, you can still convert them into SCSI disk without having to rebuild the VHD.

1. Launch Virtual Server Administration Website.
2. On the side panel, under Virtual Machines, choose Configure and select the VM that you want to configure.
3. Click on SCSI adapters in the configuration page.
4. Click on Add SCSI Adapter, SCSI adapter ID: 7 and click OK.
5. Leave the VHD as IDE disk and start the VM.
6. Once inside the VM, go to Device Manager, look under Storage controllers (Windows Vista) or SCSI and RAID controllers (Windows XP). You should see the following
   • Adaptec AIC-7870 PCI SCSI Adapter or
     • If you have Adaptec AIC-7870 PCI SCSI Adapter, you will need to install a new driver. The Adaptec driver will do, but it is a slow SCSI driver. To update the driver
       1. Right click on the adapter and select Update Driver…
       2. Choose Install from a list or specific location and Have Disk.
       3. Browse to %Programfiles%\Virtual Machine Additions and click OK.
       4. The driver will then be installed. Make sure that Microsoft Virtual Machine PCI SCSI Controller is listed in device manager now.
   • Microsoft Virtual Machine PCI SCSI Controller
7. Shutdown the VM.
8. Move the IDE VHD boot disk to a SCSI interface.
9. Start the VM.

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By hayami.wai, March 17, 2008 11:39 am

Whenever you attempt to type an email address (that had been used previously), you’d notice Outlook will provide a drop down list containing previous similar addresses you had used. So after some usage, the list gets longer and you want to clear the history and finding no setting in Outlook and you start to uninstall and reinstall Outlook. So here’s a faster way or you.

1. Close Outlook.
2. Launch Windows Explorer, type %appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook in the address bar and hit enter.
3. locate files with extension *.NK2 and delete them (usually named Outlook.NK2).
4. Launch Outlook.

Another method which allows you to delete selected history.

1. In Outlook, type the address that you wanted to delete.
2. Once the drop down list appear, use your arrow key and navigate to the address to be deleted.
3. Hit Delete key on your keyboard to delete it.

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By hayami.wai, February 28, 2008 9:20 am

Microsoft has just released a new update (kb940510) on the Windows update to tackle some of the widely used hacking method to activate Windows Vista.

Unfortunately due to time constrain, I am unable to test on the behaviour of this update. But do note that this update is listed on the Windows update and is not stealth installation. It is also said that this update will not disable any Vista features except giving you a good WGA nagging.

Might test this update when I have the time.

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By hayami.wai, February 18, 2008 11:56 am

This is especially useful when you have a computer that can be accessed by multiple users or public. To do this, you must first prepare a batch file to execute the various commands to clear the IE cache.

There are various cache that you can clear.

Temporary Internet Files
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 8

Cookies
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 2

History
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 1

Form Data
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 16

Passwords
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 32

Delete All
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 255

Delete All – “Also delete files and settings stored by add-ons”
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 4351

Simply create a file clearIE.bat and type in the command you want, corresponding to the cache that you want to clear. You can also combine multiple commands in the same clearIE.bat to achieve the result you wanted.

Next, fire up Group Policy Editor. Go to Start, Run, then type in gpedit.msc and hit OK.

There are 2 parts after this, depending if you want to clear the cache during logoff or shutdown.

To clear cache during logoff

1. Inside Group Policy Editor, expand User Configuration > Windows Setting > Scripts (Logon/Logoff).
2. On the right panel, select Logoff, right click and select Properties.
3. On Logoff Properties window, click on Add.
4. On Add a script window, click on Browse, navigate to the location where clearIE.bat is at, select it and click Open.
5. Click OK, Apply then OK.

To clear cache during shutdown

1. Inside Group Policy Editor, expand Computer Configuration > Windows Setting > Scripts (Startup/Shutdown).
2. On the right panel, select Shutdown, right click and select Properties.
3. On Shutdown Properties window, click on Add.
4. On Add a script window, click on Browse, navigate to the location where clearIE.bat is at, select it and click Open.
5. Click OK, Apply then OK.

That’s all. Just do some logoff and shutdown to make sure that the batch file is working.

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By hayami.wai, February 18, 2008 10:46 am

1. Download this file.
2. Extract winxp_fix_tasksbar.vbs to any location and execute it.

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By hayami.wai, February 18, 2008 10:16 am

1. Right click on the Quick Launch toolbar (move the mouse cursor to any part of the Quick Launch toolbar other than the icons).
2. Select Open Folder (This will open the folder containing all the shortcuts in the toolbar. The path typically will be C:\Documents and Settings\<_user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch.).
3. Create a *.txt file in the folder.
4. Open the newly created *.txt file and type in
   [Shell]
   Command=2
   IconFile=explorer.exe,3
   [Taskbar]
   Command=ToggleDesktop
5. Save and rename the *.txt file to Show Desktop.scf

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By hayami.wai, January 24, 2008 12:18 am

You can manually edit the registry or run the file below.

*Note that editing the registry wrongly might cause your system to be unstable or even crash. Handle with care.

To edit the registry

1. Go to Start then Run.
2. Type regedit and click on Ok.
3. Inside the registry editor, on the left panel, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main.
4. Then on the right panel, locate RunOnceComplete and RunOnceHasShown.
5. Double click on them and change the Value data to 1.
6. Close the registry editor.

Alternatively, you can download this file and run the registry file inside.

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By hayami.wai, January 21, 2008 10:12 am

This has something to do with the timing issues between the cores. Download AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor Driver Version 1.3.2.0053 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (x86 and x64) from AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor Utilities & Updates to have it fixed.