When IE refuses to display certain web elements, like Flash:

This page provides potentially unsafe information to an ActiveX control. Your current security settings prohibit running controls in this manner. As a result, this page may not display correctly.

your COMCAT.DLL file is damaged or is the wrong version number.

Unregister the file by using:

regsvr32 /u C:\winnt\system32\comcat.dll

Then rename it, and reinstall IE, as described in this Microsoft KB article.

When reinstalling IE, and the following message pops up:

A previous program installation was never completed. You need to restart your computer to complete that installation before running Internet Explorer Setup. Setup will now close.

Locate the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

Delete any PendingFileRenameOperations values in this key. Note: this only works for Windows NT.

The solution is prescribed in this Microsoft KB article.

I have Windows Workstation installed on my C drive, and most of my applications resides on my D drive. Both are NTFS partitions. Recently, my D drive dead during an experiment whose details I shall not go into here. Along with the drive went most of my apps, which I only backed up partially.

The first thing that happened when I started up the system was that some services didn't run anymore, because they resided on my D drive. Actually, this presented a great opportunity for me to do housekeeping. Since I couldn't uninstall the apps which installed these services, I needed a way to manually removed them. I found this great freeware called Windows Manager NT which allowed me to do just that.

Found an alternative to TraySaver, which recovers the tray area after an Explorer crash. It is called Tray Manager, a freeware released by PC Magazine. PC Magazine has been releasing free utiltiies for a long time now, mostly with source code for self study. Their utilities are often focussed and of high quality, and Tray Manager is no exception. It makes use of a service under NT to access the tray area, which seems to make it more robust and stable than TraySaver.

If you are looking for other tray area utilities, there are two more: TrayMin, which allows you to minimize any application into the tray area, and Tray Magician, which hides/unhides the tray area at will. I have tried TrayMin, and it works as advertised too.

I hate the fact that on my Windows NT Workstation, when Explorer crashes, it takes everything down with it, including the taskbar, system tray etc. I remembered there was a way to run these components in separate processes for better isolation, so I seached on Google. Sure enough, I found this on Windows Registry Edits:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER> Software> Microsoft> Windows> CurrentVersion> Explorer
DesktopProcess REG_DWORD 0 | 1
Default: 0
Determines whether the components of Windows NT Explorer run in a single process or in two separate processes.
Value Meaning
0 All of the components of Windows NT Explorer (Explorer, Desktop, and Taskbar) run as separate threads in a single, multithreaded process called Explorer.exe.
1 All instances of Windows NT Explorer run in one process and the Desktop and Taskbar run in a separate process. Both processes are called Explorer.exe.
Warning
Enabling DesktopProcess can interfere with the functions of Windows Explorer if the computer is not equipped to run all processes efficiently. Do not set the value of DesktopProcess to 1 unless the computer has a Pentium processor (or equivalent) and at least 16 MB of physical random access memory.
Note
Windows NT does not add this value to the Registry. You can add it by editing the Registry or by using a program that edits the Registry.
Tip
To verify that DesktopProcess is enabled, use the Processes tab in Task Manager. If the value of DesktopProcess is 1, then at least two instances of the Explorer.exe process should appear in the list of processes (one for the Desktop and Taskbar and one for Windows NT Explorer). For each additional instance of Windows NT Explorer, a new instance of Explorer.exe should appear in the list of processes.

The other day, while in the office, my home machine lost its DHCP lease, and was given another IP address. Since I use my home machine as my personal email server, I couldn't wait until I was home. So I looked around for a simple-to-use port scanner. I found Active Ports, which was free and easy-to-use! I scanned for the IMAP port (143) on my ISP's range of IP addresses, and located a few active IP addresses in no time. Then, I tried FTPing to those active ones, and pinpointed the new IP address of my home machine. Cool!

Didn't know that the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy actually exists on this earth. Check out the legacy left behind by Douglas Adams.

Spotted this handy freeware called Easy Thumbnails for creating accurate thumbnails of your images. Great for web pages! Comes with many different methods of resizing your images. I am sure there is one best method for resizing each particular image, but for now, I will just stick to the default!