Tech Thoughts

2001-06-28T00:18:00.000-07:00

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.

2001-06-28T00:16:00.000-07:00

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.

2001-06-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2001-06-18T02:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2001-06-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

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.

2001-06-05T03:49:00.000-07:00

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!

2001-05-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

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

2001-05-19T04:08:00.000-07:00

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!

2001-05-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

PC Mag's MultiRen seems to work great as a batch file renamer, although the "template syntax" takes some familiarization. Comes with everything I need so far, including preview of new filenames. I like it!

2001-05-17T20:02:00.000-07:00

Found this great free downloader on the LangaList called DLExpert. Works great, although I miss the "alt-click adds to job list" feature of ReGet. Plus it has this minor bug on NT4 where the application vanishes when the minimize button is hit! I am writing to the author, but meanwhile, the workaround is to relaunch the application. I am also tracking it for new releases.

Update: Found out that TraySaver was causing the problem on DLExpert no being able to minimize to the tray area on the taskbar. TraySaver is quite neat, as it saves the icons in your tray area just in case Explorer dies from time to time, but it also jumps through hoops to do that, and programs which jump through hoops to do things are typically not very robust and stable, so I am leaving it off my PC at the moment.

2001-05-17T19:49:00.000-07:00

I am looking for a freeware context menu enhancement software for Windows explorer to rename files in batch (this should include the ability to change the case of the filenames). I am still looking, but in the mean time, I have bumped into two great freeware packages:

Folder Size: This gives you an extra "Size" tab in the "Properties" window of ay folder. The size tab will display the size taken up by the files in this folder, as well as files in any subfolders.

Copy To: This adds a "Copy to..." option in the context menu of any file or folder.

These and other context menu enhancements can be found here.

2001-05-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

Does it come as a surprise to you that Bill Gates and his pals were once a coding athlete?

"It was pretty incredible - they were pretty good at what they were doing" ... I found a jump instruction that jumped to the middle of another instruction. Why was this extraordinary? ... if that bit of code was small enough (ie one or two bytes) you could simply encode those one or two bytes inside a two or three byte instruction thus saving the three-byte instruction needed to jump over it ... All that... for three bytes ...

2001-05-16T01:06:00.000-07:00

Got bitten by this NS bug, which is nicely explained on this page:

If an IMG has the style attribute set on it (even to nonsensical declarations), the image will be thrown around the page, styles will stop working and general chaos and page destruction will ensue. To avoid this bug, use a class instead.

Very comprehensive listing of browsers' bugs at this Browsers' Bugs web site.

I was trying to set the border color of an image through CSS:

<img border="3" style="border-color: #ff0000" src="...">

but the image gets thrown around the page under NS.

Using a class parameter will work:

<style> .imgborder { border-color: #ff0000; } </style> <img class="imgborder" border="3" src="...">

but for my application, I can't use a stylesheet, so this option is out for me.

I could also specify the border style in an associated anchor tag:

<a style="border-color: #ff0000" href="..."><img border="3" src="..."></a>

This is provided the image is hyperlinked, and it is not guaranteed in my case. So this option is out for me too.

So looks like I'd have to live with this bug for the time being.

2001-05-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

Finally got down to doing this. Let's test out all the features. This is a link to TrackEngine. This is a piece of bold text. This is italics. Well great! That's all for this first posting.