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  • Keep your icons out of my system tray!-

    Related topic: System Tray Scan Utility - identify programs that have icons in the tray.

    I don't know about you, but I am saddened whenever I use a non-techie friend's computer and see more than two or three active tray icons in the Windows taskbar "system tray"*. (Usually I see six, seven, eight or even a few dozen!)

    Brand new Dell 1501 system tray loaded with with an obscene number of running tasks Why does it bother me? Because, most of the time, the computer owner has no idea what those icons are for, or how they got there. It means that third-party installers (or worse, computer integrators or 'manufacturers' like Dell) have hooked more stuff into the auto start chain, which also means: more memory used, longer startup times, another prime opportunity to break the user's system with even more bloated, buggy software.
  • Living without antivirus software- Ok, I'll admit it. I've been living dangerously for the last several years. To be blunt: I refuse to install any kind of antivirus or personal firewall software on most of my computers. This includes a Windows XP Home system that was used by my children as a web surfing / email / game system. I've suffered zero infections during this time. (The only time I ever suffered a malware infection was before, when I did rely on Norton Antivirus to protect the kids' computer.) Why do I refuse to use these massively popular products? Simple. I am convinced that they cause more harm than good, and that they foster a false sense of security - leading users to engage in riskier behavior. Further, antivirus software is almost always behind the curve - by definition, the antivirus people are playing catch-up with the malware writers. It's a good living for them, but I choose not to contribute to it. As a software developer, I cannot afford any downtime due to buggy software, and yes - antivirus software has bugs. Not long ago, one major antivirus package ran amok, causing widespread damage by deleting harmless user data and programs.
  • Microsoft hurts own market dominance - WPA, WGA- [ed. note: this was originally posted on 6/30/2006 09:21:00 AM] There were stories going around about Microsoft having the ability to 'pull the plug' on XP installations if Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is not installed on a user's machine: Now, this may turn out to be FUD and disinformation, but if this is even partly true... very bad move on Microsoft's part. Even if it's totally untrue -- Microsoft ought to expect that their actions with Microsoft's Product Activation (WPA) and WGA expose them to broad suspicion about their motives.
  • Antivirus software runs wild; damages user files.- Yes, Virginia, anti-virus software has bugs too!
    For over five hours Friday, McAfee's anti-virus software erroneously flagged hundreds of legitimate executables as a malicious virus, leading some customers to quarantine or delete the offending files and render applications such as Microsoft Excel inoperative. An error in McAfee's daily virus definition file (dubbed "DAT") identified the files as W95/CTX, a virus first discovered in 2004. All editions of McAfee's on-demand-scanning products, including both the enterprise and consumer versions of VirusScan, were affected.
  • Another Anti-virus related SNAFU- In the news: another SNAFU related to malfunctioning anti-virus software. See: Symantec breaks Chinese XP systems due to a false positive.
  • Another preinstalled software mop-up operation- I had the 'honor' of rescuing yet another victim of a pre-installed software nightmare. A new co-worker was working with his notebook (a Hewlett-Packard, recent vintage, less than a year old with Vista Home Basic installed). The complaint? Minimum five (yes, FIVE) minute boot time from power-on to desktop interaction. After a cursory examination, I found that it wasn't a hardware problem, nor was it due to memory limitations: the system had 512MB RAM, Vista was using just over 300MB with no other applications running (yes, that's a lot, but this is Vista, after all).
  • Essential Windows Utilities-

    Here's a shortlist of utilities I think are essential for regular users of Windows-based systems.

    Most of these are aimed at keeping your system running cleanly, eliminating problems, or checking the status of hard disk drives or memory hardware.

    If you have a suggestion or find a broken link, please use our contact page to let us know.

  • lsass.exe - what is it?- LSASS.exe (the 'LSA Shell') is part of the Windows security services, dealing mainly with local security policies. I've seen two major variants: the export version (weak crypto) and the domestic version, which is supposed to offer 128-bit encryption.
  • DLL Error: esent.dll and wuauclt.exe - Access violations and other errors after user logs in- A friend had me check out his ailing Windows XP Home notebook computer last night. Every time he booted the computer, it would display an endless stream of error messages about wuauclt.exe having caused an access violation. This message would reappear every 30 seconds or so. Microsoft has a hotfix (see 'related links', below) that is supposed to address this problem, but I was unable to install the hotfix - the system would display an error message saying that it could not verify the system configuration, and therefore could not install the hotfix. As it turns out, the computer in question had suffered a series of hard disk failures - the system event log showed a series of disk bad block errors dating back over a month. So, I expect that critical files on the hard disk have been corrupted - including, perhaps, the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) database or related files used by esent.dll.
  • DLL Errors and how to fix them-

    Windows XP Troubleshooting

    When you encounter a Dynamic-Link Library error (DLL error) or related Windows XP error, what can you do about it? How can you track down the source of the problem and, one hopes, fix a Windows XP problem? With a little bit of Windows XP troubleshooting skills one can usually find the problem and fix it. If a Windows error of this type is troubling you, it can be fixed in most cases with some effort.
  • Adware and spyware and how to remove them-

    An epidemic of uninvited guests

    One of the recurring problems I encounter is spyware and adware. When helping home or other casual Windows users with performance problems on their Windows XP systems, I frequently encounter programs that have installed themselves without the users' knowledge - invariably, I hear "I have no idea how that got there." Upon inspection, I often find a variety of 'hidden' program set to run when the computer is started. These unwelcome and uninvited guests pests bring a variety of problems with them, so it's always best to eliminate them from the computer whenever possible.
  • Windows XP Themes- Windows XP supports look and feel customization using 'themes'. Themes are collections of settings and images that provide a complete appearance 'package' for your XP system. When you select a new theme, Windows XP takes on a customized appearance that is controlled by the theme's settings and imagery. The customizations can include fonts, colors, desktop wallpaper, and other Windows XP visual styles elements. You can give your Windows XP system a completely unique look and feel. Of course, you can override the theme's settings, so, if you want to use a different wallpaper/desktop background, or change the font size or title bar color, you can change those settings.
  • D-Link DWL-650 Drivers-

    D-Link DWL-650 Info and Drivers

    Interesting article regarding an external antenna for this card:


    http://c0rtex.com/~will/antenna/

    (older version archived here) http://www.guerrilla.net/reference/80211_mod/dwl-650_ext_antenna/

    Alternative drivers for D-Link DWL-650 wireless network card may be located at D-Link's UK site:

    ftp://ftp.dlink.co.uk/pub/wireless/dwl-650/

  • Remove unwanted items from the Vista Welcome Center- You can remove items from (or add items to) the Vista Welcome Center. If your Windows Vista machine came bundled with a bunch of pre-loaded software and trialware (as do most consumer machines) you are likely to see promotional entries in the welcome center that may be more annoying than useful - for example, if you uninstall the cure-worse-than-the-disease anti virus software or some of the other disk-filler trialware, you will probably still see lingering but non-functional items in the Welcome Center long after you uninstalled the related programs.
  • Visual Studio .Net 2003 standard include directories- Just in case anyone needs this, I thought I'd list this here. I needed to restore the standard include directories for Visual Studio .Net 2003. So, without further ado, here they are: 
    $(VCInstallDir)Include
$(VCInstallDir)atlmfc\include
$(VCInstallDir)PlatformSDK\include\prerelease
$(VCInstallDir)PlatformSDK\include
$(FrameworkSDK)include
  • WhyReboot-

    Why Reboot?

    WhyReboot is a small (~100KB) Windows application that helps you decide whether to reboot your computer after running an installer. It does this by displaying a list of "pending file operations" (rename, delete, etc) that will occur after rebooting your computer. Quite often, no reboot is really needed.

    You can download the utility by clicking the file attachment link at the end of this article.

    December 18, 2006 news flash: Version 1.0.1.537 now available. See our news release for more information.

    Ministry of Silly Prompts

    "Would you like to restart your computer now?" Arguably the most aggravating prompt displayed by your Windows-based computer.

    You know, when I woke up this morning, I said to myself, "I think I'd like to reboot my computer several dozen times today."

    Why should you have to reboot your Windows-based computer so many times when installing software? Why do Microsoft Windows installers create such a mess?

  • IECacheList Lite-

    Display the contents of Internet Explorer's index.dat files, including 'lost' and hidden content

    Current Version: 1.0.2.0

    Overview

    Have you ever wondered about the contents of the Internet Explorer ("IE") cache? Wanted to know if the cache is really empty when you tell (or ask) IE to delete temporary files? Want to know what's kept in those INDEX.DAT files that are stored in your user profile?

    IECacheList Lite is a command line utility that will examine the contents of Internet Explorer's index.dat files and display them for you. The method used by IECacheList is designed to ensure that no 'hidden' or lost information escapes detection.

    The interesting thing about these files is that the IE cache tends to accumulate dead information, some of which remains even after you tell Internet Explorer to empty the cache, clear the history, delete cookies, etc. This causes the index.dat file to grow over time, accumulating these 'lost' bits of data on your hard drive(s). Another oddity is that IE seems to leave multiple copies of index.dat in different locations on the computer's hard drives, perhaps due to changing configuration or service patches.


    These problems have been attributed to a number of causes: 'bugs' in IE's cache management code, malicious data gathering by Microsoft, etc. See Google search: "index.dat hidden" for juicy details along with a dose of paranoia.

    In any case, it's never a good idea to accumulate bits of your surfing history, cookies, and other information scattered all over your system. Knowing about the information that is stored on your computer is a good way to become better aware of the need to clean this data from time to time. IECacheList is a good way to learn about it.

    Capabilities

    100% Clean!
    • Quickly display Internet Explorer cache, history, cookies index.dat file contents for currently logged in user account.
    • Allows logging of output to a text file for later use.

    Download

    Click here to download the latest version.

    System Requirements

    IECacheList Lite has been tested on Internet Explorer versions 5 through 7, on Windows 9x/ME, 2000, and XP.

    NOTE: Windows NT4 systems may have some problems depending on the installed version of Internet Explorer. We have not tested on Internet Explorer version 4, although it should work. IECacheList Lite does not work with Internet Explorer version 3 or earlier.

    Related links

  • Find Compressed Files-

    Locate NTFS compressed (or uncompressed) files on your system

    Overview

    I was interested in locating all the compressed files in my \Winnt (%SYSTEMROOT%) directory, as I was concerned that the Disk Cleanup utility had compressed often-used system components, which could result in a significant performance degradation.

    The built-in command line utility compact.exe that is included with Win2k and XP (and perhaps NT4) produced output that I found less than useful -- it was too verbose for my purposes (I wanted to generate a list of files, one per line).

  • PMMon - Monitor Win32 Power Management Events-
    Mentioned on Daily Cup of Tech 1/10/2007
    PMMon monitors your system for Win32 power management events that are sent to all application windows, under the WM_POWERBROADCAST window message. These messages are then decoded and displayed in a log window. Where possible, the delta between previous and current values are shown. The current battery power level (if available) is shown in a colored bar at the top of the window.
  • Windows System Tray Scan Utility-

    What programs are running your system tray?

    This command-line utility for Windows XP or Server 2003 will tell you which programs have inserted themselves into your "system tray"*.
    It generates a list of PIDs, the program's location, and the number of visible and hidden icons for each program that has inserted itself into your system tray.

  • Block MySpace.com on Windows: zero cost, no additional software-

    I've been asked how to prevent access to myspace.com on Windows systems without having to purchase or install blocking software. Well, there's a free and simple way to do this.

    Here's a quick trick to block myspace.com on a Windows system. Basically, you are editing a text file on your computer, adding an entry to it. This file is known as the 'hosts' file, and it allows you to block sites using a very simple but effective method.

  • Fast User Switching and Welcome Screen in Windows XP- Originally published 8/15/02

    If you are having problems in Windows XP Home or Pro, with Fast User Switching enabled and you are using the "Welcome Screen" feature, check this out.

  • New WhyReboot version (1.0.1) released-

    December 18, 2006 News flash: Version 1.0.1.537 of our popular free utility WhyReboot is now available for download.

    As before, it helps you determine whether you need to reboot your Windows computer after running an installer.

    This version adds several UI enhancements requested by users: copy to clipboard, window resizing, word wrapping in log output, and several other UI enhancements.

    Other enhancements are in the works, so please stay tuned!

  • WinXP/IE6/Sendmail.dll-

    Updated: 2005.08.18
    Added links to WFP info and tools

    When you click the "Send a Link..." menu item in Internet Explorer 6, Outlook Express 6 attaches a .URL file, but doesn't insert a plain-text version of the link in your email message.

    I don't know who thought that this was a good thing, but it is very annoying.

    Here's some info on how you might be able to fix it. (I had used these techniques on a pre-SP1 XP Pro installation, but there have been some changes since then, so please check the updates below.)

  • SysTrayScanCmd 0.0.9.2b released-
    Version 0.0.9.2.b (Beta) of the Windows shell tray scan utility is now available. This command-line utility provides a list of programs that have placed icons in the Windows shell tray, including the path to the executable file.
  • DLL Error: Illegal System DLL Relocation- If you are running Windows XP SP2 (including Media Center and Tablet Edition), and you have applied the Microsoft updates 925902 (MS07-017) and security update 928843 (MS07-008), and you are using Realtek audio components on your system, you may receive this error message when trying to use ElsterFormular, Realtek HD Audio Control Panel, TUGZip, and CD-Tag.
    {application name} - Illegal System DLL Relocation The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL C:\Windows\System32\Hhctrl.ocx occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.
  • Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for Windows XP!- It looks as if Windows XP's number is up. According to various reports, Microsoft will be pulling the rug out from under Windows XP by forcing manufacturers to stop selling machines with XP by the end of 2008.