Friday, May 4, 2012

Moving ‘My Documents’ to SkyDrive

In the past week the cloud wars have greatly benefited consumers like me, with Google launching its Google Drive service and Dropbox increasing its free user storage to 4gb and the software giant Microsoft finally coming out with their premier desktop sync tool for their SkyDrive service.

I have always liked Sky Drive better than other Photo uploading services( I used it primarily as a photo backup and sharing service) because of the 25gb storage it offered (per account) and also the facility to upload images in their original resolution. Now that Sky Drive has its windows sync application , I can finally move the My Documents folder to the Cloud. I’ve had a fare share of hard drive crashes and have lost out on some data that I would have better of backing up. Unfortunately I am not into the habit of backing up stuff. I had adopted an alternate strategy of saving all my files to the Dropbox folder. But there are always those quick saves that get placed in the default my documents and also the save game files that are forever lost in every hard drive crash. So finally after testing the Sky Drive app for a few days, I decided to move the My Documents folder to the Sky Drive entirely.

Moving your my documents is pretty simple. Just right click on your My Documents Folder and select the new location.

Image capture of the My Documents folder which is under the Libraries > Documents

In windows 7, the option to change the location would appear if when the folder that is at Libraries->Documents->My Documents. In the picture my ‘My Documents’ folder is now changed to SkyDrive.

prop

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Hiding an administrator account in windows 7

 

Today I was just toying around with the idea of having a root user in windows 7 and have my user account changed to the Standard one so that it would be like on a Linux machine where I will have to put in the root users password for running any thing that requires administrator privileges. Now it is just easily possible to do this by creating an administrative account from the control panel, but I wanted the admistrative account to remain hidden from the welcome screen. I assumed that I could just logon to the root administrative account by using the ctrl+alt+del at the welcome screen.

I did the following steps to hide the administrative account :

I navigated to  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon in the registry

Created a new key SpecialAccounts

Created a new key inside SpecialAccounts called UserLists

Then made a dword 32 bit with the name of the account root and set the value to 0

Now my account is a standard on and the root account is administrator.

Sadly when I tried to run a program that need administrative privileges I faced a critical problem!

I couldn’t click on the Yes button on the administrative privilege dialog box , it was hidden too!!

I couldn’t undo any changes to the registry as I had no privileges

I couldn’t logon to the root account even in safe mode.

This was a serious problem, luckily I found a solution on the internet.

I typed in user:root "control userpasswords2"

it asked me for the root password , I was so happy

I put in the password and added my account which was a standard account to the Administrators group.

Logged off and logged back in and my problem was solved I was Administrator again.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Outlook web access

Microsoft outlook web access is now widely being used in offices and educational institutions.More and more organizations are switching to Microsoft exchange server for their organizational mail.However people don’t like change and this new outlook application is not the simplest of things to use either.

One of the problems with this application is that its not easy to import contacts from the outlook web access program.

For doing this one has to manually import as csv file from outlook 2010/2007 on the computer and then sync it.

Something else I’ve learned about this new app is that all the global address can be locally accessed.

For achiving this one has to do as follows

In outlook 2010

1

23

 

That’s it.

Multimedia on Opensuse 11.3

I spent a lot of time installing multimedia codecs on linux distribution opensuse 11.3

A few point to remember while doing this are:

Add packman to the repository list

Install all the essential codecs like win32codecs-all and mp3,xvid etc.

After all this I got video and mp3 to play on my OS but there was no audio in the video.I look all over the internet, installing reinstalling the packages over and over again.

Finally when I was just about to give up I looked at the KDE mixer one last time and found the PM volume is zero.

I couldn’t think of volume being a problem as MP3 played loud and clear. So did youtube videos.

I seems that the digital audio from divx and xvid files needed too be outputted in pcm so as soon as I raised the PCM volume the was sound!!

Friday, July 23, 2010

MTNL Digital certificates and CAPICOM

CAPICOM is and ActiveX control developed by Microsoft , that enables the user to access to  digital certificates in a computer via the cryptography service.

CAPICOM has been discontinued by Microsoft.It is included in the vista OS and can be downloaded for all other OS preceding windows 7

MTNL’s e-Procurement system is one such application that requires users to login using a username and password.Then the user is to use the users Digital certificate to authenticate the session and access the e-procurement system.

The problem arises while using Windows 7 to access the e-procurement system.

However Microsoft’s .NET Framework 3.5 consists of equivalent functions.

Hence installation of .NET framework 3.5 is required for systems that need the CAPICOM control for accessing digital certificates.

The easiest way to do this is use Windows Update and install all the updates.Gradually .NET framework also gets installed.

Friday, April 23, 2010

DELL BLUETOOTH PROBLEM

I had this problem with Dell INSPIRON’s wireless Bluetooth adapter  WIDCOMM made by Broadcom corp.

The Bluetooth connection would break off after a few minutes whenever I used my Sony Bluetooth stereo headset with the laptop

The peculiar thing about the problem was that this happened only when the headphone was in stereo headset mode and not when it was acting as a hands free for Skype calls.

The Problem:

  • Bluetooth Icon disappears from the system tray
  • The Laptop doesn't appear to have Bluetooth after this point,
  • Other devices do not ‘see’ or ‘find’ the laptop as a Bluetooth device
  • Everything returns to normal after a restart.

The Observation

For some reason after a certain amount of time the Bluetooth adapter switches off and the laptop no longer acts as Bluetooth pair able device.

The Solution

Before applying the solution here is a checklist of things that needs to be checked before hand

Is the Bluetooth ‘turned on’ ,it could just be turned off/on  by the following

  • BIOS
  • Function Key on the Laptop [f2]

Have you installed the latest dell Bluetooth driver windows (in my case dell Bluetooth driver windows 7)

You can find these drivers at the dell support website

Finally all I did was

  1. Go to the Device manager
  2. bluetooth-1
  3. Select the Bluetooth Device
  4. Right click on it and select properties
  5. Go to power management tab
  1. In this tab
  2. UNCHECK (if checked) the

Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power

bluettoth 2

That's it click on OK and close the device manager.

This fixed the problem for me

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Manually Removing Office 2007 (manual uninstall)

Note

If you are planning to remove office 2007 manually because you have an error “office <word/excel...> is not installed for the current user”

then there are two possible causes

  1. you are using a genuine version of office 2007 and something went wrong with an update or some thing happened unexpected by the program

  2. you used an activation patch on your office 2007 copy that was downloaded from the internet and then updated it to SP2 or later manually or using windows update

Now if it was the first then you may have tried reinstalling to no avail and want to remove all traces of office 2007 to reinstall,well this guide is for you.(found at microsoft knowledge base)

But if it is the second reason then you simply need to reapply the activation patch!

Removing Office 2007 Manually.

Step 1:

  • Click Start, click Run, type installer, and then click OK.
    This process opens the %windir%\Installer folder.

  • On the View menu, click Details.

Important To use the View menu in Windows Vista, you must press the ALT key first to display the menu bar, and then click the View menu.

On the View menu, click Choose Details.

  • Click to select the Subject check box, type 340 in the Width of selected column (in pixels) box, and then click OK.

  • For each .msi file where the subject is "Microsoft Office Product_Name 2007," right-click the .msi file, and then click Uninstall.
    Note Product_Name is a placeholder for the name of the 2007 Microsoft Office product.

Step 2: Stop the Office Source Engine service:
  1. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, click Start, click Run, type services.msc in the Open box, and then click OK.
    For Windows Vista, click Start

    type services.msc, and then press ENTER.

  2. In the Services window, determine whether the Office Source Engine service is running. If this service is running, right-click Office Source Engine, and then click Stop.

  3. Close the Services window.

Step 3: Remove any remaining 2007 Microsoft Office installation folders
  1. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, click Start, click Run, type %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared in the Open box, and then click OK.
    For Windows Vista, click Start

    click Start Search, type %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared, and then press ENTER.

    Note On a computer that is running a 64-bit version of Windows Vista, type %CommonProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Shared, and then press ENTER.

  2. If the following folders are present, delete them:

    • Office12

    • Source Engine

  3. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, click Start, click Run, type %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office, and then click OK.
    Note On a computer that is running a 64-bit version of Windows XP, type %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office, and then press ENTER.
    For Windows Vista, click Start Search, type %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office, and then press ENTER.

    Note On a computer that is running a 64-bit version of Windows Vista, type %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Office, and then press ENTER.

On the root folder of each hard disk drive, locate and then open the MSOCache folder. If you cannot see the MSOCache folder, follow these steps:

  1. Open Windows Explorer, and then on the Tools menu click Folder Options.

  2. Click the View tab.

  3. In the Advanced settings pane under Hidden files and folders, click Show hidden files and folders.

  4. Click to clear the Hide protected operating system files check box, and then click OK.

  • Open the drive_letter:\MSOCache\All Users folder, and then delete every folder that has the following text in the folder name:

0FF1CE)-

Note This text contains a zero and a one for the letters "O" and "I."

Step 4: Remove any remaining 2007 Microsoft Office installation files
  1. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, click Start, click Run, type %appdata%\microsoft\templates, and then click OK.
    For Windows Vista, click Start

    click Start Search, type %appdata%\microsoft\templates, and then press ENTER.

  2. Delete the following files:

    • Normal.dotm

    • Normalemail.dotm

  3. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, click Start, click Run, type %appdata%\microsoft\document building blocks\Language_ID, and then click OK.
    For Windows Vista, click Start

    click Start Search, type %appdata%\microsoft\document building blocks\Language ID, and then press ENTER.
    Notes

    • If you cannot open this folder because the folder does not exist, go to step 6.

    • Language_ID is a placeholder for the four-digit number that represents the language of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. For example, if you use the English version of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, the Language_ID value is 1033. If the Language_ID is not known, type %appdata%\microsoft\document building blocks, and then open the subfolder in that location.

  4. Delete the Building blocks.dotx file.

  5. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, click Start, click Run, type %temp%, and then click OK.
    For Windows Vista, click Start

    click Start Search, type %temp%, and then press ENTER.

  6. On the Edit menu, click Select All.

  7. On the File menu, click Delete.

  8. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, click Start, click Run, type %AllUsersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Data, and then click OK.
    For Windows Vista, click Start

    click Start Search, type %AllUsersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Data, and then press ENTER.

  9. Delete only the Opa12.dat file.

Step 5: Remove the registry subkeys of the 2007 Microsoft Office system

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/ ) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

  1. Locate and then delete the registry subkeys of the 2007 Microsoft Office system if they are present. To do this, follow these steps:

    1. For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
      For Windows Vista, click Start

      click Start Search, type regedit, and then click OK.

    2. Click the following subkey:

      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0

    3. On the File menu, click Export, type DeletedKey01, and then click Save.

    4. On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click Yes to confirm the deletion.

    5. For each registry subkey in the following list, repeat steps 1a through 1d. Change the name of the exported key by one for each subkey.
      For example, type DeletedKey02 for the second key, type DeletedKey03 for the third key, and so on.
      Note In the following registry keys, the asterisk character (*) represents one or more characters in the subkey name.
      32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows:

      • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\12.0

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Delivery\SourceEngine\Downloads\*0FF1CE}-*

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*0FF1CE*

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UpgradeCodes\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ose

      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Features\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\UpgradeCodes\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Win32Assemblies\*Office12*

      64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows:

      • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\12.0

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\Delivery\SourceEngine\Downloads\*0FF1CE}-*

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*0FF1CE*

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UpgradeCodes\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ose

      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Features\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\UpgradeCodes\*F01FEC

      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Win32Assemblies\*Office12*

  2. Locate the following registry subkey:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

    Note On a computer that is running a 64-bit version of Windows, locate the following registry subkey instead:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

  3. On the File menu, click Export, type UninstallKey01, and then click Save.

  4. Under the Uninstall subkey that you located in step 2, click each subkey, and then determine whether the subkey has the following value assigned to it:

    1. Name: UninstallString

    2. Data: file_name path\Office Setup Controller\Setup.exe path
      Note In this example, file_name is a placeholder for the name of an installation program, and path is a placeholder for the file path.

  5. If the subkey contains the name and the data that are described in step 4, click Delete on the Edit menu. Otherwise, go to step 4.

  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you locate and then delete every subkey that matches the name and the data that are described in step 4.

  7. Close Registry Editor.

Step 6: Restart the computer

Restart the computer. If the uninstall was successful, you are finished and can now reinstall the 2007 Microsoft Office system if you want.

Additional registry information

UserInfo subkeys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\UserInfo

Shadow subkeys for Windows Server 2003 and for earlier versions of Windows Server:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0

Shadow subkeys for Windows Server 2008:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Terminal Server\Install\Software