Workaround: EPSON Status Monitor under Windows Vista

Since EPSON Status Monitor does not work properly under Windows Vista I recommend extracting the installation files and simulate an old operating system (Windows XP SP2) by using the compatibility tab for all EXE files in the folder.

Then install and enjoy!

 

P.S. You can force a cartridge change on a EPSON Stylus Color printer even without using the EPSON Status Monitor software. Read here.

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Optimizing VMware virtual machines with PerfectDisk 2008 grows, instead of shrinks, the virtual disk

Prerequisites:

 

Situation:

  • After "optimizing" the VM the file grows (in my case from 13 GB to 100 GB, which is the maximum size of the dynamic disk)

 

Workaround:

  • Create a full clone of your VM (this copies all the linked disks + your VM into a target disk). You are not using the base disks from that moment on. But the resulting VM will be nice and small and in the future you can use PerfectDisk again to optimize and shrink your VM.

 

Background:

  • VMs with linked disks are not available for SHRINK operations.
  • WIthout linked disks this works perfectly.
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Not enough free space to create a full clone out of a linked clone with VMware

Situation:

  • You have a linked clone.
  • You do not have any snapshots, just the current state.
  • You want to create a full clone out of the base image(s) and the current state using the VMware Wizard.
  • You get the error message that you need (3.5 GB) of free hard drive space.
  • Freeing space on the source and target drive does not seem to help.

Solution

  • Just create a snapshop and re-try the full-clone-creation.

Enjoy!

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A central place for Visual Studio hot fixes

can be found here:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?TagName=Hotfix

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WORKAROUND: "Show window contents while dragging" appearance option deactivated after every restart

You are sure a Dell user!

And you are certainly not alone:

http://www.5starsupport.com/xp-faq/1-67.htm

http://help.lockergnome.com/windows/Show-window-contents-dragging-problem-ftopict7815.html

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/9300-show-window-contents-while-dragging-option-doesnt-stick.html

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/9293-show-window-contents-while-dragging.html?highlight=dragging

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-319387.php

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=104214

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/25218-35-show-window-contents-dragging-work

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=100264&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=98039&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=118786&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_video&message.id=106470&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=sw_winxp&message.id=137349&c=us&l=en&cs=19&s=dhs

http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics/2004-02/0411.html

http://www.tutorials-win.com/MaintainXP/Show-window/

Possible Workarounds:

  • Uninstall Dell Media Experience
    (seems to be cause for the most of the links above, but I handn't installed it)
  • Use MSCONFIG to disable the services of your video and audio drivers.
    (this solved it in my case on a Dell XPS M1330 64-bit)
  • Add this small tool to your autostart programs

HTH!

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INFO: .REG files can also delete keys and values

.REG files can not only add and modify but also delete keys and values from the Windows registry.

To delete a registry key

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Test]

To delete a registry value

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Test
"TestValue"=-

Enjoy!

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WORKAROUND: Mail icon missing in Control Panel of Vista 64-bit

You need to open the item "View 32-bit Control Panel Items". And there it is. :)

Enjoy!

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My header area is not showing when creating a new Word Document

... and even resetting the normal.dot won't help you there.

But it's soo simple. A double click between the border between your document and the rulers will display them. Read the full story here.

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INFO: Administrative shares (c$, d$, etc.) disabled by default in Windows Vista

You need to make a registry change to make it work.

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Driver: Broadcom 57XX/59XX Gigabit Integrated Controller for Dell XPS M1330 running Vista 64-bit

Thanks to Shad, I have now found Vista 64-bit drivers for my network card as well as a generic driver for the touchpad for my Dell XPS M1330.

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INFO: Access denied on SendTo folder under Windows Vista

If you get the message that the access for "C:\Users\<Username>\SendTo" is denied it doesn't mean you don't have the necessary permissions - but rather that you are looking at the wrong place since the SendTo folder was moved to:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

At the old location there is a NTFS junction which redirects read/write access to the SendTo folder. Unfortunately Windows Explorer won't follow this link and doesn't show you want's in there (stating the access was denied).

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PRB: Clean Vista x64 installation freezes with blue screen on Dell M1330 after first reboot

You need to turn off the computer completely (restart won't work). Vista should start now and you need to install "Intel Matrix Storage Manager" (provided by Dell) and after the next restart everything worked fine for me.

Another tip would be to turn off ACHI in your BIOS.

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WORKAROUND: Installing Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 breaks your XAML Intellisense

A nasty one, you will probably realize in front of customers.

The workaround can be found on the Windows SDK blog.

Enjoy!

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PRB: Hibernate option gone in Windows Vista?

Run the command (using admin privileges):

powercfg /hibernate on

Read more about it.

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Using LINQ to SQL with SQL Server Compact Edition

If you try to drag tables from the Server Explorer of Visual Studio 2008 to the designer surface of the Link-to-SQL designer you'll probably be surprised to see the error message stating:

"The selected object(s) use an unsupported data provider"

However you can use SqlMetal.exe to generate the .dbml file manually (obviously: command line instead of drag & drop).

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INFO: Edit and Continue works only against .NET apps that target 32-bit (x86)

You cannot use Edit and Continue on a Windows 64-bit machine by default.

Workaround: For development and testing change the target platform from "Any CPU" to "x86" in order to get Edit and Continue support.

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Workaround: Unable to load DLL 'sqlceme35.dll': The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

If you get that nice error message change your solution configuration to target 32-bit (x86) using configuration manager.

For more information read this.

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Enabling or disabling Large Fonts for Internet Explorer

As documented here [1] you need to change this following registry value to 1 (= enabled) or 0 (=  disabled) and restart IE.

  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER

    • Software
      • Microsoft
        • Internet Explorer
          • Main
            UseHR = dword:00000001

 

 

[1] http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa770067.aspx

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FIX: Performance too slow when doing web development with Visual Studio 2008?

Microsoft released a hotfix [1] for Visual Studio 2008 (also targeting Visual Web Developer Express) that corrects several issues with the web development features.

At this time the hotfix is only available for the English and Japanese versions.

List of things that were corrected according to this post [2] by Vinaya Reddy:

HTML Source view performance

  • Source editor freezes for a few seconds when typing in a page with a custom control that has more than two levels of sub-properties.
  • “View Code” right-click context menu command takes a long time to appear with web application projects.
  • Visual Studio has very slow behavior when opening large HTML documents.
  • Visual Studio has responsiveness issues when working with big HTML files with certain markup.
  • The Tab/Shift-Tab (Indent/Un-indent) operation is slow with large HTML selections.

Design view performance

  • Slow typing in design view with certain page markup configurations.

HTML editing

  • Quotes are not inserted after Class or CssClass attribute even when the option is enabled.
  • Visual Studio crashes when ServiceReference element points back to the current web page.

JavaScript editing

  • When opening a JavaScript file, colorization of the client script is sometimes delayed several seconds.
  • JavaScript Intellisense does not work if an empty string property is encountered before the current line of editing.

Web Site build performance

  • Build is very slow when Bin folder contains large number of assemblies and .refresh files with web-site projects.

Make sure to read the installation instructions at [2].

Enjoy!

[1] https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=10826

[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/02/09/downloadable-hotfix-performance-and-editor-fixes-for-microsoft-visual-studio-2008-and-visual-web-developer-express-2008.aspx

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PRB: Windows DreamScene reappearing under Windows Update

Do you happen to know the situation as well? No matter how often you install Windows DreamScene it keeps reappearing as a "new" update?

However the solution is easy: first uninstall it (Control Panel > Software > Installed Updates) and rerun Windows Update.

Now install it once more and it should not appear again (but instead you'll see the content packs with more "dream scenes" [2]).

Enjoy!

[1] http://windowsultimate.com/blogs/extras/archive/2007/03/14/windows-dreamscene.aspx

[2] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931133

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