The many faces of Windows
Windows Vista is going to be released tonight. As I sit here writing this article it is only 3 hours, 3 minutes, 24 seconds before it is unleashed to the general public.
It is times like this I get nostalgic and start thinking of the first time I got my hands on a copy of Windows. I remember when I was a student interning at a local computer store, and DOS was the only game in town. I still thought my Commodore 64 kicked its butt at the time.
They purchased a new demo system - I had to set it up for the sales floor. Yes. They had real sales people on commission back then, and they made a mint selling systems. They wanted me to install Windows. Windows? I said. What the heck is that?
Once I started to play with it I was hooked. It was the first time I wanted to start writing software on the PC instead of my crusty old Commodore.
Little did I know that Windows had been around for quite some time. It started out as an API that third parties could use to develop graphical applications. It was originally called "Interface Manager" (Just think if we called it that today!)
They released the first version of Windows that could display more than one application at a time. It was 1987 - Almost 20 years ago we were introduced to Windows 2.0
Still - Most applications were still being written for DOS. Microsoft kept plugging away. The 386 processor was released by Intel, and provided a hardware opportunity for real multitasking. People started hearing about Windows 386, which became what we now know as Windows 3.0
Microsoft hit a milestone with 3.0 - Released in early 1990, it sold over 10 million copies. It became the most popular graphical user interface ever made.
Everything really took off with Windows 3.1 - 3 Million copies were sold within the first 2 months of its release.
This is when Windows really took hold and thousands of applications were written for it. For the first time there were more Windows applications being developed than DOS.
Still Windows users looked over at the Mac camp, and they were jealous. Its interface was more polished, and well developed.
The Chicago operating system filled that void. Chicago was the code name for Windows 95. I first saw it in August of 1994. At the time I was a tech fixing Macs, and PCs. I knew what each had to offer - I knew Windows 95 would take over the world.
See - Back then Microsoft had a different philosophy about backward compatibility. I remember hearing a story about a group of Microsoft Employees pulling up to a computer store in a U-Haul. They walked in and purchased 1 copy of every software title in the store! They took them all back to the MS testing labs, and made sure that each one worked with Chicago. If it didn't, they put special detection code to make sure it did. I don't think one of those stuffy committees within Microsoft would allow them to do the same with Vista today.
With great fanfare Windows 95 was released in August of 95. Yes, I was one of those losers waiting in line for a copy at 11 O'clock at night.
In the mean time, Windows NT was evolving in the corporate world. It wasn't really until Windows 2000 that consumers got a taste of this much more powerful operating system.
Microsoft had made a few fumbles along the way. After Windows 98, they released Windows ME - an abomination!
The most horrible software ever released by Microsoft. It gave tech support people heartburn, headaches, explosive diarrhea, and sleepless nights all at the same time.
Finally, in 2001 - Microsoft was able to bridge the gap, and close the books on the Win 9x line of the operating system. Windows NT was now at the core of their flagship consumer operating system - Windows XP.
Windows XP has been extremely popular. Last check - 80% of Windows based PCs are running Windows XP. We have waited for almost six years for a new version of Windows. The time is now.
Microsoft - its been a great ride so far. I hope Vista can live up to all of its promises.
Posted By:
Steve Wiseman on Monday, January 29, 2007
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Tweak your IE 7 Settings
We came out with our IE 7 Search bar remover a few weeks ago, and since then we have had some suggestions on some tweaks people wanted us to add.
Hide/Show the command bar.
Hide/Show the main menu
Wish granted:
It can be found in our download section
If you want to change these on your own, here are the registry changes we are making to tweak IE 7:
The command bar can be changed by creating this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\CommandBar\
If you want to hide it, create a dword value named Enabled, and set it to 0
If you want to show it, create a dword value named Enabled, and set it to 1
The search bar can be changed by creating this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftware\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Infodelivery\Restrictions
If you want to hide it, create a dword value named NoSearchBox and set it to 1
If you want to show it, create a dword value named NoSearchBox and set it to 0
The menu can be set within the browser, or via this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftware\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
If you want it to show all the time, create a dword value named AlwaysShowMenus and set it to 1
If you want it to auto-hide, create a dword value named AlwaysShowMenus and set it to 0
Finally, you can force the menu to go all the way to the top of IE, instead of just in the middle of all the buttons. To do this, create this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftware\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser
If you want it at the top, create a dword value named ITBar7Position and set it to 1
If you want it at its default position, set that value to 0
I wonder where the name for that value came from? ITBar7Position - Only Microsoft would know. It looks like a typo - its not. You might think it would be IEBar7Position...not so.
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Wednesday, January 24, 2007
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The 5 sins of Vista
Since Vista was released to MSDN subscribers back in November I have started using it on my primary development laptop. I would love to run it in a VMWare session while I am developing, but it is still not possible to get Areo Glass to run this way (I need glass running to get our Remote Control Applications to work with it). After a month and a half of using it I have found a number of things that have irritated me, and only make me more angry as time goes by
It makes me angry because I am a big fan of Microsoft. In my mind, every version of Windows since 3.1 has gotten better with each release (I will kindly forgive them for Windows ME). Each day I feel that in many ways, Vista is a step back in the usability department.
I want Vista to be great, but there are so many issues I have lost count. I will limit my rant to the top 5 user interface nit picks in Vista. This is my top 5 - yours may be different ;)
Number 1 - The new file browsing interface is broken
This problem costs me time every day. I use notepad all the time. It is great for throwing together a script, or a to-do list. Text files work on almost every OS, so I can still read them when I am running Mac OSX. When I go to browse for a file I am shown this dialog.
Notice that when I clicked on the dropdown it shows me a bunch of websites. A BUNCH OF FRICKEN WEBSITES! No, not the usual tree of folders, and My computer so I can locate a file.
Sure, I can click on the left to one of my 'Favorite locations', but this takes much longer than the tree interface ever did. Oh yea. What happens when we select one of those websites?
Why show it then?
One other bone I have to pick with the new browsing interface is the difficulty in going back to the parent of the current directory. The new way makes going back up a few folders a much longer process. Simply stated there is no one button that will always bring you back up to the parent.
Keep in mind that this file browsing interface is in every new Vista aware application.
Number 2 - The new start menu sucks (Kind of)When I first started using the new start menu I loved it. I usually have 100s of programs installed, and the new interface makes it much easier to navigate. But there is something also I do with the run command on the start menu.
If I want a specific folder to launch in explorer I just type it out. Click start, then run and type c: Press enter, and the folder will show up.
Not anymore. If you forget the trailing backslash it will launch a program that is the closest match to that word. So for me, when I type c: It launches Remote Desktop! Argg! I must still make this mistake about 10 times a day. It would be so easy for them to check and see if the folder exists before launching an application
Number 3 - Windows Networking is a messI need to go into networking options often when going from place to place with my laptop. Since some places need a static IP, others need dynamic, etc. When I go into windows networking I am greeted with this.
Look at all of the options I am given here. If you have never used Vista before - Quick tell me how to change the IP address on my wireless card! I think they could have split many of these options into totally different areas and made it much cleaner, and easy to use.
Number 4 - Windows Search Is BrokenSame as it ever was. Ever since they started messing with Windows Search in Windows XP Service Pack 2 I have hated it. It has fooled me so many times into thinking a file was gone, or nothing existed that matched by search criteria.
Now when I want a simple search for any file that contains the string 'IntelliAdmin' I can't do it. Instead of fixing what they broke in XP SP2, they just took it out! I want a simple search program that will search for a file on my hard drive (Hint to Microsoft - Every file, not just the types you know about like Word and Excel files) that contains a specific string of letters. It can't be done any more with windows search. I find myself going to a command line these days and doing a wildcard directory search to get better results. How sad.
Number 5 - Windows copying has not improvedEver since the Chicago Beta was released to the world (You know it as Windows 95) I have hoped that the next version of windows would improve the file copying system.
Sure they have made the interface look cooler, a snazzy progress bar here and there. What about a robust copy? I absolutely hate it when my 5000 file copy gets killed half way through because 1 single file can't be opened. Or better yet, how about when I start a copy to a remote file share that is not responding - and all of explorer locks up. Yes it still does this in Vista. I have had to kill explorer on a few occasions over the last month and a half. In this regard Microsoft thinks it is perfectly fine for the UI to become unresponsive when the network is down.
These are my user interface rants. Maybe one day I will write about stability issues, but I hate to do that since it is my single experience. Maybe the 99.9% of the other installations don't have the problems I do... I will keep them to my self for now.
Posted By:
Steve Wiseman on Saturday, January 20, 2007
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Disable USB Flash Drives
Update 1/18/2007 11:01 PM EST: I have received a few questions about this method - no it will not disable mice, or keyboards. It only disables storage devices attached to the USB port. This includes hard drives, flash drives, and any other type of USB storage device. And yes, if the user has administrator access they can reverse the changes
| Our USB Flash drive enable/disable program has been out for quite a while now. Recently we have been getting bug reports that it no longer works.
|
How it operates is simple, we set a registry key that tells the UsbStor driver not to load on boot:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor
Start = 4 (Disabled) - Don't start the driver on boot
Start = 3 (Enabled) - Start the driver on boot
If we visit Microsoft, this is an appropriate way to disable USB drives, they even recommend it as a group policy to disable USB, CDROM, and floppy drives:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555324
After loading about 10 different variations of Windows (2000, XP, 2003, and Vista with different service packs) in VMWare we started to see a clearer picture.
Some variations will simply reset the key 'Start' back to 3 when a new flash drive is plugged in. The first trick we tried was denying write access for the system account on the USBStor registry key.
It worked on everything except Windows 2003. This version of windows would reset permissions on the key - and delete it!. Then it would re-create with the USB storage enabled.
Then we came across this document:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823732
(Looks like it was published much later than KB 555324)
It tells us to put deny permissions for the users we want to lock out on UsbStor.inf, and UsbStor.pnf in the c:\windows\inf folder. Funny thing - it doesn't work. Windows XP will reset the permissions and let the user install their flash drive anyhow.
Now we could have created a filter driver that would sit between windows and usb storage, but we wanted something simple that an administrator could do without even using our program.
We found a simpler solution...rename the files. If we simply rename the files to UsbStor.inf.backup, and UsbStor.pnf.backup windows can no longer load the drivers for usb storage.
So to recap. Rename the files, set the registry key to 4, and users can no longer access any type of usb storage. Reverse the rename, and reset the registry key to 3 and users can access their usb storage again. Ahh. Almost forgot. Reboot required each time you switch.
We have a few programs now that will do this for you. First the USB Disabler. It is for disabling, or enabling USB flash drives on the computer you run it from.
Second we have the remote USB flash disabler. It will allow you to pick a machine on your network and enable, or disable USB flash drives
Third, our
Network Administrator product can apply it to all the machines on your network.
They all can be found on our
downloads page
Posted By:
Steve Wiseman on Wednesday, January 17, 2007
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Reduce Word 2007 Compatibility Problems
The new version of Word saves documents in a different format. This is to facilitate all of the wonderful features it provides. Unfortunately this also means that documents saved will be incompatible with older versions.
Yes...It is possible to go into settings, and change the default format to whatever you please - that includes the longstanding .doc format
It will be difficult for the average user to remember or understand they need to save in the older format. If they don't, they will have a great deal of trouble sharing their Word documents with the rest of the world.
If you are planning to deploy the new version of Office, how can you force Word to save by default in the .doc format?
We searched Google, and the knowledge base at Microsoft. Nothing. Hmm. How can we figure out what registry key Office is using to save this?
Easy. Export the Word registry key to a file and compare the difference after we make the change.
Here is the key I found:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options\DefaultFormat
Hah! That one is so easy to see I should have found it by browsing through the registry.
I changed to each setting, and found these possible values:
(Empty) - Word Document (.docx 2007)
MacroEnabledDocument - Word Document (.docm 2007 W/Macros)
Doc - Word Document (97 - 2003)
Template - Word Template (.dotx 2007)
MacroEnabledTemplate - Word Template (.dotm 2007 W/Macros)
Dot - Word Template (97 - 2003 Format)
WebArchive - HTML (.mht, .mhtml Single file HTML Format)
Html - HTML (.htm, .html HTML Format)
ReducedHTML - HTML (.htm, .html Filtered HTML Format)
Rtf - RTF (.rtf)
Text - Text (.txt)
FlatXML - XML (.xml 2007 XML Format)
XML - XML (.xml 2003 XML Format)
MSWorksWin6 - Works Document (.wps Works version 6-9)
We have written a utility that will help you deploy this on your network. It is a command line tool. You can put it on your server, and have it called from a login script. Here is the syntax
SetDefaultDocument.exe {Type}The {Type} argument is any of the types shown above in bold.
If we wanted to set it to the well used 2003-97 doc format you could put this line in your login script:
SetDefaultDocument.exe DocNow you might not want to set it each time in a login script. Our
Network Administrator program will do the same with an easy to use interface.
Both of them can be obtained by visiting our
download page
Posted By:
Steve Wiseman on Monday, January 15, 2007
Check out our utilities for windows
Tweak your recent documents list
The recent documents list in Windows XP can be convenient. By default it is set to save the last 15 documents. Microsoft never provided an easy way to change the number of documents.
To change the number of documents saved you will need to change a registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies
You will need to add a dword value of MaxRecentDocs - and set it to the number of documents you want to keep on the list.
If you don't want to mess around with the registry, use our utility to set it for you.
To download it, visit our
downloads section
Posted By:
Steve Wiseman on Monday, January 15, 2007
Check out our utilities for windows
Unofficial Windows 2000 Daylight Saving Time Patch
We have updated our Network Administrator product - You can use it to deploy the patch, and verify it's installation on machines across your network. Also we have updated the free patch More info about it here
Update 2/12/2007 12:57 AM EST - We created a different patch for Windows 98/ME. Visit here for more information
Update 2/12/2007 12:56 AM EST - We want to also remind you that Outlook, Exchange and Java have their own issues. This patch will not fix that. Please see these links for more info on fixing those issues:
See this article for Exchange, and Outlook
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx
For Java:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/USDST/
You may have forgotten by now, but two years ago the US government changed the dates for daylight saving time. When the law was passed it was set to take effect in 2007.
Well, here we are. It is 2007, and Microsoft has published updates for XP, and 2003. But...No update for 2000 Workstation, or any of the server editions.
This is a huge problem for many organizations. I know some companies that have hundreds of Windows 2000 boxes. The thought that they will need to upgrade to XP or 2003 (Just for this) is a nightmare. Microsoft is providing a hotfix - but only to the companies that have an extended support contract. To their credit, Microsoft does provide a registry workaround for the rest of us.
The workaround that Microsoft provides is not easy to follow. Check out the KB article at Microsoft.
We have created a utility that will update any machine to the new daylight saving format (XP, NT, 2000, 2003, Vista). Obviously you only need it for 2000, or NT since those operating systems have dropped off support.
It updates Daylight Saving Time (Yes it is Saving, not Savings) in these time zones:
-Alaska Standard Time Zone
-Central Standard Time Zone
-Eastern Standard Time Zone
-Mountain Standard Time Zone
-Pacific Standard Time Zone
-Atlantic Standard Time Zone (Canada)
-Newfoundland Standard Time Zone (Canada)
If we are missing another US timezone that supports daylight saving time, please let us know by emailing support@intelliadmin.com
The utility can install, or uninstall the change. It runs without any setup and requires no extra DLLs or runtime. It is less than 1mb, so you can put it on a flash drive:
It can run silently from the command line if you use these options:
Install:
DaylightSavingFix.exe /qinstall
UnInstall:
DaylightSavingFix.exe /quninstall
Please note that the program must be run as administrator since it access HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
If you want to roll it out to multiple machines we have updated our Network Administrator product to install the patch.
Both can be downloaded from our
downloads section
Posted By:
Steve Wiseman on Thursday, January 11, 2007
Check out our utilities for windows
The Progression of Vista through screenshots
Microsoft to release 8 new patches on January 9th
| As part of Microsoft's regular patching schedule, they have announced that they will release 8 new security patches next Tuesday.
|
They are:
• Three Microsoft Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft Windows. The highest Maximum Severity rating for these is Critical. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and the Enterprise Scan Tool. Some of these updates will require a restart.
• One Microsoft Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Visual Studio. The highest Maximum Severity rating for this is Important. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and the Enterprise Scan Tool. These updates will require a restart.
• One Microsoft Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. The highest Maximum Severity rating for this is Important. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. These updates may require a restart.
• Three Microsoft Security Bulletins affecting Microsoft Office. The highest Maximum Severity rating for these is Critical. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. These updates may require a restart.
In addition to the security updates, they will be releasing updated version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool.
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Friday, January 05, 2007
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32GB Flash drive for notebooks
SanDisk has released a 32 GB flash drive that may be used for laptops. The flash memory would be used as a boot drive to dramatically reduce startup time.
Laptops that have the new drive would start becoming available in the first half of 2007. SanDisk has said that it would add about $600 to the cost of a new laptop.
Another benefit is low power consumption. Machines that use the new flash drive will consume only half of what a hard drive would require.
Real world tests show that a fully loaded Vista laptop boots in about half the time it takes with a standard hard drive.
Posted By:
Steve Wiseman on Thursday, January 04, 2007
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How to run an external program within VB Script
When VB Script executes a command line program it opens a new window. This can be especially inconvenient when you want to incorporate an external application into your script.
There is a way to have your script keep the console application within the same window, and wait for it to complete.
What we will do is launch the process, and then forward all of the console output of the script. When the process has terminated we exit the loop.
Here is a function that you can drop into your script (
Click here to download)
Function ExecuteShellProgram(ByVal sFileName)
Dim poShell
Dim poProcess
Dim iStatus
Set poShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set poProcess = poShell.Exec(sFileName)
'Check to see if we started the process without error
if ((poProcess.ProcessID=0) and (poProcess.Status=1)) then
Err.Raise vbObjectError,,"Failed executing process"
end if
'Now loop until the process has terminated, and pull out
'any console output
Do
'Get current state of the process
iStatus = poProcess.Status
'Forward console output from launched process
'to ours
WScript.StdOut.Write poProcess.StdOut.ReadAll()
WScript.StdErr.Write poProcess.StdErr.ReadAll()
'Did the process terminate?
if (iStatus <> 0) then
Exit Do
end if
Loop
'Return the exit code
ExecuteShellProgram = poProcess.ExitCode
End Function
Here is a simple example. I am going to call the command interpreter, and do listing of the windows folder:
ExecuteShellProgram "%COMSPEC% /c dir c:\windows"
(%COMSPEC% is a system variable that is set to the full path and file name of the command interpreter cmd.exe)
Now you can execute your console helper applications - and use the output in your script.
Posted By:
Steve Wiseman on Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Check out our utilities for windows
