Andy Kemp

I recently came across an issue on my Vista and Office 2007 pc where I could not open any excel file by double clicking on it, whether it be a locally stored file or a file on the network. The only way I could open up the file was by going into Excel and then opening from with in there.

I recently came across an issue on my Vista and Office 2007 pc where I could not open any excel file by double clicking on it, whether it be a locally stored file or a file on the network. The only way I could open up the file was by going into Excel and then opening from with in there.

The solution I found was from: http://forums.techguy.org/business-applications/294819-can-t-open-excel-files.html. However this was for Excel 2003. In my version of Excel there was no Tools option. instead I needed to go into the Excel menu by clicking on the Office logo in the top left of the screen and then selecting Excel Options.

Once in there you go to the Advanced Option and then scroll down to the section for General. Then once in there you can un select the option to Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE).

I can now open my Excel files by double clicking on them from within Windows Explorer. I do not know why it all of a sudden did this but hey, who cares now I know how to fix it!

Apparently the bug that crippled hundreds of VMWare machines across the world was down to a piece of code left in the final release of update from the beta version expired on the 12th August. I am guessing that the developer who was responsible for that might be updating his CV just now!

I have to say this has made me re-evaluate which route I want to go down with Virtualization, VMWare are/were the market leaders but now there is HyperV with Windows Server 2008 and then Citrix now have a good contender with their Xen Series. I have been looking at XenDesktop and I am impressed with that, I am eager to see how XenServer looks now too.

VMware have left their customers irate as they were unable to power-up their virtual servers this morning due to a bug that killed their systems when the clocked changed to 12th August.

read more at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/12/vmware_12_august_esx_cockup/

For me I would say: isn't this what is supposed to have happened when we went from 31st December 1999 to 1st January 2000?

Well be interesting to see what VMware actually do now, the work around they are offering has implications, and well it is something we have all probably tried to get a few more days out of that trial software... set the clock back! what kind of work around is that

Apparently this bug only affects customers who have installed the latest patch since 27th July

We have a logon to the Microsoft eOpen site (https://eopen.microsoft.com) and the Microsoft Licensing Site (https://licensing.microsoft.com). Both these sites list our Product Keys and number of licenses we have etc... And they also offer a software download section, where you can download the software that you are licensed for.

I recently bought some software Windows Server 2008 Std, Windows Server 2008 Ent and SQL Server 2005 Std. I got the License Authorisation and Agreement numbers through and registered them on the eOpen site and then went to the Product Download, this was last Thursday (it is now Wednesday the following week) and it is still saying service is temporarily unavailable! I would not mind this usually but MS have now apparently made it their policy not to send out media kits, probably part of their green initiative (all very commendable). But what are we supposed to do in the mean time?? thankfully I have the media for Windows Server 2003 Std and SQL Server 2005 but not Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, well not the Volume Licensing Media I have it with our MSDN Subscription.

6 or 7 days where the product downloads is unavailable is pretty bad! and for a company like MS I would say that is VERY bad!

I logged a call with MS to fins out when the downloads would be available again and the women on the phone could not say, however she offered me the chance to purchase the media kit! what a cheek! the only reason I would order it is because their site was down, and well shouldn't they give it to me in that case?

Any way I hope it is back up soon as my servers have now arrived and are just sitting in the boxes waiting to have an OS installed on them.

I recently installed a new server on our network for File and Print, it was so that I could decommission the old file/print server that was running Windows 2000 Server.

However due to other things happening I left the old server on running the print queues. As time went on this task worked its way lower and lower on my "to do" list. Due to a new project I needed to clear out the Old HP Rack to make way for a new Dell rack and the only server that was running in this rack was the Print Server so I had to look at this task again.

I was thinking about getting one of the Helpdesk guys to right a quick "How To" sheet on changing printers but I just knew that users do not always follow these and then when it did come to switching off the old print server  the Helpdesk would be in undated with calls by users complaining that their printers are not working!

Like always the best thing to do is try and automate things for users as much as possible making changes like that as transparent as possible.

I found this very good little script at: http://www.petri.co.il/changeprintsrv.htm

all you need to do is copy it into your netlogon or scripts folder in your \\domain.com\sysvol\domain.com\scripts and then create a batch file that will call up the exe and then tell it what server to change it from and to eg:

\\domain.com\sysvol\domain.com\scripts\changeprintsrv.exe from printserver1 to printserver2

And it is as simple as that, I added this script in Group Policy so then when the users logged on they got it as part of a policy. It seems to run quite nicely. I noticed on Vista I had to restart the local spool service, but on XP it seemed to work fine!

I have been playing around with my registry on my pc (I know a dangerous thing to do some times).

Now what I had done was similar to that in the post on how to edit VBS files in VBSEditor, I created a folder in C:\Program Files\ called Notepad2 and copied the files for Notepad2 into there.

To set up Notepad to to edit documents from a right click you need to do the following:

1. Open up Registry Editor
2. Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\name of the file type in this case it is the inf file so:
1. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\inffile
3. under there go to the Shell key and create a new key called "Edit with Notepad2"
4. under that create another key called "command"

Then:

once you have created the 2 new keys

in the command double click on the default value and enter in the following:

"C:\Program Files\Notepad2\Notepad2.exe" "%1"

and then click on ok.

Once you then right click on an inf file you will get the following option:

I recently installed the latest software update for my iPod Touch and I am loving it! the extra features you can get are amazing. The ability to use active sync to connect to your mobile information server and receive your Exchange Emails, calendar items and contacts is brill.

Also the AppStore is also very good and being able to install new apps on your Touch so easily without having to Jail Break it. One of the apps that I am using a lot just now is the Remote (it is a free app) and basically you can remote control your iTunes Library that is on your PC from your Touch or iPhone through your home wireless network.

I would really say the Update is worth the £5.99 for Touch owners to buy (iPhone owners get it free). The only downside is that it does use up your battery far quicker than it did prior to the update and also you have a little less space once installed.

On the whole it is a good update and great add on to the Touch.

some months ago I was asked to look at forcing the Proxy settings for Firefox through GPO (Group Policy), to begin with I wasn't too sure it if was possible or not but turned out that it was, I will put something up on how to lock down Firefox through GPO later.

Any way I just thought if I remove the policies I'd put in place that would disable it, but no! I disabled the policies and scripts and no joy we were still getting the proxy settings forced and could not change them.

In order to force the settings you need to run a computer start up script (at computer start up funnily enough!!). So I had a look at the script and noticed that there were several entries made into the windows registry, specifically in to HKLM\Software\Policies\Firefox so I had a look in there and deleted everything in there (as it contained several settings for the proxy and default home page) re-started Firefox and no joy, so I restarted my PC, still no joy.

I then noticed in the firefox_startup.vbs file that there was a line:

FirefoxPrefsFile = EnVar("ProgramFiles") & "\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\autoconfig\prefcalls.js"

So I wen and had a look in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\autoconfig and saw that there was a file called prefcalls.js. I opened that file up and noticed that it had a lot of "lockedout" settings applied that related to our proxy server address and port. so I deleted all those lines and then restarted Firefox and it worked. I could now change all my proxy settings as and when I wanted to.

I was reading a copy of the Web User Magazine today Issue 193 and in their Downloaded Software Section there were some good looking downloads. One of which was Notepad2. This can be downloaded from: http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html. It truely is a good notepad editor! it works much like the VBSEditor in my previous post (this is what prompted me to put this post up) but it works for more than VBS files!

It will choose the syntax schema depending on the file extension of the script so a batch file will be assigned the Batch File syntax schema, a VBS file with the VBScript syntax schema and so on.

If you are a System Admin who has lots of scripts then this would defiantly be one for you. I am going to see if there is a way to put it into the right click menu too jsut to make life that little bit easier!

I am forever creating/editing VB Scripts to make my job just that little bit easier, hey if a script can do what I can do then why not do it, means I can spend my time doing other thins at work (like writing blogs etc...).  Any how I came across this decent free VBSEditor a few years ago, it is really handy and offers syntax highlighting and line numbering:The Actual Exe can be downloaded from here. I have found this Editor to be very useful.

The one thing that I found annoying was that I had to open the editor up first and then browse to the script location, I could not just right click and edit in in VBSEditor. Until now...

Create a Folder in C:\Program Files\ called VBSEditor, then copy VBSEditor.exe into that folder. Then, copy and paste the following into notepad and then save as VBSEditor.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VBSFile]
@="VBScript Script File"
"EditFlags"=dword:00000000
"BrowserFlags"=dword:00000008

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VBSFile\Shell]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VBSFile\Shell\Edit_with_&VBSEditor]
@="Edit with &VBSEditor"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VBSFile\Shell\Edit_with_&VBSEditor\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\VBSEditor\\VBSEditor.exe\" \"%1\""

Once you have saved it as a reg file go to the location where you saved it and run it.

You can now right click on any VBS file and it will give you the option to Edit with VBSEditor.