Over the past few months, I have had so many jobs in for repair because people think that there is a problem with their machine as the Windows XP welcome screen disappears and instead the classic logon screen / Domain login screen is there instead.
To fix this, simply open up registry editor and navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\winlogon
From here you should see a key called Ginadll with a value of mrvgina.dll - Simply delete this and you should instantly see the welcome screen.
There are quite a few Netgear products that come with this driver and I have no idea why - it doesn't seem to do anything and everything works fine when the key is deleted.
If you do not want to do this manually, here is a .reg file to run which should do the same job: http://ezpcltd.com/netgeargina.reg
Hope this helps you!
As this has been quite a little earner with a lot of jobs, I wasn't sure to publish this, but I think the sort of person who would self-fix wouldn't come to someone like me for a repair anyway... and I want this blog to be a honest source of good information!
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Thursday, 11 February 2010
BT peak hours change
Just seen the interview with a man from BT on Working Lunch Iplayer Link (Valid for 7 Days).
Basically, BT are changing the off peak hours from its current time of 6PM-6AM to a new time of 7PM-7AM.
What a load of rubbish! I understand what the bloke from BT was saying on the show - and on Working Lunch, the figures were about making call every day - however, I am not that different.
I usually make a 10-20 minute call every other day at around 6:30, this is currently completely free with BT - now I will be paying about £15 a month for these calls unless I sign up to their any time package at £4.99 a month.
I think that is just a way of getting cash from people who do not know about this change or a way of forcing people on to their £4.99 a tariff.
I have long hated BT, but I am on a LLU internet package that I love and there is little other choice. Personally, I think I would rather change my habit and make my calls after 7:00 instead rather than give a penny more to BT. How they can defend their position and say that not many people make calls straight after 6:00, I have no idea.
Basically, BT are changing the off peak hours from its current time of 6PM-6AM to a new time of 7PM-7AM.
What a load of rubbish! I understand what the bloke from BT was saying on the show - and on Working Lunch, the figures were about making call every day - however, I am not that different.
I usually make a 10-20 minute call every other day at around 6:30, this is currently completely free with BT - now I will be paying about £15 a month for these calls unless I sign up to their any time package at £4.99 a month.
I think that is just a way of getting cash from people who do not know about this change or a way of forcing people on to their £4.99 a tariff.
I have long hated BT, but I am on a LLU internet package that I love and there is little other choice. Personally, I think I would rather change my habit and make my calls after 7:00 instead rather than give a penny more to BT. How they can defend their position and say that not many people make calls straight after 6:00, I have no idea.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Gary McKinnon Extradition
Well, I have seen a lot in the papers and on the news about Gary McKinnon recently and I am in complete mixed views on this.... Forget for a second all the politics and UK v USA extraditions... I just want to say my piece on the crime itself.
Surely any crime should be punished by the laws of the country that the crime took place in.... With anything exclusions being pre defined which should be written somewhere that everyone can be aware of.
I understand extradition and think it should be used if someone skips borders - but in the digital age, I think new rules need to be defined.
Please correct me if I am wrong here -
All his hacking took place in the United Kingdom. Why doesn't America provide evidence to the UK and charge him with the computer misuse act over? - From what I have seen, they tried, the evidence didn't stack up and they failed... so now they want revenge and do it on their own rules.
I have tried to look at some of the court cases that have been in the papers, but I cannot say I really understand, I think they are dealing mainly with trying to over turn the England-American extradition pact and Garry's health rather than the actual point that the crime was committed over here.
That being said, what charging him with is ridiculous - They are stating $700,000.
As far as I can tell from everything I have read, he searched for blank passwords and did not cause any damage. The figure is made completely from costs of consultations and implementing of a security policy that should of been there from day one....
At the end of the day to sum up my thoughts - denying the holocaust is a criminal offence in 13 countries (according to Wikipedia) Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland. If I write "The holocaust did not happen" (Which by the way, I fully believe it happened) and Google (the blogger.com provider), outside of my knowledge hosted this in one of those countries, could I be extradited?
I am not saying that anyone who does this should instantly be let off, I am just saying that there needs to be a serious English law review on extradition and the computer misuse act as to where the crime actually takes place. However, the ruling should be a warning to all and not retrospectively applied to cases - Gary should be charged in the UK.
This has been more of a rant than anything else, I could go on for ages but I have vented enough for now!
Surely any crime should be punished by the laws of the country that the crime took place in.... With anything exclusions being pre defined which should be written somewhere that everyone can be aware of.
I understand extradition and think it should be used if someone skips borders - but in the digital age, I think new rules need to be defined.
Please correct me if I am wrong here -
- If someone plans a murder in England of an American - Conspiracy to commit murder, English Crime
- If someone murders an American in England - Murder, English Crime
- If someone from England murders someone in America - Murder, American Crime
- If someone from England murders someone in American and comes back to the UK - Murder, Extradition to America as the crime was committed there.
- If someone from England phones someone in England and threatens to murder - Conspiracy to murder, UK Crime.
- If someone from England phones someone in America and threatens to murder - No idea, Cannot find any reference.
All his hacking took place in the United Kingdom. Why doesn't America provide evidence to the UK and charge him with the computer misuse act over? - From what I have seen, they tried, the evidence didn't stack up and they failed... so now they want revenge and do it on their own rules.
I have tried to look at some of the court cases that have been in the papers, but I cannot say I really understand, I think they are dealing mainly with trying to over turn the England-American extradition pact and Garry's health rather than the actual point that the crime was committed over here.
That being said, what charging him with is ridiculous - They are stating $700,000.
As far as I can tell from everything I have read, he searched for blank passwords and did not cause any damage. The figure is made completely from costs of consultations and implementing of a security policy that should of been there from day one....
If anyone from the American government is reading this, if you want to pay a consultant $700,000 to tell you not to use blank passwords, I will happily work for you!!!On top of this, I doubt that anyone who has blank passwords / no security policy would have any sort of good logging policy - Do they even know what he did? After all, when America sent evidence to the UK and Gary stood trial, he was let go as the evidence just did not stack up.
At the end of the day to sum up my thoughts - denying the holocaust is a criminal offence in 13 countries (according to Wikipedia) Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland. If I write "The holocaust did not happen" (Which by the way, I fully believe it happened) and Google (the blogger.com provider), outside of my knowledge hosted this in one of those countries, could I be extradited?
I am not saying that anyone who does this should instantly be let off, I am just saying that there needs to be a serious English law review on extradition and the computer misuse act as to where the crime actually takes place. However, the ruling should be a warning to all and not retrospectively applied to cases - Gary should be charged in the UK.
This has been more of a rant than anything else, I could go on for ages but I have vented enough for now!
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Delete Windows 7 Search History (And customise!)
A question just came up on SuperUser.com where a user asked the following:
So... I remember the search being the third tab within the re-done folder options dialog, however I could not see the ability to disable search or delete the history. I looked a bit further at some other options, but could not find it anywhere (Including a quick look in group policy).
I ran Microsoft/Sysinternals Process Monitor and found that the following location is where the search results are stored :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery
So, to cut it short, you can delete any entry within this key without breaking anything - The entire key simply does not exist on a fresh Windows install. But, to disable search history entirely simply right click the key (In the left folder view) and click Permissions, Click add then type everyone and click ok. Click on the Deny box next to "Full Control", and you should see something like the following:
Simply Click ok and done! If you go to any Windows Explorer folder and click on search, there will not be ANY results from previous searches and more importantly, it won't remember anything you type in the future.
Whilst this is job done, I wanted to take this a step further and see if it is possible to add predefined search terms whilst preventing Windows from writing new entries - Long story short, I failed!
I understand how the entire registry key works, You simply add a new Binary value with a sequential number, write your search term and add a 00 in-between each letter followed by three 00's at the end. For example:
Lastly, I think for the last item - MRUListEx, you simply need to add- followed by three 00's. For example, With three entries, MRUListEx looks like:
And with four, it looks like:
Anyway, I tried simply disabling the ability for everyone to write, however it seems to disable all history despite effective permissions confirming that there is still permission to read. I spent a good few minutes on this but I just have a lot of work to do today - This is something I want to revisit when I have more time to spare!
Windows 7 - Make Windows Explorer Never Remember Search Terms
You know the handy search bar on the top right of Explorer. I find it irritating that it always remembers search terms. I feel like, people can easily intrude into my computer since they know what documents I'm searching for.
Is there any way to disable it?
So... I remember the search being the third tab within the re-done folder options dialog, however I could not see the ability to disable search or delete the history. I looked a bit further at some other options, but could not find it anywhere (Including a quick look in group policy).
I ran Microsoft/Sysinternals Process Monitor and found that the following location is where the search results are stored :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery
So, to cut it short, you can delete any entry within this key without breaking anything - The entire key simply does not exist on a fresh Windows install. But, to disable search history entirely simply right click the key (In the left folder view) and click Permissions, Click add then type everyone and click ok. Click on the Deny box next to "Full Control", and you should see something like the following:
Simply Click ok and done! If you go to any Windows Explorer folder and click on search, there will not be ANY results from previous searches and more importantly, it won't remember anything you type in the future.Whilst this is job done, I wanted to take this a step further and see if it is possible to add predefined search terms whilst preventing Windows from writing new entries - Long story short, I failed!
I understand how the entire registry key works, You simply add a new Binary value with a sequential number, write your search term and add a 00 in-between each letter followed by three 00's at the end. For example:
Lastly, I think for the last item - MRUListEx, you simply need to add
And with four, it looks like:
Anyway, I tried simply disabling the ability for everyone to write, however it seems to disable all history despite effective permissions confirming that there is still permission to read. I spent a good few minutes on this but I just have a lot of work to do today - This is something I want to revisit when I have more time to spare!Friday, 20 November 2009
Visual Studio Sound Effects
I wanted to change the sound effects for something and I was checking through the sound settings and I found this:
So, does Visual Studio corrupt the sound control panel item? Do other people have these duplicates?
So, does Visual Studio corrupt the sound control panel item? Do other people have these duplicates?
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Speed up ASP.Net Development Server on Firefox
I have been doing a lot of work on ASP.Net development recently and one thing that annoyed me was how slow the ASP.Net Development Server was. I use Visual Studio 2008 and Firefox.
I always thought that the delay was due to the server itself, as I had no problems when the site is deployed to IIS, however I needed to test a CSS style in Internet Explorer and I noticed that it was just as fast as when deployed.
So, it was time to try and figure out what caused the delay! Long story short (and after a few hours of looking), I found the following.
In Firefox, type about:config into the title bar and then ipv6 in the filter. I was then left with just one option - network.dns.disableIPv6
By changing network.dns.disableIPv6 to true, it suddenly makes a world of difference - instead of a 3-5 second delay after any request, it (usually, script dependently) appears instantly!
I still don't think anyone is reading my Blog - don't blame you, one post every 15days-2 months at random, but hopefully this comes up on Google just in case anyone else has the same problem!
I always thought that the delay was due to the server itself, as I had no problems when the site is deployed to IIS, however I needed to test a CSS style in Internet Explorer and I noticed that it was just as fast as when deployed.
So, it was time to try and figure out what caused the delay! Long story short (and after a few hours of looking), I found the following.
In Firefox, type about:config into the title bar and then ipv6 in the filter. I was then left with just one option - network.dns.disableIPv6
By changing network.dns.disableIPv6 to true, it suddenly makes a world of difference - instead of a 3-5 second delay after any request, it (usually, script dependently) appears instantly!
I still don't think anyone is reading my Blog - don't blame you, one post every 15days-2 months at random, but hopefully this comes up on Google just in case anyone else has the same problem!
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Visual Studio 2008 Install Order
Well, after many problems, I reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch and got everything working.
(My problems mainly are because of a bug with x64 Windows + x64 SQL with x86 Visual Studio)
It is really hard to find a good guide so if anyone is interested the following is what I did and got it all working without any problems.
* As much as I wanted to use the Advanced edition with Text Search, BI tools and reporting services, I just need to use SQL, I don't need anything advanced. I always seem to mess around with things I do not need! This time I just wanted to keep it simply and this works.
** Management Studio Express 2008 is not available to download with SP1 already applied, I tried running it and it seems to be fine - I cannot see anything that running the SP1 update actually improves, however when looking at the version numbers, it does get upgraded whilst the SQL 2008 instance previously installed remains untouched.
I was searching for ages for a guide like this but could not find anything up to date. I have done a lot of testing inside VMs, but this is what I came up with. I hope it helps someone out there!
(My problems mainly are because of a bug with x64 Windows + x64 SQL with x86 Visual Studio)
It is really hard to find a good guide so if anyone is interested the following is what I did and got it all working without any problems.
- Install Windows 7 RTM
- Perform all Windows 7 updates.
- Install Visual Studio 2008 (Team Suite)
- Install Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Update
- Install SQL Server Express Edition 2008 SP1*
- Install SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express
- Install SQL Server 2008 SP1 Update**
- Install Visual Studio Hotfix 957944
* As much as I wanted to use the Advanced edition with Text Search, BI tools and reporting services, I just need to use SQL, I don't need anything advanced. I always seem to mess around with things I do not need! This time I just wanted to keep it simply and this works.
** Management Studio Express 2008 is not available to download with SP1 already applied, I tried running it and it seems to be fine - I cannot see anything that running the SP1 update actually improves, however when looking at the version numbers, it does get upgraded whilst the SQL 2008 instance previously installed remains untouched.
I was searching for ages for a guide like this but could not find anything up to date. I have done a lot of testing inside VMs, but this is what I came up with. I hope it helps someone out there!
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