Ramesh

Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a ten-time recipient of the Microsoft MVP award in Windows Desktop Experience (Windows Shell), from 2003 to 2012. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

Calendar Gadget in Windows Sidebar is Blank with Orange Background

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The Calendar gadget in the Windows Sidebar may display blank content, showing only the plain orange background. Also, the Stocks Gadget may not show up when you add it to the Sidebar. A missing scripting run-time registration usually causes this problem. Registering VBScript.DLL Registering the vbscript.dll file from an admin Command Prompt fixes the problem. … Read more

Change Ownership of a File or Folder Using Takeown Command-Line Tool

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Every file or folder in an NTFS volume has an owner. Certain system files are owned by TrustedInstaller, some by SYSTEM account, and others by the “Administrators” group. If a user creates a file or folder, that user is usually the owner of the file or folder. The owner is the one who can assign permissions (Allow or Deny) to other users for that object.Read more

File Explorer “Working on it” Showing Green Progress Bar

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Summary: Windows 10’s File Explorer stalls saying “Working on it…” during the folder type automatic discovery process. And in earlier versions of Windows, Windows may sometimes assign incorrect template for folders if the content discovery or sniffing goes wrong or the folder view settings in the registry are messed up.Read more

[Fix] Can’t find Script Engine Vbscript, and “no script engine for .vbs”

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When you run a VBScript or .msi setup file that runs a VBScript, you may receive one of the following errors: Can’t find script engine “VBScript” for script C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\OFFICEICON.vbs There is no script engine for file extension “.vbs”. This happens if the vbscript.dll module is not registered correctly or the .VBS file association settings are … Read more

How to Copy Address of a Internet Shortcut (.URL) via Right-click Menu

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add "copy target url" context menu option for internet shortcuts

The Copy as Path command in the right-click menu is an extremely useful one to quickly copy the full path of a file or folder to clipboard. Similarly, for internet shortcut (.url) files, here is a script that lets you copy the web address (URL) of a internet shortcut, via the right-click menu.

After following the steps in this article, you’ll see a Copy Target URL context menu option when you right-click on an Internet Shortcut (.URL) file. Clicking this option copies the shortcut’s Web address to the Windows clipboard.Read more

Exit and Restart Explorer.exe Cleanly in Windows 7 and Vista

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To restart Explorer to test a registry setting without a reboot, we usually terminate the Explorer shell (explorer.exe) using Task Manager. The Task Manager method is like forcibly killing the process instead of terminating it cleanly.

Jeff, a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft, posted a great tip on how to cleanly start and stop explorer.exe in Windows XP.

Quote:

If you are running Windows XP and want a cmd prompt with no strange environment variables set, do the following: Ctrl + Shift+Esc → File → Ctrl + New Task (Run…)

This will open a cmd window with only the basics. This is useful if you have killed Explorer and need to restart it. Explorer will keep the environment of the cmd window that started it.

If you want to cleanly shutdown Explorer without having it automatically restart: Start → Shutdown → Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Cancel.

Although the above method (originally written for Windows XP) would work for the Classic Start menu in Windows Vista and Windows 7, not everyone uses the Classic Start menu.

This article tells you how to exit explorer in Windows Vista and Windows 7 using the New Start menu.

Read more

Add “Open with Notepad” to the Right-click Menu for all file types

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There are situations where you need to open plain-text files having an unknown or unregistered file extension using Notepad. By default, no file association exists for extension-less files and files with unknown extension in Windows. So, to open those files, you use the Open With option and select Notepad from the list.

And, it becomes even more difficult if Notepad is not readily available in the “Open with” sub-menu, in which case you need to browse to select Notepad.exe in the Windows folder every time. Adding the Open with Notepad option in the context menu (for all files) makes the job easy. It would save you a couple of mouse clicks every time.Read more

Windows Audio Error 1068 and “The Audio Service is not running”

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windows audio service not started

The speaker icon in the Taskbar’s notification area may appear with a red cross. When you hover the mouse pointer, it may say, “The Audio Service is not running.”

Clicking the speaker icon may launch the Get Help or the audio troubleshooter. This happens if the Windows Audio service is turned off. As a result, there will be no sound output in your device.

windows audio service not started

Launching the Volume Mixer by running Sndvol.exe would show the following error:

No audio device is installed

windows audio service not startedRead more

[Fix] VBScript Files Open With Notepad

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When you try to run a VBScript by double-clicking it, the script may open in Notepad. This happens if the user has set Notepad as the default (instead of wscript.exe) program for .vbs files, using Open with or through any other methods.. [Fix] VBScript Files Open With Notepad Running VBScript manually To run the script, … Read more