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We’d like to share with you an interesting registry hack that adds a Microsoft Security Essentials AutoPlay handler so that you can thoroughly scan a CD/DVD media or USB flash drive for viruses, via the AutoPlay dialog. See article Scan Your Thumb Drive for Viruses from the AutoPlay Dialog at the How-To Geek website. Thanks … Read more
Have you ever wondered how some of your mp3 files show up with the album art icon instead of the standard mp3 icon when browsing through the mp3 collection on the hard disk? Also, does the cover image appear in the background when playing an mp3 file using Windows Media Player or any other music player?
Thumbnail image of the mp3 files as seen in Windows Explorer.
When a software installation that uses the Windows Installer Package fails, you enable Windows Installer logging and re-run the setup to capture the output to a log file for troubleshooting. Logging can be done using the Registry Editor, the Group Policy Editor, or the msiexec.exe command with the required parameters.
The first two methods are documented in the article How to Enable Windows Installer Logging. The third method uses the msiexec.exe command-line parameter. Here is an example:
msiexec /l*v "%temp%\verbose.log" /i "C:\Users\Ramesh\Downloads\7z465-x64.msi"
This starts the 7-Zip .msi installation (7z465-x64.msi) and records all the results, including verbose output, to a log file named verbose.log in the %TEMP% folder.
Do you find it difficult to type the entire command-line every time you need to log application setups? You can implement this in the context menu for .msi files to launch the installation with verbose logging.Read more
Recently I came across a problem where the Windows Search service failed to auto-start, and manually starting the service using Services MMC resulted in Error 1053, with the following error message verbatim.Read more
A theme is a combination of desktop background pictures, Window colors, sound scheme and a screensaver. Windows 7 introduces a new file format (.themepack) which is basically a .cab file that can contain images, audio files for sound scheme, mouse cursors, icons and the .theme file itself. This file format was introduced so that it’s … Read more
Ever wondered why there is a lock icon overlay appearing for some of your files and folders, as in the image below:
And for some folders:
After upgrading your Windows Vista computer to Windows 7, when you right-click on a JPG/JPEG image and click Edit, the following error message may appear:
There was a problem starting C:\Program Files\Windows Photo Gallery\PhotoViewer.dll The specified module could not be found.
You can create a password reset disk so that you can regain access to the system quickly in the event of a forgotten local account password, without having to use third-party boot environment CDs.
It’s suggested that you create a password reset disk after creating the user account and assigning the password. The password reset disk is not applicable if you have a Microsoft account (MSA); it works for local user accounts only.
Here is a walkthrough on how to create a password reset disk in Windows 10.Read more
Until last week I was thinking that increasing the taskbar thumbnail window size is not possible natively in Windows 7 (and Windows Vista). After doing a bit of hacking around the registry, I found that Windows 7 has the ability to increase the thumbnail preview size natively, plus much more, through registry edits which I’m … Read more
I’m writing this article specifically for Windows 7, because the FullRowSelect registry value that you used in Windows Vista, doesn’t work in Windows 7. (REF: Enable or Disable Full Row Select feature in Explorer in Windows Vista). After some of our readers reported that setting FullRowSelect to 0 doesn’t do anything in Windows 7, I decided to have a look at this issue. Playing with different bitmask values, I finally got what I wanted – to disable full row select feature in Windows Explorer (Details mode) in Windows 7, but with a minor side-effect which is explained in the later part of the article.Read more
