How to Open Pinned Site Shortcuts Using Your Default Browser (Registry Hacks)

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With the Pinned Sites feature introduced in Internet Explorer 9, you can add your favorite websites to the Taskbar and/or the Start menu. We’ve seen that in article IE9 Lets You Pin Website Shortcuts to the Windows 7 Taskbar. Clicking the Pinned site shortcut opens the website using Internet Explorer, regardless of which browser you’ve … Read more

Fix Windows 7 Backup and Restore Not Launching After Uninstalling Acronis True Image

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Recently one of our readers faced a problem with Windows 7 Backup and Restore after installing and then uninstalling Acronis True Image. Nothing happened except for a brief hourglass when the user double-clicked the Backup and Restore item in the Control Panel. It turned out that the user had enabled the Windows integration feature in … Read more

Using ActiveX Filtering in Internet Explorer 9

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Internet Explorer 8 introduced the Per-Site ActiveX feature which allowed users to run a certain ActiveX control only on white-listed sites. This feature was explained in our earlier article How to Disable Adobe Flash Animations for All but White-Listed Sites in IE8. Internet Explorer 9 introduces another similar feature named ActiveX Filtering. When ActiveX Filtering … Read more

Clear Internet Explorer Cache using Rundll32 Command-Line

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The rundll32 command-line involving inetcpl.cpl and the entry point ClearMyTracksByProcess which is widely in use since Internet Explorer 7, is effective only if it’s run in low integrity level. This is because in Windows Vista and higher, Internet Explorer manages two different cache containers, one for the Protected Mode and another cache folder to store files when Internet Explorer is outside the Protected Mode.Read more

What Causes “Unsaved Theme” to Appear in Personalization window?

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A desktop theme contains various settings such as cursors, icons, wallpaper, screensaver, and other UI settings. It’s obvious that when one of those theme parameters is changed, Windows saves the customized setting in a separate theme file named Custom.theme, which is displayed in the Personalization window as “Unsaved Theme”. RELATED: Windows can’t find one of … Read more

Wevtutil Error “The specified channel could not be found” when clearing an Event Log File

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If you’re receiving the following error when trying to clear an event log file using the wevtutil.exe CLI tool, then you’re most likely using an incorrect log file name parameter: Failed to clear log <logfile>. The specified channel could not be found. Check channel configuration. For example, the event log file name and the display … Read more

How to Reset Folder View Settings in Windows 10/11 and Earlier

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folder view bags

Folder view settings include column preferences, view mode (icon or thumbnail), grouping, sorting order, window size, etc. Sometimes Windows may forget your folder view settings due to corruption or if the 5000 folders limit has been reached.

For instance, Windows may keep resetting the view back to “List” even though you repeatedly choose the thumbnail view. Another example would be that the system keeps enabling the auto-align setting for your desktop icons into a grid (even when the Align icons to grid is not ticked.

Or, let’s say you had added additional columns in a folder and closed the folder. When you reopen the folder, the changes may not be retained, and it goes back to the default view and sort order settings.

In those situations, you may want to reset the views to clear out corrupt settings and start afresh. This article explains how to completely clear the saved folder views in Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10, and Windows 11.Read more

Extract Contents of .MSI File and Add “Extract All” to Right-Click Menu

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extract msi file contents command-line

There are situations when you need to pick a single file from a .msi package without going through the installation phase. One good example is that a stand-alone or portable application wrapped in a .msi package. Or, you may need to extract a particular wallpaper image from a theme installer.

In that case, you can avoid running the setup and extract the contents of the .msi package manually. Thus there won’t be a need for a System Restore point, the addition of several registry keys, and a few temporary directories (which would be the case if you run the setup).

No third-party tools are needed; you can do this using the Windows Installer executable msiexec.exe command-line.Read more

Windows 7 Services Default Configuration Startup Type and Log On Account

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Did you tweak the Services configuration incorrectly, resulting in a system slowdown or leading to other catastrophe? And you don’t remember the original configuration to revert back? You may find the Windows 7 default Services configuration table below useful.

Note that some of these services may not be found in your system, depending upon the edition of Windows 7 you’ve installed. For example, the BranchCache feature and the corresponding Service are available only in Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise Editions.Read more