klauskjeldsen.dk » Windows

Windows 7: Open Command Window Here

Klaus Kjeldsen — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:53:46 +0000

Using Windows XP the option of opening a command prompt (cmd.exe) in a specific directory required that you installed the Windows XP PowerToy “Open Command Window Here“.

This probably not breaking news. However, I just found out that the “Open Command Window Here” option is available in the right-click context menu in Windows 7 by default. When you do a regular RIGHT-CLICK on a folder, you will not see it:

Regular right-click

But when you do a SHIFT + RIGHT-CLICK more options are revealed – woooop… here it is:

Shift + right-click

Actually I think this is a pretty neat feature usability-wise, normal – non developer – users, probably do not have any need for this option at all, but I do.

Fix: AVG Installation/Update Error

Klaus Kjeldsen — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:23:58 +0000

While doing an update of the AVG Antivirus Free Edition to version 9.0, I got an unexpected registry error:

Local machine: installation failed
Installation:
Error: Action failed for registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows: creating registry key….
Error 0×80070005

Googling the problem offered me lots complex solutions with varying results, however I found a very easy solution on how to fix the issue:

Download the AVG Remover tool for either 32 bit Windows or 64 bit Windows
Run the AVG Remover tool to uninstall the current version of AVG, it will require restart.
Download the Dial-a-Fix tool.
Run the Dial-a-Fix tool and hit the button with the hammer icon (see screenshot below).
In the dialog locate and select Repair Permissions in list and hit the GO button (see screenshot below).
Let the tool do its magic.
Download the new version of AVG – AVG Download Manager or Full Installation Package (100+Mb)
Run installation of AVG, it should complete with success.
Enjoy!

Step 4) The Dial-a-Fix tool (hit the button with the hammer icon)

Step 5) Select Repair Permissions and hit the GO button.

Free TV Channels

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:02:52 +0000

The danish public service channels from “Danmarks Radio” can be streamed and viewed directly from QuickTime, iTunes, VLC player etc. on both Mac and Windows by downloading a few channel files (.mov). This of course also opens the option to stream and view the channels in Frontrow on Mac:

All you have to do is to download the files and add them to your library:

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Download TV Channels (danish channels)

A friend of mine is monitoring the channel streams at his website, here you can see how reliable each stream are >> Stream Status

Sources:

Boot Camp: Windows 7 on iMac – Fix Black Screen

Klaus Kjeldsen — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:45:12 +0000

Recently I was making a Boot Camp installation of Windows 7 on my iMac, however, it did not go as smoothly as expected. During the installation process the screen went infinitely black, and it was not possible to continue the installation process.

Software versions:

Boot Camp 3.0 (Mac OS X Snow Leopard)
Windows 7

Doing a little search, I found the following solution on how to fix the problem.

Update: Apple has made a support article on the issue: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3173

Solution (step by step from the beginning):

Run Boot Camp Assistant from Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Applications -> Utilities)
Create a partition for the Windows installation using Boot Camp Assistant
Plugin your install disc and install Windows 7
The system will reboot a couple of times during the installation
The problem: The second time the system reboots, you the see the Windows red-green-blue-yellow animated logo, and then the screen goes black and hangs infinitely.
Press and hold the power button on your iMac until it shuts down.
Start the iMac again holding “alt” key, so you can select and load Max OS X Snow Leopard again.
Run any application that let you work with NTFS partitions (e.g. Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X or MacFuse)
Find the file “C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ATIKMDAG.SYS” on your BOOTCAMP partition, and simply delete it.
Restart you iMac, and boot up Windows 7
Now Windows 7 should boot normally
Run update windows utility and install Boot Camp drivers from the Mac OS X install disc

Boot Camp: Create Partition Error – Files cannot be moved

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:11:09 +0000

Recently I was about to install a Windows 7 beta using Boot Camp on my iMac, but it did not succeed due to an error. I was setting the Windows partition to 80 GB with plenty of free space available.

Then I got this error, namely “The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved”:

But I did not like the idea of formatting my hard drive due to fix the issue, and make Boot Camp work. However, I found an other solution to the problem, namely installing tool to defragment the hard drive. Defragmentation is not something you usually do on a Mac, but here it came in handy. I found these two tool to do the trick:

iDefrag (I used this)

Drive Genius

What the tools basically do, is that they are able to moved the files, which for some reason is blocking the Boot Camp Partitioning.

Mac Themes for Windows 7

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:24:30 +0000

Running Windows 7 on Boot Camp on your Mac, you might like some Apple or Mac OS X like themes for your Windows 7 installation. Here is a couple try out. I am also look for more and better Mac or Black themes for Windows 7, so please post if you found some nice ones…

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All of these themes are installed without extra patching of you operation system, download the themes below.

Download the themes:

Windows 8 theme for XP/Vista/7

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:08:15 +0000

There are many loose rumours about Windows 8 so fars, but it hasn’t stopped designers to make Windows 8 wallpapers and Windows 8 themes. The first Windows 8 Theme I have found is the Windows 8 Professional Edition theme.

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Window 8 Theme

It is available for you.

Download: Get it here

Windows 8 theme for XP

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:53:29 +0000

There are many loose rumours about Windows 8 so fars, but it hasn’t stopped designers to make Windows 8 wallpapers and Windows 8 themes. The first Windows 8 Theme I have found is the Windows 8 Professional Edition theme.

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: Window 8 Theme

It is available for you.

Download: Get it here

Read Mac-formatted hard drives on Windows

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:24:05 +0000

HFSExplorer is a free application that can read Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images. It can read the file systems HFS (Mac OS Standard), HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) and HFSX (Mac OS Extended with case sensitive file names).

HFSExplorer allows you to browse your Mac volumes with a graphical file system browser, extract files (copy to hard disk), view detailed information about the volume and create disk images from the volume. HFSExplorer can also read most .dmg disk images created on a Mac, including zlib / bzip2 compressed images and AES-128 encrypted images. It supports the partition schemes Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Table and Apple Partition Map natively.

Install Windows Mobile on iPhone

Klaus Kjeldsen — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:08:45 +0000

A guy showing how it is possible for you to install and make windows mobile run on iphone 3g / 3gs:

But anyway why would you do a thing like that?? ;o)

Update iPhone without backing up (Mac and Windows)

Klaus Kjeldsen — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:53:02 +0000

The below method is not yet tested with iOS 4.0, if you try it, please post a comment if it works.

Most iPhone OS 2.0 / iPhone 3G users have experienced the very slow backup process each time the iPhone is connected to iTunes, and as more applications are installed the process will take even longer. It is possible to just cancel the backup process, and then make a regular Sync without backing up. However, if you want avoid the backup process from starting, there is a workaround. It is possible disable the automatic backup process from starting, and how to do this is described below; firstly for Mac users, and secondly for Windows users:

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Mac users:

Quit iTunes.
Open a Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal)
Type or copy the following command:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
Open iTunes.
Connect the iPhone.
Make Sync without backing up.

To enable automatic backup in iTunes again use this command instead:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

Note: If you previously have used the command line option that entirely disables the backup feature, then type this command as well to enable to backup process:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool false

Recommendation: If you choose to disable the automatic backup process, it would be a good idea to manually making a backup it once a while to get a safe copy of text messages, call log and like (just right-click your iPhone icon in iTunes).

Windows Users: (updated)

Windows users can use the same approach:

Quit iTunes.
Press Win+R (opens the Windows Run dialog)
Type or copy the following command:
“%CommonProgramFiles%\Apple\Mobile Device Support\bin\defaults.exe” write com.apple.iTunes AutomaticDeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
Open iTunes.
Connect the iPhone.
Make Sync without backing up.

Instant Messaging Applications for Windows

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:40:59 +0000

The Instant Messaging application listed below are all Multi-protocol Instant Messaging clients that allows you to use all of your IM accounts in only one application. They all support the the most general messaging protocols/accounts such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ etc. Google Talk/Jabber is supported in the first two. Digsby can like Adium (MAC OS X IM Client) also connect to your Facebook account.

Digsby
Pidgin (formerly named Gaim)
Miranda IM
Meebo (iPhone friendly)
eBuddy

Paint.NET – lightweight photo editing

Klaus Kjeldsen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:24:17 +0000

Paint.NET is a great and free lightweight alternative to Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Photo Editor, The GIMP, and of course the crappy Microsoft Paint. Of course Adobe Photoshop is my preference, but this also a $999USD piece of software compared to a free alternative.

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins. It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as AdobeÂ® PhotoshopÂ®, CorelÂ® Paint Shop ProÂ®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.
The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality. The source code is available under the terms of the MIT License.

Paint.NET can be downloaded at GetPaint.NET

No related posts.

Locked Files and Folders in Windows

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:15:09 +0000

All windows users will eventually meet with the following Windows error messages, when trying to delete, move or rename a file or folders:

Cannot delete folder: It is being used by another person or program.
Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

In many cases it is not obvious what process actually locks the file or folder, but there are small extensions for Microsoft Explorer that can help locate it. These tools permits you to list all the processes locking the selected file, and unlocking the file or folder and killing the process.

Unlocker

Unlocker displays the list of all processes locking a file, access by right-clicking the file and choosing the Unlocker menu item. (The preferred tool)

Product: Download

Who Lock Me

A similar tool to Unlocker.

Product: Download

Opened Files View

Opened Files View displays the list of all opened files on your system.

Product: Download

Essential .NET development tools

Klaus Kjeldsen — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:35:00 +0000

In the recent year I tried using various .Net tools (C#) supplementary to what Visual Studio offers, and the tools listed below really has great functionality. If you know of more useful tools please post a comment.

JetBrains ReSharper

ReSharper provide you with various code productivity enhancements, it is analyzing code while typing finding and highlighting errors and warnings. Furthermore ReSharper offers code suggestions, analysis of possible flaws in code design, and suggestions to improve them when typing. Key features are Code Analysis for C#, Code Templates, XAML & XML Support, Code Formatting, Code Formatting, Coding Assistance, and Code Refactoring.

Reflector for .NET

Reflector is the class browser, explorer, analyzer and documentation viewer for .NET. Reflector allows to easily view, navigate, search, decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic and IL. Furthermore various add-ins are available to boost the potential and functionality of Reflector.

Rhino.Mocks

A dynamic mock object framework for the .Net platform. It’s purpose is to ease testing by allowing the developer to create mock implementations of custom objects and verify the interactions using unit testing. Alternatively use the non-free Typemock.

TestDriven.NET

TestDriven.NET makes it easy to run unit tests with a single click, anywhere in your Visual Studio solutions. It supports all versions of Microsoft Visual Studio and it integrates with the best .NET development tools.

NCover – Code Coverage

NCover is an essential tool to measure code coverage while creating automated tests, and it helps to test intelligently by revealing which tests haven’t been written yet.

NCover Explorer

Once you have used NCover to produce an xml result of your coverage, you can open it in this tool to browse the source code with the coverage information highlighted.

Liquid XML Studio 2008

Highlights the results of your XPath query in real time against any XML document. Intellisense XPath expression builder. Code samples are provided for mainstream languages (C#, java etc).

Sisulizer

Sisulizer is a visual software localization tool, which is able to work directly with your C++ Builder, Delphi, C#, Visual C++, Visual Basic, Turbo languages, Java, Windows binary files, HTML Help (.chm), XLIFF, or with .NET.

JetBrains dotTRACE Profiler

dotTrace provides an extremely fast way to profile the performance of .NET applications (frameworks 1.x, 2.0 or 3.x).

JavaScript and jQuery Tools For Web Application Development

Mac OS X Dock Clones for Windows XP/Vista

Klaus Kjeldsen — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:14:13 +0000

A general component in Mac OS X is the Dock, which provide a graphical user interface feature used to launch applications and switch between running applications. If you use Microsoft Windows as operation system free Dock clones are available too. Actually there are a number of alternatives, where I believe the best ones are these:

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The below is a screenshot of RocketDock using the Vista Black theme/skin, which comes with the application. RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher, and currently my choice. It provides a nice clean interface to drop and organize shortcuts for easy access.

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The quality of icons can be a bit of a problem since poor quality icons scale badly, however, many generally used applications now have high quality icons, e.g. Microsoft Office 2007, VLC Player, Skype, iTunes, Safari etc. For applications that lack of a quality icon, the RockDock provide a icon gallery, where you can find various icons for generally known applications. But to make it all much easier, this page provide a joint collection of icons from the icon gallery, which might fill your needs. Some of the application icons are:

Microsoft Office XP/2003
Recycle Bin
Internet Explorer
Outlook Express
Firefox
Thunderbird
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Joost
CCleaner
Total Commander
WinRAR
and many more…

Get the zipped icon collection – DOWNLOAD

If you like to modify your Windows machine to look almost like Mac OS X, this article provide an amount of tools to do that. But if you really want to go that way, you might want to drop windows, and go Mac…

Screen shot / screen dump tool for Windows

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:34:13 +0000

Greenshot (update #3)

Greenshot might be even better…

PrtScr (update #2)

PrtScr I believe is a better alternative compared to the two previous tools:

Gadwin PrintScreen (update #1)

Gadwin PrintScreen I believe is a better alternative than MWSnap.

MWSnap

MWSnap is a great utility for taking screen captures, which adds the feature of selecting a specific area of the screen and specific elements. The program supports saving screen dumps in BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF formats, with user selected color depth and quality settings. It also includes a zooming tool, a screen ruler and a color picker as well as system wide hotkeys and preset selection sizes. A very nice little program, and properly one of the best free tools to make screen dumps on windows.

The program can be downloaded right here.

Windows Vista compared to Mac OS X

Klaus Kjeldsen — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 09:42:51 +0000

A video showing similarities between Windows Vista and Mac OS X, the speaker from New York Times is “trying to prove” in his video that â€œMicrosoft did not steal ideas from Mac OS X.â€

Record screen content on Windows (screencasting)

Klaus Kjeldsen — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:28:24 +0000

Jing Project – The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video from your computer to anywhere.

CamStudio is an open source Windows application for fast high quality and resolution video capturing and able to achieve high compression. CamStudio is able to video capture full screen resolution screencasts and encode directly into Xvid and DivX.

Using Mac? Screencasting on mac…

Black Windows XP (Vista like) Theme

Klaus Kjeldsen — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:05:31 +0000

As an alternative to the standard blue, olive and silver themes in windows XP, Microsoft has released an aesthetic black and blue themes respectively named Royale Noir and Royale. The skins are refreshingly different compared to the traditional Windows XP themes named Luna.

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Below is a screenshot of the Royale Noir skin:

Below is a screenshot of the blue Royale skin:

The Royale themes are new themes for Windows XP that have been leaked out of Microsoft. The theme appears to have come out of a beta version of Windows Media Center 2005 that was in testing. The Royale themes are aesthetic themes and comes with two color schemes Royale (a blue theme) and Royale Noir (a black theme). The Royale theme is refreshingly different to the traditional Windows XP Luna theme.

Just download the theme and extract the .zip into “C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\”, open the folder Royale Noir (“C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Royale Noir\”) and doubleclick the “luna.msstyles”. Select “Royale” or “Royale Noir” from color scheme.

Keystroke Application Launcher for Windows

Klaus Kjeldsen — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 09:29:32 +0000

Using Mac, Quicksilver is a great application launcher, however, when using Windows keystroke launchers are available too; Launchy and AppRocket. Launchy would be my choice… Related posts: Top Free Windows Applications Mac OS X Dock Clones for Windows XP/Vista JavaScript … Continue reading →

Top Firefox Add-ons / Extensions

Klaus Kjeldsen — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:33:55 +0000

A small list of very useful plugins for Firefox:

Web development:

Web Developer Extension
Firebug
Page Speed (Google extension for FireBug)
Total Validator
HTML Validator (not applicable for Mac)
ColorZilla
User Agent Switcher

Other:

Top Free Windows Applications

Klaus Kjeldsen — Wed, 09 May 2007 17:32:28 +0000

A list of usable tool and utilities for Windows.

Notepad++ – Plain text editor
Google Chrome – fast browser
Firefox – best web developer browser with plug-ins.
Microsoft Powertoys for Windows XP – the PowerToys adds more functionality and programs that developers developed after Windows XP was released
Microsoft Office 2007 Add-in: Save as PDF or XPS – allows you to export and save to PDF and XPS formats in 2007 Microsoft Office programs
Ad-aware – Anti-spyware
CCleaner – a freeware system optimization and privacy tool
AVG – Anti-virus application
Total Commander – file manager
Daemon-Tools – Virtual cd/dvd-rom emulator
Launchy – Keystroke Application Launcher
Everything – Fast lightweight search engine
TugZip – Archiving utility
ImgBurn – Lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application
VLC Player – cross-platform media player
WinSCP – Secure file transfer
TortoiseSVN – Version Control
PuTTY – SSH client
Pageant – Authentication agent
PuTTYgen – Key generation utility
Miktex – MiKTeX is an up-to-date implementation of TeX and related programs for Windows
TeXnicCenter – TeXnicCenter is an integrated development environment (IDE) for developing LaTeX-documents

Black Royale Theme for Windows XP

Klaus Kjeldsen — Wed, 02 May 2007 10:08:12 +0000

As an alternative to the standard blue, olive and silver themes in windows XP, the Royale Noir Theme Pack provide a new black and blue theme.

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More about Windows themes here.

Black Theme for Windows XP – Zune

Klaus Kjeldsen — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:21:32 +0000

Microsoft Windows XP Zune Theme

Windows XP - Zune

Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=75078