Tagged: Tech

Windows 7 Search Files And Programs

Rebuilt my laptop thanks to lazily allowing a rootkit to hit it and discovered that the Windows 7 Search Files and Programs function wouldn’t work.  No good, as this it is the default way I launch everything on my machine (no desktop icons FTW).  Turns out deleting one registry key does the trick:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}

It’s user specific, obviously.

Bootable USB installer for Win7

You’ll need a DVD or ISO of Win7 and have your USB drive plugged in.  Take note – this is going to erase it.  Bear in mind you can create a Win7 64 bit installer with this procedure, but you cannot create this install on a Win7 54 bit machine.  Good job Microsoft.
  1. Download DiskPart.
  2. Launch DiskPart by entering diskpart at the start menu or in a command prompt.
  3. Enter list disk.
  4. Enter select disk # where # is the appropriate disk number.
  5. Enter clean.
  6. Enter create partition primary.
  7. Enter active.
  8. Enter format fs=fat32 quick.
  9. Enter assign.
  10. Copy all files from the DVD or ISO to the USB drive and it’s good to go.

Garmin Nuvi 1200 QWERTY

To enable QWERTY your Nuvi 1200, plug it into your computer, head to Keyboards, open the appropriate file in a text editor (in my case, en_US.kbd), find line:

<group name=”QWERTY” priority=”1″ wide_screen_only=”true”>

and change it to

<group name=”QWERTY” priority=”1″ wide_screen_only=”false”>

Multiple Pidgin Profiles

  1. go to start-run, and enter “cmd” – this will open the command windows
  2. in the command windows browse to “c:\program files\pidgin”
  3. now enter in the command window “set PIDGIN_MULTI_INST=1″
  4. create a second profile by entering this into the command window “pidgin -mc <path of where you want to keep that new profile>”
  5. another instance of pidgin is opened with its own profile settings
  6. enjoy your two instances of pidgin

Return to Chrome

I used Chrome occasionally in the past.  I liked its speed but, at the time, was put off by its lack of customization.  I couldn’t surf without FireFox and its AdBlocking, XMarking, LastPassing, NoScripting powers.   Visiting the web without them was a jarring experience, akin to watching “real” television – like commercials, I’d gone so long without intrusive ads, popups, hijacks and javascript silliness that I forgot they’re out there.  And oh boy are they.

Fast forward a bit.  XMarks announces it’s going under.  Sadness ensues.  Switch to FireFox sync.  Fast forward a bit more.  FireFox begins releasing its beta builds of FF4.  Sync is built in.  4 seems delicious – and then I tried to manage my bookmarks.  Slow.  Painfully, mind numbingly slow.  Inoperable, in fact.  It seems that FF4 uses SQLite for its bookmark containment, and everything went into the shitter as of SQLite 3.7.x.

Meanwhile LastPass purchased XMarks (probably for a song, having waited until the 11th hour to do so) and Chrome has since opened up, finally supporting 3rd party plug ins.  Time to try again!

So far, so good.  Word of warning, however.  If you configure data sync in Chrome (Options > Personal Stuff > Sync) and you install XMarks, the two services will begin a bloody battle, duplicating and triplifrying your bookmarks.  From what I’ve sussed both of them insert a unique bit of unseen markup to each bookmark, effectively making them unique again and again and again.  Like this:

Xmarks: Hey!  I found a bookmark!  I’ll sync it and slip a date string in it!

GSyng: Hey! I found a bookmark with a funny date string in it!  It must be new – I’ll sync it and put my own bit of something in it!

Xmarks: Hey!  I found a bookmark that’s startlingly similar to the one I just synced, but it has a new little bit of something!  It must be different – I’ll add it and update its date.

GSync: Holy cow!  There’s a familiar looking bookmark – but that funny date string is different.  I should totally add that!

…and so on and so forth.  Long story short, only use one bookmark sync method lest you wind up like me, writing a script to identify and strip duplicates from your 5000 item large bookmarks list.

TuxBoot

Tuxboot, a bootable USB drive for Clonezilla, DRBL Live, GParted Live and Tux2Live, is a lifesaver.  I cannot recommend it enough.   I got a new, 3x bigger drive for my laptop and cloned it with Tuxboot/Clonezilla and resized the primary partition with Tuxboot/GParted.  All went without a hitch.  I love free things that work.