Some Notes on the Machines

Go to the Start ball, enter “Folder Options” in the search box. Under “View”, far down in the checkbox options, you’ll see “Sharing Wizard”. Turn that off, to turn off simple file sharing in 7.

If the BIOS is UEFI-capable, one can install a current 64-bit Windows OS to a GPT partition, and this should increase overall reliability and stability of the hard drive by a good bit. But the procedure is interesting. Here’s the best example I’ve found so far:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2011/05/31/installing-windows-7-on-uefi-based-computer.aspx

Try this:

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed-100-working-guide/

Three separate methods! First, a set of .REG files to merge; you can use these to fix only what is broken, if you know:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/19449-default-file-type-associations-restore.html

Second, you can delete a particular area of the registry, and it will be re-created at reboot:

http://www.windowsvalley.com/restore-default-file-association-in-windows-vista-and-windows-7/

And third, a utility:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/file-association-fixer-for-windows-7-vista-released

So far as I have been able to ascertain, nothing does this very helpful task better than Toolbar Cop. It’s a little program, published in 2005 (!), but it does the job faster and more effectively than anything else I’ve tried, on every version of Windows since 2000. It does its job using .REG files for each item, so you can easily re-enable by a quick merge.

Its home is here:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/toolbarcop.htm

One of several good download locations:
http://majorgeeks.com/Toolbarcop_d4126.html

Sometimes XXXXX can be a small file in “C:\Documents and Settings” on XP. If so, remove it, and AVG will install.

Sometimes a user is accidentally created in SBS 2008 outside of the SBS wizard. This can lead to all sorts of problems, including inability to do RWW regardless of group membership. Here’s how to fix.

1. In SBS console, in “Users and Groups”, “Users” tab, right-click on background, choose “Change User Role for User Accounts”.
2. Choose “Standard User”. Choose “Replace user permissions or settings”. Click Next.
3. The user may not be in the account list. Choose “Display all user accounts in the Active Directory”. The user will pop in. Choose him/her to change.
4. Click “Change User Role”. Complete the wizard.

The command ‘TASKKILL’ works very well. It can work by EXE filename and process number, filter by service name, work remotely, specify credentials, and more. Lots of useful capability here.

dd for Windows, including support for /dev/zero and /dev/random, is available here:

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

This is NOT the dd which comes with Cygwin.

For many years there was ‘blat’, the all-purpose command-line mailer for Windows.  However, blat was never updated for SSL, and a great many email providers (e.g.,. Gmail) require SSL.  One can add a second tool called ‘stunnel’ to create a chain for the purpose, but I don’t like to kludge that much. 

For a while I preferred the applet ‘email’, which is part of Cygwin. However, this is not a standalone applet, and there have been other issues. Just now SwithMail came to light for me:

http://www.tbare.com/software/swithmail.html

Am testing. So far, it is working very well indeed.