Slipstream Windows XP SP2 + Hotfixes

Use an application called nLite to make the process so much easier. This can be accompolished without using the nLite application, by copying your source XP files, all of the service packs, and then running some command line switches to update the XP files, and then burn them to a bootable CD as described in this article, but it's a lot more of a hassle. nLite makes it so much easier, and provides a lot more options.

When first launching nLite, it will prompt you for the language you want to use, as well as a path to your XP source files. I have mine shared on the network, so I point to that location. Once it examins the source, it will come back with the version, and size. Once this is done, click Next and you will be asked to choose from a list of available presets. If this is the first time running nLite, you won't have any. Just click Next to get started.

You are now prompted with a list of available options for the CD/Image. The main options are to integrate a service pack, and create an unattended setup, and bootable ISO image. You also have the option to remove various XP components, and include multiple tweaks like renaming the administrator account, disabling balloon tips, and turning off system restore.

Getting all of the hotfixes released since SP2 is a pain. This guy has a site that lists them all, as well as a .cab file that includes all of them.

Once you select the options you want, click next to customize each of those options. Depending on what options you choose you will go through a wizard for each option. Once you are done and create your .iso, you can test it and then re-run Nlite to modify your options further to your liking.

Stored usernames and passwords can bite you

A while back a user at work was complaining that they kept getting locked out of their accounts for no reason. It seemed to happened after they would open and close outlook. There were actually 2 different incidents of this happening. Both were laptop users who accessed outlook web access on a regular basis. What was happening was that they were saving the password in internet explorer for outlook web access. 90 days later when they change their passwords, the stored password stays the same and then you start having problems.

You can see what saved passwords are on your system by clicking on start, run, and typing the following command.

control keymgr.dll

I've also experienced this problem when trying to authenticate to an IIS server on our domain. The IIS server is houses our knowledgebase which is also password protected.

When the saved password becomes outdated, you are prompted to provide your username and password when trying to connect to the server even when you are logged onto the domain.

So if you're having some funny authentication problems on your domain, run "control keymgr.dll" and check for stored usernames and passwords.

Add Auto-Refreshing RSS Feeds to Your Protopage

Some/many of you may be familiar with the Ajax designed Protopage.com where you can design custom start pages. One of the things you can do is create a sticky note to be treated as HTML. Using the iframe html tag and some help from rss-info.com you can wrap a nice feed into one of these sticky notes. Try the following.

<iframe name=digg_frame width="350" height="350"
onload="javascript:setTimeout('digg_frame.location.reload()',120000);"
src="http://www.rss-info.com/rss2.php?integration=if&windowopen=1
&rss=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digg.com%2Frss%2Findex.xml&number=10
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;width=350
&height=150&ifbgcol=ffffff&bordercol=ffffff
&textbgcol=ffffff&rssbgcol=F0F0F0
&showrsstitle=0&showtext=1" frameborder=0></iframe>

Here's a frame resulting from that code. Parsing through the src tag, you can quickly see how to make your own.

Okay, now for the auto-refresh part. For your onload tag of the iframe, try the following:

onload="javascript:setTimeout( 'digg_frame.location.reload()',120000);"

Now you have some html to create an auto-refreshing RSS feed "sticky note" in protopage.

Set the folder list as the default view in outlook 2003

I found a helpful fix to an outlook 2003 annoyance where outlook always opens in the mail pane view. This registry change will make the folder list the default view when starting outlook. This can make outlook a little easier to navigate if you are more accustomed to previous versions.

1. Exit Outlook.
   
2. Click Start, Run, and type in regedit.
   
3. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MicrosoftOffice11.0\Outlook\Options\WunderBar.
   
If WunderBar is not shown, right-click the Options folder,
point to New, click Key, and then type WunderBar.

4. Double-click BootModule.
   
5. If BootModule is not shown, right-click WunderBar, point to New, click DWORD Value, and then type BootModule.
   
6. Type the number that matches the default view that you want Outlook to start in.
   
0 - Mail
5 - Folder List
6 - Shortcuts
To use Shortcuts as the default view, a shortcut to the Inbox must be on the Shortcuts list.

7. Exit Windows registry editor, and then start Outlook.

You can view the original article here.

Reinstall Windows XP Without Reactivating

This post is pretty much syndicated from an about.com posting. However, from time to time we all screw up our machines bad enough to need to reformat and reinstall Windows. To avoid activation with XP, just copy wpa.dbl and wpa.bak from your system32 directory. After having reinstalled Windows XP, you'll need to restore these files in Safe Mode.

Disk Partitioning with Knoppix

One of the many good things you can do wih a Knoppix bootable CD is repartition your hard drive. It’s a fairly quick and easy process but remember to always backup your data before messing around with your hard drive partitions.

If you don't have a copy of knoppix head over to knopper.net and download the ISO image.

What I’m going to do is resize one of my partitions so that I can create a second partition from the new unallocated space. The first thing you do is boot to your Knoppix CD. The boot process can take a couple of minutes since you are running entirely off your CD-ROM drive which is considerably slower than your hard drive but once you get knoppix up and running you’ll need to open up a console…
Click this button on the bottom of the screen.

When the console opens type SU and hit enter. This logs you on as super user.

Then type qtparted and hit enter.

The program will load showing a list of your hard drives on the left. I’ve selected my primary partition. The partitions details show up on the right. Next you’ll want to click on the Operation menu and select Resize.

In the resize dialog you can click and drag a new partition size at the top or manually specify the size of the partion on the bottom. When you are finished click OK.

After resizing the partition then you can go back and select the unallocated space. Then click
on the Operation menu and select Create.

The Create dialog will display. For a windows partition I’ve chosen to create a Primary NTFS partition. Click OK to close the dialog.

At this point no changes have been made to the hard drive. To apply the changes choose Commit from the file menu.

It may take a few minutes to apply the changes.

Unable to address e-mail to Firstname Lastname in Outlook 2003

One issue I have seen in Outlook 2003, and had several complaints on, is the inability to resolve e-mail addresses by Firstname Lastname. This is possible in previous verions of Outlook, and in Outlook 2003 when not using Cached Mode, but then you loose out on all the features of Cached Mode.

There is a workaround from Microsoft that requires making a registry entry that tells Outlook to resolve Ambigious Names using the Online Global Address List instead of the Offline Address List which is the default. Most companies list their employees by Lastname, Firstname this scenario works fine most of the time, but there are many times when you would like to address mail using Firstname Lastname. This change will force Outlook to look at the Online GAL so that you can address e-mail to John Doe, or even just John D and it will return a list of close matches.

To make this change:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.Locate or create the following key in the registry:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\
   Office\11.0\Outlook\Cached Mode
2. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
3. Type ANR Include Online GAL, and then press ENTER.
4. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
5. Type 1, and then click OK.

Make Windows XP UI Run Faster

There have been numerous posts on the web I have seen on how to speed up Windows XP. Many of these suggest disabling services, etc to make it run faster. One thing I have found that makes XP at least seem faster is turning off some of the UI eye candy.

Many of the machines I run XP on don't have the processor power, or video card to handle the default XP UI. The first think I do when re-imaging is to turn these features off. It makes the whole windows experience seem to run so much faster and smooth.

What I do is turn off most of the XP animation. These are the animations that happen when you expand the Start Menu, minimize/maximize windows etc. To make this change, right click on My Computer and choose Properties. Click the Advanced Tab, and then click Settings under the Performance section. Depending on your system it will probably be set to Let Windows choose what's best for my computer. I'm not sure what they use to choose what's best, but even on my older PIII 450Mhz machines, it has everything turned on. I typically unselect the options to Animate, Fade, and Slide objects. Once these settings are configured as they are pictured to the left, Windows seems to run so much faster.

Power of Firefox Bookmark "Keywords"

For those of you who are using Mozilla Firefox (and if you're not, you probably shouldn't be reading any of the other postings in this blog), one of the most time saving features I've found has been with bookmark keywords. Open the properties dialog for one of your bookmarks and try providing a keyword. Now in the address bar, just type in the keyword and, voila, your bookmarked page appears.

However... that's nothin'. The real power of the keywords comes in their use for search terms. The easiest way to describe this feature is with an example. Let's say you want to search ebay, but only for "Buy it Now" items. You also want to search descriptions and you want to sort by lowest price. And for this search, let's look for the "WRT54G" router. Once you perform the search, you get an URL such as
http://search-desc.ebay.com/wrt54g_W0QQcatrefZC6QQcoaction
ZcompareQQcoentrypageZsearchQQcopagenumZ1QQfromZR10QQfsooZ
1QQfsopZ3QQfstypeZ1QQftrtZ1QQftrvZ1QQftsZ2QQsacatZQ2d1QQsa
prchiZQQsaprcloZQQsascsZ2QQsbrbinZt

You'll notice our search term "wrt54g" shows up in the URL. You could easily copy and paste this URL replacing the text with "sanyo television" and get similar results. So lets apply this to the bookmark.

Create a bookmark for this eBay search. Set the Keyword to "ebay" and paste the URL in the "Location" field. Now, replace the text "wrt54g" with "%s". Now in your address bar, try "ebay panasonic speakers".

Moved Sent Items Folder

I had an issue this week at work that I wasn't able to figure out. Some how a user's sent items folder in Outlook were moved beneath another subfolder. After muddling around with it for sometime I found that I wasn't going to be able to resolve this one alone.

I tried moving the sent items folder using the old Exchange client (exchng32.exe), as well as mdbvu32.exe, to no avail.

I finally got ahold of an application similar to MDBVU32 called MFCMAPI from Microsoft. This tool is similar to MDBVU32, but a little easier to use. After poking around a little I was able to resolve this issue.

What you have to do is Copy the sent items folder to the next level up, and then choose the option to Move the folder. This wasn't initially intuitive since there isn't an option to Move a folder. But as soon as I choose that option the problem was resolved, and the customer was happy.