Disable Synchronization Warnings in Windows XP

Offline files in windows XP can come in handy if you need to take your work home with you, but if you have any .mdb or .pst files in a folder that has been made available offline you'll get an annoying warning message every time you synchronize.

You can disable these warning messages by adding a registry key under
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SyncMgr

Create a new dword value called "KeepProgressLevel" and set its value to one of the following options.

1. - Pause on errors.
2. - Pause on warnings.
3. - Pause on errors and warnings.
4. - Pause and display info.

Option 1 will prevent any warning message from being displayed after the sync operation, but it will still display errors.

Microsoft Office Picture Manager Opens Slowly

I ran into a problem a few weeks back where I would try to open an image attachment from an e-mail, and it would take forever to actually open up. The splash screen for Microsoft Office Picture Manager would appear, but then seem to hang. After some time it would eventually open, but something was definately wrong.

I searched all over the web for a fix, and finally found the answer in Google Groups. My hunch about something to do with an MRU (most recently used) list was correct. Picture Manager maintains an MRU list in an XML file. If one of those locations is no longer valid, or is on a slow link, Picture Manager will appear to hang.

To fix this issue browse to %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\OIS. Locate the file named OIScatalog.cag, and double-click on it. When asked what you want to open the file with choose Notepad from the list. When it opens you will see a file that looks like the following. Remove any lines that start with mru path. Make sure to remove the entire line including the opening/closing tags. You can also just delete the OIScatalog.cag file, and it will be re-created the next time you open a picture.


Save the file, and then try opening another picture. It should now open much more quickly and all of your headaches will disappear.