Tech Tips

One of my favorite features in Windows 7 is the taskbar, as it combines the convenience of Vista’s Quick Launch, while organizing windows in a more intuitive manner. I’ve grown accustomed to dragging program shortcuts into it, and having them remain there permanently. That is, until this morning. For some reason, I discovered that Windows wouldn’t let me drag a batch file to the taskbar. In DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows, batch file is the name given to a type of script file, a text file containing a series of commands to be executed by the command interpreter. Even when I right-clicked the file, I didn’t see the typical “Pin to Taskbar” shortcut. Seeing as batch scripts can execute programs within themselves, I was … Read more

As a fan of WordPress, as soon as 3.2 was released, I found myself reading the changelog. While doing so, I noticed a very intriguing feature addition: Start writing your first post in our redesigned post editor and venture to the full-screen button in the editing toolbar to enter the new distraction-free writing or zen mode, my personal favorite feature of the release Zen mode? Distraction-free writing? Sounded good, so I proceeded to update all my WordPress installations. To fully impress upon you how significant of a feature it is, here’s what the typical WordPress WYSIWYG editor looks like: It’s a full-featured page, that’s for sure – but it also has quite a lot of controls surrounding it. The text editor itself loses … Read more

Immediately after updating Internet Explorer to version 9, I noticed a pretty severe bug within Gmail. A huge blue bar appeared, forcing all the buttons to appear on individual lines. Furthermore, despite the fact that I had one e-mail in the inbox, the graphical issues may it impossible to see. With the problem only existing in IE9, and not in my other browsers, I began searching for a solution. Solution A Gmail Help article revealed that the problem originated from my Compatibility View settings: Internet Explorer has a Compatibility View, a feature that affects how some websites are displayed. If Compatibility View is enabled for google.com, it may cause some Gmail features to display incorrectly. So, we suggest that you … Read more

Every now and then, when I attempt to connect to my work machine using Remote Desktop, I encounter the following error: Considering I have no special devices plugged in at work, the message always comes as a surprise. Multiple attempts to connect will simply result in the same message, forever blocking the connection. Solution Though I haven’t had the chance to try it, commenter “Rahim786” seems to have found a better solution: “1) Kill explorer of that session 2) now you will be able to connect to this session 3) Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to launch Task Manager 4) Click new task and run Explorer again” Thanks, Rahim786! Other Potential Solution The solution I found involves using Remote … Read more

As a frequent user of the built-in Internet Explorer 8 debugger, I was particularly annoyed when it suddenly started to appear off-screen. As you’ll see below, the debugger window itself was nowhere to be seen, whereas the actual “JScript Debugger” balloon tip remained visible. Amusingly enough, the balloon was pointing up, suggesting that my missing window was in that direction. I hoped it would stop happening after a reboot, but unfortunately, this was not the case.  To make matters worse, trying to killing the process wasn’t easy, as it often took a good two minutes for the kill command to take effect. I believe this was because the process was in a debug state, rather than running as normal. Solution After dealing … Read more

Before the introduction of Vista, Windows always featured a menu bar in Windows Explorer. It offered the following menu options: File, Edit, View, Favorites, Tools, and Help. Below is a screenshot of the bar in Windows Server 2003: Since Vista, Microsoft has decided to hide the bar, by default. In Windows 7, here’s what Windows Explorer looks like: While the menu bar is no longer visible, it hasn’t been completely removed from the operating system. You can simply press ALT to make it appear. Once visible, it is designed to disappear whenever you left-click the Windows Explorer window. If you actually click the menu, you can execute one action, and then the bar will disappear again. In this manner, Windows ensures … Read more

As I was trying to install Pear for my WampServer 2.0i installation today, I encountered a problem. When I ran the typical “go-pear.bat” script – I was hit with this message: Solution Thankfully, after searching around – I found the solution from a blogger named Latyr, who blogs in French. Since I speak French, I thought I should offer his solution in English. I expanded it into a few steps, for those that aren’t familiar with WAMP and PHP. 1) Locate the “php.ini” file.  In my case, I found it at this path: C:wampbinphpphp5.3.0php.ini Don’t use the WAMP system tray icon to edit this file. It didn’t work when I tried – you have to manually locate it. 2) Find … Read more

In the last few weeks, I’ve been having problems launching Notepad++ from the context menu as I usually do. Instead of it launching properly after I select the “Edit with Notepad++” option, I get an error: To get around the error, I had to use the File-Open menu from Notepad++, and locate the file I wanted to open. This was acceptable for a while, but eventually my patience with the issue wore thin. Solution I figured out why it was happening. The problem was that the “notepad++.exe” file was set to automatically prompt for administrative privileges via User Account Control. This works fine if you’re launching Notepad++ from a start menu or desktop shortcut, but apparently the context menu didn’t like the setting. … Read more

Usually when I copy text from web pages, I really don’t want the formatting from the webpage to be kept. I  just want to have the text in the simplest format possible, and then I can set my own styles. Unfortunately, this isn’t normally how it works. Typically, when copying from a web page in a browser, it may also copy any tables, images, and styles that are applied to or mixed with the text. This does depend on where you are pasting the text, though. In my case, I use Microsoft Word most of the time. Word supports a lot of web page elements, meaning they will likely appear in the Word document. Consider the following text: This is some … Read more

In a previous post, I described a screen capture application included with Windows, called Snipping Tool.  Since then, I’ve been using it regularly for my screen capture needs. That is, until I realized an interesting flaw: the application, after a few uses, stops working. In Vista, here’s the error message I get: It eventually appears when you try to launch the tool, preventing you from using it. The advice the dialog offers (restarting your computer and then trying again) is totally unacceptable, in my mind. Because of this problem, I could not rely on the tool – so I instead started using Jing more often. Eventually, I tried to see if I could do something to fix this problem whenever … Read more