Matt Refghi

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

Microsoft’s Server operating systems are specifically aligned to offer, above all, top reliability and performance. It is therefore no surprise that Windows Server 2003, at first glance, seems to lack the standard Luna desktop theme that XP users have been accustomed to. Here’s the thing: The feature isn’t missing, it’s just “hidden” by default. Solution Here’s how to enable it: 1) Open the Services Management Console by entering “services.msc” in the Run dialog. To open the Run dialog, click Start > Run, or press Windows Key + R. 2) Locate the Themes service, right-click it, and select Properties. 3) On the General tab, select the Startup Type dropdown, and choose Automatic. 4) Click Apply. 5) Click OK. 6) Right-click the Themes … Read more

When Microsoft announced their new Bing search engine, I was immediately curious about how it compared to Google. I changed Bing to my default search engine, and tried using it daily. Ultimately, I returned to Google, which always seemed to have slightly better search results – in most cases. Despite this fact, I visit Bing it at least once a day  – but not to search. I visit it daily specifically to see the new background image they are using. They change this background image every day, and each one is usually impressive. In fact, in most cases, seeing it actually makes me want to find out more about what I’m seeing. As an example, consider the following screenshot: Great … Read more

Here’s a really quick one: I kept getting this error when I tried to launch my recently purchased copy of Fallout 3. I googled around a bit, and while I found people with the same problem, no fixes were available. Solution While not an actual solution, I’ve been able to circumvent this problem by closing Steam, and re-opening it. This will allow you to launch the game successfully, but only once. If you quit the game, and try to launch it again, it won’t work. To get it to launch again, simply repeat the process – close Steam, re-open it. I’ll try and figure out how to fix this once and for all. See Also Steam Forum Post – Fallout 3 fell over and … Read more

I’m sure most of you have encountered this type of error, at one time or another, while using Windows: It appears when you try to delete a file or folder that is currently in use by an application. To be completely accurate, the file needs to be in use and locked by the application to prevent external edits – the lock is likely the reason we see the error message. Sometimes it is really obvious which application has a locked handle on the file – for example, if it is complaining about a Word document – perhaps the document is still open in Word. Personally, I consider scenarios like that acceptable because they can be solved easily; unfortunately, all too … Read more

Lately, I’ve been getting 2-3 of these errors whenever I try to open Firefox: I tried re-installing it, and also repairing it – but neither solved the problem. After spending some time googling to find a solution, I found a great knowledgebase article from the Mozilla guys themselves. Since it was difficult for me to find, I decided to offer the solution here too. Here’s the description of the problem, from the article: The term chrome has been used in Mozilla development for 10 years, referring to the that part of the Firefox window that lies outside of a window’s content area. Toolbars, menu bars, progress bars, and window title bars are all examples of elements that are typically part … Read more

Last night I set up Subversion on my main development machine, which is running Vista. To do this, I followed the steps outlined by Jeff Atwood on his Coding Horror blog. His article was very helpful – it allowed me to install Subversion rather painlessly, despite the few HTML glitches I encountered in his instructions. This morning, I opened the “Show log” page for a particular file using TortoiseSVN, and noticed one of the revisions I checked in was missing a comment. I right-clicked it, and selected “Edit log message”, wanting to add a comment then and there.  A little text editor popped up, and I typed the message. After I pressed OK, I was hit with this: Solution To … Read more