No Choice

This is why I don't like using web services. As a user, I'm given no choice in what I want. On twitter, it used to be OK to set a wall paper for your home, now it isn't. For a free web service, I assume it should be acceptable for them to be able to make the choice for you.

Soon, with automatic updates in Windows 10 delivering new features, I'd assume something like this would happen for desktop software. Is that acceptable?

Windows 8, how to change a new account to administrator

I used a particular online account (for example, account1@hotmail.com) to sign in and use Windows 8. Account1@hotmail.com has administrator privileges.

When I sign in with account2@hotmail.com and go to the user account metro control panel I can't find an option to make it an administrator. You have to use the older desktop style administrator panel to switch the account from a standard user to administrator.

1. Windows key + X, and then control panel
2. Under users, there should be the option "Change account type".
3. Change account2@hotmail.com to administrator and you're done.

Article on automating your powershell reports

Automating PowerShell Reports, Part 1

For those of you stuck doing the really boring but necessary work on windows server, here is a good article on automating powershell reports. 

Changing desktop background in Windows 7 Home Basic...

I thought Windows 7 starter was the version where you couldn't change the desktop background. Turns out the usual way of changing the desktop background is not present in Windows 7 Home Basic as well. If you right click on the desktop in Windows 7 Home Basic the option to personalize the appearance of the desktop is not present. However, unlike Windows 7 Starter you can change the desktop background, its just harder to get to then Windows 7 Home Premium.

According to this article, the way to change the desktop background is to go to the start menu and type "Change desktop background".

Windows SDK installation

I needed to install windows 7 SDK on my machine. The installation works by downloading various pieces and installing them. Somewhere along the line, the download stalled. Its been that way for hours. Cancelling the installation brings up the dialog above asking me to wait while the operation completes. But that's the problem, the operation is stuck and won’t complete. Plus the dialog remains on top of all windows and won’t go away. Bad design.

On tornado

Started playing with the tornado library released by facebook recently and it seems you cannot run tornado on windows. The framework seems to use fcntl which only works on Unix platforms.

Vsp1cln.exe - Vista SP1 File Removal Tool

I've been running Vista SP1 for the past few days, and the system is quite stable. It was time to make Vista SP1 permanent on this machine. I had 45.6 GB free before running the above tool. Vsp1cln.exe is described as:

Vsp1cln.exe is an optional tool that you can run after you install SP1. This tool removes older versions of components that have been updated in SP1, which are stored during the installation in case you need to uninstall SP1 later. Saving these older components increases the amount of disk space that is used. Typically, you should run Vsp1cln.exe if you want to reclaim this disk space after applying SP1 and if you will not need to uninstall SP1. Note, however, that you cannot uninstall SP1 after you run this tool.

UAC asks for permission when running the tool, and a command prompt pops up asking if you want to make SP1 permanent. After the tool had run on my machine, disk space went from 45.6 GB to 47.3 GB. If you're sure you are going to be keeping SP1 this might be a worth while tool to run.

doskey

I had forgotten about doskey and I read about it somewhere recently which jogged my memory. I love setting up aliases to some common directories on Linux, and was looking to do the same on Windows. This is one way not really sure if its the best way.

doskey wa=cd C:\Users\Adnan\Some\Directory

Now when you type wa, you should change to the directory specified.

You can also specify shortcuts to run programs, for instance:

doskey vi=start c:\progra~1\vim\vim71\gvim.exe $*

Now "vi Autoexec.bat" should start up an instance of vi with the Autoexec.bat file open.

Speaking of Autoexec.bat, it doesn't work in Vista. I got around that by editing the shortcut and adding "/k C:\Autoexec.bat".

There is probably a better way to do this by now. If you know of one, leave it in the comments.

Vista Experience

I'm beginning to get a little disappointed with Vista. It was working quite well for me the past few days, but I've been having application issues as days go by. First vlc-0.8.6 wouldn't play properly, it gives me a black screen instead of video. Switching back to 0.8.5 works, but then it disables aero. Then I had the problems with IE7 crashing yesterday. And today while doing video chat on Skype, I got a bluescreen, and the system rebooted. Now all of this could be a result of third party software, but thats my point. If an application misbehaves, the OS shouldn't crash.

While transferring data via scp, my wireless connection died. All other machines worked without any problems. I had to plug in a network cable.

World of Warcraft keeps crashing on me, a few minutes after I'd start it up.

Plus, a 40 gig harddrive is no where near a decent amount of disk space for Vista. Granted I have quite a bit installed (Office 2007, Visual Studio 2007, world of warcraft, warcraft3 being the heavy hitters) I still should have had more than a gig left at least!

Oh well, I guess the honey moon with Vista is over, and all the little problems are cropping up now! :)