William D Buchanan » How To’s

Enable the Preview Pane in Explorer

William Buchanan — Sat, 29 May 2010 15:28:00 +0000

Windows Vista and Windows 7 both have a great option called the Preview Pane. Instead of having Windows classic style folders with file names, icons, and maybe some details, you can have a pane on the right side of your Explorer window that will preview any file selected including graphics files and Microsoft Office files without having to open them.

To find this option do the following:

While in Windows Explorer click Organize. Mouse over the Layout option and then select Preview [...]

Get Rid of the "Use the Web service to find the correct program" Option

William Buchanan — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:12:18 +0000

When you try to open a file in Vista and the OS doesn’t recognize the file extension because it’s not associated with an installed program, a dialog box pops up that gives you the option to "Use the Web service to find the correct program" or "Select a program from a list of installed programs." Most of us want to do the latter, and so you have to go through that extra click to get to your list of programs. [...]

Slipstreaming Service Packs into Windows XP

William Buchanan — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:30:00 +0000

If you need to reinstall Windows XP and only have the original disk you are in for a long process to get the operating system installed and up to date. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of security patches and updates released for Windows XP since its release in 2001. So, you could install XP with the original disk, then install the latest service pack and updates, but you may run into problems such as the fact that the [...]

"Windows has disabled remote access to this computer"

William Buchanan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:04:00 +0000

Sometimes when you try to share a folder on an Windows XP computer, you may receive an error message that says "As a security measure, Windows has disabled remote access to this computer. However you can enable remote access and safely share files by running the Network Setup Wizard." This is caused by a local policy setting, read on for the step by step instructions for resolving this problem…

To resolve this issue, modify the Network access: Sharing and security [...]

Enable Command Prompt QuickEdit Mode

William Buchanan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:43:00 +0000

By default, QuickEdit mode in the command prompt window is disabled in Windows XP. QuickEdit mode is a useful function that lets you copy text between a command window and GUI-based programs, or paste text into the command window using the right click option.

You can enable QuickEdit mode by following these instructions:
Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. Click the icon in the upper-left corner of the Command Prompt window, and then click Properties. On [...]

.NET Framework Error on Login & Services not Starting

William Buchanan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:28:53 +0000

I have had a few laptops running Vista (Enterprise version) in my care that have experienced this problem lately. The user boots up their machine and logs in, then they receive an error from the .NET Framework, which is the first symptom of this particular issue.

The user receives the following error:

Microsoft .NET Framework

Unhandled exception [...]

Permission Denied When Uploading Files Through CGI

William Buchanan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:48:11 +0000

I have a Perl script that one of my clients uses to upload files. It is a script that I created and has been working flawlessly for a couple of years now. Today I received a call saying that this client is no longer able to upload files.

When they tried to upload files to their server they received an error saying something to the effect of:

The server encountered an error. The script either created no output or an error. [...]

Problem Updating RPMs Using YUM

William Buchanan — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:03:37 +0000

I was working on a Linux system that is running Fedora Core 4 and needed to install some updates to the system. I was using YUM because of the easy of use and how well it handles dependencies with rpms.

When trying to update the system I received the following error:

[root@yourlinuxbox ~]# yum -y update php Setting up Update Process Setting up repositories Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: updates-released

The system was unable to find [...]

Backing Up The Registry In Windows XP

William Buchanan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:06:26 +0000

Making changes to the registry in Windows has been a fact of PC life for a long time now. Before making any changes it’s always a good idea to make a backup of the registry just in case. Many registry modifications take effect immediately and there is no “undo” function. If you make a mistake while editing the registry, it can cause major problems, including a non-bootable system.

The process of backing up the registry basically means exporting a registry data [...]

Save Your Office 2007 Files as a PDF

William Buchanan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:08:27 +0000

Microsoft Office

If you are a user of Microsoft’s Office 2007 there is a very handy addon that will allow you to save your files in the Adobe Acrobat PDF file format. This can be extremely useful when you need to send, for example, a Word document to someone but you don’t want them to be able to edit the original document.

Obviously you need a valid copy of Microsoft Office in order to download [...]