Tips & Tricks

Microsoft has made a lot of significant changes from the way things worked in Windows XP to how they work now in Windows Vista and Windows 7. One of the most frustrating changes in my opinion is Windows Search. I used the search function in XP on a regular basis to do everything from a basic search for a file to more advanced things like searching for certain text within a file. In the effort to make things "simpler" Microsoft has removed the interface that used to allow you to do that.

If you are not too thrilled with the Windows Vista/7 shutdown menus or just want the convenience of having those options on your desktop it’s pretty simple to do.

When you try to right click a network connection in the Network Connections folder in Windows XP and select Properties, you get an error message that says "an unexpected error occurred". Not very descriptive, so what is the problem?  The most common cause of this problem is damaged registry settings that prevent you from viewing the network connection’s properties.

I ran into an interesting problem recently with a client who was trying to upload a file for a Live Meeting in which she was the presenter. Her presentation was created in Power Point 2007 and had the extension .pptx. When she attempted to upload the file to Live Meeting she was prompted to install an ActiveX control to convert the .pptx file to a Live Meeting (.lmp) file. The problem came when installing the ActiveX file, when she clicked on the link to install the ActiveX file, the process started but then would come back with an error saying that the ActiveX control could not be installed.

A client of mine had this issue recently. When you try to start a program with administrative privileges in Windows XP by using the Runas command, the program window opens but it’s empty. This happens because of an issue with permissions. There is a fairly simple workaround for the problem.