Fix: remove ‘optimized for Bing and MSN’ from IE titlebar

Seems some Microsoft software (probably Bing bar) version is changing Internet Explorer title bar to write “optimized for Bing and MSN”.

To remove this:

1. Use Start/Run or Start/Find and type there regedit then press ENTER to launch the Registry Editor.
2. At the tree on the left navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
3. At the right handside of the window right click the value “WindowTitle” and select “Delete” to restore the default “- Windows Internet Explorer” suffix on the IE titlebar

HowTo: Remove Skype from Windows taskbar, keep as Taskbar tray icon

An annoying feature of Skype of recent Skype versions is that by default it shows an icon on the Windows taskbar apart from the one at the taskbar tray while you’re signed in. This also means it shows in the ALT+TAB key sequence when switching between open windows, which you might not always want to happen, since you may accidentally switch to it instead of the windows you’re working with at that moment.

If it (also) had an option “Keep Skype in the taskbar during a video conversation” it would be more useful I guess.

Luckily you can turn off that behaviour from Skype’s Tools/Options menu option, by going to Advanced and then Advanced settings part of it.

Pinned tabs and Split-Screen

Since widescreen format in monitors gets more and more common, how about a twist to the classic tabbed windows UI?

Imagine being able to pin a tab and have it move to a side-view area in the same window. That are would keep the pinned tabs separated from the rest using a splitter / split-view UI. The pinned pages area could also be configurable by user to be at left or right or even at top or bottom of the window. It could maybe even be dragable to dock to the wished for side of the window or to make the pinned pages area float as a separate window (that one can even move to another display if they have multiple monitors attached) if we wish to have maximum flexibility.

That way for example in a web browser that uses tabbed navigation, when you would click on a link that would open in a new tab (as requested by the respective anchor tag in the HTML page, or as configured in browser settings for all links that don’t specify a target, or as overridden by the user using SHIFT+click or right click and “Open in a new tab” action), if the page you were at was pinned, the new tab would open at the non-pinned tabs area on the side and you would keep having both the page you were reading visible and the new page visible at the same time to check it out.

Such a design would be very handy when you want to checkout a news stream like that in Twitter, Facebook etc. without opening and closing or navigation between tabs all the time.

So how about some browser maker or plugin author to go for it? Feel free to give just the due credit for the idea if nobody else has come up with this before.

broken .LNK files assignment (or how to destroy and fix Windows 7)

A friend just called me this morning that their notebook with Windows 7 Starter started today showing the same icon for every Start menu item and for shortcuts (e.g. on the desktop) and when trying to open them the same program would always try to open them.

Seems he had right-clicked and done “Open With…” on a “.lnk” (Windows shortcut) file that was pointing to a missing (deleted) video file. Not knowing what .lnk files really are (filesystem shortcuts), he tried to open it with Windows Media Player.

There are several issues here that Microsoft should fix:

1. Somebody at Microsoft changed Windows (think this happened at Windows Vista) to have “Always open with this program” option checked by default and this means users can easily damage file assignments that way.
2. Windows doesn’t seem to protect such critical file extensions from getting reassigned by accident or by malicious code. In fact System File Protection (SFP) should take care to restore this automatically
3. The Open With dialog shouldn’t allow one to check “Always open with this program” for critical file extensions like “.lnk”.

For older Windows versions (not Vista or Windows 7) I found a solution listed at:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/172053/en-us?fr=1

but for Windows Vista and Windows 7 the correct solution is discussed at:

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/change-fix-file-associations-windows-7/

There a Microsoft MVP (admin of http://winhelponline.com/) points to

http://www.winhelponline.com/fileasso/lnkfix_vista.zip

1. You download this file and unpack/execute the .reg (registry) file that is included in the ZIP archive.
2. Then Windows will warn you that the changes will occur to Windows Registry, you accept that
3. Then you get a message the merge was completed.
4. From Start menu, LOG OFF (from Shutdown submenu select Logoff/Disconnect from system) and LOG ON again.
5. If everything isn’t fine at the new log-on session, you can also try rebooting the machine.

Windows 7 Command Line Help mistake for IF command

If you type

help IF

at the Windows 7 command-line (can launch this by searching at Windows Start menu search box for “Command” or by typing cmd there and pressing ENTER), you get in one of the help pages printed out for the batch files’ IF command:

%ERRORLEVEL% will expand into a string representation of
the current value of ERRORLEVEL, provided that there is not already
an environment variable with the name ERRORLEVEL, in which case you
will get its value instead. After running a program, the following
illustrates ERRORLEVEL use:

goto answer%ERRORLEVEL%
:answer0
echo Program had return code 0
:answer1
echo Program had return code 1

If a program you launched from the batch file returns error code 0 (meaning usually no error), then you jump to label (using “goto” command) answer%ERRORLEVEL% that is answer0 (labels are prefixed with : in DOS/Windows batch files) and it prints out (using echo command) on the console “Program had return code 0”.

Fine till here, but then it will proceed to next commands (the block labeled :answer1) and also print out “Program had return code 1”. Obviously the correct example should be:

goto answer%ERRORLEVEL%
:answer0
echo Program had return code 0
goto finish
:answer1
echo Program had return code 1
:finish

Could also have a goto finish after the last echo, but its needless since we don’t have :answer2 etc. labels after that and proceeds to finish by itself anyway.

Thinking of this example again, it’s a pretty silly one since one could do instead:

echo Program had return code %ERRORLEVEL%

BTW, to output an empty line to the console you can use echo:
And speaking of batch file tips, you can use :: for comment lines instead of REM command.

Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier (FCIV)

I recently came across a very useful Microsoft tool (FCIV) that can compute and store (as XML) checksums (MD5, SHA1 or both hashes) of folders/files you want and can also be used to later on verify the checksum lists to see if they’ve been tampered with.

Would be nice to have a GUI wrapper around that tool that would also cooperate with the task scheduler to run regular checks of sensitive files.

You can get FCIV from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11533 (after unpacking it at some folder you can checkout the tool parameters by typing fciv or fciv /? at the command line – of course you can use fciv | more to see the syntax page by page).

You can read more regarding that (unsupported) Microsoft tool at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841290

 

Microsoft (R) File Checksum Integrity Verifier V2.05 README file
================================================================

1.What is File Checksum Integrity Verifier (FCIV)?
2.Features.
3.Syntax.
4.Database storage format.
5.Verification.
6.History.

1.What is fciv?
—————
Fciv is a command line utility that computes and verifies hashes of files.

It computes a MD5 or SHA1 cryptographic hash of the content of the file.
If the file is modified, the hash is different.

With fciv, you can compute hashes of all your sensitive files.
When you suspect that your system has been compromised, you can run a verification to determine which files have been modified.
You can also schedule verifications regularily.

2.Features:
———–
- Hash algorithm: MD5 , SHA1 or both ( default MD5).
- Display to screen or store hash and filename in a xml file.
- Can recursively browse a directory ( ex fciv.exe c:\ -r ).
- Exception list to specify files or directories that should not be computed.
- Database listing.
- hashes and signature verifications.
- store filename with or without full path.

3.Syntax:
———
Usage:  fciv.exe [Commands] <Options>

Commands: ( Default -add )

        -add    <file | dir> : Compute hash and send to output (default screen).

                dir options:
                -r       : recursive.
                -type    : ex: -type *.exe.
                -exc file: list of directories that should not be computed.
                -wp      : Without full path name. ( Default store full path)
                -bp      : base path. The base path is removed from the path name of each entry

        -list            : List entries in the database.

        -v               : Verify hashes.
                         : Option: -bp basepath.

        -? -h -help      : Extended Help.

Options:
        -md5 | -sha1 | -both    : Specify hashtype, default md5.
        -xml db                 : Specify database format and name.

To display the MD5 hash of a file, type fciv.exe filename

Compute hashes:
        fciv.exe c:\mydir\myfile.dll
        fciv.exe c:\ -r -exc exceptions.txt -sha1 -xml dbsha.xml
        fciv.exe c:\mydir -type *.exe
        fciv.exe c:\mydir -wp -both -xml db.xml

List hashes stored in database:
        fciv.exe -list -sha1 -xml db.xml

Verifications:
        fciv.exe -v -sha1 -xml db.xml
        fciv.exe -v -bp c:\mydir -sha1 -xml db.xml
       
4.Database storage format:
————————–
xml file.

The hash is stored in base 64.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FCIV>
    <FILE_ENTRY>
        <name> </name>
        <MD5> </MD5>
        <SHA1> </SHA1>
    </FILE_ENTRY>
</FCIV>   

5.Verification:
—————
You can build a hash database of your sensitive files and verify them regularily or when you suspect that your system
has been compromised.

It checks each entry stored in the db and verify that the checksum was not modified.

6. History:
———–
Fciv 1.2 : Added event log.
Fciv 1.21: Fixed bad keyset error on some computers.
Fciv 1.22: Added -type option. Support up to 10 masks. *.exe *.dll …
Fciv 2.0:  xml as unique storage. Added -both option.
Fciv 2.01: Exit with error code to allow detections of problem in a script.
Fciv 2.02: Improved perfs. When both alg are specified, it’s now done in one pass.
Fciv 2.03: Added -wp and -bp options. Fciv now stores full path or relatives paths.
Fciv 2.04: Removed several options to simplify it.
Fciv 2.05: Added success message if the verification did not detect any errors.

Renaming a file but preserving its sort order on Windows

Sometimes you may wish to rename a file to mark it as being not yet finished or in need to be worked on etc.

In such a case on Windows if you want to make sure the filename shows first/last depending on the sort order you can prefix its name with a "_", an underscore char (assuming you sort by name ascending or descending – quick way to toggle this is by clicking one or two times as needed onto the "Name" column title at the Details view of Windows Explorer).

If you don’t want to ruin the alphabetical sort order you can prefix the file with "-" (the minus char). This seems to be a useful hack implemented into Windows, that is the "-" prefix is ignored when sorting by filename at a Windows Explorer folder view. You can even prefix with multiple minus chars there (all ignored). Using multiple dashes could help the file standout in the file list or help you visually order which one is more urgent to work on.