Archive
HowTo: Use Silverlight-enabled website in Microsoft Edge Chromium
Let’s see how we can use a Silverlight-enabled website in Microsoft Edge Chromium
1) When we visit the site we’ll see a “Click now to install” button that used to download and install Silverlight, but that recently stopped working. Even before though, it wouldn’t work with Edge Chromium after installation, but show everytime the same download prompt
2) Press “…” button at top-right and select “Settings”
3) Pick Appearance at the left sidebar and scroll down on the right to “Internet Explrorer mode button”. If the switch to turn it on is disabled (grayed out), then press the link “allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode”
4) This will take you to edge://settings/defaultBrowser, where you should change “Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode” from “Default” to “Allow”. After that press the “Restart” button shown.
5) Now if you go back to Appearance, you can turn on the “Internet Explorer mode button” option
6) Now if you go back to the website, you’ll see a button at top-right allowing you to open the page in Internet Explorer mode. The same action is also available on the “…” menu, but having it as a button too can prove handy.
7) If Microsoft hadn’t broken the direct Silverlight download links, then from this point you would be set and could use the respective website by first installing the Silverlight ActiveX control. But instead you’ll get:
8) Luckily archive.org has cached the last Silverlight releases (you can also check them on virustotal.com after downloading if you wish) and hope they will keep them, since they’re the most trustworthy alternative source for those installers (after Microsoft of course). Ignore the “Developer” versions and just get the x86 (Silverlight.exe) or x64 (Silverlight_x64.exe) version, depending on your Windows installation
9) Since they keep various versions archived, make sure you get the latest available one from there.
10) After the download completes you will be able to run the downloaded installer
11) When the installer starts, uncheck the options “Make Bing my search engine” and “Make MSN my homepage” if you don’t wish to do those actions. Then press Install now and after it downloads and installs, select “Enable Microsoft Update” (as recommended) and press Next and then Close.
12) Now if you visit the Silverlight-based website again you will see the Download Silverlight prompt, but if you press the “IE mode” button on the Edge toolbar (or do the same action from the “…” menu), you’ll see the Silverlight application loading (could show some loading progress animation there or some percentage – depends on the application).
13) You will see a popup open up where you can select that Edge should remember the current url and open it in Internet Explorer mode next time too (if you press Manage on that popup you can see those sites which are remembered for 30 days). Those sites can be managed at edge://settings/defaultBrowser
14) after that the website opens up in Internet Explorer mode with a small warning bar at the top that you can close with the [x] button on its right
15) And presto, you can see below ClipFlair Studio (http://studio.clipflair.net) working fine in Microsoft Edge Chromium via Internet Explorer mode and the Silverlight ActiveX Control.
Wish Microsoft wouldn’t make lives of users that hard. Not all sites are backed by multi-million dollar companies to be rewritten from scratch with HTML-based technology that still strives to support what Silverlight was offering with ease (btw, if you’d care to sponsor Clipflair Studio’s future evolutions, can donate via the respective button at https://github.com/zoomicon/clipflair)
In the case of ClipFlair, you’ll need to do the final steps of this process for these URLs:
http://gallery.clipflair.net/activity
HowTo: install multiple Corel Painter brushpacks silently
I got a nice expression software charity bundle with Corel Painter 2020 (current version is 2021) and a bunch of brushes in it and then noticed that the brush packs where available for download as separate installers than the Painter software.
So I launched one of the brush pack installers from the command-line (can give CMD and press enter at the address bar of the file explorer window to open command-line in the current folder) with a /? parameter to see its syntax:
e:\brushpack_abstract_windows.exe /?
Then I created a batch file to loop over all the brush_* installer files using the following commands in the console (press ENTER after each one). The for loop executes each brush pack installer from the same folder passing parameters for silent mode (/S /v/qn), as instructed by the dialog above:
copy con PainterInstallBrushes.bat
@for %%f in (brushpack_*) do %%f /S /v/qn
^Z
The last one (^Z) means Press CTRL+Z (then press ENTER for that line too). It signifies the end-of-file / input. We were inputing/copying keystrokes from the console (CON) into the file PainterInstallBrushes.bat (note that if the file exists you’re asked to overwrite it as soon as you copy the 1st line into it, but you still have to press CTRL+Z and ENTER to end input).
To avoid having to press Yes at repeated security dialogs (due to User Access Control [UAC] being activated), I opened an administrator command-prompt (can give CMD at Windows search and right click the found cmd.exe and select to open it as administrator), then executed the batch file (E: goes to drive E, CD \Corel.com goes to Corel.com folder under E: drive root)
c:\windows\system32> e:
e:\somefolder> cd \Corel.com
e:\Corel.com> PainterInstallBrushes.bate:\Corel.com>PainterInstallBrushes.bat
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_abstract_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_alcoholink_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_bristly_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_bubbles_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_drytexture_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_feather_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_fireworks_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_gesturalillustration_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_mangaii_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_michellewebbmasterpack_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_nature_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_perfectpets_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_popart_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_rain_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_rake_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_rustandpatina_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_scrape_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_stipple_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_suminagashi_windows.exe /S /v/qn
e:\Corel.com>brushpack_sunnyrays_windows.exe /S /v/qn
An alternative way to using the command-line would have been to create the batch (.bat) file with a text editor in the same folder as the brush pack installers, then right click it and select to run it as an administrator from the popup menu.
HowTo: Install Python, PIP and cx_Oracle on MSYS2 / Windows
Here’s how to install Python, PIP package installer and cx_Oracle extension module on MSYS2:
$ pacman -S python
warning: python-3.8.3-1 is up to date — reinstalling
resolving dependencies…
looking for conflicting packages…Packages (1) python-3.8.3-1
Total Installed Size: 108.66 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 0.00 MiB:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
…
$ pacman -S cx_Oracle
error: target not found: cx_Oracle
$ pip install cx_Oracle
bash: pip: command not found
$ pacman -S python-pip
resolving dependencies…
looking for conflicting packages…Packages (2) python-setuptools-47.1.1-1 python-pip-20.1.1-1
Total Download Size: 2.22 MiB
Total Installed Size: 10.91 MiB:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
:: Retrieving packages…
…
$ pip install cx_Oracle
Collecting cx_Oracle
Downloading cx_Oracle-8.0.0.tar.gz (325 kB)
|████████████████████████████████| 325 kB 693 kB/s
Using legacy setup.py install for cx-Oracle, since package ‘wheel’ is not installed.
Installing collected packages: cx-Oracle
Running setup.py install for cx-Oracle … error
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
command: /usr/bin/python3.exe -u -c ‘import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = ‘"’"’/tmp/pip-install-wqtzv2rv/cx-Oracle/setup.py’"’"’; __file__=’"’"’/tmp/pip-install-wqtzv2rv/cx-Oracle/setup.py’"’"’;f=getattr(tokenize, ‘"’"’open’"’"’, open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace(‘"’"’\r\n’"’"’, ‘"’"’\n’"’"’);f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, ‘"’"’exec’"’"’))’ install –record /tmp/pip-record-mui2mjs9/install-record.txt –single-version-externally-managed –compile –install-headers /usr/include/python3.8/cx-Oracle
cwd: /tmp/pip-install-wqtzv2rv/cx-Oracle/
Complete output (17 lines):
running install
running build
running build_ext
building ‘cx_Oracle’ extension
creating build
creating build/temp.msys-3.1.5-x86_64-3.8
creating build/temp.msys-3.1.5-x86_64-3.8/src
creating build/temp.msys-3.1.5-x86_64-3.8/odpi
creating build/temp.msys-3.1.5-x86_64-3.8/odpi/src
x86_64-pc-msys-gcc -Wno-unused-result -Wsign-compare -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe -DCXO_BUILD_VERSION=8.0.0 -Iodpi/include -Iodpi/src -I/usr/include/python3.8 -c src/cxoApiType.c -o build/temp.msys-3.1.5-x86_64-3.8/src/cxoApiType.o
In file included from src/cxoModule.h:14,
from src/cxoApiType.c:11:
/usr/include/python3.8/Python.h:44:10: fatal error: crypt.h: No such file or directory
44 | #include <crypt.h>
| ^~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
error: command ‘x86_64-pc-msys-gcc’ failed with exit status 1
—————————————-
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: /usr/bin/python3.exe -u -c ‘import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = ‘"’"’/tmp/pip-install-wqtzv2rv/cx-Oracle/setup.py’"’"’; __file__=’"’"’/tmp/pip-install-wqtzv2rv/cx-Oracle/setup.py’"’"’;f=getattr(tokenize, ‘"’"’open’"’"’, open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace(‘"’"’\r\n’"’"’, ‘"’"’\n’"’"’);f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, ‘"’"’exec’"’"’))’ install –record /tmp/pip-record-mui2mjs9/install-record.txt –single-version-externally-managed –compile –install-headers /usr/include/python3.8/cx-Oracle Check the logs for full command output.
Found a solution here for other Linuxes, mentioning
apt install python-dev clang libcrypt-dev
Via MSYS2 package manager (pacman), libcrypt and libcrypt-devel seem to be available. The second one should fetch the first one if needed, together with header files for development.
$ pacman -S libcrypt-devel
resolving dependencies…
looking for conflicting packages…Packages (1) libcrypt-devel-2.1-2
Total Download Size: 0.04 MiB
Total Installed Size: 0.04 MiB:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
…
Now we can install cx_Oracle succesfully:
$ pip install cx_Oracle
Collecting cx_Oracle
Using cached cx_Oracle-8.0.0.tar.gz (325 kB)
Using legacy setup.py install for cx-Oracle, since package ‘wheel’ is not installed.
Installing collected packages: cx-Oracle
Running setup.py install for cx-Oracle … done
Successfully installed cx-Oracle-8.0.0
HowTo: Use DISM and SFC tools to check+fix your Windows installation
If you’re having issues with your Windows 7 or newer, you should consider whether its installation has become corrupted (due to malicious software or hard drive errors).
After doing a disk check (say by right clicking the appropriate drive under my computer and selecting Properties, then Tools tab and Error checking) and a complete virus scan (on Win10 you can click the shield icon of Windows defender in the taskbar tray and at scanning options choose to do a full scan – or if you have installed some third-party antivirus double-click its icon in the taskbar tray and when its GUI opens up opt to do a full scan), then try the following steps to repair your Windows installation:
1. Press WIN+R to open Run dialog
2. Type in:
CMD
Hold down CTRL+SHIFT keys and click OK to open the command line window in Administrator mode (do press Yes at the User Account Control prompt)
A (usually) black text-based console window will open up and you’ll be greated with something like:
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18363.720]
(c) 2019 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
and then a prompt like:
C:\Windows\system32>
3. Type in the following and press the ENTER key:
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth
and press ENTER to execute the DISM tool with the option to check the windows image health and wait patiently for it to complete
Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.18362.1Image Version: 10.0.18363.720
[==========================100.0%==========================] The component store is repairable.
The operation completed successfully.
4. In case you see a message that the component store is repairable, then when greeted with the C:\Windows\system32> prompt again, type in the following and press ENTER:
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth
to repair the Windows image:
Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.18362.1Image Version: 10.0.18363.720
[==========================100.0%==========================] The restore operation completed successfully.
The operation completed successfully.
If RestoreHealth fails and you’re on Windows 10, then you should checkout this article:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/16397-repair-install-windows-10-place-upgrade.html
on how to do an in place upgrade of Windows 10, opting to keep your settings and apps
5. If all goes well you’ll see that the restore operation completed successfully and you’ll be taken again to the command-line prompt C:\Windows\system32>
Now that the windows image is checked and fine, you should check your Windows installation against that image, giving the following command and pressing ENTER:
sfc /scannow
Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.
Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them.
For online repairs, details are included in the CBS log file located at
windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For offline
repairs, details are included in the log file provided by the /OFFLOGFILE flag.
After any automatic repairs you should see the prompt C:\Windows\system32> again. Now repeat the same step till you see no more errors found and repaired.
sfc /scannow
Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.
Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.
When back at the C:\Windows\system32> prompt with no errors found and repaired, just close the console window or type in the following and press ENTER:
exit
Fix: Microworlds Pro installer showing gibberish instead of Greek
A friend sent me the other day a screenshot from the installer of Microwords Pro Greek version on Windows 10 that was showing gibberish instead of Greek. At their school on Windows 10 it was showing up fine, so they wondered what the issue was.
They mentioned that on Windows 10 english it was showing fine. So we did try changing the preferred language order of Windows (at Laguage preferences in settings), to put English first (clicking on a language there shows arrows to reorder them, but has no drag action allowed btw), then Greek and try installing again, but the issue was still the same.
Note that at first I had wondered if it was a similar issue with the OwnCloud client installation that was showing an unexpected language instead of English, but since the screenshot was showing gibberish chars I guessed it was indeed showing Greek, but at some unexpected encoding for the system’s codepage. Note that codepages are a thing of the past and not needed for Unicode programs, but they’re still needed for older programs that just used a single byte (that couldn’t fit all posisble characters in the world) to encode a character.
I noticed it was showing a WinRar icon at that installer, so wondered if they had WinRar installed, but since installers are usually self-contained, I guessed the installer had been built with some older non-unicode WinRar engine version or something.
So I suggested going to Control Panel > Change Display Language > Administrative > Change System Locale for non Unicode programs and choose Greek there instead of English and indeed it worked.
Note that to find Control Panel on recent versions of Windows 10, the easiest way is to press the Search icon on the taskbar and then type “Control Panel” (or “Πίνακας Ελέγχου” if you’re on a Greek system). On the first Windows 10 editions you could just right click the Windows 10 Start/flag button on the taskbar and select Control Panel from the popup menu shown, but it seems they’ve removed that with recent updates.
This is useful to know since it usually affects most older non-Unicode programs that expect the system to work with a specific codepage. Microsoft used to have a utility that allowed one to switch the system codepage separately for various programs instead of doing a system-wide change, but it was hard to find even back then (plus didn’t allow redistribution) and most probably doesn’t work on newer systems.
Fix: Cisco Webex Meetings install fail (AddDllDirectory @ KERNEL32.dll)
Looking into the following error message occuring with Cisco WebEx Meetings installer on Windows 7, found this useful discussion:
where the following are suggested:
– install Update for Windows 7 (KB2533623) from Microsoft:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26767
– video tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpRRiMGJ_xA
And an extra tip, in case you after the installation, when you try to connect via a meeting URL, you see this dialog:
then try enabling TLS 1.1 & 1.2 at your browser (e.g. was told Chrome on Win7 had then both off). See how to do this for various browsers at: https://knowledge.digicert.com/generalinformation/INFO3299.html
Regarding TLS 1.1 though, mind you that it is considered insecure – so you might decide to skip enabling it (and try just enabling TLS 1.2) unless you can’t find some other solution. Quoting recent article on TLS 1.0 and 1.1 protocols:
Microsoft announced today that it will delay disabling support for the insecure Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and 1.1 protocols from Microsoft web browsers because of the current global situation until the second half of 2020, with an estimated time of roll out during July. “For the new Microsoft Edge (based on Chromium), TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are currently planned to be disabled by default no sooner than Microsoft Edge version 84 (currently planned for July 2020),” Kyle Pflug, Microsoft Edge Developer Experience Principal PM Lead, said. “For all supported versions of Internet Explorer 11 and Microsoft Edge Legacy (EdgeHTML-based), TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 will be disabled by default as of September 8, 2020.” https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-delays-disabling-insecure-tls-in-browsers-until-july/
Fix: Delphi error MSBuildToolsPath is not specified for the ToolsVersion …
This is my answer at:
for the issue of Delphi showing on build the error
MSBuildToolsPath is not specified for the ToolsVersion “12.0” defined at “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\12.0”, or the value specified evaluated to the empty string
note that in my case it was also showing underlined unit names in the code editor at uses clause with “Cannot resolve unit name xx”
It is a known issue, documented here: https://community.embarcadero.com/article/technical-articles/16202-msbuildtoolspath-is-not-specified-for-the-toolsversion
This error is caused by incorrect values in the registry. On a 32 OS, run regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild. On a 64 bit OS, run regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MSBuild. First, backup this registry key by selecting File | Export. Next, look at the numbers below the ToolsVersions key. Delete any number not found at the MSBuild level. … There is anecdotal evidence to suggest this registry key imbalance is caused by uninstalling some versions of Visual Studio, but it has not been confirmed at this time.
Since I’ve been installing/uninstalling various Visual Studio versions (including previews), guess it has indeed been caused by that
Error “A default tools version “2.0” was specified, but its definition could not be found.” may appear then if you deleted the 2.0 key following the 1st article’s advice. Solution for that one is to edit each value under MSBuild key in the registry locations mentioned for x32 and x64 and change DefaultToolsVersion to 14.0 or other highest MSBuild tools version that is installed
Note that on x64 machine you need to fix these two issues for both x32 and x64 registry locations, since the IDE is 32-bit process and if you fix x64 location only it will fail internally, underlining all Standard units at uses clause in your source code at uses clause and showing “Cannot resolve unit name xx”
Also it may be useful to install this: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=48159
This may also be useful to know (copying from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb383985.aspx):
Order of Precedence
The order of precedence, from highest to lowest, used to determine the ToolsVersion is: The ToolsVersion attribute on the MSBuild task used to build the project, if any.
The /toolsversion (or /tv) switch that’s used in the msbuild.exe command, if any.
If the environment variable MSBUILDTREATALLTOOLSVERSIONSASCURRENT is set, then use the current ToolsVersion.
If the environment variable MSBUILDTREATHIGHERTOOLSVERSIONASCURRENT is set and the ToolsVersion defined in the project file is greater than the current ToolsVersion, use the current ToolsVersion.
If the environment variable MSBUILDLEGACYDEFAULTTOOLSVERSION is set, or if ToolsVersion is not set, then the following steps are used:
The ToolsVersion attribute of the Project element of the project file. If this attribute doesn’t exist, it is assumed to be the current version.
The default tools version in the MSBuild.exe.config file.
The default tools version in the registry. For more information, see Standard and Custom Toolset Configurations.
If the environment variable MSBUILDLEGACYDEFAULTTOOLSVERSION is not set, then the following steps are used:
If the environment variable MSBUILDDEFAULTTOOLSVERSION is set to a ToolsVersion that exists, use it.
If DefaultOverrideToolsVersion is set in MSBuild.exe.config, use it.
If DefaultOverrideToolsVersion is set in the registry, use it.
Otherwise, use the current ToolsVersion.
HowTo: Install .NET 3.5 component in Windows 8.1
I just installed .NET 3.5 on a Windows Enterprise 8.1 system that was failing to bring the needed files from the network
To do this I opened a command prompt with elevated rights and ran a single command, having the Windows DVD at drive F:
Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3 /All /Source:F:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess
as explained at this article:
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-install-microsoft-net-framework-3-5-offline-in-windows-8-without-internet-connection/
Notes:
1) if you have the Windows DVD in .ISO file, with a double click it mounts it to a virtual drive on Windows 8, so you can do similarly (you look at My Computer or the folder it opens after mounting to see what drive letter it used)
2) to run command prompt with elevated (administrator) rights, I searched for "cmd" (it is cmd.exe) and right click at the result found to then select "Run as administrator".
George Birbilis @zoomicon 