Even after Microsoft abandoned the stupid idea of the Windows 8 start screen and gave us back the start menu in Windows 10 there is still a lot to desire. Of course you can replace the the start menu with a tool like Open Shell (formerly known as Classic Shell) which improves it quite a … Continue reading How to use JumpFolder to create multiple “start menus”
Category: Windows 7
Troubleshooting FTDI driver installation
So I don't forget: If the drivers for an FTDI USB-serial adapter don't install resulting in an "unknown device", try to remove all other USB connected devices. In my case it was a PeakCAN USB adapter, connected via a rather long USB extension cable, that caused the problem (not sure whether it was the adapter … Continue reading Troubleshooting FTDI driver installation
Blocking the Windows Screen Saver in Delphi
Sometimes your program needs to block the screen saver from automatically kicking in. My use case was that the program was recording data and whenever the screen saver was active, the data was lost (No idea why, it probably had something to do with the way HID is implemented in Windows.) So I was looking … Continue reading Blocking the Windows Screen Saver in Delphi
Don’t give the user any information!
... seems to be the motto of Microsoft. How else can you explain that a recent update of Windows 7 and Windows 10, that broke older versions of one of our programs (no idea yet what exactly is the problem, but the error code indicates an out of memory error) has different effects. Windows 7 … Continue reading Don’t give the user any information!
Filter multiple criteria in Windows Explorer
Note to self: It is possible to filter on multiple criteria - e.g. extensions - in Windows Explorer by combining them with OR: .txt OR .doc The OR must be written all upper case (AND is also possible). *.txt will not work It will search recursively A semicolon (as in file filters) does not work. … Continue reading Filter multiple criteria in Windows Explorer
Force “unidentified networks” to be private or public in Windows 7
Windows 7 has got an annoying feature that categorises network connections to be public, home or work networks. This might work for others but it has never worked for me. Even worse, for some reason the link that usually allows the user to change the network type sometimes is not available. Microsoft even has got … Continue reading Force “unidentified networks” to be private or public in Windows 7
Problem accessing a Windows XP share from a Windows 7 PC
Today a problem drove me crazy: I tried to map a share on a PC running Windows XP from another computer running Windows 7. I kept getting the error that the username or password are invalid. On the other hand, accessing a share on the Windows 7 PC from the Windows XP PC worked fine. … Continue reading Problem accessing a Windows XP share from a Windows 7 PC
Windows annoyance number 3 gazillion and 4
We all know, that Microsoft software is great and that they are constantly striving to improve the user experience (best example: Windows 8 (Yes, that's sarcasm)). Windows 7, the best Windows of all times, has a great feature which is an improvement of the universally loved desktop cleanup we know from Windows XP. It regularly helps … Continue reading Windows annoyance number 3 gazillion and 4
Windows 7 Blue Screen Of Death with error 0x7B
If you ever had to change the motherboard of your computer and wanted to keep the Windows installation on it, you might have encountered the dreaded Blue Screen of Death with an unhelpful error code. In my case, this was a Windows 7 installation where the on board SATA controller started to misbehave. These problems … Continue reading Windows 7 Blue Screen Of Death with error 0x7B