IE 7 readiness toolkit
Many of us have been using IE 7 in its various beta incarnations for many months, but it’s set to be released in final form within the next month, and if you create web sites, you’ll want to make sure they work properly with the new browser – especially since it’s planned to be an automatic update. You can get the IE 7 Readiness Toolkit to help you do that. For more info and the free download, click here.
Welcome to Windows Meeting Space in Vista
Windows Meeting Space is a cool new feature in Vista that replaces the old Microsoft NetMeeting application, with a spiffier and more professional- appearing interface. With WMS, you can have meetings with up to ten participants, where you can share your desktop or applications, connect to a network projector to view presentations, and pass notes privately to other participants. You can even distribute documents as handouts, and any participant can edit them with the changes automatically propagated to each particpant’s copy (while leaving the original unchanged). Unfortunately, it can’t be installed on pre-Vista operating systems, as it depends on Vista’s People Near Me peer-to-peer networking functionality and uses IPv6, which is installed and enabled by default in Vista. But it’s an easy, cost effective way to conduct small virtual meetings. For more about WMS, click here.
How to make XP launch Windows Explorer instead of IE from the Accessories menu
We’ve had a couple of instances where readers tell us that when they click Programs | Accessories | Windows Explorer, instead of launching Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer starts. That happens because the path in the program shortcut is incorrect. Here’s how you can fix it:
- Click Start | All Programs | Accessories
- Right click Windows Explorer
- Select Properties
- Click the Shortcut tab
- In the “Target” field, type: %SystemRoot%explorer.exe
This also affects what program launches when you hit the Windows key + E.
What happened to the file names in Thumbnail view?
If you see thumbnails of pictures but not the file names when viewing the contents of a folder, you can do the following: Change to a different view, such as List or Details, and then hold down the Shift key while you click View | Thumbnails to switch to the Thumbnail view. Your file names should be back. You can toggle between displaying or not displaying them this way.
How to remove invalid entries from Add/Remove Programs
If you use the Add/Remove Programs applet in Control to remove a program, but there are still references to the program in the Currently Installed Programs dialog box, you can edit the registry to remove these invalid entries. As always, be careful when using the registry editor as incorrect use can render your computer unbootable. For step by step instructions on how to perform this registry edit, see KB article 310750.
Registry keys and values for System Restore
Want to know which registry keys and values contain information about the System Restore utility in Windows XP? Note that there are some values in these keys that should not be modified under any circumstances, but there are others you can change without harming your computer, including specifying how much disk space System Restore can use, the minimum amount of free space System Restore needs to function, and the amount of time System Restore waits before creating automatic computer checkpoints for elapsed time. To find out more, see KB article 295659.
How to turn on Remote Desktop automatic logon
By default, for security purposes Windows XP Pro asks users for a name and password when connecting to the Remote Desktop service to access its desktop from a remote computer. For convenience, you can allow automatic logon so that it’s not necessary to enter credentials, by editing the local Group Policy. For step by step instructions on how to do so, see KB article 281262.
Until next week,
Deb Shinder,