Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

This is a fairly common problem which leaves a lot of users scratching their heads as to how to just make things work. There are a couple reasons one would encounter this. The most common is because an application or process still has the file open (technically it's called a 'handle to the file'). Another possibility would be if the permissions on the file you were trying to delete were invalid. Without getting too in depth into the how and why there are two quick things to check on when trying to get around the problem.

I'll go over the first reason in this post. In the Windows SysInternals suite, there is a tool called Process Explorer, which is an amazingly powerful app. It will allow you to view what's going on behind the scenes of most everything running on the system. Just doing quick search will show just how powerful this tool is. For this issue though, what we'll do is find any open handles on the file we're trying to access and delete.

1. First, start Process Explorer.
2. Press CTRL+F to open a search window.
3. In the 'Handle or DLL substring' field type in a portion or the complete name of the file you are trying to delete and press Enter to begin the search. In my case the file was "08 mer du japon.mp3".
4. You should now be presented with a list of open handles. Next double click on the handle in the search window to show the file handle highlighted in the lower pane along with all the other open handles on the system.
5. Right click the row for the handle and click Close Handle.
6. You should now be good to go.

In this particular case it would seem the handle to the .MP3 file wasn't properly closed by Windows Media Player despite it having finished playing and updating the metadata. Because of this I was unable to move the album folder. By using Process Explorer I was able to find the culprit and close down the handle which allowed Vista full access to move the file and folder. There are some other third-party tools available as well as other tips and ways of doing the same thing. However, I highly recommend the method I just described, as using and further exploring Process Explorer and the other tools available in the SysInternals suite of applications will allow you to gain a much greater understanding of your system.

This, combined with a few good search queries, a deep curiosity through Wikipedia, and the Microsoft Knowledge Base will help turn any enthusiast into a real power user. Check back shortly for part two where I discuss how to take back ownership of your files and folders through permissions in Windows Vista and Server 2008.

I was in a team meeting thing the other day and had my laptop out taking notes. Unfortuantely despite the fact I always run with all system sounds off, I kept on getting the annoying system beep every so often. It was maybe coming from Outlook and holding down the backspace for too long. It happens even if you mute the sound on the system, and heck, even if you disable the "System speaker" device in Device Manager which is listed under the System devices. And man is the beep loud, amusing really, since the mono speaker on my Dell Latitude D430 is barely audible but that bloody system beep is loud as hell and definitely attention grabbing.

So here's how to disable the Beep, yes that's actually what it's called.

1. Press WIN+R
2. Type in devmgmt.msc and press Enter.
3. Click the View menu then click Show hidden devices.
4. Expand the Non-Plug and Play Drivers branch out.
5. Look for Beep and double-click the device to bring up the properties window.
6. Click on the Driver tab.
7. Under Current status, click Stop.
8. Under Startup type drop down switch the driver to Disabled.
9. Click OK

You'll now have true silence from your desktop or laptop PC regardless of whatever crazy error messages pop up or however much spam gets delivered to your Inbox. Though this won't help if you if you've got a bunch of 80mm fans running at 8000RPM still . But that's for another post... Tip though, voltage converters for fans or fans with a high CFM and low dB rating work amazingly well as do rubber gromets for fans and HDD's and not to mention that Dynamat isn't half bad for noise absorbtion as well.

This is a common question on XP and even Vista. If you do a basic search with Google or Live you'll actually get mixed information with many people (including some Microsoft sources) saying that sharing of networked content is not possible. However let it be known that it is possible and this information is available directly from Microsoft's own sharing FAQ's.

If you want to share files in a monitored folder that is located on another computer (for example, a folder on a network share), the remote folder must have the appropriate Windows access permissions assigned to it and the computer that contains the library you want to share has remote content sharing enabled. You can enable remote content sharing by performing the following procedure on the computer that contains the library you are sharing.

1.	Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2.	In the registry tree (on the left), expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Microsoft, MediaPlayer, and then Preferences.
3.	Right-click HME, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4.	Type EnableRemoteContentSharing, and then press ENTER.
5.	Right-click EnableRemoteContentSharing, and then click Modify.
6.	In the Value data text box, type 1, and then click OK. If you later decide to disable remote content sharing, you can repeat this procedure and change the value to 0.

For more information, see Windows Media Player FAQ.

I should also note that typically you need to make sure that WMP is monitoring the network share via the UNC path so \\SERVER\Music, while you can certainly have the share mapped to a network drive this will cause issues in certain cases. So if you add M:\ for example, make sure WMP is monitoring and using \\SERVER\Music instead. Issues that come up include the networked content showing up on first use but not being able to play back, and after the machine starts the content not being up to date. For more info check out this post.

This is a mod I did a while ago. I randomly use 24-hour time and sometimes my brain just doesn't quite associate 20:05 as being 8:05pm and what not. Getting tired of figuring it out (yes I'm that lazy and don't want to subtract 12) and having a Skagen wristwatch (I rarely wear it now) that has both 12 and 24 on the face, I figured the Clock gadget in Vista should have a 24 hour face as well.

So click here to download it.
Note it is provided free without warranty or support.

I've been playing around with other ideas as well for new and modified gadgets so will post updates as they become available. Oh and while you're downloading the Cojugo 24 hour clock, also download the uTorrent Gadget... Works great, only thing missing it seems is the ability to set Labels for your torrents.

Jon ordered a new Microsoft LifeChat ZX-6000 from Amazon (using some major credit) which arrived today. There's little information about this headset, I didn't even really know it existed till he brought it up. So yeah, no real information about the base unit but we figured it was free credit so might as well try. Opened it up and sure enough the base unit reads Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for Windows. Plug it in, Vista sees it, it doesn't find drivers, Jon downloads the drivers from Microsoft Hardware. Install takes a good 5 minutes for the 3MB setup, totally lame, especially on Vista. The headset worked perfectly, pressed the button and up came WLM8.1, we then tried pairing the Xbox 360 Wireless controller, it paired just fine as well. Then did a short Skype call after setting the input and output to echo123 and that also worked perfectly. So awesome, a good solution to kill two birds with one stone. Only caveat that I can see is that after testing with the Xbox 360 itself I can't find a way to pair the headset with the 360. Regardless considering the receiver is $20 normally getting a nice headset and a good way to do wireless calls with Skype is worth the $30.

Despite the fact that Vista shipped 4 months and a day ago + the 5 years of development time, Creative has just now finally decided to do some work and ship what should hopefully be some quality non beta drivers. Granted this hasn't stopped some OEM's, like Dell, from shipping logo'd systems with Vista and XtremeMusic cards with beta Creative drivers (oh and these aren't even the latest beta drivers Creative made available)!

The new drivers can be found here (narrowed down to the XtremeMusic that I own, oh and if you have an Audigy 2, non beta drivers are available now as well):

The drivers download there supports the following audio devices only:

• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic,
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro

Oh and to just prove that Creative aren't a bunch of idiots and haven't been sitting on their hands all this time since Vista shipped:

Known issues:

• This driver does not support the following:
  • Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS™ signals
  • DVD-Audio
  • DirectSound®-based EAX games
  • 6.1 speaker mode.
• SPDIF passthrough is supported on Vista 32-bit only.
• Applications from the original Sound Blaster X-Fi CD will not work with this download.

Sure the entire bloody audio architecture in Vista changed, but there have been years of ramp up now. To release drivers this late and with a plethora of known issues that people care about, well, that's just unforgiveable. It's no wonder why you're losing the market and everyone just sticks with onboard AC'97 and now the far better HD Audio.

I've been running the beta drivers now on a 4.9 WEI system with my XtremeMusic and I can't even move a file from one folder to another without having WMP or VLC crackle and pop while playing music. All I can say is that unless this driver release or a new driver release in the next 90 days resolve this I will never buy a Creative product ever again.

With the recent February CTP release of Longhorn Server I finally decided that since my Dell PowerEdge 2900 hasn't really been fully configured. It'd be a good time to give Vista... err Longhorn Server a shot.

I'm still waiting in limbo for my fresh install with Exchange 2007 (waiting on that one little app that will make it all work like magic) on Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition x64 R2 (PLEASE PLEASE let them have some common sense with naming sometime this century).

The install of Longhorn Server went perfectly. I didn't even have to provide drivers for my Dell PERC 5/i RAID controller which is awesome and as expected. The entire install took only 15 minutes which is great considering it's a quad core server with 4GB of 667MHz FB-DIMM's. I noticed right away that the no network connection icon was down there in the system tray so I immediately went to Device Manager. The two embedded NIC's (Broadcom NetXtreme II 5708C's) were just showing as Ethernet adapters.

Figuring first that the 2003 x64 drivers would work I went to the big RAID driver I've got, it wasn't there. No biggy, it's probably not mounted. Popped open Disk Management saw 3265GB (RAW) and nearly died of a heart attack. Remaining calm (knowing Microsoft couldn't have just done something so stupid as wipe my drive), I gave the unmounted partition a drive letter and crossed my fingers as it was assigned to R: and showed the right amount of free space and NTFS. Now I'm sure the PM that thought this was a good idea had the best intentions but for the love of god man think again. Don't you ever scare me or anyone else like that again. RAW == brand new drive / empty drive / drive with nothing on it. Don't you dare say that my 3TB array is empty. List it as UNMOUNTED and pop a bloody dialog stating that I need to assign a drive letter. The last thing you want is some system admin working away on 100's of systems to just format a drive with critical data on it.

I tried installing the NIC drivers from Dell and they didn't work. I then tried the drivers from Broadcom for the NetXtreme II 5708C and they didn't work. I then tried whatever Broadcom drivers came in Longhorn Server and those didn't work. Finally I Googled and found, this, so I then tried the RIS drivers and unfortunately those didn't work either. In fact Windows wouldn't even boot complaining about the driver's digital signature being unverified. So after trying every possible driver my 20 minutes with Longhorn Server is over and I'm going back to Server 2003. Maybe with Beta 3, maybe once Broadcom get there butts in motion (this isn't a bloody Creative soundcard guys it's a critical enterprise level NIC that's shipped on nearly ALL 9th gen Dell servers, you've got Vista RTM get moving, Server shouldn't be much of a leap). Clearly the issue is with the NDIS v5 Broadcom are using. And it's probably also the root cause of all the issues I've been having with Virtual Sever 2005 and this NIC back on Windows Server 2003 as well.

There's a part of me that just wants to give in and buy the Intel Pro/1000PT Dual Port PCIe x4 NIC and have the drivers built in and not have to worry but I'm not about to waste $170 on another NIC when I've got one that should be working perfectly. What a headache.

It's been driving me nuts ever since I started using Vista but it's finally been fixed. Apparently not caused by Plus! Live for Messenger nor WLM 8.1 itself but some bad bits for the Microsoft wireless mouse I've got. The fix went up on Windows Update the other day and since then things have been fine. The KB article for the fix is amusing to me since it talks about the issue possibly being caused by CyberLink software. Cute since this is a clean install and nothing other than WLM and Office 2007 have been installed. Either way the "HID Non-User Input Data Filter" fixes the auto away status in Messenger. My power management for disabling the monitors after 15 minutes has worked fine and the update hasn't changed that. Jason Tsang also has a bit more information regarding the update.

First an obvious one from the Sidebar... This is a known bug but it's stupid and annoying. Notice anything in the linked screenshot? According to the Sidebar and according to the Display Settings the gadgets and such should be on the right side of my left monitor. Obviously they're not. After a restart of the PC the Sidebar ends up in that location. At which point you have to pull up the properties again and set it to the right side of monitor 3.

If you have a sharp eye you might have also noticed something else. This one is a shell bug. Notice the taskbar has a bit more going on than it should? Especially over in that right side there's just stuff that should definitely be black.

Here's another example, you can clearly see what's happening here. The taskbar glass effect is grabbing the wrong portion of the image for the effect. It's taking the image from the 2nd monitor not the 1st. Here's the actual background image (converted from a BMP). Jon and I thought the fix would be to just turn glass off then on so I restarted the DWM service that didn't work. Neither did a restart. So we're not sure if this is the same known bug we've seen during the beta or something else. The fix however is to turn on the auto-hiding of the taskbar. Immediately after doing that the problem is fixed. Disabling the auto-hiding breaks it again .

One other thing you'll notice from the background image is that it doesn't quite match the screenshot of the desktop. Well this is more of a feature request and something that can be done with UltraMon but something clearly the shell team didn't have time nor thought was worthy of doing for Vista. Basically I've got 3 24" monitors at 1920x1200. I've got my main monitor 1 set to the middle where I like my taskbar. 2 is to the left, and 3 to the right. The problem is that I'm a bit more of a pixel perfectionist than most and so having one desktop background spread across all 3 monitors is a must. There's only 2 ways of doing this. First is to use a third party app like UltraMon. And the second approach is to pop open Paint or Photoshop and create an image that's the right size (5760x1200) in my case. Then paste in the 3 images to create one image to stretch about whichever way you'd please.

Now logic would dictact that WYSIWYG with the background image. You'd expect it to go 123, left, middle, right. Well that's not the correct logic according to the methods used for the Desktop Background settings in Vista. If you have a set up similar to my circumstances, which I'll concede many don't... *cough* stupid speech recognition vulnerability. Then I'm just like some at ZDNet and I'd just be making something of nothing. However, if you also have Aristotle like perfection you'll want to make sure your multimon background is set up right.

To do this you need to remember that Windows will start the background image from your "main" monitor and you need to have things set to Tile mode. In my case the monitors go 213. So while the start of image should be at the left mine is in the middle. Next you have to make sure the image flows and overflows from left to right, regardless of monitor numbering. To better illustrate this click here. Well, I hope that better illustrates things with the description:

1, Middle monitor = Left side of image in Photshop.
2, Left monitor = Right side of image in Photoshop.
3, Right monitor = Middle of image in Photoshop.

If not then maybe heading over to shellrevealed would be a good idea . Tell them that you want to be able to set a different background image for each attached display and not have to deal with this mess. Finally if you like the backgrounds shown or want to see some other cool stuff head over to mandolux.

UPDATE: Dom and I were discussing how annoying desktop icons have become. I was ranting about how I wish the Recycle Bin were a sidebar thing instead of being the only desktop icon that I'd have floating around. So I disabled it in Personalization. He instead just unchecked Show Desktop Icons from the Properties menu on the Desktop. I gave this a go just for the heck of it since I've still got a couple other temporary icons on the desktop that I didn't want to move and low and behold. The bloody taskbar glass bug was resolved. Obviously there's something funky going on here and I'm sure it wasn't really considered to be significant enough to fix since not enough people would hit it. At any rate, just a work around for anyone who wants to know...

I just got back from my local QFC/Starbucks and sadly that free Vista/T-Mobile Hotspot access wasn't working today though according to the Vista blog it should've been. I'm going to go back tomorrow and again on the 30th to test for sure. But apparently whatever new access site that should've gone live hasn't as the gateway page didn't look any different and there was nothing special that said, "hey look you're using Vista here's some free wifi". To verify things I logged in using another account and checked skysurprise.com. Nothing really special other than that very fine print that says starting from the 30th. So either the Vista blog is lying or T-Mobile are just getting lazy and waiting till the 30th.

So why bother walking the 400 yards or so to the Starbucks when I've got perfectly good WiFi at home. Well, Dom, Jon, and I all thought that they're probably be lazy and determine the Vistaness of any given laptop by just checking the user-agent. So I went with my Vista PC in hand with the user-agent set to spoof MSIE 6.0 and NT 5.1 thinking that even though I was running Vista it should think I'm running XP. If it worked then obviously running a XP machine and spoofing your user-agent to something like this:

Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+ MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+6.0; +SLCC1;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727;+Media+Center+PC+5.0;+.NET+CLR+3.0.04506;+InfoPath.2;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322)

Should also work to get you free acess on a XP machine because they've got no other way (other than to use some ActiveX control or client-side app) to determine whether the client is XP or Vista. I kinda doubt their hardware is going to be determining it. That would be too much work.

So anyway if any of you get bored just pop open regedt32 and go for it:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
"Version"="MSIE 7.0"
"Platform"="Windows NT 6.0"

I'm also curious if they'll be good and let Firefox on Vista users in for their free WiFi or if they'll have to spoof their user-agent as well.

UPDATE: Looks like Engadget got the same idea. However contrary to the earlier idea and what Engadget claim, just changing your user-agent doesn't get you free WiFi. It seems that a key is generated after you install the required tmobile.cab ActiveX control. When viewing the properties for this add-on you find that it's actually netdiag Class. Here's a little code snip from the accountLogon page:

<body onload="checkit()">
<object classid="clsid:A448E34F-EC78-4277-BDC5-DFA68C83C401" id="tmvista" codebase="https://service1.hotspot.t-mobile.com/vista/pages/tmobile.cab" ></object>

<script language="javascript">
<!--
 function checkit() {
  var result = tmvista.CheckSpeed('hardcd');
  window.location.replace("checkVista.jsp?ticket=" + result);
 }
-->
</script>

I'm a bit surprised they actually thought of the user-agent hack. But using an ActiveX control is a bit predictable. I've not had a chance to see what the tmobile.dll actually does.

All that being said. When you have your user-agent set to NT 5.1 (XP) it does indeed redirect you from the /vista page to an awareness page. If you switch to NT 6.0 and IE 7.0 you instead get redirected to this page to create your trial account. Once your trial account has been created you're then redirected back to the login page. After you login it sends you to a page to install the ActiveX control above. Once that is done it creates a ticket which is then passed to whatever proxy gateway they have which enables your untethered access to the Internet whether that be in Firefox or IE7. If you do not install the ActiveX control (say for example by spoofing in Firefox) you get a message like the following: "You are trying to log in with an operating system that is incompatible with your account. Please try again with the Windows Vista operating system installed on your laptop."

Now I'm going to guess that it's probably pretty easy to see what's going on with that ActiveX control and just pass your own ticket. But I'll leave that to someone else.

If you want to download the 655KB ActiveX control click here and have fun.

UPDATE: Again people this DOES NOT WORK. It's not a question of just downloading the ActiveX control it has to run and it has to pass on a Vista machine before T-Mobile allow you fully onto the Internet. Even if you switch your user-agent and create the trial account (which you can do on a Mac, PC, or Linux, and in IE or Firefox or whatever) by changing your user-agent to NT 6.0 and IE7.0 you still won't get onto the Internet until you validate your Vista install by installing the ActiveX control. Think of the Windows Genuine Advantage stuff on downloads.microsoft.com.

UPDATE: After talking to Jon and someone else who has far greater will than I (wtbw) for all things related to debugging and disassembling there are some more details to provide. From what can be seen it looks like the ActiveX control is simply using the value of  _time64 which is the number of seconds since midnight 1/1/1970 dividing that by 300 prefixing that string with hardcdPadded then making it a nice hex MD5 token for the /vista/pages/checkVista.jsp page.

It's possible that the ActiveX control is looking for the referral from TMO's own servers but it would be worth a shot to write a standalone app to do the above then send the request and token over to this page. You could do this from a web page however you'd have to host that locally since well, you can't really get to the net until you bypass the ActiveX control anyway. So a quick non-complete example in one line of semi C# would be:

System.Cryptography.Thingy.MD5Hash.HashThisThing("hardcdPadded" + (DateTime.Now.ToSeconds/300).ToString())

Obviously you'd want this to be cross platform or whatever. But I'll leave that to the reader...

Dom sent me this link to a Flash demo of Y! Messenger for Vista. Three things I notice right away:

1. It's got glass.
2. It's got tabs.
3. It makes use of the Sidebar.

I really don't get why the WLM team got lazy and didn't bother doing anything special for Vista with glass and the Sidebar, makes no sense considering the amount of time they knew they'd have before Vista shipped. I suppose they had other priorities though like adding more winks and other things that they can charge for.

Oh and the way Yahoo has done the tabs, from first impressions, they've got it down just right. Being able to drag and drop them seems really nice.

The last few times Jon and I have met with the MSN/WLM folks they seem to dislike the fact that so many people use Plus! Live despite the fact that many of the same people on those teams use the app themselves. Now what I don't understand is that if they were so against the add-on app then why don't they just start taking some of the features that clearly people want and add them in? It's like half the work has already been done. Features that if done would make me drop Plus! Live for WLM are:

1. Tabs
2. Logging that works as well as Plus, including an option for plain text.
3. Larger text buffer so I can send at least 1100 characters (and yes this isn't just a geek thing, my grandma likes to type whole letters out in IM form).

Finally get moving and implement glass! And as a final suggestion, never ever say "good suggestion, thanks" ever again.

So I just got done doing a second clean install on my main PC. This PC for the softies out there is pretty much identical to one of the systems used during the Media Center TakeHome Program. I had just clean installed yesterday morning because my last install was just odd, for example plugging in a SanDisk Micro into the USB and it would never be detected. Ditto with the USB hub / memory card reader on my Dell 2405FPW. Plus the fact that I kept getting blue screens 2 to 3 times a day was enough for me. I did a full memory test with extended 2 pass and verified the memory was fine but kept getting page errors and the like. Needless to say I just figured it was a lemon install so I installed yesterday.

When I reinstalled I kept the full 4GB of RAM in the system and I left the USB hub and SanDisk Micro plugged into the USB. Unfortunately after I finished installed neither of these devices were being detected. The BIOS still showed 4GB of RAM and Vista still showed 2.75GB of RAM usable (the usable RAM I know is normal). So then I set the PC to tripple mon. Then I installed WLM 8.1 beta. Then I restarted. Got back up and noticed an error report. Looking further I noticed I already had 43 to report! Still no USB hub showing up (even though the BIOS sees it fine), but the Micro finally shows up. So I try and format the device from Computer by right clicking then go to Format. The dialog window never appears, even after waiting 5 minutes. Frustrated I just shut the system down. Unplug both of the USB devices mentioned, pop open the system then I play around with the RAM, I try doing 2GB in single channel, then 2GB in dual channel, then the other 2GB in both modes, then 1 chip from 1 set and the other from the other. Basically just making sure I wasn't forgetting to test everything (with the last installs BSOD's fresh in my mind). It's fun to note that every time I booted with 2GB of RAM both USB devices showed up. I then tried going back to 4GB and again the USB devices are unrecognized by Windows (they appear as unrecognized in Device Manager). Enough fiddling I go back to 2GB in dual channel. I just want this bloody thing to work right.

I get the USB hub working finally, I'm able to format some SD from the memory reader for the first time since installing Vista on this system. The dialog to format the SanDisk Micro comes up immediately on the first try and I'm able to format that and enable ReadyBoost to use the extra 1.8GB it provides.

So this morning in a New Year I'm feeling pretty good about the system, not wanting to throw it off my balcony. I get a link from Mark pointing me to a new music vid on YouTube. Click to go there, then click to install Flash from Adobe. And now the frustration is back again. Having only used IE like 3 times (once to get beta drivers for the Creative XFi) I've not had a chance to change any settings from default. So what's the first thing I see when I go to install Flash? Hmm well, I can't it won't let me. The first thing you should notice about that screenshot is that IE says Protected Mode is Off in the bottom right. According to the default settings in the Security dialog that's incorrect and the setting is Enabled. Even when I toggle this setting on and off and restart the system the status does not update in the bottom right.

Next I put on my "I'm now going to be my Mom" hat and go well beyond my capabilities by adjusting the settings and lower everything to the lowest possible options without going into anything too advanced. Now my son knows that this should now basically put me at the same level as IE7 on XP would since the default back then was Medium and Protected Mode isn't even an option. Sadly for me, the Mom, I still can't watch anything off YouTube because Flash won't install. I try calling my son but he's being a jerk and isn't answering the phone or my IM's. So I then go in and figure out how to add adobe.com to the trusted sites. Sadly this still doesn't work. I then find the Advanced button and decide to start messing around. Not knowing what any of these things do I just set everything to Enable. I do finally get my Flash to install so I can watch stuff on YouTube. But when I do finally get a hold of my son he says he can't believe how big of a security risk I've put myself in and that it's no wonder I get spyware all the time.

Anyway, besides having just exploded into a rant I hope the point did get across. WTH is going on here? This is a bloody clean install, I shouldn't be needing to go through hell just to get a signed ActiveX control to install and run. There's no way in hell my Mom would ever be able to figure this out and sadly because the damned Remote Assistance NAT issues still haven't been resolved in Vista I'm still inclined to tell her that it's a waste of my time and that she should either use Firefox or just buy a Mac.

UPDATE: I just set the IE7 security settings back to default for a third time and for the second time reset after having done the change. Sure enough Flash now installs with the default settings. Still note that Protect Mode shows as being Off in the bottom right. Now I'm willing to concede that it was probably just some minor quirk and the setting might not have taken even after setting it twice and restarting. But what type of user experience is that?

With a minor addition to the Find Album Wizard pipeline hours of frustration are gone. Before one would go through the wizard for any random album and hopefully find all of the tracks one by one. Sometimes on random albums random tracks would just be gone because of common word removal and a complex search algorithm. That for the most part has been taken care of now...

What we have now is a nice new check box option and a single new page in the wizard. This new option is labeled "Use the album selected below to update all tracks in wizard." It does exactly what it suggests. Click that one box then click on the correct album below and WMP/WMIS then presents a confirmation page with all the tracks listed, all you have to do is click Finish and it then updates all the tracks for the album with the correct metadata.

Awesome with a capital A.

UPDATE: Looks like there's a minor bug with international characters like the umlaut (ü) and others as well. I think it's in during the process of grabbing the information and pulling it into WMP that the characters aren't being encoded right in the HTTP or something along those lines. To work around the problem simply do Find Album Info once more on the track in trouble and it shoud be the only track listed and should have the correct characters in the right spot. When I get into work tomorrow I'll be checking to see if a bug on this issue exists yet, if not consider it filed.

I was just reading about the Vista upgrade matrix on Ars. You know, it actually makes sense. There's really no point in offering upgrade pricing to pre-Windows 2000 users since well, there's no point in them upgrading.

1. They'll have to clean install anyway.
2. Their machine will perform so poorly with Vista that the upgrade costs alone will equal that of a new PC.
3. It's probably about time they get a new PC preloaded with Vista anyway.

Really it's a big deal for all those OEM's that will now be getting loads of new PC purchases. Would imagine they'll even be getting some from XP users that bought those ~$500 PC's two or three years ago that figure it'll be another $500 to upgrade to a good Vista experience. So they might as well buy another ~$500 Vista machine.

Now just to convince both my parents to just sit and wait so that they don't waste more money replacing their dying PC's.

So I'm driving back from Northgate Mall to pick up one of these devilishly delicious apple pie apples from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I get a call from Justin saying that I need to get to campus. It's around 10pm so I figure this must be interesting.

Get my way over there and there's 100's, 1000 even, of these big blue Vista pearl exercise balls everywhere. Sadly I don't have my camera with me so I can't take any photos plus it's too dark anyway.

I grabbed one, put it in the car, made my way home. Can't wait to see just how massive the roll out is and to see how many are left tomorrow morning.