Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

Remote Desktop won’t go back to Full Screen after Mnimization in Windows 7

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

So, last month I finally got my new work system. It is a nice Dell Precision M4500 running an Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, tons of Hard Drive space, etc. I also made the move to Windows 7 X64 from Windows Vista. In reality, I don’t use many of the super advanced OS features. I wants the OS to “stay out of the way” of my day to day tasks. One of those tasks is remoting into servers and headless desktops. It is not that unusual for me to have several Remote Desktop(MSTSC.exe) windows open at the same time.

Now, I will usually fire up the remote desktop windows in fullscreen mode and take care of some tasks. Once complete, I will minimize the window, like any other window. The problem appears when I restore the Remote Desktop window. Instead of returning to true fullscreen, I find that the Windows 7 Taskbar, or Superbar, blocked the window from returning to full screen. Also, the remote desktop window now has scroll bars.

Luckily, the fix is pretty easy. We all know we can use Ctrl-Alt-End to send a Ctrl-Alt-Del  message to the remote desktop. Similarly, we can use Ctrl-Alt-Break to force the Remote Desktop window to a true full screen. Superbar or not, the Remote Desktop is now full screen again!

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Using Windows Media Center on a Dual Screen Setup with Windows 7 x64

Friday, June 25th, 2010

If your PC came with Windows 7, chances are you already have Windows Media Center installed. Some PCs come with a built in TV tuner, or you can get an external TV tuner at a reasonable price at your favorite store. One of the neat things about having a TV tuner on your machine is is having the ability to watch live or recorded TV right on your machine via Windows Media Center. Of course, when you’re working on something else, you’re going to have to cover the TV image. Of course, when you have a multi monitor setup, you can have your favorite application running full screen on one monitor and all your work applications on another monitor. However, I have noticed an annoying issue on Windows 7 x64.
It seems that running Windows Media Center on full screen mode also freezes the mouse on the same monitor. Meaning, after you maximize, you cannot move the mouse off of the monitor running Windows Media Center. Not ideal, if you want to work on other things on your primary monitor. I searched around the web to see if there is a patch or hotfix for the issue. I didn’t really find anything, except for a work around from Microsoft.
The work around is pretty simple:

  1. Open Windows Media Center on your secondary monitor
  2. Maximize Windows Center
    1. The mouse is now stuck on the secondary monitor
  3. Hit the Windows key on your keyboard
  4. Move the mouse freely again!

Perhaps the next Windows 7 service pack will have something for this issue.

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Unshare Folders in Windows 7

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

I was formatting the several of my machines the other day and I was moving files back and forth. Sure, for MP3s or videos, I use an external USB hard drive. But there are smaller files, such as the Adobe Flash installer or Opera, which are pretty small. For those smaller files, I use a drop folder. The drop folder is simply a folder where I grant read/write permissions to everyone. That way, people can drop files there for me. Or I have files sitting out there for, destined for another PC. Now, I made the move to Windows 7, so I had to relearn a few things. Once I was done moving files around, I wanted to unshare the drop folders. However, the share dialog looks different from the old Windows 7 versus Vista and XP. What to do, what to do. Well, instead of right-clicking and going to properties, you simply right-click and point to Share with and select “Nobody.” Voila, the share is gone!

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Could not install the custom actions

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Could not install the custom actions. The object could not be found.

I’ve gotten that error more than once from Outlook 2007. The error will appear every time you try to open an eMail and the Calendar may not work at all. Not a good way to start the day. Luckily, there is a quick fix to resolve this error:

  1. Exit outlook completely.
    1. Use Task Manager or Process Explorer to ensure that outlook is no longer running.
  2. In Windows Explorer, navigate to %USERPROFILE%\local settings\application data\microsoft\forms\
  3. Delete the file FRMCACHE.DAT
  4. Restart outlook

Now, whenever you open up an item, the error should no longer appear.

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