random neuron misfires

I’m definitely not a Windows user, nor a fan of Microsoft products, but I do have to use them for work and my personal calendaring with Cozi and my BlackBerry device, so I’m learning how to tweak and modify the core components to suit how I use them.

In this case, I have a direct need to get my Outlook data, offline PST files, archive files and other material into Dropbox, so I can back it up and access it from multiple places.

One of the biggest flaws in Microsoft Outlook is the inability to move the data files to another location, including the Outlook address book.

A simple registry poke, and you too can move your OAB to any location you want.

My work machine constantly locks me out of my two corporate accounts there, depending on which resource or website I’m accessing while connected via the VPN.

When I access the parent company’s web infrastructure, my ML corporate ID is locked out. When I access some of the ML sites and resources, my BAC corporate ID is locked out. I must unlock my account 5-6 times a day, every day.

It’s frustrating, and kills my productivity. It happens so often, I added a speed-dial entry to my phone to call the Help Desk and navigate through the automated phone menu to unlock my account without human intervention. I needed to find a better way!

Digging around in the Windows developer documentation, I found it, and just in the nick of time…

If you use Putty to SSH or telnet around from your Windows machine(s) to your UNIX or Linux machines, you’ve probably yearned for some added functionality.

One of the biggest requests from anyone using Putty, is tabs!

Recently, my Windows 7 laptop started showing the “Search programs and files” Start Menu option was showing bogus search result that looked like this:

I searched around for awhile, and finally stumbled on a site describing the exact fix I was looking for.

In short, you need to perform the following steps to fix this:

1. Open the Registry Editor, but since may not be able to search for it, you’ll have to surf over to C:\Windows\System32\regedt32.exe and run that, or C:\Windows\regedit.exe.
2. Navigate to the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
3. Locate the value: GroupBy in the right-hand pane.
4. Change the value to System.StartMenu.Group
5. Launch Task Manager (Ctrl-Shift-Esc) and kill the explorer.exe process you’ll see running.
6. Inside of Task Manager, go to File | New Task (Run…)
7. Type “explorer.exe” and click Ok.

Nobody seems to know why this happens, and it happens randomly. It was discussed in the Microsoft forums, but there was no fix therein.

This is yet another reason why I hate Microsoft Windows. Random behavior in a computer is never acceptable.