Windows 7 Explorer bug that silently aborts large file copies

Just stumbled on a pretty awful bug in Explorer.

Figured I'd make a quick page about it in case other people run into it.

It's easy to avoid, and also only triggered by doing something fairly unusual (for most users at least), but if you run into it you'll be unlikely to trust Explorer to copy a lot of data until you understand what triggers the problem and what to avoid doing in order to stay safe.

Full details and a video are on my main website.

Flash links updated for Flash 11

I have updated my page with direct links to the Flash updaters and version checker:

• http://www.pretentiousname.com/flash_links/

For Flash 11, the installers have moved on Adobe's site.

You still have to update Internet Explorer and Firefox separately.

They have finally (and four years late) introduced 64-bit versions into the mix. Now you can infect even more versions of your browsers with Flash!

They seem to have stopped trying to make people use their stupid download manager.

They have not stopped trying to trick people into installing extra bundled crap (McAfee or Google Toolbar, depending on browser). Strangely, the installer you get is identical, whether or not you opt out of said crap, except for the filename which seems to determine whether or not the extra stuff is installed. So don't rename the installers.

Here's how rubbish Adobe's update checker is: The Flash 11 installers are over a month old (from the digital signature timestamps), yet I didn't even know Flash 11 existed until someone emailed me (thanks, Cobaco/Bart!) to let me know my links were still pointing to Flash 10. This is even though I had three different computers with Flash 10 installed, presumably all wide open to known security holes that were fixed in the newer version. Brilliant. I wouldn't mind slow update notifications if Flash wasn't such a gaping malware vector, and if the notifications actually worked at some point and for all browsers instead of just a random one... Adobe's failure knows no boundaries.

SetDllInheritance issue

This will only be of interest to Windows developers.

I've written about some problems we discovered with using SetDllDirectory to plug the 'binary planting' security issue.

Here's the page:

• SetDllDirectory inheritance issue

mIRC Tile plugin

This is a plugin DLL for mIRC which makes it automatically tile its windows, adjusting the layout whenever the main window is resized or child windows are opened & closed. It's a bit like converting mIRC into a "docking" user-interface.

It also lets you force certain windows to remain in a specified order, and to leave specified windows alone entirely.

The layout is such that the space used by the child-windows' resize borders is reclaimed, which IMO makes things look cleaner and also leaves more room for actual conversations.

I don't know if many other people will find this useful, especially as it is currently without any options for other layouts (e.g. two-columns etc.), but I've found it makes using mIRC much better and figured I might as well share it. I've always got mIRC open but often want to resize it to fit what I'm doing, or because I'm Remote Desktop'd in from a machine with a smaller display, and having to manually rearrange/resize the child windows is a pain.

• Main page for the plugin.

Clipboard Owner Debug 1.0.0.1

• Download, source, updates, etc.

ClipboardOwnerDebug is a tool for debugging problems with the Windows clipboard, specifically with apps that open the clipboard and do not close it in a timely manner so that you're unable to copy or paste anything.

The tool should be run from a command prompt, giving it an interval time (in milliseconds) to tell it how often to poll. It will then report changes to the clipboard and which apps it notices using the clipboard.

It is normal, especially if you set a very short interval time, to see reports of different programs using the clipboard for short periods of time (especially just after you change what's in it). There's only a problem if you see lots of "clipboard in use" lines in a row all mentioning the same exe, with no "clipboard not in use" lines in between.

The tool also periodically confirms that it can open the clipboard as well as which app last put data on the clipboard (if the data has an owner; simple text/bitmap data usually doesn't).

Turn On Window Shadows

New miscellaneous util: Turn On Window Shadows

If another human on planet earth finds this useful I'll be amazed. :-)

Running TurnOnWindowShadows.exe has the same effect as going to Start -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> System -> Advanced system settings -> (UAC) Yes -> Advanced -> (Performance) Settings -> Visual Effects and turning on Show shadows under windows.

I wrote this little thing because I use Window Clippings v3 to take screenshots and whenever I take a screenshot while using Remote Desktop it turns off the system shadow setting. The shadow setting has no effect on Remote Desktop so it's not immediately clear anything is wrong but when I return to using the machine locally all the window shadows are gone, which is just weird with the Aero/glass theme. I got sick of going through the convoluted route above to turn shadows back on and made a program I could drop on my Directory Opus taskbar-style launcher toolbar to make the change in one click.

64-bit Adobe Reader thumbnail mix-up fix.

I've released out a new version of my Adobe Reader x64 thumbnails fix which hopefully solves the problem of PDF thumbnails appearing for the wrong files.

• Download links for the new Adobe Reader x64 fixes

Note the instructions about clearing your thumbnail cache.

If you still get the problem, let me know. I had to guess what Adobe had done wrong this time and didn't get much feedback on the new version, but hopefully my guess was right.

Directory Opus users: Opus 10 is now out and works with this fix (and with PDF-XChange), so you can get PDF thumbs in Opus again now, too.