Leo Davidson / Pretentious Name

Windows 7 Explorer bug that silently aborts large file copies

2011-12-23T15:33:00.001Z

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

2011-10-17T08:57:00.001+01:00

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

2011-09-09T16:50:00.000+01:00

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

2011-08-05T11:59:00.000+01:00

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

2011-06-08T19:33:00.000+01:00

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

2011-05-11T08:27:00.001+01:00

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.

2011-05-02T12:53:00.000+01:00

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.

Clear Icon Cache 1.0.0.1

2011-05-02T12:15:00.000+01:00

This is a tool I've written that helps with a bug in Windows Vista and Windows 7. The bug affects Windows and Explorer and can affect Opus by proxy.

For example, if you updated from Opus 9 to Opus 10 but still see the Opus 9 icon on your desktop or taskbar, this tool should fix it.

Download and source code

ClearIconCache will cleanly exit Explorer, delete the shell icon cache (IconCache.db) and then restart Explorer.

Windows is full of icon-caching bugs which mean it frequently shows incorrect, missing or out-of-date icons for programs and shortcuts on the desktop, taskbar, start menu, etc. When that happens, simply run this tool to fix things up.

There are lots of guides on the web about how to do this manually but many of them have the details wrong. Even the good guides almost never tell you how to cleanly exit Explorer and are too complex for many users. (As well as using Task Manager and/or Command Prompts, you have to exit explorer, delete the file, then restart explorer in the right order or nothing will happen.) On the other hand, you just double-click this EXE and it does the rest.

ClearIconCache is only for Windows Vista and Windows 7 (and presumably later versions). Users on earlier versions of Windows can use TweakUI instead.

To prevent message-boxes telling you if the program succeeded or failed, run ClearIconCache.exe /QUIET

Update: Turn MSDN red for Windows CE

2011-04-06T18:59:00.000+01:00

I've updated my Greasemonkey script to make MSDN pages turn red if the page is about Windows CE.

Either there was a type of page I hadn't encountered before or the site's layout changed and the script no longer detected things.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/gm/msdn_wince.html

phpBB3 Forum Compactor v1.6

2010-11-22T11:02:00.000Z

phpBB3 Forum Compactor is a script for the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. For phpBB forums using the default prosilver theme, it rearranges things slightly so they are easier to read and parse.

I've made a small update to the script so that it highlights new posts in red again with the new phpBB 3.0.8. Seems that the new phpBB version uses a slightly different name/title for new posts than before.

Turn MSDN red for Windows CE

2010-11-22T10:58:00.000Z

I've added a new, simple script for the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox.

When viewing Windows API documentation on the MSDN website, this script will turn the background red if it detects the documentation is for Windows CE, Windows Mobile or Windows Embedded.

I wrote this script after years of frustration caused by web searches for Win32 API documentation (and the craptacularly broken F1 help in Visual Studio) landing me on pages for similar, but slightly different, WinCE APIs with the same names. The default page styles are identical and the APIs are so similar that it's easy too miss that you're on the wrong page. (If you realise at all it's usually after reading most of the page, at which point you have to find and re-read the real API's page in case it's different.) Turning the background red makes it obvious that you've wound up in the wrong place the moment the page loads.

Grab the script form my main site:
http://www.pretentiousname.com/gm/msdn_wince.html

Adobe Reader X direct download

2010-11-19T07:49:00.000Z

Just like with Flash updates, Adobe are now inflicting their stupid Download Manager (and McAfee junk) on people trying to download Adobe Reader X (which is also not found via the auto-updater in Adobe Reader 9).

Here's a link to Adobe's FTP site where you can download a normal installer directly:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/

Found via this thread.I've tacked this on to my Flash standalone installer links page to help find it in the future.

How to find components (e.g. shell extensions) causing memory leaks

2010-11-16T09:24:00.001Z

I wrote a guide which, while aimed at Directory Opus users, might be useful to others as well, so figured I'd mentioning it here:

Opus News Blog: New guide: How to find components causing memory leaks

When the SysInternals VMMap tool was first released it seemed neat but only useful in rare situations. Recently it has gained the ability to track memory allocations and show stack traces for them and that has made it very useful indeed. That's what the guide is about.

Flash standalone installer links

2010-09-22T11:23:00.000+01:00

If Adobe won't keep links to the standalone Flash installers/updaters in a sensible, easy-to-find place, I will:

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

Find Error 1.0.0.1

2010-09-16T14:56:00.002+01:00

Find Error is a small tool for looking up Win32 errors by name, number or description.

Looking-up errors by number can be useful when a program returns an error code without a description. (While other tools already do that, this one has the nice feature that you can type a number without knowing/caring if it's hex or decimal and get back matches for both possibilities.)

Looking-up errors by description can be useful when you're writing code and want to find an appropriate error value to return in a given situation. You can search for errors containing words/substrings, using basic AND/OR boolean logic. Double-click a line in the results to copy that error's name to the clipboard.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/finderror/

ConnectVPN 1.0.0.2

2010-07-08T22:36:00.001+01:00

Small update to the ConnectVPN tool:

Now waits for VPN connection to complete if it was in the middle of connecting.when run. (Was meant to originally but there was a typo in the source.)

ConnectVPN 1.0.0.1

2010-06-14T16:30:00.002+01:00

I wrote a new tool:.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/miscsoft/index.html#ConnectVPN

ConnectVPN is a tiny command-line tool which checks if a specified RAS or VPN connection is established and, if it isn't, displays the standard connection GUI and waits for the connection to finish (or fail). If the RAS/VPN is already connected then the program exits immediately.

(ConnectVPN is designed for standard Windows RAS and VPN connections. If you are using another type of VPN then it might not work.)

You can use ConnectVPN to ensure you are connected to your VPN before continuing with something else. For example, you can use ConnectVPN to make TortoiseSVN ensure you are connected to your VPN, prompting for password etc. in the usual way if not, before doing a commit or update. (To do that, create a .bat file which calls ConnectVPN with the name of your VPN and then tell TortoiseSVN to run it via the pre-commit and pre-update hook scripts.)

Using ConnectVPN is different to scripting RasDial.exe in a couple of ways: First, if you are not connected then you will see the standard Windows connection prompts and progress dialogs instead of command-line messages. Second, you will not be prompted or bothered at all if the VPN is already connected, even if the VPN configuration does not store credentials; that is, if you don't store the VPN login & password on your computer then you'll be asked for them when required to connect but not if already connected.

64-bit Adobe Reader fix updates

2010-04-28T02:23:00.002+01:00

I have updated my page on the 64-bit Adobe Reader fixes as well as the preview handler fix tool:

Fixes for 64-bit Adobe Reader preview handler and thumbnails

The updates are in response to Adobe Reader 9.3.2 and Office 2010 RTM.

Adobe Reader 9.3.2:

Half a year after I published the information, Adobe finally incorporated the preview handler fix (but no thumbnails fix) into the Adobe Reader 9.3.2 (April 2010).

Note that at the time of writing you only get 9.3.0 when you download and install Adobe Reader; to get the latest version, which includes several vital security updates in addition to the x64 preview handler fix, you have to run its update checker after installation.

Also note that there is no mention of the x64 preview handler fix (nor any credit given to me, heh) in the change log. Credit goes to Alex Bantzhaff for noticing that 9.3.2 included the fix and for letting me know.

Maybe in 2011 Adobe will manage to fix the thumbnails as well; until then you can get a fix for them from my site. :-)

Office 2010 RTM

Office 2010 RTM fixes the problem that was in Office 2010 beta where the 64-bit version required some extra registry changes to make the Adobe Reader (and other) preview handler work.

The preview handler fix tool now has a checkbox so you can tell it whether or not you want the extra Office 2010 beta changes.

If you've upgraded to Office 2010 RTM then you can use the new fix tool to clean up the old, unwanted registry settings. (Such clean-up and repair tasks are the main reason that the preview handler fix tool still exists.)

Thumbnails

No change in terms of the thumbnails. My current "Thumbridge" is still required and has not needed any changes since the February updates.

Windows time sync, alternative method

2010-04-27T23:27:00.001+01:00

Stefan Kanthak wrote to me with an alternative, and much easier, method of making Windows synchronize its clock more frequently.

I have updated my guide to include Stefan's method as the first suggestion. (The old, alternative method is still there in case it's useful for some reason.)

http://www.pretentiousname.com/timesync/index.html

WmaAlbumArtist 1.0.0.7

2010-04-27T22:46:00.000+01:00

Another small WmaAlbumArtist tool update:

Added /VV argument to search for any parent/ancestor folder starting with "Various" instead of just the immediate parent folder.
Also fixed that search being case-sensitive.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/WmaAlbumArtist/index.html

WmaAlbumArtist 1.0.0.6

2010-04-17T15:46:00.000+01:00

A little update to my WmaAlbumArtist tool:

Added /VA argument to use "Various Artists" instead of just "Various" (request from Stuart Hodgson).
Added /ClearAA argument.
Fixed it not seeing the parent dir name if you gave it just a filename, without path, as an argument.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/WmaAlbumArtist/index.html

Visual Studio 2010 binary corruption issue on exFAT drives

2010-04-17T01:40:00.002+01:00

I ran into a nasty issue where Visual Studio 2010 (the RTM version which just came out) often corrupts the binaries it outputs if the project is on an exFAT partition.

I've written about the problem on my website and also filed a bug report on the Connect website.

Hopefully it only affects exFAT partitions, and it only seems to, but it's made me decide not to switch to VS2010 just yet. I do like a lot of the new features but I'm going to wait a bit longer.

Make Windows synchronize time more often

2010-03-24T10:35:00.000Z

I've written a guide on how to make Windows (including Windows 7) synchronize its time more often than once per week (which is important if your PC clocks drift as much as mine do).

Note that you have to do more than just make the Synchronize Time task run more often (which it turns out has no real effect at all).

Here's the guide:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/timesync/index.html

phpBB3 Next/Prev Topic Links Greasemonkey script

2010-03-12T15:59:00.000Z

Another Greasemonkey script which modifies phpBB3's default prosilver theme.

This one lets you add Next Topic and Previous Topic links to the top and bottom of each thread, like phpBB2's default them had. A couple of people on the Opus forum asked for this and it turned out to be pretty easy to do.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/gm/index.html#nextprev

BTW, the other phpBB3 GM script has also had some updates in the last couple of days. Didn't seem worth spamming the RSS feed about them, though.

phpBB3 Forum Compactor Greasemonkey script

2010-03-10T13:22:00.002Z

When viewing phpBB 3 forums which use the default prosilver theme, this script will rearrange things to make them more compact and easier to read.

See the main page for detail and screenshots:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/gm/index.html

64-bit PDF thumbnails fix UPDATE

2010-02-06T23:18:00.003Z

There's a new version of the PDF thumbnail fix with a workaround for a problem where the thumbnails sometimes went black.

(As far as I can tell, it's a bug in Windows, but it was easy to work around. See my comment at the bottom of here for the technical detail.)

Grab the new installer from here.

Make sure the file you see is called Adobe_Reader_x64_fixes_v2_002_installer.zip -- if it isn't then F5 or Ctrl-F5 your browser to force it to refresh the page.

64-bit PDF thumbnails fix

2010-02-04T14:49:00.002Z

I have made a fix for Adobe Reader's thumbnails on 64-bit Windows Vista and Windows 7, to go with my earlier fix for the preview handler.

You can download it from here.

64-bit PDF thumbnails fix coming soon...

2010-02-03T04:33:00.002Z

I've started work on a fix for Adobe Reader's PDF thumbnails on 64-bit Vista and Windows 7 machines.

If you're keen to see the thumbnails working again, keep an eye on the site or RSS feed over the next few days...

Adobe PDF fix now for Office 2010

2010-01-25T17:23:00.001Z

My fix for Adobe's PDF preview handler on x64 systems now also makes the preview handler work with 64-bit versions of Office 2010 (beta).

This is thanks to extra information discovered by Winfried Pohl.

An updated automated fix-tool, plus details of the extra step required if you'd prefer to make the fix by hand, can be found at the page for the fix:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/adobe_pdf_x64_fix/index.html

IEThings: IE Email Quote fix

2009-12-22T10:19:00.001Z

The little Email Quote add-on for IE has been updated. The .reg file wasn't seen as valid, at least on modern versions of Windows, but it's been corrected.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/iethings/index.html

FileTypeDiag 1.0.0.6

2009-12-16T04:00:00.004Z

An update to the little FileTypeDiag tool for investigating filetype registry settings:

Outputs RegisteredApplications data.
Outputs OS version info.
Output less under 64-bit.
Understands more registry types.
Expands REG_EXPAND_SZ strings.
Expands localised strings.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/miscsoft/index.html#FileTypeDiag

Adobe 64-bit PDF fix tool and update

2009-12-15T07:28:00.002Z

I've updated my fix that makes Adobe's PDF preview handler work in Office & Explorer on 64-bit Windows. Now there's a tool which fixes the registry automatically, taking care of the details and differences between machines:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/adobe_pdf_x64_fix/

Hope it helps some more people.

WmaAlbumArtist 1.0.0.5

2009-12-01T17:43:00.002Z

The WmaAlbumArtist tool has been updated to correct a bug in the command-line parsing.

Thanks to Jean-Pierre Turchi for noticing the bug and letting me know!

FileTypeDiag 1.0.0.5

2009-11-03T17:29:00.001Z

Yet another FileTypeDiag update.

Should be the last one for a while. :) I've been using it to investigate a problem which is now solved.

FileTypeDiag now understands version-independent ProgIDs and dumps both them and the versioned ProgIDs they point to.

FileTypeDiag 1.0.0.4

2009-11-02T23:26:00.002Z

I liked updating FileTypeDiag so much I did it again a few hours later. :)

It now also logs "AllFilesystemObjects" for everything and "Drives" for folders. Also has a new "." mode where it will dump the information for files without extensions.

FileTypeDiag 1.0.0.3

2009-11-02T19:10:00.000Z

The little FileTypeDiag tool (for investigating file-type registry issues on other people's machines) has been updated.

FileTypeDiag now also dumps the relevant SystemFileAssociations keys for the extension itself and for any PerceivedType values defined for the extension or ProgID elsewhere.

LoadString 1.0.0.2

2009-09-17T19:01:00.002+01:00

The little LoadString.exe tool has been updated to include a 64-bit version.

The tool is for deciphering the localised @blah.dll,-1234 strings found in the registry under Vista and Windows 7. This update lets you look-up strings in 64-bit-only DLLs.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/miscsoft/index.html#LoadString

Adobe PDF preview handler x64 fix

2009-09-09T06:25:00.005+01:00

Adobe Reader comes with a preview handler that allows things like Windows Explorer, Outlook and Directory Opus to view PDF files.

(Opus can also use the full Adobe Reader but the preview handler is more lightweight and works better on machines with IE8/Windows 7.)

There's a mistake in Adobe's installer which means the PDF preview handler has never worked on x64 (64-bit) versions of Windows.

Today I discovered that you can fix the problem via a very simple registry change:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/adobe_pdf_x64_fix/index.html

A workaround for the problem has also been built into my Directory Opus ActiveX viewer plugin.

New tool: Delete Desktop Wallpaper

2009-08-18T21:20:00.003+01:00

DeleteWallpaper.vbs is a little script that's intended to run via your Desktop context menu. (Simple installation instructions are included in the zip.)

The script provides an easy way to delete the current wallpaper using the recycle bin. It's most likely to be useful for people who use Windows 7's wallpaper slideshow feature as it lets you delete images you don't like when they cycle around.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/miscsoft/index.html#delwall

Windows 7 Aero Busy Cursor Fix

2009-08-17T01:14:00.001+01:00

There's a little glitch in two of the animated busy cursors that ship with Windows 7 RTM. I've created fixed versions of the files.

Full details at my main site:
http://www.pretentiousname.com/win7_fixed_aero_busy/

New tool: SetPoint Application-Override Nuker

2009-08-15T00:17:00.002+01:00

SetPointAppOverrideNuker is a standalone program which can be used to modify the configuration files for Logitech's SetPoint mouse-driver software.

The program will permanently remove all application override settings from the configuration files so that your mouse configuration is the same in all applications.

This is needed due to a bug in SetPoint where you can remove the default application overrides using the SetPoint GUI but you will find that they come back after a reboot. (At least sometimes. It may only happen if you have certain apps installed which SetPoint recognises.) For example, before using the nuker my MX Revolution would switch back to using smooth-wheel scrolling with Internet Explorer and would ignore my mouse button customizations when in Outlook.

Inexplicably, this despicable bug has existed in SetPoint for at least three years. I used to edit the config files by hand but I got sick of doing that every time I updated SetPoint or installed a new machine. I thought other people may find an automated tool useful as well.

Full details, download and C++ source at my main site:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/setpoint_aon/index.html

New tool: LaunchViaLabel

2009-08-14T09:28:00.001+01:00

LaunchViaLabel.vbs is a script you can use to run a command on a particular drive, looking up the drive via its label. It can be useful when you want to launch something from a USB drive which doesn't always have the same label.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/miscsoft/index.html#LaunchViaLabel

New tool: VMware Launcher

2009-08-12T03:25:00.002+01:00

VMware Launcher will automatically start and stop VMware's background services when you run VMware, so that they don't waste resources and slow your boot time when VMware is not in use.

http://www.pretentiousname.com/vmware_launcher/

Hello

2009-08-12T02:48:00.005+01:00

I've started this news feed so that people interested in the stuff on my website, www.PretentiousName.com, can keep track of changes without having to visit the site every so often and work out what, if anything, is new.

If I post some new software (or whatever) to my site, or update any of the existing stuff on there, I'll post a short note here to let people know. If you care about that stuff then hit the RSS button in your web browser, for great justice!

I may also post the odd rant here if I feel like it. :-)