Firefox tweaks that will double your browser speed

Interesting article with some good suggestions.

Conficker eye chart

Use this link to test a machine for Conficker infection:
http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html

Since the Conficker worm blocks access to certain security sites, this can be used to determine infection. The page above consists of linked images from these security sites. So, if your PC can display the images, it is not infected . . . .

RichCopy

My friend Ron introduced me to a free utility from Microsoft called RichCopy via a TechNet article. It is described as "An advanced alternative to RoboCopy".

From the TechNet article:

RichCopy is a free utility that comes to us from Ken Tamaru of Microsoft. The tool was first developed in 2001 and has been updated regularly to keep pace with evolving needs. Trust me when I tell you, this is the answer to all your file copying needs. What you'll find most striking the first time you take RichCopy out for a spin is that it's a multithreaded copying tool. That means that rather than copying one file at a time in serial order, RichCopy can open multiple threads simultaneously, allowing many files to be copied in parallel and cutting the total time required to complete the operation several times over. You can also pause and resume file copy operations, so if you lose network connectivity at any point, you can just pick up where you left off.

According to this blog post I found, it is blisteringly fast.

15 free downloads to pep up your old PC

"Got an aging Windows laptop or desktop computer, but money's too tight to buy a new one? Fret not. There's plenty of life in your old PC. It may seem sluggish and on the point of expiring, and its hard disk may be nearly full to bursting, but there's plenty you can do to clean it up, speed it up and give it new life."

Link

PDF-XChange Viewer

PDF-XChange Viewer is "smaller, faster, and more feature rich than the Adobe reader". It is free for private and commercial use. Additional features are also available in the pro version that they sell.

In addition to all the standard features here are some of the features available in the PDF-XChange FREE Viewer

• Add Comments and Annotations to any PDF file (subject to security settings) - unlike the Adobe Viewer which requires the PDF creation tool to be 'certified' by Adobe !
• Add & apply Custom Stamps from any Image or PDF File and even your Windows Clip board !
• Mark-up pages with text and objects
• Type directly on any PDF page, not just Adobe enabled forms documents - in Typewriter mode.
• Export PDF pages or entire files to any one of the supported Image formats including BMP, JPEG, TIFF, PNG and many more ...
• Extract text from a PDF page/File
• Make your navigation of large or complex PDF files both simple and enjoyable with the extended functionality of our 'Loupe' and the 'Pan' Window tools
• Fill and Save Adobe Forms to disk, email or 'post' !
• Full Javascript Engine included
• Updated JPEG2000 Compression support - improving speed.
• Plug-Ins for both MS IE or Firefox Browser's included
• Integrate seamlessly with your favourite translation software to translate text on the 'fly' - including : ABBYY Lingvo 12, Translate It!, Lingoes.
• Includes comprehensive Help file and PDF Manual - no extra downloads required to add features etc.
• Portable version also available - can be run from any suitable device such as a Memory stick/CD/DVD etc - simply unzip and use - no installation required - just 4MB download !

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Hard Drive Cloning Utility

http://clonezilla.org/

Open Source alternative to clone utilities such as Norton Ghost, Partition Image, etc.

Drive imaging program, bare metal backup and recovery.

Botched VMware Install or Uninstall

I have had multiple occasions when upgrading VMware Player, Server, etc. where the process goes wrong and leaves me unable to cleanly uninstall or re-install.

It happened again today. This time I was installing VMware Workstation 6.5.1 and it wanted to uninstall Vmware Player first. Well this failed and now I couldn't install either app.

A little digging and I found a knowledge base article: Cleaning Up After Incomplete Uninstallation on a Windows Host

Following the repair steps accomplished nothing but then I noticed this little gem at the bottom: VMware_Install_Cleaner.zip This did the trick and I could then install Workstation. :) Note that for Vista you need to right-click and run as administrator if using UAC.

Access Report Margin Problem

While using Access 2003 to create a report to print on 4" x 6" labels on my SATO GL 408e label printer, I ran across some very strange problems with margins.

I had created a custom paper size in the print driver on my print server (called custom stock in SATO lingo) and things seemed to be OK as I could see the new paper size in Access. The problems started when I tried to adjust the report margins to use as much of my label real estate as possible. The margins I set for top, left, and right would "stick" but the bottom margin kept resetting itself to 20.02 mm each time I left the page setup form. This was resulting in a large amount of unusable space at the bottom of each label.

Access 2007 was showing the exact same behaviour. Strangely, Word 2007 was not showing this behaviour and would allow me to select the custom paper size and print on the entire label. It seemed to be an issue related to Access.



After some banging of heads on walls, we stumbled across a setting in the print driver that solved the problem. On the "Printer Settings" tab the bottom section is titled "Override Application Default Settings". The field within is called "Always use drivers settings" and this needed to be set to true. I have no idea why this fixed the issue but it did and I am documenting in case this is of help to someone else!

Favicon for OWA on Exchange 2007

A minor thing but I wanted to use a favicon for our new Exchange Server 2007 Outlook Web Access site (also known as OWA or Outlook Anywhere). It was significantly harder to find the answer to this one than I expected . . . eventually, the secret was found on this developer forum posting. The (slightly modified) answer:

This is done by modifying the asp file for the logon page.

Locate the logon.aspx file. This is usually in ExchangeServer\ClientAccess\Owa\auth

Place the following under the *SECOND* <> tag:
< rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="favicon.ico">

Note1: You need to remove the space I inserted after the initial "< ". I did this as Blogger interprets the HTML and messes up this post!

Note2: You can change the text between the TITLE tags under the *second* HEAD tag to whatever name you want to call your site. I did this too. Very nice.