The Old New Thing

Wait a second, I thought we stopped doing this back in 2003

February 20, 2008 Feb 20, 2008 02/20/08

Raymond Chen

It looks like Verizon's default DNS server for their customers is redirecting all failed DNS queries to their own site, calling the feature Advanced Web Search. Fortunately, they have instructions on how to opt out. The short version: Go to your DNS settings and change the last octet from .12 to .14...

Controlling which devices will wake the computer out of sleep

February 13, 2008 Feb 13, 2008 02/13/08

Raymond Chen

I haven't experienced this problem, but I know of people who have. They'll put their laptop into suspend or standby mode, and after a few seconds, the laptop will spontaneously wake itself up. Someone gave me this tip that might (might) help you figure out what is wrong. Open a command prompt and run the command powercfg -devicequery ...

The classic start menu is even more classic than it looks

January 25, 2008 Jan 25, 2008 01/25/08

Raymond Chen

In Windows 95, the Find option took its place on the Start menu between Settings and Help. In Windows 2000, the option was still there, but its name changed to Search, a name which persist today if you use the classic Start menu. When the menu option changed its name, the keyboard accelerator changed accordingly. Whereas Find used ...

How does the calculator percent key work?

January 10, 2008 Jan 10, 2008 01/10/08

Raymond Chen

The same way it does on a cheap calculator.

When you compress a drive, some files are exempted, but you can force it, and then it's your problem

November 27, 2007 Nov 27, 2007 11/27/07

Raymond Chen

On the drive property sheet for an NTFS volume, there is a checkbox called "Compress drive to save disk space." If you check that box, the shell marks the drive as "compress all newly-created files" and also goes through and compresses all the existing files on the drive. Well, almost all the file. Some files are exempted by default. ...

Hidden gotcha: The command processor's AutoRun setting

November 21, 2007 Nov 21, 2007 11/21/07

Raymond Chen

If you type at a command prompt, the command processor will spit out pages upon pages of strange geeky text. I'm not sure why the command processor folks decided to write documentation this way rather than the more traditional manner of putting it into MSDN or the online help. Maybe because that way they don't have to deal with annoying ...

You can't change it, but you can hide it and add something that looks like it

October 30, 2007 Oct 30, 2007 10/30/07

Raymond Chen

Today we have another case of "Now you have two problems." The corporate customer already solved their problem halfway and needed help on the other half. The impossible half. We want to change the Add or Remove Programs icon in the Windows XP control panel so it runs our custom install management program instead of running the one built ...

How do I delay the automatic logon process?

October 16, 2007 Oct 16, 2007 10/16/07

Raymond Chen

To solve some problems you need to place one foot outside the box. We have a number of kiosk machines that are networked wirelessly. Each machine is configured with automatic logon so that things return to normal after power is restored after an outage. The problem is that the wireless switch takes a long time to recover from a power failure...

Why does ICE16 complain about product names longer than 63 characters?

October 9, 2007 Oct 9, 2007 10/9/07

Raymond Chen

If you merge in the Internal Consistency Evaluators into your MSI package, you may run into error ICE16, complaining that the product name is longer than 63 characters. Why is this so bad? Well, it isn't really, at least not any more. The original Windows 95 version of the Add/Remove Programs control panel did limit product names to 63...