The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

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Different ways of sleeping/waiting in batch files

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/13

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about a Batch file to “Keep Alive” a CMAK generated VPN connection in Windows 7.

It uses ping to wait a certain amount of time, but it has the drawbacks of

  • requiring TCP/IP to be installed (which some headless systems don’t).
  • using N+1 as the number of seconds

Since then, I learned that since Windows Vista and up has timeout command that just waits:

timeout /t 600 /nobreak

Two parameters are used:

  • /nobreak
    does not stop waiting when you press a key
  • /t #
    waits # seconds

(the example is 10 minutes, I use it to regularly run FlushFileCache.exe or FlushMem.exe to empty the Windows file chache and release memory – often more than a gigabyte – back to Windows)

There is also sleep.exe, but that requires the Windows Resource Kit or Windows Server 2000/2003.

–jeroen

via:

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

When your 2nd (touch) screen “clicks” on your 1st (non-touch) screen (Windows 7 tip,via André Mussche – Google+)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/13

Glad I found back this G+ post by André Mussche:

20130206, 09:12 –  Public

TIP: I got a 2nd screen with touch (on Win7), however default when touching the second screen it “clicks” on the main (1st) screen. Using “Tablet PC Settings” I got this switched to the correct 2nd screen.

http://ava.co.uk/support/faq/general/touch-screen-show-as-not-supporting-touch-how-to-install-a-2nd-touch-screen-on-windows-7.aspx

I had exactly the same problem, and this solved it.

–jeroen

via: André Mussche – Google+ – TIP: I got a 2nd screen with touch (on Win7), however….

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

Trying fix for Windows 8 high CPU usage of TiWorker.exe (via: bit-tech.net)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/11

Hopefully this command (ran as administrator) will fix the high CPU usage of TiWorker.exe on one of my Widows 8 machines:

DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

It took almost an hour to run…


C:\bin>DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.2.9200.16384
Image Version: 6.2.9200.16384
[==========================100.0%==========================]
The restore operation completed successfully. The component store corruption was repaired.
The operation completed successfully.

view raw

fix-TiWorker.exe-high-CPU-usage.txt

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Thanks to Windows 8: Update KB2821895 sorgt für Probleme – Lösung gefunden! – Dr. Windows.

–jeroen

via: Windows 8 update bug clogs CPUs | bit-tech.net.

See also:

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »

Windows batch files: How to set a variable with the result of a command (via: Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/12/11

One of the easy things in *nix is to set the value of an environment with the output of a command.

Something like this is possible in Windows too, but you have to instruct Windows to keep an empty set of delimiters to capture the full first line.

There is also a small but important difference between Windows and *nix upon command failure: *nix will always return an empty value, but in Windows you must make sure to empty the value first.

Thanks Jesse Dearing for this summary: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Office Communicator 2007 Keyboard Shortcuts – Communicator – Office.com

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/11/29

I wasn’t aware that Office Communicator supported keyboard shortcuts for text formatting in the chat window.

Since I normally use RDP/MSTSC connections to a work machine (the laptop often moves around which means that network connections aren’t
“persistent”), which means that every once in a while a key like Shift, Alt, Ctrl, or Windows hangs.

That’s how I found out why sometimes the font in the chat window changed a bit: most often the font became strike through, which corresponds to Ctrl-T.

Three things that Microsoft should improve here:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Communicator, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Windows Vista/7/8 and up: setting the user environment variables as regular user (non-administrator)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/10/14

As a non-administrator, as of Windows Vista, you are not allowed to change the environment variables the regular way.

Various people have quoted the official Microsoft way of changing the environment variables as a regular user on Windows Vista and up (including Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008 and up).

It means going through the account settings doing half a dozen steps or so.

Quickest way however is to put this in a batch file to set/edit those environment variables like PATH:

"C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe" sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables

Whereas for the full sysdm.cpl you need Administrator privileges, you don’t for this specific rundll32 call.

The cool thing is that Windows will automatically merge the user and system environment PATH in this format:

system-PATH;user-PATH

–jeroen

via: How can I set user environmental variables such as PATH from a non-administrator account on Windows 7 – Super User.

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »

Test which Java version you have installed

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/10/11

Java.com has a test page that checks which Java version is installed and accessible through your web-browser:

http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp?detect=jre

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »

performance – How is TeamViewer so fast? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/10/07

Interesting Q/A thread because it mentions quite a few alternatives next to the well known TeamViewer, RDP, VNC combo.

--jeroen

via:  performance – How is TeamViewer so fast? – Stack Overflow.

Posted in Power User, Remote Desktop Protocol/MSTSC/Terminal Services, Windows | Leave a Comment »

When KB2844285 fails to update on Widows XP after the 20130813 refresh

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/09/30

KB2844285 failed to update on one of my XP systems, probably because it got re-released on 20130813: MS13-052: Description of the security update for the .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: July 9, 2013.

The .NET Framework Repair Tool failed as well, so I needed more rigorous measures.

To get it working, the below steps are what I did after reading Updated: what to do if other .NET Framework setup troubleshooting steps do not help – Aaron Stebner’s WebLog – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

The reason for all these steps is that there is are dependencies (3.5 SP1 depend on 3.5, which depends on 3.0 SP2, which depends on 3.0, which depends on 2.0 SP2, which depends on 2.0; the language packs depend on their respective versions).

  1. run Appwiz.cpl (that’s the Add or Remove Programs wizard in the Control Panel).
  2. uninstall .NET 3.5 SP1 (I didn’t have language packs for that installed).
  3. uninstall the language packs for .NET 3.0 SP2.
  4. uninstall the language packs for .NET 3.0.
  5. uninstall .NET 3.0 SP2.
  6. uninstall the language packs for .NET 2.0 SP2.
  7. uninstall the language packs for .NET 2.0.
  8. uninstall .NET 2.0 SP2.
  9. uninstall .NET 2.0 SDK ENU.
  10. read the .NET Framework Cleanup Tool User’s Guide, then ran the .NET Framework Cleanup Tool for .NET versions 3.5, 3.0, 2.0 in that order.
  11. reboot
  12. download and install the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 (it is needed by the SDK from the next step).
  13. that failed: “DepCheck indicates Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a is not installed.”.
  14. uninstall .NET 4 Client Profile
  15. uninstall .NET 1.1 language packs
  16. uninstall .NET 1.1 SDL
  17. uninstall .NET 1.1
  18. run the .NET Framework Cleanup Tool for .NET versions 4, 3.5, 3.0, 2.0, 1.1 in that order
  19. download and install the .NET 1.1
  20. download and install the .NET 1.1 SDK
  21. download and install the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 (it is needed by the SDK from the next step).
  22. download and install the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework SDK (some tools on this machine required this).
  23. downloaded and installed Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (as it contains .NET 2.0 through 3.5 SP1 including all intermediate versions and updates).
  24. read the .NET Framework Setup Verification Tool User’s Guide, then ran the .NET Framework Setup Verification Tool: no problems.
  25. installed the updates and hotfixes for the above .NET versions using the Microsoft Update site.

It was a single processor system, so it took a few hours to complete, but now it works well again.

BTW: in preparation of the Windows XP / Windows 2003 Server, I plan to create and archive a few activated VMs with as many .NET frameworks and language packs on it. Just in case I need it for clients that still depend on them.

–jeroen

via: KB2844285 – fail to update – Microsoft Community.

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Speedup Youtube Playback: Watch Lectures In Half The Time with YouTube’s HTML5 Player

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/09/13

I wish I had kept an eye on it after it was announced (which was 3.5 years ago, but not very stable): The Youtube HTML5 viewer trial.

It has come a long way since then. Full screen it is still not as good as the official one, but the main attraction introduced since is: configurable playback speed!

Yes, you can choose playback at 25%, 50%, 100%, 150% or 200% of the original speed. Ideal for lectures or watching replays of conference sessions.

Quote from the life hacker post LifeHacker on this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Opera, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Web Browsers, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »

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