Archive for the ‘Windows 8’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/06/21
If you ever wondered why how in Windows – as of Vista – the NCIS (network connection status indicator) determines if you have a valid internet connection, it is pretty simple, as both these pages explain:
NCIS depends on the msftncis.com domain (link to the checks from IntoDNS) and is for supporting Network Awareness in applications.
The probing is done in this order: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Captive Portal, DNS, Internet, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/06/10
(note: part of this post is unfinished, but I wanted to make sure all the links are publicly accessible, so I posted earlier and incomplete)
I already did a few ESXi5 postings (they apply to 5.1 as well) of which the most important are:
Time to finish up some additional installation steps (with a big thanks to Matthijs ter Woord):
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in BIOS, Boot, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, Hardware, HP XW6600, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, PowerCLI, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Wake-on-LAN (WoL), Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/06/07
As a follow-up on my question cpu usage – Windows 8 Task Manager: how to enable the “CPU Time” column in the Processes tab? – Super User:
You can show the *CPU time* column in the Windows 8 Task Manager, it just well hidden.
These steps and screenshots show how:
- Start the Task Manager, then click on More Details
- You end up in the Processes tab, now click on the Details tab
- In the Details tab, you see there is no CPU time column, only a CPU column
- Right click on the header of the Details tab, in the the pop-up menu choose Select columns
- In the dialog, put a check-mark in front of CPU time
- then press the OK button
- Now you have the CPU time column in the Details tab
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/30
If you install Office 2013 on Windows 8, be sure to transform the default Windows Update mechanism to Microsoft Update: that will get you the Office 2013 updates too.
Here are the one-time steps to accomplish that (which also work for other non-Windows products from Microsoft like Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc):
- Start the “Windows Update” window
- Click the link in “Get updates for other Microsoft Products. Find out more“
- Internet Explorer starts at the Microsoft Update page which detects you only have “Windows Update” configured and asks you if you want to configure “Microsoft Update” as well by agreeing to its Terms of Use.
- Clicking there refreshes the same page into “Choose how Windows can install Updates” page (I took the “current settings” choice)
- Click on the “Install” button
- In the UAC screen, confirm you are an Administrator
- Internet Explorer now refreshes the page to show “Find Windows Update using your Start Screen”
- “Windows Update” now will find updates for other Microsoft products like Office 2013 as well (some 300 megabytes in my case)
–jeroen
via: Office 2013 Plus on Windows 8 x64: how to force update? – Super User.
Posted in Office, Office 2013, Power User, Windows, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/22
Despite the radically different first look, lot’s of Windows 8 is the same as in Windows 7
So this Windows 7 trick works just as well in Windows 8:
This is how you get the underline character to show for Alt and other keyboard shortcuts in Windows 7 (the link shows you how to do this with the mouse, but we are keyboard lovers, are’t we?):
- Press the WINDOWS-U combination to open the “Ease of Access Center”
- Under Explore all settings, select “Make the keyboard easier to use” by pressing TAB a couple of times, then press ENTER to select it.
- Press ALT-N to select and check “Underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys” under ”Make it easier to use keyboard shortcuts”
- Press ALT-O to fire the OK button action.
- Press ALT-F4 to close the “Ease of Access Center”
Done!
–jeroen
via: I love my keyboard; why did they hide “Underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys” in Windows 7 so far away? « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.
Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/17
Sometimes I get messages like the below No Disk error on virtual machines, mainly in Windows XP and lower, but sometimes in more recent Windows versions too.
---------------------------
Windows - No Disk
---------------------------
Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf7c 4 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c
---------------------------
Cancel Try Again Continue
---------------------------
The 0xc0000013 is a No Disk Exception.
Every time the solution has been to uninstall the floppy drive device from the VM image.
I never had it on physical hardware, but for that, disabling all unused removable and USB disk devices seem to work.
Somehow, lots of software thinks it should scan ALL media, even the removable ones that might not have media inserted.
–jeroen
via: A Consuming Experience: Windows – no disk Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf9c 4 75b6bf9c 75b6bf9c – fixed!.
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/05/08

Lucida Console Sample (thanks Wikimedia!)
I’m in search to see if there is a better programmers font than the monospaced Lucida Console mainly to be used in Visual Studio, Delphi, the Windows console, Xcode and Eclipse. What I love about Lucida Console design is the relatively large x-height combined with a small leading (often called “line height”). This combines very readable text, and a lot of code lines in view. Lucida has two small drawbacks, see the second image at the right:
- The captial O and digit 0 (zero) are very similar.
- Some uppercase/lowercase character pairs are alike (because of the large x-height)
But, since the font hasn’t been updated for a very long time, lots of Unicode code points that are now in current fonts, are missing from Lucida Console (unless you buy the [Wayback] most recent version that has 666 characters from Fonts.com) Well, there are dozens of monospaced fonts around, so I wonder: which ones do you like? In the mean while, I’m going to do some experimenting with fonts mentioned in these lists:
A few fonts I’m considering (I only want scalable fonts, so raster .fon files are out):
I have tried Adobe Source Code Pro about half a year ago. That didn’t cut it: problem with italics in Delphi, and not enough lines per screen. [Wayback] New Open Source monospaced font from Adobe: Source Code Pro.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, Adobe Source Code Pro, Apple, Delphi, Delphi 2007, Delphi XE3, Development, Encoding, Font, Lucida Console, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Programmers Font, Software Development, Typography, Unicode, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows XP, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 43 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/04/26
Found a while ago that Brian Long wrote a few nice pages and posts on Windows keyboard shortcuts:
Thanks Brian
–jeroen
Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Tagged: blong, jeroen, software, technology, windows keyboard shortcuts, windows shortcuts | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/04/19
PSUBST:
Associates a path with a drive letter and extends the standard SUBST command allowing to create persistent substituted drives between startups.
It is the “maintained” version of scripts like these:
–jeroen
via: psubst – Persistent SUBST command – Google Project Hosting.
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2013/04/05
Interesting answer on SO, not only for developers:
You can check out the wavesurfer program:
WaveSurfer is an Open Source tool for sound visualization and manipulation. It has been designed to suit both novice and advanced users. WaveSurfer has a simple and logical user interface that provides functionality in an intuitive way and which can be adapted to different tasks. It can be used as a stand-alone tool for a wide range of tasks in speech research and education. Typical applications are speech/sound analysis and sound annotation/transcription. WaveSurfer can also serve as a platform for more advanced/specialized applications. This is accomplished either through extending the WaveSurfer application with new custom plug-ins or by embedding WaveSurfer visualization components in other applications.
It can perform many different types of analysis, I have only used it for practicing Chinese tone pronunciation.
Thanks hlovdal!
–jeroen
via delphi – component or code for wave analyzer – Stack Overflow.
Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »