Tips, tools and utilities...

Capturing screens Part I

2007-02-20T18:22:00.000+05:30

Windows Media Encoder is a nice tool to capture video especially for screencasts.

Technorati tags: Windows Media Encoder, Screencast

Cleaning up a failed .NET framework 2.0 install

2007-02-19T19:55:00.000+05:30

I was trying to install .NET framework 2.0 and it was failing with this error.

Product: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 -- Error 25015.Failed to install assembly 'X:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.VisualBasic.Vsa.dll' because of system error: The device is not ready.

After some searches, I came across Aaron Stebner's Weblog which addresses this issue in the post How to manually clean up a failed .NET framework 2.0 install.

Needless to say, the post was very helpful, and running the cleanup tool removed the remnants of earlier installs of .NET 2.0 (needed a couple of runs to really clean my system.)

Get the tool at the cleanup tool at http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/dotnetfx_cleanup_tool.zip.

I used the version at http://www.cnblogs.com/Files/lovesanni/cleanup_tool.zip (Warning: Use it at your own risk!)

Note: The Windows Installer Clean Up Utility was not at all helpful although it works for some.

ZoomIt

2007-01-25T10:56:00.000+05:30

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/zoomit.mspx

One of my colleagues was looking for the MS mouse software. When probed he mentioned that the zoom utility that is provided with MS mouse is a neat one, where you can control the zoomed area. Quite useful when you’d want the audience to focus on a specific area on the screen. I was running Vista at the moment and I found that the Magnifier tool in Vista was quite nifty in this regard. The magnifier can be found under Accessibility (Shortcut: ÿ + u)

Since Win2K3 and XP doesn’t have the same magnifier, for those OSs you could use Zoomit.

Technorati tags: ZoomIt, Technical Presentation Zoom tool, Zoom tool, Alternative to Magnifier

Tracing tools

2006-09-20T15:19:00.000+05:30

http://blogs.msdn.com/kaevans/archive/2004/08/20/2... has a short list to some useful tracing tools.

tags: Tracing tools, WSE tracing tools, Web services tracing, HTTP tracing, TCP tracing, Fiddler, YATT

50+ keyboard shortcuts for moving faster in Windows XP

2005-12-25T18:04:00.000+05:30

Dictionary at your fingertips

2005-12-23T05:57:00.000+05:30

For a quick look, I press Ctrl+Alt+W and Wordweb pops up. Neatness quotient: Select the word before pressing the shortcut key and Wordweb shows its meaning.

Wordweb, download from http://wordweb.info/free/

If you are in Microsoft Word, select the word and press Shift+F7

Free screen capture utility

2005-11-29T08:39:00.000+05:30

What I liked about ScreenHunter 4.0 Free Version ?
1. Ability to assign a hotkey
2. Save the capture immediately to a BMP/JPG or GIF
3. Timed Capture and
4. The ability to select a specific area of the screen to be captured

My favorites in order
1. Snagit
2. Spy and Capture (Free)
and now
3. Screen Hunter

And, as always, Alt+PrtScrn and PrtScrn are always around ;)

Changing the Automatic Updates pop up frequency

2005-07-19T05:15:00.000+05:30

Is the Automatic Updates window behaving like a nuisance popping up every 10 minutes and waiting for you to press ‘N’ to “Restart Now”?

The solution to make it pop-up less frequently:
1. Fire up Group Policy Editor
Start->Run->gpedit.msc
2. Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update

3. In the Setting pane (right hand side), double click on “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations” and set it to Enabled and enter a value more than the default 10 (minutes.) The maximum value that can be entered is 1440 (minutes)

Warning: Do not poke around with these setting unless you know what you are doing. I am not responsible for the consequences of your actions. Ask your local admin. (or on the newsgroups) on the impact of this and the other settings under Windows Update.

Outlook Express Newsgroup Tips from a power user

2005-04-19T16:38:00.000+05:30

Mastering Newsgroups in Outlook Express: Power User Tips

Pitfalls to avoid when holding a e-meeting

2005-04-19T14:18:00.000+05:30

From Microsoft Small Business CenterHolding a Web meeting? 5 pitfalls to avoid