Craig Bailey on Microsoft

Rick Strahl explains how to get rid of the Windows Server Shutdown Event Tracker dialog – you know, the annoying one that asks you to put in a reason every time you reboot. I have to admit I had no idea you could even get rid of it (but then again I never looked). One of the comments on the post gives a good case for why you’d want to leave it on, but for most of us (especially home users) I’m sure this is a welcome tip. Thanks Rick.

This is exactly the same issue I mentioned in my VPC: Mouse issues running W2K3 under Virtual PC 2007 almost a year ago. But this time it's with Windows 2008.

Solution: Set Hardware Acceleration to Full

Problem: My mouse movement was really sluggish in a VPC running Windows 2008 (and 2003, but other OSes are fine)

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Paul Adare on the Microsoft Newsgroup for originally sorting this one out

Here's the steps:

1. Right click on Desktop, select Personalise -> Display Properties
2. Monitor Tab
3. Advanced Settings... Button
4. Troubleshoot Tab
5. Change settings button
6. Slide the Hardware Acceleration tab to Full

No doubt you've done this at some point:

You're at an event or user group and find yourself chatting with someone new. A friend of yours strolls over and joins the conversation. Being the polite person you are you introduce your friend to the new person. They reply with 'oh yes, we already know each other - Bob here is my brother...'

Easy to feel embarrassed right?

You shouldn't - in a healthy group or event this should be happening all the time.

These days I make a point of introducing people whenever I can. I'd estimate that on 20% of those occasions they already know each other.

Far from being embarrassing it is actually a good thing.

Don't apologise, instead follow on with something like this: 'Oh good, just checking. Have you known each other for a while?' etc - use it is a conversation starter. (Of course, if they are brothers, you may want to use a different line... )

Why? Because it really is embarrassing if you chat for a while and then the third person takes it upon them self to make the introductions. Or worse, they part ways never having been introduced.

Some caveats

Obviously you should use a bit of common sense.

• Introductions are best via a question: 'John, do you know Cathy here...?'
• Don't go introducing people who clearly recognise each other (eg they are already chatting :-)).
• And don't go out of your way to introduce people who are in a hurry eg they may be just passing by to quickly mention something to you.
• Oh, and be careful introducing people if one of them is very well known (eg 'Tim, let me introduce you to Bono...'). Famous people - at least those worth being introduced to - are usually gracious and take the initiative of introducing themselves. Which is why you'll hear things like this at a developer user group: 'Hi, I'm Scott Guthrie, pleased to meet you...'

Forgetting people's names

We all do it. Don't try to hide it.

If you obviously recognise them, and think the chat is going to be more than a passing hello, then bite the bullet and 'fess up. A simple 'I'm sorry, I've completely forgotten your name...' is better than dancing around the 'good to see you mate' routine.

And if like me you've been in situations where you chat with them later at the same event and you've forgotten their name again, just 'fess up again: 'I'm so sorry, this is embarrassing, but I've forgotten your name again...' - they may be a little peeved, but that is still better than them realising via your use of 'mate'.

What's the point?

User groups, events and other community gatherings are about getting to know each other better.

So, focus on the good of ensuring everyone is included, and less on the etiquette and social dance that can otherwise detract.

Brad Marsh alerts us to this handy option in SQL Server 2008 - how to change the default result set sizes. They default to 200 for Edit and 1000 for Select, but can be increased to... everything if desired. Proceed with caution though - there's a reason Microsoft put these new limits in.

A simple one. Sorry if you all know this already - but I keep coming across people who've missed it - so please read on.

You can easily hide the ribbon in any of the Office 2007 programs simply by double clicking on the tabs.

Thus

becomes

with just a double-click on the Home tab (or any tab).

Oh, and I assume you know you can customise the Quick Access toolbar easily enough:

As usual this Tip is covered under my 'well duh' Disclaimer.

I don't know if you read the Outlook Team Blog, but if not I recommend it - there's stacks of goodies over there.

Take this one for example, on entering dates in Outlook. I didn't realise you could enter a date as easily as 'next tue' and Outlook would work it out for you automatically:

Gets converted to

As Kristel explains, there's a bunch of terms that work, including 'tomorrow', 'Christmas day' and 'in 6 days'.

This one has bugged me for ages - you open up stacks of tabs in IE and after a while weird things start happening. Perhaps its the menu not appearing on some tabs, another tab has missing toolbars, etc.

And it affects other programs as well including File Explorer, shortcuts, and in my case SharePoint Designer (and even Live Writer - with which I am currently writing this post).

Well, thanks to Jon Galloway we now have a (Microsoft non-supported) solution. Jon points to posts by Ed Bott and Kevin Dente, the latter being almost 4 years old. Some things never change huh?

Warning: All registry changes are 'do at your own risk' affairs, so be careful as always with this one.

I've had issues recently with Outlook crashing when I shut it down. Initially I thought this was due to a rogue Outlook Addin (eg I've got Xobni, ClearContext, OutTwit and others installed). So I went through systematically getting rid of them. Put the problem persisted.

Finally I found the issue was to do with the actual .ost file being corrupted. The way I discovered this was by chance when trying to clear my Deleted items. Outlook gave me a message informing that the file was corrupt, and even better recommended using scanpst.exe to fix it.

I'd never heard of scanpst.exe but a quick Google check shows it has been around since the dark ages, and has been a regular in the Sys Admin's toolbox for years.

If you are looking for it you can find it in your c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 12\ folder or equivalent.

Everything Outlook related needs to be closed down (eg Mobile Device Sync) and then you run it up. It'll prompt for the ost file and away you go.

Since repairing my file I've had no further issues with Outlook.

If, like me, you rushed out and installed Internet Explorer 8 last week, then you may, like me again, be regretting it.

IE8 has been slow, unstable and ugly. By ugly I mean that most of the sites I viewed looked really bad (or didn't render at all). The price of progress you may say? After all, the push is on for better standards compliance right? Unfortunately, the IE8 Beta 1 release seems to have been rushed out the door without proper testing, and more importantly, without the proper user preparation - users need to be informed of the potential issues and in effect, properly change managed.

When is a Beta a Beta?

Short answer: it's never a beta anymore.

Ever since Microsoft (and others) started pushing out Beta versions of products to everyone (think Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and onwards) we've all grown accustomed to using Beta software in production settings. Previously the domain of die-hard testers only, now everyone runs them. They are not Betas anymore. The real Betas are now called CTPs and come with explicit this-may-not-work doco (sometimes that is their only doco) - although many people still end up putting CTPs on production machines as well (example :-).

So when IE8 was announced with such fanfare at MIX last week - it was pretty much a public event (I mean why else would you have it noted on the Microsoft home page?). Everyone was being invited to download and uninstall it.

It's a shame really

I've had nothing but nice words to say about Microsoft over the last few months. Their releases have been continuous, innovative and of high quality. But this IE8 release is an unwelcome exception. Now, it may turn out to be my machine that's playing up given I have so much junk installed on it (it's due for a reformat actually), but even in that state it runs Safari Betas, Firefox Betas and a host of other Beta software fine. IE8 is the only thing I've had problems with.

The real shame for me is that I won't be getting to play with all the new features any time soon. And there's a stack of them.

I gave it my best shot. I spent Thursday in IE8 mode, and then on Friday when I couldn't stand it anymore I shifted to IE7 compatibility mode. That didn't change things (although sites did look fine again). It crashed repeatedly and was slow. Slow to start, slow to open a new tab, slow to render a page. Slow. Saturday morning was the end. Off it came.

The sad part about this - Microsoft had a chance to win over a lot of people with this release. And they definitely need to in the browser game, with so many people favouring non IE options. But if others have suffered the way I have (and from my Twitter reading many have), then Microsoft has a lot of work to do to win them back.

Back to the uninstall

Oh yes, so how do you uninstall IE8? If you are on XP it is in the same place - Add and Remove programs. But on Vista it is hidden away in the View Installed Updates section. You still get to it via Control Panel -> Uninstall a program. But then it is sitting over on the left panel.

Click on View installed updates.

Find IE8 in the list and click Uninstall from the top bar.

In fairness to Microsoft I have to say the uninstall process was very smooth and after rebooting I had IE7 back and working fine. I've had no problems with missing links, components or saved settings. So at least they got the uninstall part right.

I'm looking forward to Beta 2.

Am I over-reacting? What's been your experience with IE8?

This one crops up from time to time. You need a Microsoft LiveID for use with say Windows Messenger. But when you go through the sign up process, you only have options for a .hotmail.com or .live.com domain on your alias.

If you have registered your own domain name, then ideally you want your LiveID profile to be somehow linked to that as well.

Turns out it is pretty simple. There are many ways to get to the right place, here's one:

Go to Microsoft.com

Scroll down to the bottom of the page

Click on Manage my profile

Click on Sign In up the top right

Click on Create new LiveID

And there you are - you can add your own email address.

Use this with Windows Messenger and all the other Microsoft Live services.