Web Development Insight

I had to install an msi file on Vista today. An msi extension means the file is a Windows Installer file.

When I right-clicked and selected ‘install’ it failed. So I right-clicked again, thinking it had to be run as administrator, and there was no ‘run as administrator’ option.

Fortunately, there is a workaround.

1. Open up the command prompt in ‘run as administrator’ mode.

2. Navigate to the directory where the msi file is located.

3. msiexec  /a “The Big App.msi”

The /a will install the file as an administrator.

I never thought removing an activex control could be so obfuscated.

Recently I ran Secunia PSI which checks the versions of programs to see if they are up-to-date and are a security risk. One program that showed up was Trend Micro’s Housecall activex control which was woefully out of date.  Not using housecall anymore I though it simple to delete the activex control. Hah!

The control was firmly esconced in the Windows/Downloaded Program Files directory. Even starting Windows explorer as an admin did not help.

I opened Internet Explorer 8.0 > Tools > Manage add-ons.

The activex control was nowhere to be found until I selected All add-ons under the Show: label. I scrolled down to the Housecall activex control, right-clicked on it, and chose More Information. Then click Remove which will delete the control.

I needed to use telnet today to see if my ISP was blocking a port. No telnet on Vista. After some searching, I found out that it is not preinstalled (unlike Windows XP) so it needed to be installed. Here is how to install it:

1. Click start then control panel
2. Click Programs and Features
3. Click Turn Windows features on or off (on the left side)
4. Select the Telnet client
5. Click OK. A dialog box will appear to show the installation. Note that it may take several minutes, even on a fast computer.

It took me quite a while to figure out how to search for file extensions using Vista’s new search interface. In searching for an answer, *many* other people were perplexed, too.

In XP, you could type:  *.xls  to find all the Excel spreadsheets. That does not work in Vista. Here is what you do:

In the search box:

To search for one extension, type in:

ext:(*.xlsx)

or

ext:*.xlsx

To search for more than one extension, type in:

ext:(*.xlsx OR *.xls)

Make sure the OR is capitalized.

Here is a link to more search features:

Desktop Search

Doug

Many people complain that their computer is too slow and it takes a long time to boot up. Startup programs are often the culprit. There are many hidden startup programs that are installed without the user’s knowledge – monitors and schedulers to name a few.
msconfig comes with Windows XP and does a minimal job of showing startup programs. We like autoruns by SysInternals. It is freeware and shows MUCH more than just startup programs: drivers, services, print monitors, browser helper objects…the list goes on. You can hide signed Microsoft entries so only 3rd party items show up. Autoruns makes it easy to disable/enable startup entries. This can also be the bane of autoruns.
Autoruns has a command line mode, too. And it runs on all versions of Windows; 95 on up.

Doug