Blagged

When using Windows’ Remote Desktop Connection to access other Windows machines, I don’t like to have it running full screen, as I’m usually working with many other applications on my local computer at the same time. My primary monitor resolution is set to 1680×1050, but with the taskbar and the RDC window border and title bar, I can’t set the RDC resolution to 1280×1024 without having to scroll to see everything. The next step down in the RDC options is 1280×720, which is a bit too disproportionate for me.

Long story short, you can actually set the RDC window to whatever resolution you desire, using a couple of switches for mstsc.exe (the executable for the Remote Desktop Connection application).

Use the /w: switch to set the width, and the /h: switch to set the height. Simple enough, right? The example below would launch the RDC application with the resolution of your RDC window set to 1280×925. Note that the custom resolution won’t show up in the options for your session, but when you connect to your computer of choice, the window will be the size you specified.

• mstsc.exe /w:1280 /h:925

Here’s an interesting tidbit of information that I wasn’t aware of. Apparently your system memory isn’t only limited by your 32-bit operating system. I installed 4GB of RAM into a system the other day and installed Windows 7 64-bit, and found that the System Properties page showed 4GB installed, but only 3GB usable. What gives?

As it turns out, the amount of usable memory can be limited by the chipset, as well as the BIOS. In my case, the Intel 945 chipset only supports a 4GB address space. Since memory on other hardware devices (i.e. video cards) needs to be mapped somewhere in that address space, some of it is reserved, and cannot be used by the operating system.

Now, if your chipset supports more than 4GB of address space, the BIOS still needs to support memory remapping. The memory remapping feature allows for the other hardware devices to use memory addresses above the 4GB limit, thus allowing the operating system to use all 4GB of system memory. I’m assuming that if the chipset supports more than 4GB of address space, then the BIOS should support memory remapping, but you know what happens when you assume.

What’s interesting to note, and makes perfect sense once you think about it, is that if your amount of system memory is equal to the amount of address space supported by your chipset, then your operating system will never be able to use all of the system memory. Again, this is because of the reserved address space for other hardware in the system.

Microsoft’s knowledge base article #929605 has a good explanation of the requirements for making 4GB or more available to the operating system.

I ran into a strange issue the other day and thought I would share the solution. I had a laptop with Windows 7, and occasionally after shutting it down, everything would look like it was off, but the laptop stayed hot and the CPU fan would continue to run until the battery died.

I managed to duplicate the issue on another laptop, also running Windows 7. What was also interesting is that both laptops were configured with BitLocker for full disk encryption.

After some searching, I came across a Microsoft hotfix that resolves that specific issue on Windows 7 computers running BitLocker. Microsoft doesn’t include a cause in the information for the hotfix, so I have no idea what the actual issue is, but at least there’s an easy fix for it.

The hotfix is provided in article ID 975496 and can be found at the link below:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975496

Where has this been all my life? I can’t count the number of times I’ve needed to uninstall something that won’t allow a computer to boot normally, yet in Safe Mode I can’t uninstall it because the program uses the Windows Installer service which by default won’t run in Safe Mode. I finally got around to looking into it and now I can uninstall anything in Safe Mode to my heart’s content.

For those wishing to enable the Windows Installer service in Safe Mode, add the following registry keys and set their Default value to ‘Service’. The first key is for plain Safe Mode, the second key is for Safe Mode with Networking.

• HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer
• HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer

The screenshot below shows what this should look like in regedit.

• net start msiserver

You should now be able to run any installer or uninstaller that uses the Windows Installer service in Safe Mode.

This is something so fantastic, I had to revive my blog just to talk about it. There’s finally an official Blackberry WordPress app! It’s currently in beta, but so far it’s working like a champ. If your Blackberry runs OS 4.2.1 or higher, point your Blackberry browser to http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install to install it. I wrote this post on my 8830, and if all goes well, it will actually make it onto the site.

You know what ruins a Sunday afternoon?  Turning on your Xbox 360 and finding out you’ve lost all of your game saves because the hard drive has crashed.  It’s partially my fault I lost everything though… about a year ago when I had to penny trick my 360, it was sitting on top of my loudspeaker without the case on it.  One of my cats decided it would be hilarious to jump up and knock the system onto the floor while it was running.  Ever since then I’ve been telling myself I should buy a memory card and copy my game saves to it as a backup.  Looks like procrastination has finally come back to kick me in the ass.  RIP 20GB drive, hello 60GB drive.

I have a question… since when is NTFS not the same as NTFS?  Anyone?  I recently received Red Alert 3 as a birthday gift, but for whatever reason, it wouldn’t run in my current install of Windows Vista.  I decided that since the games take up so much space any how, I would create a new partition on my drive and load it up with Vista, then install all of my games there.  When I want to play, I’ll just boot up the gaming install of Vista and the games can run in a clean environment.

Anyways, I used Acronis Disk Director to shrink my current Windows partition to make room for the new one.  Then I create the new partition and format it with NTFS using Disk Director.  Here’s where it gets messed up.  I installed the new copy of Vista, but didn’t format the partition using the Vista setup since it was already formatted using Disk Director.  Vista installed fine, but I found that I couldn’t install any software.  Any setup file, would complain about not having access to the temp folder.

After some searching, I found many people having the same problem.  I started the Vista setup from CD again, but this time formatted the partition right in the Vista setup and all is well.  So, pro tip for the day; if you’re using Disk Director to create a new partition for a Vista install, make sure you format the partition using the tool provided in Vista’s setup and not with Disk Director!

I’ve never been overly into fighting games, but today I decided to try out Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.  The graphics may be a bit lacking, and the dialogue in the cut scenes is super cheesy, but the game play is pretty decent and the cut scenes in Story Mode are still a nice break from Arcade Mode where you just fight round after round.  Story Mode is a bit short though, I completed the Mortal Kombat part of it in just a couple of hours.  I haven’t started the DC Universe part of Story Mode yet.

I haven’t played a Mortal Kombat game since the Sega Genesis days, but this game still has all of the familiar characters from the old game.  They have a lot of the same special moves and finishing moves too so anyone who’s feeling nostalgic of the old Mortal Kombat games can pick this one up and feel that familiarity.  All in all, if you like fighting games, this is a good one to try out.

The three red lights of death have claimed another two victims who are near and dear to me.  This weekend I received a phone call from my cousin informing me that my services would be required to penny fix his red ringed Xbox 360.  Then, last night I received a text message from this fellow informing me that he too has finally seen the dark days of the Xbox 360’s RROD.  Be strong gents, my heart is with you.

I’ve been saying for a while now that if I find something I like, I’ll blog about it, but only after using it for a couple of weeks.  Much like this fellow, I have a tendency to try something out, rave about how great it is, and then never use it again.  So here it is, my first Certified Awesome post and it’s about the redesigned taskbar that’s in Windows 7.  The Windows 7 pre-beta comes with the same old Vista taskbar, but there are ways to unlock the new one.  The new taskbar is more like a dock, but the live thumbnails of the running applications are fantastic.  They’re a bit clearer than in Vista, and you can even close windows right from the live thumbnail in the taskbar.

Other things I like are the ability to pin a running application to the taskbar, as well as the context sensitive pop out menus (jump lists) that you can open from the taskbar shortcut.  For example, if you have Notepad pinned to your taskbar, the jump list will contain the recently opened text files.  This comes in handy if you’re frequently opening the same log files.

Last but not least is the updated notification area (or system tray if you prefer).  Rather than “hiding” rarely used icons, there’s actually a new area where you drag them to, and that area is only shown on your command. It’s kind of like the old way of having to click the little arrow and it slides out to show your unused icons, but it’s more of a static type of window that opens up above the taskbar.  You also have the option to suppress balloon notifications for any application you would like to ignore.

Did I mention that you can also drag your taskbar items and system tray icons, allowing you to re-order them to your liking?

All in all, this much needed update to the Windows taskbar is proving to be pretty fantastic, and I already hate using the old Vista taskbar now that I’ve been spoiled by the new one.  Keep up the good work Microsoft, I can’t wait to get my hands on a Windows 7 build that will have the fully functioning peek feature.