Sunday, August 23, 2009

You may not wish to rely on Windows Vista's Disk Defragmenter running on a schedule, preferring to perform this task manually via the command prompt. Or, you may need to create service-oriented batch files that defragment drives as a part of other maintenance tasks.

1. Click the "Start" button and type cmd.

2. When "cmd.exe" appears, right-click the icon and choose "Run As Administrator".

3. Confirm your actions if User Account Control (UAC) prompts you.

Now, for the command:

4. Enter the defrag command at the prompt, passing in the volume name to defragment. Several command line options are available (note the analyze options are described further in the tip Windows Vista - Disk Defragmenter: Analyze Fragmentation Status):

-a: Only performs drive analysis, not a defrag

-c: Instead of defragmenting a particular drive, this will defragment all volumes on the machine

-f: Though this option is not recommended, it will attempt to defragment the drive even if there is a low amount of free hard drive space

-r: Performs the default partial defragmentation, only consolidating fragments smaller than 64MB

-v: Displays extra information when performing the defrag or analysis

-w: Performs full defragmentation, attempting to consolidate all file fragments regardless of size

-?: Displays the help information

For example, the following command will defragment all drives on the system, displaying extra information about the process:

defrag -c -v

This command only defragments drive E:, but it will attempt to defragment all files regardless of size:

defrag -w e:

Monday, August 17, 2009

By default, Windows 7 hides the file extensions of known file types in Explorer views. The reasoning - this keeps the display clean, as often a file's icon signifies its type.

However, as in in Windows Vista and earlier, this default setting is a potential security risk. It's possible that you can receive a file via e-mail with an extension of ".txt", or a file with a Notepad icon. Unfortunately, this file could have a hidden second extension, meaning that if you double-click the file, you may actually execute spyware or other malware instead!

Don't just take my word for it - Anti-virus and security software developer F-Secure describes this problem as well in their blog.

Luckily, the "fix" for this is easy:

1. Click the "Start" button, type folder options and click the "Folder Options" link that appears.



Accessing Folder Options from the Windows 7 Start button




2. When the "Folder Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the "View" tab.


3. Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types".

4. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

IEs4Linux is the simpler way to have Microsoft Internet Explorer running on Linux (or any OS running Wine).

No clicks needed. No boring setup processes. No Wine complications. Just one easy script and you’ll get three IE versions to test your Sites. And it’s free and open source.This may be very helpful for software developers and web developers to test their applications.

IEs4Linux Installation in Ubuntu

You have to enable universe packages first. It is also recommended that you use the official winehq ubuntu package:

Open /etc/apt/sources.list file

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Uncomment following lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list and it may be different if you are in different country instead of UK

For Ubuntu Dapper Users

deb http://uk.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe
deb-src http://uk.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe

For Ubuntu Edgy Eft Users

deb http://uk.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy universe
deb-src http://uk.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy universe

Add WineHQ APT Repository

or

If you want to add source packages from the repository

Currently, wine only have i386 binary packages available. If you do not use an i386 architecture, or wish to compile the package in a special or optimized way, you can build the wine package using the source repository instead. To do this, add a source repository with one of the following:

For Ubuntu Dapper Users

deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt dapper main
deb-src http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt dapper main

For Ubuntu Edgy Eft Users

deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt edgy main
deb-src http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt edgy main

Close gedit and run an update to take your new Repository

sudo apt-get update

Install wine and cabextract

sudo apt-get install wine cabextract

Now you need to download IEs4Linux script from here

wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-2.0.5.tar.gz

tar xzvf ies4linux-2.0.5.tar.gz

cd ies4linux-2.0.5

Once you are inside ies4linux-2.0.5 directory you need to run the following script to install internet explorer

./ies4linux

This will install the internet explore in your machine.

To run IE you need to run the following command and it may be different for others this path at the end of installation it will give from where you want to run

/root/bin/ie6

You should see the Internet explorer opening

If try to run /root/bin/ie6 as root user you will get the following error messages so you need to run as user#/root/bin/ie6
fixme:actctx:CreateActCtxW stub!
err:imagelist:ImageList_ReplaceIcon no color!
err:imagelist:ImageList_ReplaceIcon no color!
err:imagelist:ImageList_ReplaceIcon no color!
err:imagelist:ImageList_ReplaceIcon no color!
Application tries to create a window, but no driver could be loaded.
Make sure that your X server is running and that $DISPLAY is set correctly.