SuperWasp

Productivity tips, reviews, tools, software and gadgets.

TCP Ports required for ActiveSync & WMDC

To get a working ActiveSync (or Windows Mobile Device Center on Vista) connection, you need to open some ports in your firewall. Some firewalls like Eset SmartSecurity have auto-discovery mode or interactive mode, but that doesn’t always work out okay.

The easiest and most reliable way is to open these TCP ports manually in your firewall:

• 990 (RAPI)
• 999 (Status)
• 5721 (DTPT)
• 5678 (Legacy Replication)
• 5679 (Handshake & Legacy Replication)
• 26675 (Airsync)

Source: TreoProTricks

Labels: ActiveSync, firewall, ports, TCP, Vista, Windows Mobile, WMDC, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 | PermaLink | 0 comments

ATI Catalyst Install Manager has stopped working

This problem has bugged me for a while: when installing AMD/ATI Catalyst drivers (version 7.8, 7.9, 7.10 and who knows the new 7.11), everything goes fine until you click the Install or Uninstall button:

You are then greeted with the message Catalyst Install Manager has stopped working. Apparently this has something to do with the VS2005 C++ redistributables, but that shouldn’t be our problem.

The fix is quite easy:

• open a CMD-box with administrative privileges
• go to your ATI drivers, probably in a location similar to this one:
  C:\ATI\SUPPORT\8-10_vista32_dd_ccc_wdm_emu_69564\
• then go to the BIN (or BIN64 for Vista64) folder underneath
• type this command:
  atisetup.exe -Install -Output screen

If all goes well the drivers will then install successfully. Do not forget to reboot your machine after installation!
Good luck!

Labels: AMD, ATI, Catalyst, crash, driver, drivers, fix, install, installation, installer, solution, Windows, Windows Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, November 04, 2008 | PermaLink | 11 comments

IE Tester - Test your sites against IE8, IE7, IE6, and IE5.5

IETester is a free tool to test your websites against all major versions of Internet Explorer. It has the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 2, IE7, IE6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP.

Download: IETester v0.2.3 (24Mb)

Labels: browser, CSS, developer, IE, IE6, IE7, IE8, Microsoft, Vista, Windows, Windows Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 | PermaLink | 0 comments

Microsoft Office 2007 Filter Pack

This download will install and register IFilters with the Windows Indexing Service. These IFilters are used by Microsoft Search products to index the contents of specific document formats. This Filter Pack includes IFilters for the following formats: .docx, .docm, .pptx, .pptm, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .zip, .one, .vdx, .vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx, and .vtx.

Download details: Microsoft Filter Pack

Labels: 2007, download, free, Microsoft, MSO2007, Office, Office 2007, Vista, Windows, Windows Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Monday, October 13, 2008 | PermaLink | 0 comments

ATI Releases Catalyst 7.8 with Free Half-Life 2 Games

After the rather buggy Catalyst 7.7 drivers, ATI has today released the highly anticipated Catalyst 7.8 driver set.

• Download Catalyst 7.8 (English, 72MB)


• Download Catalyst 7.8 (Multilanguage, 107MB)

Note that Catalyst 7.8 also installs the Steam Games client and you can get 2 free games from ATI here: Half-Life 2 DeathMatch and Half-Life 2 Lost Coast!

This is a quote from the ATI website:

Effective immediately, all owners of ATI Radeon graphics cards may receive a free copy of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch via Steam. Steam will automatically confirm the presence of ATI Radeon hardware and then enable immediate access to full versions of the games free of charge.

Besides tons of bugfixes, there should be a noticeably performance improvement – especially for the Radeon HD 2600 and HD 2400 series.

Here's an extract of the Release Notes, some of the fixes for Vista and XP:

• Call of Duty->United Offensive: Having all of the in-game settings at their maximum levels along with the Catalyst™ Control Center->3D aspect set to Optimal Quality no longer results in the Windows Vista (64 bit) operating system failing to respond after a short period of game play. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28793
  
• The default audio device is no longer set to ATI HD Audio after installation of the display driver for the ATI Radeon™ HD2900, HD2600, and HD2400. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28483
  
• Hot-plugging a CRT to a system running Windows Vista and containing an ATI Radeon™ X1100/1150 series of product no longer results in extended desktop mode failing to be applied. Further details can be found in topic number 737-25801
  
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by disconnecting and then reconnecting the CRT display device no longer results in duplicate video options being seen within the Catalyst™ Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27457
  
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by setting AA to 14x and AF to 16x no longer results in the AA showing a setting of 0x level when disabling CrossFire™ and unchecking the AA option in the 3D aspect. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27458
  
• Making changes to the Color aspect found in the Catalyst™ Control Center without applying the changes no longer results in the Reactivate ATI color controls button remaining active after the Catalyst™ Control Center is closed and then re-launched. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27459
  
• Enabling CrossFire™ followed by setting the OverDrive™ clocks to their maximum settings no longer results in the Catalyst™ Control Center failing to accurately report the requested OverDrive™ values. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27621
  
• Performing an un-install of the display drivers on a CrossFire™ configured system no longer results in extended desktop mode becoming active resulting in all of the desktop icons failing to appear. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28478
  
• Catalyst™ Control Center->3D->Anti-Aliasing: Unchecking the option to Use Application Setting found in the 3D aspect page when CrossFire™ is enabled no longer results in the maximum AA setting being 6x. This issue may also be experienced under the Windows XP operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28479
  
• Performing either a custom or express install of the display driver no longer results in the system possibly failing to respond and the installation of the driver failing. This issue was known to occur when using an ATI Radeon™ X1950 CrossFire™ Edition product installed on in a system containing an Intel975. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28481
  
• HDMI audio stutter is no longer heard when playing MPEG clip at certain resolutions on some HDMI device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28484
  
• The Scaling options found in the Catalyst™ Control Center no longer disappears when relaunching the Catalyst™ Control Center after applying optimized and custom formats for Component Video. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28855
  
• Connecting a secondary display device (CRT) and enabling extended desktop mode no longer results in invalid refresh rates being available in the Display Manager. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28787
  
• Making adjustments to the Gamma, Brightness, and Contrast and not applying the changes no longer results in the desktop image failing to return to its default color values when performing a hot-reboot of the system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28787
  
• All supported display resolutions are now available in the Display Manager when connecting a secondary display device and enabling extended desktop mode. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28789
  
• Performing an un-install of the display driver no longer results in the display entering an extended desktop mode and the desktop icons failing to be displayed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28478
  
• Setting the Avivo Video Brightness to less than 0 within the Catalyst™ Control Center no longer results in a white frame being created in the Windows Media Player when fullscreen mode is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28790
  
• The Enable ATI Overdrive clocks for 3d applications is no longer available on non supported products such as the ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 series of product. Further information may be found in topic number 737-28477
  
• Setting the Avivo Video De-interlacing setting to auto, motion adaptive or vector adaptive no longer results in certain DVDs, menu videos and some special features failing to benefit from the options. Further information on this issue may be found in topic number 737-27196
  
• The color depth no longer changes to 8bpp when enabling or disabling CrossFire™ for the first time. Further information may be found in topic number 737-28485
  
• Connecting a TV followed by removing the display resolution of 640x480 from the mode table no longer results in the both the TV and LCD failing to display an image. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28490
  
• An unhandled exception no longer occurs when running an OGL application and resuming from S3 under Vista on various ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1200/1250/1300 series products. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27960
  
• Windows Media Player: Playing a DVD in full screen mode no longer results in vertical bar corruption being noticed during playback. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28497
  
• DVD display no longer blinks in red when Overdrive is enabled. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28794
  

Some of the fixes for XP:

• Star Wars knights of the Old Republic 2: Corruption is no longer seen when running the game on some members of the ATI Radeon™ Xpress 1200/1250/1300 series of products. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27098
  
• CounterStrike Source, Day of Defeat Source, and Half-Life 2 Episode 1, Excessive fog is no longer noticed when playing these games. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28795
  
• The Overscan/Underscan slider bar is no longer enabled when setting display resolutions of 1280x1024 or higher on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2900 XT series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28843
  
• Adobe After Effects 8: The application no longer fails to load on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ X700 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28796
  
• PowerDVD6: Momentary desktop corruption is no longer noticed when minimizing the DVD playback window after stretching the playback window approximately 80%. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28797
  
• The system no longer becomes unresponsive and no longer requires a reboot while randomly moving Video Player window from primary to extended desktop under certain hardware configurations where the second adapter is an ATI Radeon™ X1200/1250/1270 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27092
  
• A warning message indicating CrossFire™ cannot be enabled because some 3D applications are running or the interconnect cable is not connected, or the motherboard has no communication channels between PCI-Express slots is no longer displayed when using a motherboard with an Intel I965 chipset. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28798
  
• The CrossFire™ page is no longer greyed out and cannot be enabled when attempting to use a software CrossFire™ configuration on a system using a motherboard with an Intel I975 chipset. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28799
  
• The Avivo components are now listed in the ADD/Remove Programs after installation of the display driver. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28800
  
• Switching HD-DVD titles during playback with hardware acceleration enabled no longer results in the playback to be blocked. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28802
  
• WinDVD8: Playing a DVD and changing the video setting to Hardware Acceleration mode no longer results in corruption being noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28803
  

Labels: ATI, download, driver, drivers, free, games, Vista, Windows, Windows Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

Turbocharge your installations with Inno Setup

Long time Pascal and Delphi friends surely remember Jordan Russell for the Toolbar97 and Toolbar2000 components. At that time he started a very promising application called "Inno Setup". It was an easy to configure installation program, ideally suited for the target audience (freeware and shareware authors). Years have gone by, and look who's still alive and kicking... Inno Setup.

The current implementation of Inno Setup is so powerful, it rivals many commercial installers. Here's the list of key features taken from the Inno Setup homepage:

• Support for all versions of Windows in use today: Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, Me, 98, 95, and NT 4.0. (No service packs are required.)


• Extensive support for installation of 64-bit applications on the 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. Both the x64 and Itanium architectures are supported. (On the Itanium architecture, Service Pack 1 is required to install in 64-bit mode.)


• Supports creation of a single EXE to install your program for easy online distribution. Disk spanning is also supported.


• Standard Windows 2000/XP-style wizard interface.


• Customizable setup types, e.g. Full, Minimal, Custom.


• Complete uninstall capabilities.


• Installation of files:
  
  Includes integrated support for "deflate", bzip2, and 7-Zip LZMA file compression. The installer has the ability to compare file version info, replace in-use files, use shared file counting, register DLL/OCX's and type libraries, and install fonts.


• Creation of shortcuts anywhere, including in the Start Menu and on the desktop.


• Creation of registry and .INI entries.


• Integrated Pascal scripting engine.


• Support for multilingual installs.


• Support for passworded and encrypted installs.


• Silent install and uninstall.


• Full source code is available (Borland Delphi 2.0-5.0).

Download: Inno Setup
It's a free download, and can be used free of charge even when deploying commercial applications. You are encouraged to donate to help support the development of course!

Labels: 2003, 64-bit, delphi, download, free, inno setup, installation, Itanium, pascal, Vista, Windows, x32, x64, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, April 27, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

IE6 & IE7 VirtualPC Images 2.0 released

Microsoft just published two new VPC Hard Disk Images for testing websites on IE on Windows XP SP2:

• Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) VPC


• Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) VPC

These VPC hard disk images contain pre-activated Windows XP SP2, and either IE6 or IE7 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. These VPC images will expire on 08/17/2007, but by that time Microsoft will have released a newer version.

Once you have completed the download, double-click file to expand the VHD file. Start Virtual PC and create a new VPC, and point to the files you just expanded.

A few people were encountering a non-genuine Windows warning from the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Notification Tool. Microsoft did not install the WGA Notification tool on the image this time around. Instead, these images have had their product keys deactivated, thus they don’t pass the WGA tests.

Remember that you can download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 for free! Virtual PC 2007 runs on: Windows Vista™ Business; Windows Vista™ Enterprise; Windows Vista™ Ultimate; Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition; Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition; Windows XP Professional; Windows XP Professional x64 Edition; or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Labels: download, free, IE6, IE7, Microsoft, Virtual PC 2007, Vista, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine

From a post by Pete LePage:


Many of you have asked how to run IE6 and IE7 in a side by side environment. As Chris Wilson blogged about early this year, it’s unfortunately not so easy to do. There are workarounds, but they are unsupported and don’t necessarily work the same way as IE6 or IE7 would work when installed properly. As Chris said, the best way to use multiple versions of IE on one machine is via virtualization. Microsoft has recently made Virtual PC 2004 a free download; we’ve taken advantage of that by releasing a VPC virtual machine image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit to help facilitate your testing and development. The image is time bombed and will no longer function after April 1, 2007. We hope to continue to provide these images in the future as a service to web developers.

Now you can install IE7 on your main machine for development, and get all the advantages of IE7, like the RSS platform, native XMLHTTP stack, and improved security, while still running IE6 simultaneously in the VPC on the same computer. Most importantly, you don’t even have to buy an additional Windows license. The VPC image runs in a virtual machine that offers all of the functionality of a full IE6 installation without giving it any access to its host machine’s hard drive, registry, etc. You can make as many modifications as you want to the virtual machine without affecting your host installation at all.

Included in the VPC image are:

• Windows XP Professional SP2 + high-priority fixes through November 2006


• Internet Explorer 6.0


• Internet Explorer 7 Readiness Toolkit 2.0

While we’ve released a VPC image today with Windows XP SP2, we’re also investigating creating other VPC images, for example IE5, IE5.5, IE6 and IE6 SP1, as well as versions of IE on different language operating systems.

Get more information on Virtual PC 2004
Download Virtual PC 2004
Download the Internet Explorer 6 Testing VPC Image

One more note - VPC 2004 doesn’t run on Windows Vista, but this image will work fine with VPC 2007, which is in beta now. You can get this free beta via Connect.
Happy testing!
PEte LePage
Product Manager

Transmit your pdf docs into charts with pdf to excel software. Also using a pdf server will save you  time. Get the details of a pdf file conversion tool and how it was created. If you are using all Microsoft applications then you can convert pdf to doc as well. Here you can get useful tips on purchasing new programs and what to look for.

Labels: 2004, 2007, activated, beta, download, free, IE6, IE7, license, PC, RSS, SP2, Virtual, Vista, VPC, Windows, XMLHTTP, XP

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, December 01, 2006 | PermaLink | 0 comments