- ATI Catalyst Install Manager has stopped working
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Posted by oVan on Tuesday, November 04, 2008 | PermaLink | 11 comments
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
- FIX: Remove and stop respawning of My Sharing Folders
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Posted by oVan on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 | PermaLink | 3 comments
In my previous post I quickly explained how to remove the "My Sharing Folders" shell extension via the command-line. All things work fine, until you restart your computer (or WLM) and notice that it has reinstalled itself.
In this post I will go a bit further, and explain how to stop automatic reinstallation of "My Sharing Folders", as apparently Microsoft has changed the latest Windows Live Messenger.
I assume you're familiar with Regedit and you have sufficient knowledge of Windows to play around with administrative rights. Obviously, I'm not responsible for any damage you might do to your machine - you're on your own there.
Let's get started:
- Exit Windows Live Messenger (not just sign out)
- In a command prompt, type: regsvr32 -u -s "C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger\fsshext.8.5.1302.1018.dll"
Note: you might need to change the numbers in the filename to match your version. - With Explorer, go to "C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger\" and rename the fsshext.x.x.xxxx.xxxx.dll file to .old (replace X with the file version from your directory).
- Next, open the registry editor (regedit), go to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\(your userid)\Products\577EC8054AB4847428FDEF82ADF9300B\Features and rename the "MsgrFeat" string to "MsgrFeat-old". Don't change the contents of this string as you might need it someday to uninstall/change Windows Live Messenger.
Start WLM, all should be ok now. Let me know if it worked out ok for you... and Digg me!
Labels: fix, hack, Live, Messenger, Microsoft, registry, Vista, Windows, Windows Vista, WLM
- Fix: Localhost unavailable with ESET NOD32
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Posted by oVan on Friday, March 21, 2008 | PermaLink | 4 comments
Developers using Visual Studio will probably encounter this problem after installing ESET NOD32 antivirus or ESET Smart Security Antivirus+Firewall: browsing the web with Internet Explorer works fine except for websites you develop yourself (localhost).
Disabling the firewall or antivirus features doesn't solve this problem, however replacing localhost with 127.0.0.1 (or using FireFox) does solve it.
The real problem is easily fixed though.
Windows Vista:
In the start menu, type "notepad %system%\drivers\etc\hosts" and instead of pressing enter, right-click on the notepad icon in the top of the list (see screenshot). In the context menu you must click on "Run as administrator".
Windows XP and 2000:
Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and type these commands:
cd %system%\drivers\etc
attrib -r -h -s hosts
notepad hosts
You will then see the following file in notepad:
The last line contains the problem. It reads:
::1 localhost
You can either remove this line and save the file, or comment it out with a pound/hash character #. Voila, fixed!
Labels: Administrator, fix, IE, IE6, IE7, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft, problem, Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studion 2008, vs2005, vs2008, web develoment, Windows, Windows Vista
- FIX: Firefox Slow Response for Localhost on Vista & XP
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Posted by oVan on Thursday, August 30, 2007 | PermaLink | 4 commentsWhen developing on Vista (or XP with IPv6) you'll notice that Firefox is extremely slow on localhost-sites.
Here's a fix, courtesy of Dan Wahlin's Weblog, via ScottGu's blog.
In Firefox, type about:config and then in the filter box type dns. You'll see an entry named network.dns.disableIPv6...
Double-click that line so that it reads True, effectively disabling IPv6.
- Fix: Vista desktop stops updating
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Posted by oVan on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 commentsMicrosoft is very productive lately, they have released a fix for these symptoms:
After a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for an extended period of time, the desktop screen may stop updating correctly. For example, you may experience any of the following symptoms:- Parts of the screen may go black.
- Parts of the screen may become transparent.
- The toolbar may disappear.
- The toolbar may appear at the top of the screen instead of at the bottom of the screen.
It is described in detail in KB 932406: The Windows desktop may stop updating correctly after a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for an extended period of time.
Download here: 32 bit or 64 bitLabels: desktop, fix, KB, Microsoft, patch, problem, update, WDM, Windows, Windows Vista
- Fix: Vista sleep problems with High Definition Audio device
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Posted by oVan on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 commentsSimilar to the sleep problems with Creative X-Fi and SoundBlaster audio cards, many Vista users have sleep/hibernation problems with the High Definiation Audio device from Intel.
Microsoft has released a new fix: as described in KB 937077: A high definition audio device may no longer work after you resume Windows Vista from hibernation or from sleep.
Download here: 32-bit or 64 bitLabels: AC'97, AC97, audio, fix, HD, HD Audio, hibernate, hibernation, Intel, Microsoft, problem, problems, sleep, Vista, Windows, Windows Vista
- Solving your Vista sleep problems (really)
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Posted by oVan on Monday, May 21, 2007 | PermaLink | 10 commentsOnce upon a time
I've posted before of my journeys into solving Vista sleep problems. Although using the latest nVidia drivers for the video card certainly eliminated a lot of lockups, the truth is that the problems on my Dell Precision Workstation 690 never really went away.
In my original post Fix: How-to solve your Vista sleep problems I touched the possibility that nVidia wasn't the only one having trouble writing decent drivers. If you have a sound card from Creative you probably know what I mean.
It struck me that sometimes upon booting or waking Vista from sleep (whenever that worked) there was no sound from the speakers. A quick look at the device manager didn't show anything unusual, and the volume mixer was looking normally too; yet no sound to be heard. This strange phenomena was resolved easily by rebooting, but still it remained in the back of my head.
There's always a side track
In the second post – Windows Vista sleep problems, revisited – I side-tracked towards the LSI SCSI/SAS/SATA controller. I don't think I can prove that the changes to the power plan actually solved much, since Vista still hanged every once in a while upon entering sleep modus.
The solution I stumbled upon
Since I was looking to replace the current speaker setup (two Solid Monitor speakers with a Solid Active Power Bass (now discontinued) from Bowers & Wilkins, which needs a decent amplifier and is thus more suited for Hi-Fi systems, I decided to go with the Logitech Z-10 Interactive Speaker System. I'll leave my impressions of the Logitech speakers for a future post, but for now let me just say that I'm quite pleased with both the sound and the lookds.
What's more important and of relevance to the Vista sleep problems, is that the Logitech speakers are connected via USB instead of audio jacks. Unless you want to use the surround capabilities of your Creative X-Fi card, you can actually replace your sound card with just these speakers. When you open up the playback devices, you'll see them listed amongst other sound hardware you have in your computer.
So, you may ask, that looks really nice, but what is the solution to the sleep problem then? Well you've just read it... remove the Creative Sound Blaster or X-Fi card from your system and replace with something else. The Logitech speakers are one possible option, but you can also use the built-in High Definition Audio Device that is present on many machines, you just need to enable it in your BIOS.
Anyway, I've never had a sleep hang since I removed the Creative card from my system and uninstalled its drivers and software (a whopping 1Gb!).
ps: You can probably apply the same fix by buying a sound card from a different manufacturer, but I'll be the first to admit that I have no experience with other companies. If you do, let us know if it fixed the Vista sleep problems so we can help others too!
Relocate saved files into excel with pdf to excel software. Here you can check out a guide to owning this software. The pdf server will save you so much time as well. If you are using all Microsoft applications then you need the pdf to doc converter for your word files.Labels: creative, driver, fix, Logitech, nVidia, problem, sleep, SoundBlaster, soundcard, speaker, Windows, Windows Vista, X-Fi, Z-10
- FIX: How-to solve your Windows Vista Sleep problems
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Posted by oVan on Friday, April 20, 2007 | PermaLink | 7 commentsYou've heard it before: some people rave about Windows Vista, others keep complaining. From the computers I've installed and/or upgraded so far, I can tell that it's a hit or miss operation. Either it all works out smoothly, or it goes down to hell quickly.
One of the biggest problems I've encountered so far is that the new Hybrid Sleep from Windows Vista works so good on my Dell Latitude D810 notebook, and at the same time totally made the Vista Experience worthless on a Dell Precision 650 Workstation and even on a brand new Dell Precision 690 Workstation.
Here's what goes wrong: you push the power button in the Start menu – this is by default configured to use the Sleep mode. Sometimes this works ok, other times you get a black screen, some USB-peripherals are correctly disabled but the machine itself doesn't power off (fans keep turning etc.). To make matters worse, you can't wake your pc because your USB keyboard has already been disabled.
It also occurs that while your machine apparently went to sleep without problems, it won't start up again or even if it does, it hangs on a black screen and you can't do anything to go further.
The big constants between my Precision 650 and the Precision 690 were: a SCSI controller based on the LSI Fusion MPT chipset in the 650 and the newer version SAS/SATA Raid controller from LSI in the 690; and both machines had an nVidia Quadro FX workstation graphics card (Quadro FX 500 in the PWS650, FX 550 in the PWS690).
The solutions I've tried:- Having tried the latest drivers for the LSI based controller, downloaded from the support websites at Dell, HP, Intel, and LSI-Logic, it didn't solve the problem. I did see controller errors in the Event Viewer that were obviously related to the sleep problem, but the most recent drivers didn't solve a thing.
- Updated BIOS firmware for the machines, installed most recent drivers for about anything in the machine, including the latest Intel INF files. No help.
- Changed the Power Plan settings in the Vista control panel to never sleep, but use Hibernate instead. Unfortunately this gave me the same problems.
- Changed the BIOS settings to use agressive S1 power state instead of S3, so that more devices are disabled and more power conserved. Alas, no resolution.
- Reset all BIOS and Power plan settings to their default. I've experienced exactly one (1) successful sleep, after that it was back to square one.
- This gave me the working solution: I changed from the latest WHQL nVidia drivers 97.46 to the nVidia beta drivers 158.18. Despite their wonderful explanation on how to install them, it didn't work at first: my video card was not supported. No problem, I've been a supporting fan of the LaptopVideo2Go website, and they have modified INF files for about every possible nVidia driver release, both official WHQL and beta drivers. So I grabbed a copy of the modified INF for the 158.18 driver and the install went smoothly. The only problem so far is that I can't access the new nVidia control panel, other than that the system runs much more smoothly than with the 97.46 driver and Sleep mode works perfectly so far!
Time will tell if and how good it keeps working, but so far the sky is bright :-)
This obviously leads me to the conclusion that nVidia was, contrary to ATI, totally unprepared for the launch of Vista, although they've had access to the beta and RC versions for months! Just do a Google search on "Vista sleep nVidia problem"... you'll find hundreds of thousands of pages. The machines I've installed or upgraded using an ATI video card never experienced this problem, they just work out of the box. In fact, they've had an WHQL'd driver from the very (consumer) launch of Vista, while nVidia had to catch up weeks and months later.
Another company that is totally unprepared for Vista is Creative Labs, but I'll save that for a future story!
Update: here's my follow-up post about more Vista Sleep problems
Update 2: I published the third post about Vista sleep problems, in which I removed the final culprit and solved the problem completely!Labels: ATI, creative, driver, fix, hibernate, hibernation, hybrid, INF, Microsoft, nVidia, problem, sleep, solution, Vista, Windows
- Adding a Content Role in MWPSK
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Posted by oVan on Thursday, March 22, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 commentsHere's an easy solution to add a Content Editor role in the MyWebPagesStarterKit without defining a new role (which would take a lot of work):
Currently the authenticated user that is not part of the administrator role can do nothing more than an anonymous (unauthenticated user) user on the website.
So let's assume that those non-admin authenticated users are just content editors. We want them to be able to add/change the content of the defined section controls, without the ability to delete sections or to change the sitemap structure.
Here are the two easy steps to accomplish this:
1) Change the following in ~/Default.aspx.cs:
foreach (ISection section in _page.Sections)
{
SectionControlBaseClass ctl = (SectionControlBaseClass)LoadControl(section.UserControl);
if (User.Identity.IsAuthenticated && User.IsInRole(RoleNames.Administrators.ToString()))
Into:
foreach (ISection section in _page.Sections)
{
SectionControlBaseClass ctl = (SectionControlBaseClass)LoadControl(section.UserControl);
if ((User.Identity.IsAuthenticated))
The above change will enable the admin functions for sections on each page, whithout enabling the administration menu for administrators.
2) Change the following line in ~/SectionControls/SectionAdmin.ascx:<asp:Button runat="server" ID="btnDeleteSection" OnClick="btnDeleteSection_Click" Text="<%$ Resources:stringsRes, glb__DeleteSection%>" CausesValidation="false" UseSubmitBehavior="false" />
Into:
<% if (Context.User.IsInRole(MyWebPagesStarterKit.RoleNames.Administrators.ToString())) {%><asp:Button runat="server" ID="btnDeleteSection" OnClick="btnDeleteSection_Click" Text="<%$ Resources:stringsRes, glb__DeleteSection%>" CausesValidation="false" UseSubmitBehavior="false" /><% } %>
The above change will remove the ability to delete section controls.
The result will enable authenticated users to update the content of the website, withouth the ability to destroy it :-)
Hope this helps!Labels: Administrator, asp.net, CodePlex, content, editor, fix, Microsoft, MWPSK, MyWebPagesStarterKit, patch, role, starter kit
- Corel releases PSP Photo 11.11 Update
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Posted by oVan on Friday, December 22, 2006 | PermaLink | 0 commentsFinally available, an update to patch Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI from v11.00 to v11.11.
First things first, here's the download: Corel PSP Pro XI.11 Update
And while you're downloading, here's the list of fixes and enhancements (quite long):
Product Improvements for Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo 11.11
One interesting fact is that they have included RAW support for the Sony DSCF828, DSC-R1, DSC-V3 models, about time I think ;-)Labels: 11, Corel, download, DSC-F828, DSC-R1, DSC-V3, fix, Paint Shop Pro, patch, PSP, RAW, Sony, update, XI
- FIX: Windows Vista has no DHTML Edit Control!
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Posted by oVan on Friday, November 24, 2006 | PermaLink | 0 commentsI just noticed this post on MSDN that explains how to proceed in Vista when you want to use the DHTML Edit Control (you know, the buggy wysiwyg html editor that a lot of programs and websites use).
On one hand, I'm very happy about this: it was buggy all along and seriously crippled because of security worries. On the other hand, a lot of these programs/sites will sooner or later need to be updated, because they won't work in Vista.
Luckily, you can download those missing components here: DHTML Editing Control RedistributableLabels: bug, download, fix, html, Microsoft, MSDN, Vista, Windows