There are a few websites that I read on a daily basis. On MakeUseOf.com I came across a very good article that had a load of 14 Great Cheat Sheets.
The first few are to do with Microsoft Office programs, which I wasn't really interested in. But if you scroll down, that page there are browser and, the best ones, Linux Cheat Sheets. These cheat sheets include VI/Vim ones as well.
Well worth a look if you dabble in Linux from time to time and if you are like me, have a memory of a goldfish.
I do a lot of coding for websites, and to do this, I use Notepad++ which is brilliant.
When I have to do programming in .net, whenever I do IF statements or loops, .net loves to automatically align everything and try to tidy things up.
Now for most people this is a wonderful feature, for me it's an annoyance because it doesn't do it exactly how I want it.
If your like me and want to turn this off, you can. Go to Tools\Options and the Option window appears, then under Text Editor expand C #. Under Formatting untick the 'Automatically format completed constructs and pasted source'.
I have set up my computer so that all my work files are on a seperate hard drive. I changed the My Documents folder to point to a directory on this.
I have my own Music folder that I manage, along with the Pictures folder and Videos folder. But Microsoft insist on having a 'My Music' folder and a 'My Pictures' folder.
I found out how to stop the system creating these folders every time you log on (because I would delete them, then they would return the next day).
Open up regedit, and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders and change the My Music setting and change it to the path of the folder you want to use. Do the same with My Pictures and My Videos.
I have had a couple of computers where the Internet seems to just stop. But this only seems to appear in Internet Explorer. I could access the internet through Firefox, and I could ping Google.
To fix this, I usually just leave the user with Firefox, which isn't the best. I managed to find a fix today, which involves the following command. Open up the run window, and paste the following command, then run it. Make sure IE is closed first.
netsh winsock reset catalog
Then, once this command has been run, open IE and everything should be wonderful with the world!
I am a daily reader of PC Mech. Their link is also on the menu to the right.
One of their recent post's that I have been meaning to blog about is their list of free software for Windows which I have used a few times since.
I recently was having a tidy up and also was tasked with making a laptop run faster. A few free programs from this list help me do that. There are also a few other everyday programs on this list for everyone. Some on the list I already knew about and use. This post, including some of their others, are well worth a read.
I tool that has become very handy for me on Vista machines is the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. This little program installs (looks like something to do with Office), and then can be found under the program menu called Windows Install Clean Up.
This little Microsoft program then shows you, in a little more detail, exactly what it thinks is installed on your computer.
This became handy when a machine I was fixing kept trying to install Kodak EasyShare every time it booted up, even though the normal Windows Add/Remove programs didn't have it listed. I ran the Clean Up program, and found a few extra, smaller programs associated with it installed, I removed all these and it fixed my problem.
This utility probably will come in handy for failed installations,where some of it is still in the system.
Been a while since I wrote a tutorial on something, but here is my latest. I recently needed a VB6 program to convert a csv file into xls files. I also needed to add multiple sheets and password to protect the file.
If you want to know how I did this then you need to read my VB6 CSV to XLS Conversion, which can also be accessed by the Main Blog Entries menu on the right.
My last update was about a cool website that I had come across, but when I went to revist the website on Sunday, it could not be found. I assumed there was some minor server error and would be back up and running in no time.
Today I came to see if it was available again, but still the same error message. A quick search of Google lead me to learn the it had been hacked, stolen and held at ransom.
If you would like to keep up to date with everything at makeuseof.com., then they have a temp site at http://makeuseof-temporary.blogspot.com/ where they are posting the current status of things.
I have a few website's that I check out for updates on a regular basis, and a new one that I will be adding to the list is makeuseof.com.
This is in the same sort of genre as pcmech.com, which incidently was where I picked up the link from, well I was checking out one of their tips, and the link had the makeuseof.com logo marked on it's home page.
If you like me and have an old version of Office installed on your computer, then the problem of opening .xlsx files and .docx files will become more regular.
I recently got sent a .xlsx file and my current version of office did not support this type.
.xlsx file formats gear more towards the standard Open XML format, so Open Office can access them. This will be the same with Word and Excel.
If like me, you have an old version of Office, then you don't have to go and get the latest version of Microsofts Office suit, or download Open Office.
The simple solution is to head on over to this Microsoft page and download the update depending on your version.
I use Office 2000, so I had to download the File Format Converters Pack, which once installed, allowed me to open my Excel File.