Andy Kemp

Since running with Vista with SP1 I have been continually requested for username and password when accessing our SharePoint site. a simple hit of the cancel button works but, it is a damn nuisance! I was used to Firefox doing that until I found out how to configure it to use the credentials that you are logged on with.

To do this you need to type in the following in the address bar: about:config

It will give you a nice warning message, Click on the “I’ll be careful, I Promise!” button to take you through to the settings

Scroll down to network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris and in there add the name of the site you want to add: in my case the site I was accessing is http://portal so all I needed to add was portal. If you have more sites you want to add then just seperate the site names via a comma eg: add in portal, portal1 etc….

Once added click ok and then that’s it!

I decided to install Windows 7 on my Laptop as I thought having it on a PC is great but as it is on the desk behind me I cannot really use it that often, and if I really want to see what Windows 7 has to offer then prob best to put it on a PC/Laptop that I use on a frequent basis.

So I installed everything I usually do on a clean PC and then threw the Google Pack on there, well tried to! but it would not let me as the Google Pack requires Windows XP or Vista.

Once I had found a work around that (which I will post up) I then installed the Pack (Google Toolbar, Adobe Reader, Picasa, Google Photo Screen Saver).

Once installed I noticed that whenever I closed IE I got an error saying Internet Explorer has stopped working, it would then submit the details to MS and check to see if there was a fix.

However I carried on with it how it was as it was more of a niggly thing than a huge problem. I proceeded to install Windows Live and Visual Studio 2005 and 2008.

Any way eventually this morning I decided to have a look into the problem.

I went in to IE and in the Tools, Internet Options, Programs, Manage Add-ons and then disabled the Google Inc Add-ons, seemed logical as that was what was installed first when the problem started happening, closed IE (needed a restart). Once I had restarted IE and then closed it again I did not get the error.

So for now I am running with out the Google Toolbar which is a shame as I find it very handy, saves me from going to the Google Home page all the time.

I have been running with the outlook connector on my Vista Laptop for some time and no problems, since journaling all emails to Mimecast I have found that I am clearing my mailbox out once or twice a week now, both sent and received items. However I had to re-install my desktop in the office the other day and thought I would put Windows Vista back on it. and when it came to configuring the connector I kept getting an error half way through the configuration, it was saying cannot create account.

I tried everything I could think of and it just didn’t work! but the same version was running happily on my laptop running Vista and Office 2007.

I thought that I would then give the connector a test on my Windows 7 Test pc too and again got the same error as my Vista desktop

I then went to the Mimecast menu thinking that I could run an update on the client to see if there was a newer version. I then noticed that the option for enabling and disabling the automatic updates was greyed out and also said it needed Admin Privileges… this then got me thinking… on my laptop I have got UAC disabled, its a great idea but for my use it is a pain in the back side! so I ran Outlook as an Administrator and it worked!

So first thing Monday morning I think I might give the guys at Mimecast a call and see if this is meant to be or not! I know in the earlier versions of the connector there were some issues with UAC.

Well Windows 7 Beta is finally her, so I decided to give it a whirl, so I downloaded the x86 and x64 editions from our MSDN subscription just to see what it was going to be like.

I wasn’t too surprised that the ISO image for the x64 edition was 3.2GB and the x86 was 2.5.

I decided to test the x64 bit edition first so in went a blank DVD and then I burnt the ISO on to DVD.

I was thinking about using virtual for installing but as I had a spare PC with 2GB RAM, 1TB HDD and a Duo Core Processor I thought I would give it a go on that.

I have to say, (although I really didn’t know what to expect with the install) I was surprised to see that the install was the same as Vista.

There are something's on the setup that look slightly different but on the whole it is pretty much identical to the install of Windows Vista.

Once installed the first thing I noticed was that for some reason the screen did not fill up the monitor, even though I had the resolution set to 1280x1024, for some reason it left a large black gap on the right hand side and bottom of the screen. I tried changing the resolution but this didn’t make any difference. The only thing I can think of is that either the monitor drive isn’t compatible with my dell monitor or that it could be something to do with it being 64bit?

The whole look and feel isn’t that much different from Vista….

Well now it is installed I shall start playing around with it :)

One of the other things that is some times easy to forget about is your Email. If you download all your email to your PC ie you use pop3 to get your email and it is downloaded onto your pc then you will need to move all your email files across to your new PC.

If you use Mozilla Thunderbird  then the best thing to do is transfer the Profiles folder from your C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles to the new location on your new PC: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird

That’s it! if you then run Thunderbird all your profiles and settings will be there.

If you use Outlook Express then you will need to locate the files that it uses to store the data in. The easiest way to do this is to load Outlook Express on the old PC. Click Tools, Options, On the Maintenance Tab there is a button labelled Store Folders. If you click on the it will tell you where the folder that stores your email is. Locate that folder and then copy it to place that you can find easily on the share. On your new PC you can then start up outlook and configure it for your accounts and then on the Fine menu select Import, Messages and Choose Microsoft Outlook Express 6. Next Select Import mail from an OE6 store directory and press Next. Now on the next screen, browse to the location that you've placed the message store we saved from your old machine. Import, and your messages should now be transferred.

If you use Microsoft Outlook then you will need to copy the PST file across this is located in the C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook if it is not there then you will need to locate it. Right click on the Personal Folder in Outlook and click on Properties for “Personal Folders”

Click on Advanced

The location of the PST is shown in the Filename field.

So from your new PC locate the path on the share of your old pc and copy across.

Open up outlook on your new PC and Click File and Open and select Outlook Data File:

Browse to where you copied the PST file to and then click Open:

Again you will need to re-configure your accounts for outlook.

There are many many more email clients out there but these are the only ones that I really use.

The next Part, Part 5 is Taking some simple steps to make the process of moving your files a bit easier next time round.

Now that you have transferred all your documents across the next thing to do is to transfer your bookmarks, this is a simple copy of the Favourites folder from your old PC to the new PC. However this may be a good opportunity to look at using something like del.icio.us

I started using del.icio.us not so long ago and I have found it very useful, I can use it on the two browsers i use the most IE and Firefox

All you need do is create an account on http://delicious.com and then download the client for IE and or Firefox and then once you book mark a website it will then be saved to your account and you can then access it any where and any time.

Google offers a book marking tool as well so if you already have a google account then you can use that. the only downside with the google bookmark jsut now is Ctrl+D doesn’t appear to work where as Delicious it does :)

No that you have got your drive or folder shared on your old pc you are ready to transfer them across to your new PC.

the simplest way (if you have shared out the whole of your C: on your old PC is to brows to it from your new PC and then locate the files and copy them across:

From a Run Command (click on start and type in run in the search box and press enter on vista) type in the UNC of the old computer eg: \\andy1\shamename

once you have opened that up in an explorer window you can browse it as a normal folder

All the documents that you want to transfer across will more than likely be in “Documents and Settings\username\My Documents”

Copy all the files and folders in that folder on to your new pc, same process as you would do if you were copying from a USB stick to your PC.

Vista has different locations for Music, Videos, Downloads and Pictures. so if you have any of these in your My Documents folder you can either move them once you have copied them or not select those particular items with the initial copy.

Once copied the Music, Pictures etc… need to be transferred.

The Music files are stored in C:\User\username\Music
Picture Files are stored in: C:\User\username\Pictures

and so on. so copy your Music, Pictures Videos and Downloads in to their respective folders.

Part 3 is about book marks

I have been asked a couple of times by friends and friends of friends to help then move all their documents from one PC ie an old one to a new PC. more than often it is from XP to Vista and from a desktop to a laptop (not that the hardware is specific).

For this “How To” I have decided to split in to 6 Parts.

This part (part1) goes through what you need to do in order to transfer the files across.

The best way to transfer files from one PC to another is to do it through a network. you will more than likely have a router of some sort connected to your internet gateway.

This whole how to is on the assumption that you have an old XP desktop that is wired into your internet and a new Vista Laptop that will connect wirelessly. However if you have massive amounts of data that needs to be copied across I would recommend that both machines are wired in.

The first thin you will need to do is enable file sharing on your old PC. This can be done by:

Right click on the drive to folder you want to share and selecting Sharing and Security.

Then:

if it is the root of your C:\ you are wanting to share out do as it says on the screen shot and click where it says click here.

Then:

You can run the wizard if you so wish but I just went ahead with out doing that

As I was not wanting to share printers just my files I selected “Just enable file sharing”

Then:

I gave the share a name and also you can toggle on an off weather other network users can change files in the share.

That is the Drive or folder shared.

You should now be able to browse to the share from your other computer, just click on start and in the search filed type run and press enter

then type in: \\computername (the name of the old PC) and you will then see the shares on that computer.

Part 2 goes on to explain how to get the files off your old computer on to your new one.

I went to install Windows Live Writer and Messenger back on my PC after re-installing it yet again and noticed that the setup had changed and once installed I noticed that the both Live Writer and Messenger looked different.

I haven’t had a change to really play around with either yet (writing this post using Live Writer) but so far I do like the look of both.

I have not tried any of the other applications that are installed as part of the Live package but as these are the two I use on a daily basis I thought I would just make a comment about it :)

One thing I have to say about Live Writer is that the tabbed option for editing is much better then clicking on the view menu or button in the previous version.

You can get it from: http://download.live.com/