Google Earth Street View missing in version 5.2
This morning (16.01.2012) a user complained to me that he can't find Street View in Google Earth anymore. Street View layer simply disappeared. The user was on version 5.2.
The reason I left some users users on old 5.2 version, was Google Earth 6.0 memory leak issue in which badly affected some of Windows XP machines.
Since version 6 Google Earth changed how Street View works. Instead of Street View layer and golden camera icons you now have a little yellow Pegman which you can drag to the area of interest in the same way as in Google Maps.
Auto Login in Poderosa Terminal Emulator
Poderosa is an open source terminal emulator. It is a popular alternative to puTTY because of additional features, such as tabbed style interface.
Another useful feature is auto-login. It is disabled by default and for a good reason – password are stored in plain text which is obviously not secure. If this doesn’t worry you (in a test environment for example) this is how to enable it:
- Open Poderosa > Tools > Detailed preferences editor... > org.poderosa.protocols.readSerializedPassword set value to True
- Now open Poderosa shortcut file (.gts) with any text editor and in line 4, after account="<account.name>" add passphrase="Password"
This copy of windows must be activated before you can log on
There may be number of reasons why you could bump into such error. In my particular situation this happened after moving physical Windows XP machine to a virtual VMware host. Other reasons could be - upgrading computer hardware, not activating Windows within permitted 30 days period, etc.
Annoyingly you are not even allowed to login into Windows. The only thing you can do is activate the Operating System. This is well and good if activation actually works, but what to do if it doesn't?
There is a little command line trick which allows to reset Windows Activation period. This will give you another 30 days period to login and use Windows normally.
All you have to do is run this little command in a command prompt:
rundll32.exe syssetup,SetupOobeBnk
and then restart your computer.
Now, logical question would be, how you could run command prompt if you are not allowed to login into OS...
One option is to boot into "Safe Mode" (restart computer and press F8 as it's booting, then choose Safe Mode option). I haven't tried this myself, but people say it works.
I didn't try the "Safe Mode" method, because I managed to open command prompt without actually leaving Windows Activation screen. This is what I did:
- On Windows Activation screen click on Microsoft Activation Assistance Web Site link.
- This should bring an Internet Explorer window
- Now, in Internet Explorer address bar type C:\Windows and press Enter
This will bring an error message, but this doesn't matter. What matters to us is that Windows Toolbar just appeared!
Just go into Start Menu and open the Command Prompt.
There is a little catch here. After about 30-60 seconds all windows will automatically close and you will be dropped back to the Windows Activation screen. But this gives you more than enough time to open CMD and issue the command.
Print spooling takes very long time
Having problems with print spooling? There is a chance that you have some orphaned files in print spool directory. There should not be any permanent files in this directory. This helped me to resolve some spooling problems on Windows XP and Windows 7 machines (such as print spooling takes very long time, print spooler service crashes, etc).
- Stop Print Spooler service
- Open C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\PRINTERS and delete all content
- Start Print Spooler service
- Skype not responding on shutdown
- Wait in a batch file
- Change TCP / IP settings using command prompt or .bat script
- Run multiple Skype accounts at the same time
- Microsoft Word 2010 prints wrong pages or doesn't print at all
- Insert Blank Page in PDF File with Nitro PDF
- Automate telnet commands using VB Script
- "Faulting application explorer.exe" - TeamViewer v5 crashes explorer.exe process on Windows XP machines
- Calendar sharing is not available with the following entries because of permission settings on your network
- Excel 2010 does not re-calculate formulas automatically