Dan's Web Spot

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My Dell Inspiron 9400 originally shipped with Windows XP, but came with a free upgrade to Vista. It also has a built-in Dell TrueMobile 355 Bluetooth + EDR module, so I decided to get a Bluetooth mouse to use with it. One slick advantage of having this built-in Bluetooth adapter is that a Bluetooth mouse can connect to it directly and there is no need to plug in an external USB Bluetooth 'dongle' for the mouse.

My mouse is a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000. Every once in a while, I had to reset the Bluetooth connection to get my mouse to re-connect, or turn the mouse off then back on, but it was never frequent enough to complain about it...

Originally, I decided to wait to upgrade to Vista until SP1 at least came out, but now that SP2 is out, a month ago I upgraded to Vista. Then I began having a problem with my mouse not connecting automatically following a reboot, and disconnecting from my laptop whenever the computer locked, and sometimes when the Vista UAC prompt appeared. It was a very frustrating problem to say the least.

I contacted Dell Support about this, but they instructed me to install the Vista drivers on their website, which I had already done (and did again). The problem still persisted. A Google search revealed Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 970408, which described the problem. There was no 'fix', but the suggested 'workaround' was to disable then enable the Bluetooth radio via a hardware or software switch. Pressing Fn + F2 twice on my laptop brought back the connection, but did not fix the cause of the problem. » More...

Problem:

When you try to delete or rename a file/folder in Windows Vista, you may receive an error message that says:

"Item not found. Could not find this item. This is no longer located in [folder]. Verify the item's location and try again."

But the file is there...

Background: » More...

If you're familiar with Power Toys for Windows XP, you know that if you install the Image Resizer Power Toy, resizing images for the web or email can be accomplished by selecting 'Resize Pictures' in right-click context menu. Not so in Vista. For whatever reason, Microsoft has decided not to include such functionality in the context menu, nor was I able to locate a 'Power Toy' for Vista that did this.

I tried out a few free image resizer tools but really didn't like any of them until I found one called Prish Image Resizer, made by a gentleman named Prish. You can find his Windows Live! blog about this tool here. If you'd prefer to download this cool, free tool directly, you can get the Prish Image Resizer here.

Microsoft still needs to work on getting some XP-equilvalent functionality like these XP-only Power Toys provide into Vista as well. My second favorite Power Toy is the TweakUI for Windows XP Power Toy. With this tool, you can adjust many core and even hidden Windows settings, all from one easy-to-use interface. You can adjust menu pop up speed, the icon overlay image on shortcuts, whether or not to prefix 'Shortcut to' on all shortcuts, and even hide user accounts on the Welcome Screen. You can get TweakUI for Windows XP here.

» More...

I kept getting a Windows Update notice that SQL Server Express SP3 was ready for installation. Every time I ran the install process, it would fail. There are a lot of posts out there regarding this issue, but I did manage to find one that worked for me, and wanted to share it.

Other failed installations or problems with programs that you are unable to uninstall can be fixed by using Microsoft's Installer Cleanup Utility. This will purge the entries and files for programs that you can not uninstall automatically because some files are missing or corrupt. An installation that does not fully complete can create such issues as well. Just make sure that you are careful in selecting what to clean up because the changes are irreversible without using System Restore or the like!

I have posted a solution that includes this info and that worked for me on the TechArena website here. But consider yourself forewarned: My solution involved cleaning up only the SQL Server Express Installer files, NOT the actual installation itself (MSSMLBIZ).

I hope that this helps someone else. » More...

Introduction

WD MyPassport Essential 500GB USB Hard Drive

If you've ever used disk cloning software such as Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost, you know that you can usually boot your computer from the product CD for backup (except Ghost) and restore operations. With an external hard drive attached (USB), you can typically back up a complete disk image to this destination as long as the product you are using has drivers that support external USB drives.

My favorite backup software is Acronis True Image, which I use to create periodic drive images so that in the event of a catastrophic drive failure, I can partition a new drive, restore the latest image, and be up and running in a couple of hours with little user interaction. This sure beats reloading Windows and all the applications and settings I have already invested the time into setting-up (at least one day, maybe two initially, and then countless moments spent tweaking from there).

The Acronis media disk lets you create a bootable USB flash drive or a CD image that you can use to burn a CD for booting your computer. My preferred method for backups is running automatically as a background process to a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. While this does work, network backups over wireless-G can be painfully slow... » More...