Sometimes your program needs to block the screen saver from automatically kicking in. My use case was that the program was recording data and whenever the screen saver was active, the data was lost (No idea why, it probably had something to do with the way HID is implemented in Windows.) So I was looking … Continue reading Blocking the Windows Screen Saver in Delphi
Category: Windows
Deleting unwanted entries from the “New” submenu of Windows Explorer
Microsoft Office has the annoying habit of adding itself to various places in the Windows user interface. One of them is the popup menu of the Windows Explorer. It adds one entry for each of the installed programs to the "New" submenu. Have you ever used them? I have only used that submenu for creating … Continue reading Deleting unwanted entries from the “New” submenu of Windows Explorer
How to defeat useful tools
Sizer is a very useful tool for sizing and positioning windows. It adds a right click menu to a window's title bar where you can select one of multiple configured window sizes and positions. It also displays the current window size while you are resizing it by dragging its frame. Now, why would somebody try … Continue reading How to defeat useful tools
Don’t give the user any information!
... seems to be the motto of Microsoft. How else can you explain that a recent update of Windows 7 and Windows 10, that broke older versions of one of our programs (no idea yet what exactly is the problem, but the error code indicates an out of memory error) has different effects. Windows 7 … Continue reading Don’t give the user any information!
DeltaChat Messenger
DeltaChat is a messenger that uses email as the transport medium, so potentially almost everybody already has an account for it. Today, they announced a new release, not only for the existing Android app but also for Desktop (Mac and Linux only so far) and iOS. I think that is a very interesting project since … Continue reading DeltaChat Messenger
Completely disable Windows 10 telemetry collection
So I don't forget: According to an article in c't magazine, disabling the "DiagTrack" service ("Connected User Experience and Telemetry") will completely disable user tracking in Windows 10. They also say that they did not see any negative effects. Source: Telefonierverbot in c't 01/2019 page 172 (in German)
If Ctrl+Alt+F8 disables your secondary monitor
I just pressed Ctrl+Alt+F8 and wondered why all of a sudden my secondary monitor went blank. Turns out that this is a "Feature" of the Intel HD graphics driver. It restores the graphics default. And since it is such a great feature, you can't disable or customize this hotkey. Great work Intel! Again StackOverflow was … Continue reading If Ctrl+Alt+F8 disables your secondary monitor
USB tethering a OnePlus One phone to Windows XP
For whatever reason my old Windows XP netbook doesn't connect to our holiday flat's WIFI while my OnePlus One Android phone does. So I thought I'd simply tether it to the Netbook via USB to get around this problem. I tried that before with other phones and other computers and don't remember ever having a … Continue reading USB tethering a OnePlus One phone to Windows XP
VirtualBox and Windows 8.1: This 64-bit application couldn’t load because your PC doesn’t have a 64-bit processor
I just moved a Windows 8.1 installation in Virtual Box from one computer to another. When booting up, Windows told me: This 64-bit application couldn't load because your PC doesn't have a 64-bit processor The host computer is an Intel Xeon CPU which definitely is a 64 bit CPU (the previous computer was an older … Continue reading VirtualBox and Windows 8.1: This 64-bit application couldn’t load because your PC doesn’t have a 64-bit processor
Adding a Windows 8.1 computer to a SAMBA domain
Note to self: If adding a Windows 8.1 computer to a SAMBA domain fails with the error "The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted" the following changes to the Registry might help: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters] ; Enable NT-Domain compatibility mode ; Default: ; [value not present] ; … Continue reading Adding a Windows 8.1 computer to a SAMBA domain