Tag Archive for 'Microsoft'

Missing recent documents in Vista

Published on January 15, 2008 in Guides. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

This may be an unusual problem, but I figured I’d post a how-to just in case. Anyways, ever since I installed Microsoft Office 2007 on my copy of Windows Vista Home Premium I have been unable to view recent documents. Normally, there’s a list of documents you’ve opened that shows up in a few places in Windows, including all the Office programs. For me, it has always been grayed out. Why? Apparently, my administrator (a.k.a. me) disallowed recent document history using group policy. Now, since I had done no such thing, it must have been something Windows did on its own. Or something. My copy of Windows is really screwed up.

Anyways, I know all about group policy. On any other version of Windows, you could simply go to your Start men, and type “gpedit.msc” (no quotes) in the Run box. Here’s a short tutorial for this on Windows XP and earlier. It should also work on Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. Unfortunately, you can’t use gpedit.msc to edit group policy on Vista Home Basic or Home Premium. Instead, you have to directly edit the registry. Don’t panic! I’ll guide you through. But always be sure to make a backup before editing the registry. This is easily done by clicking File>Export… in the Registry Editor and selecting “All” at the bottom of the screen that comes up. Do it now. Do it.

Go ahead and open up the Registry Editor by typing “regedit” (no quotes) in your Start menu search box and pressing enter. Find the following registry key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. (HKCU stands for HKEY_CURRENT_USER.) Double-click on the value inside the key labeled “NoRecentDocsHistory”. Change the 1 to 0. If it’s already 0, you don’t even need this tutorial and have wasted five minutes of your life. Way to go.

Anyways, now that you’ve edited this value, you should be able to view recent documents in Office programs and Windows itself. At the very least, you can actually edit the recent documents options in Windows and Office. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone. Maybe I just have strange computer problems that never show up for anyone else… And if I was too technical or confusing in this guide, feel free to leave me a comment.

Finally, if you’re interested in editing more group policy stuff in Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, I suggest downloading this Excel spreadsheet from Microsoft, which lists all the group policy settings and their corresponding registry keys. Very useful, especially without gpedit.msc (which is basically an easier to use interface for these particular registry keys). Or you could spring for Vista Ultimate.

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Mac vs. PC

Published on November 27, 2007 in Rant. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

The more I use Macs, the more I wonder why they’ve got such a reputation for being stable. It’s getting to the point where I hear people espouse the wonders of Mac OS and wonder if they’ve ever actually used one. Same goes for people who claim Windows crashes all the time.

I own and use a PC regularly. It’s a Dell laptop and it runs Windows Vista. What’s more, it runs Windows Vista without crashing. Amazing, isn’t it? Excuse the sarcasm, but I’ve been told a number of times that I’m a fool for using both a Dell and Windows, but I’ve never had any more problems than I had on any other brand of computer or version of Windows. Heh, I’ve actually had more problems using Macs. Anyone who says Macs don’t crash has never seen me use one. And no, it’s not because I’m an incompetent computer user who clearly doesn’t know how to use a Mac. Indeed, I get hung up on the command key (what, exactly, was wrong with the control key?) and I hate how closing a window doesn’t quit the program running it, but I know what I’m doing.

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Vista annoyances

Published on May 22, 2007 in Personal and Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I’ve been using Windows Vista on my laptop for a couple months now, and I have to say it’s pretty awesome. A lot more so than I ever thought it would be, especially considering the anti-hype it was given leading up to and shortly following its release. Contrary to the claims you’ll usually find, I haven’t had problems running games, all the drivers are there and up-to-date (even for graphics), the UAC doesn’t bug me about every single thing, and finally, it doesn’t crash every five seconds.

However, as much as I love Vista, I have come across a few really, really annoying things. Some are directly tied in with the operating system, others are just by-products of incompatibility with certain software or hardware, and still others are just personal peeves. Luckily there aren’t many, so I’m sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for a solid Microsoft-bashing. I don’t cater to fanboys (or fangirls, for that matter).

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The mark of a geek

Published on May 20, 2007 in Personal and Random. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

For some strange and inexplicable reason, I decided to install MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in Virtual PC 2007 on my computer today. I think that qualifies me as pure geek, considering both applications (dating from circa 1993 for you non-geeks reading this) are useless for any reasons other than nostalgia.

Amazingly, despite a few hitches related to corrupted disk image files, I got both installed and running near-perfectly. I had to manually install mouse and CD drivers for DOS and some network stuff for Windows, but after all of that, I could do everything from playing Oregon Trail (seriously!) to browsing Wikipedia from the comfort of Internet Explorer 3.0. I even managed to dig up a copies of MS Office 4 and SimCity Classic for Windows and Norton Commander for DOS (to make it a bit easier navigating DOS). It’s kind of amazing what kind of old software you can find online, although most of what I’ve got installed on that virtual machine is probably semi-legal. WfW 3.11 may be ancient, but it’s made by Microsoft, and they’re notorious for disliking illegitimate software. Then again, while installing this version of Windows, I was told that it was all right (!) if I didn’t have my registration key handy. Fancy that.

Anyways, I still don’t quite know why I did this, since it caused me some grief when I ran into rather interesting errors and lack of memory (easily fixed through some settings in Virtual PC). I think it was more because I could do it that I did do it. Anyways, I won’t bother posting exactly how I got everything working, but I suppose I could if anyone wants me to. Just leave a comment if you feel the need to run abandonware in a virtual machine.

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Get a Mac…why?

Published on May 9, 2007 in Rant and Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I used to like the Mac vs. PC ads on TV. They were funny at first. Now they just seem kind of…mean. Upgrade nightmares? Too many versions of Vista? Those are pretty low blows if you think about it.

For one thing, upgrading to any new operating system is painful. Newer OS’s require newer hardware. That’s a fact of life. I mean, it was the same way going from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. There are still many Mac users with OS 9 who couldn’t afford to upgrade to OS X due to–gasp!–hardware limitations. The funny thing is that if you lack the hardware necessary for Vista, you can simply buy new components and upgrade your existing PC. Can’t do that with a Mac. You’d have to buy a whole new one, and Macs aren’t exactly cheap.

The other bit about multiple versions of Vista is also kind of silly. The commercial for that one claims that Mac just has one version with everything. Windows does too: it’s called Ultimate. Of course, an upgrade version of Ultimate costs about $259 to the $129 OS X upgrade, which is quite a difference, but when you consider that you can install Vista Ultimate on any type of computer you want that has the hardware support (as opposed to OS X, which you can only install on those expensive Macs), as well as the extra features Ultimate packs (such as BitLocker hard drive encryption), I think it’s worth the extra cost.

Don’t get me wrong, Macs are good computers. But you can’t really compare them to PCs like Apple does. I could probably tear apart their points pretty easily, but that would be petty and I don’t want to waste my time. I’ll just suffice to say that my PC “just works” fine as it is. And it plays games. No such thing as a Mac gamer, is there? I rest my case.

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