Resetting Vista Offline Files

A little while back i posted about resetting the offline file cache in XP.

I had a comment left by Rick asking how to do this in Vista

After a little digging the initial answer is…..you can’t

Well not quite (just not as easily)…things like csccmd.exe don’t apply anymore as the offline files functionality has been overhauled in Vista.

Maniuplation of offline files can be done via WMI so expect to see lots of vbscripts pop up

A good place to start is the “Filing Cabinet” blog where there are a couple of WMI example scripts (here and here)

So anyway…reseting the cache….one of those Filing Cabinet posts talks about moving the cache location and mentions a FormatDatabase registry key

So after a bit of searching i found a kb article that suggests the following (do this at your own risk!)

“add the FormatDatabase registry entry to the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Csc\Parameters

Then, set the FormatDatabase registry entry to 1.

The restart your computer”

It doesn’t mention if you need to reset the key back to 0 when your done

Will it reset the database after every reboot? or does the reset process change the entry for you? Need to check that out

The article wasn’t easy to find as it’s not specifically about resetting offline files but does talk about a corrupt offline cache

P.S Some other good Vista offline cache resources include:

Jonathan Hardwick and The Windows Vista blog

Missing Pictures

*-* Updated *-*

When i view the Pictures folder in Explorer the files aren’t there! If i view them in the attach files dialog they are there but it still wont let me attach them. 

When i right click while trying to attach files files it wont open in Photo Gallery either. However good old paint came to my rescue. It opened them fine and i resaved them and all is well. I’m still puzzled about what happened and why!!

Here is the pic that all the fuss was about…. 

I don’t think it looks anything like me!

*-*-*-**-*-*

I just got an email from Vijay finalising some details for tomorrow nights meetup.

I tried to send a picture i got from Simpsonizeme.com. I previewed the pictures ok and attached them via google mail

In my sent items the picture wouldn’t open and claimed it was an empty file.

I browsed to the pictures folder and they aren’t even there! If i go back and try to reattach them the files are there but it wont let me copy them out as Vista claims the file doesn’t exist!!

Anyone seen anything like this before? I’m trying to track them down but it’s a little worrying

five different files can’t just disappear!

Media Player keeps playing

Susanne posted a while back about a problem with Windows Media Player on Vista where the music continues to play even after you have closed the program

I’d noticed the same thing on my computer at home so just got into the habit of stopping whatever i was listening to before i closed

I was reading through the latest technet flash when i found this KB article.

Here is the solution they offer

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem when it occurs, follow these steps to shut down Windows Media Player:

Well duh!

Not really all that helpful but at least they have acknowledged there is a problem. Hopefully we’ll see a fix sometime soon

Multiple Monitors With Windows Vista – Revisited

I posted a while a back about support for multiple monitors in Windows Vista and how i felt lots of people were in a panic for no good reason

Turns out this was one of the most popular posts on this blog according to the stats

I never mentioned in my original post where i got my information from

Here you go, the official Microsoft stance

I’ve been running Vista for some time now (since the start of February) and i CANNOT live without two monitors (i’m looking to get some more once i can get the pursestrings loosened!)

My desktop is a HP dc5150. The graphics card that comes with this is a ATI Radeon Express 200 and has a VGA and a DVI output. I just plugged in a couple of screens and away i went.

I have Aero interface and no issues.

When i make the move to three (four?) screens i’ll be very picky about which card i buy as the article i quoted earlier outlines.

Express Upgrade? Whats express about it?

** Rant warning **

My Dad was looking to buy a new pc. He had a modest budget but was keen on getting Windows Vista

He decided to buy a Dell PC with Windows XP Media Centre Edition installed and take advantage of the Express Upgrade offer so that he could still get Vista

As soon as the pc arrived he placed his order for the upgrade and payed for the carriage.

He heard nothing from Dell for weeks. He sent an email to their customer services department and was told they would be shipping “towards the end of February”

It’s now the middle of March and he’s still waiting for his disk

Now i appreciate there are lots of logistics in getting the orders out.

My point is though if he’d waited a couple more weeks he could have bought the PC with Vista on it. It’s been out for a couple of months now!

Now all he has is a PC that he’s scared to do anything with in as he wants the upgrade process to go as smoothly as possible!

Dell have since apologised on their blog but it’s not really good enough 

Sort it out please!

Cool New Sidebar Gadgets

Over on the Live Search blog they have released a couple of new sidebar gadgets

While i like the look of the traffic information gadget i’m in the UK so it’s of no use to me

I do like the Live Search Gadget. Simply drop it on your sidebar and type in your search term.

The results appear in a pop out window. It is also configurable and lets you search specific sites and use search macros
I have one request though…

“Can we have regional settings please?”

When i use live search (or google) i frequently tick the “only show me sites from the UK” box.

Other than that keep up the good work!

Vista vs Mac?

I usually take articles on PC vs Mac (Linux/Unix/etc) with a pinch of salt.

You can usually tell after a few minutes that the author has already decided the winner before conducting the test.

I came across this article on Znet that i think (just my humble opinion) is not a fair test

The article tries to test how easy it is to move all your settings, documents, applications, etc from system to another.

The systems in question are an existing Windows XP installation onto a new Windows Vista installation and for comparision transferring from an existing Mac OS X installation to a new Mac OS X installation.

Sorry that doesn’t work for me.

I’m not saying the guys results are wrong. But i just think the comparison is unfair.

If you were doing XP to XP vs Mac OS X to Mac OS X, fine…

or Vista to Vista vs Mac OS X to Mac OS X, fine as well.

As we all know while Vista and XP have lots of common roots there are lots of differences in there as well.

If you were comparing an XP to Vista transfer with a Mac OS X to Mac OS Leopard (is that right??) then i think thats fair game.

Transferring to a new system is always a PITA so using this argument in the “my mac is better than your pc” (et al) is a pointless excerise. Most people i know (and i’ll be experiencing this in a couple of weeks as my dad has purchased a new PC and ordered his “Vista Express Upgrade”) would just copy/burn their documents of to USB Drive/CD/DVD and reinstall any apps they needed

Not really sure where i’m going with this one so i’ll stop there! :-S

PDA Woes

I have a HP IPAQ hx2750 which i probably dont use as much as i should but is great for getting quick access to email and appointments when i’m away from my PC.

After installing Vista i discovered that ActiveSync is no-more so installed the “Windows Mobile Device Center” Beta

Installation seemed to go ok and email, tasks, calendar and the like were all sync’d ok

Then i had a bright idea.

Now that i’m using Outlook 2007 for my RSS feeds wouldn’t be great if these sync’d to my PDA as well so that i could read those away from my desk?

So i found the “select folders” bit, ticked all the boxes and i get this

“There is a problem with your connection. Please disconnect and reconnect
your device and try again”

Wonderful!

I had a look around and couldn’t find anything of any help so posted on one of the Vista newsgroups without any real success.

I then spotted this download yesteday

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=83d513ea-9df9-4920-af33-3a0e2e4e7beb&DisplayLang=en

The RTM version of the mobile device centre

I installed this but unfortunately this doesn’t solve my problem. I dont really want to upgrade to a Windows Mobile 5 device as the one i have is just fine at the moment but suspect that is probably the answer.

Slideshow Gadget

My first Vista tip!

I’m loving the sidebar at the moment. I changed the options so that it is always on top and dropped a couple of useful things on there.

Clock, it’s a bit more visible than the clock in the system tray.

Remote Desktop Connection Gadget - allows me to quickly Remote Desktop into any of the servers i’m looking after

Slideshow – I use this to cycle pictures of my daughter

So i dropped the slideshow gadget onto the sidebar. Created a search to only find pictures that are tagged with my daughers name and i tried to point the gadget at the search…no not happening.

I was a little bit annoyed that i couldn’t do this. It meant i’d have to create a seperate folder and it starts to do away with the whole “tagging” feature (which i really love btw!)

Anyway a bit of digging this morning comes up with the following from the sidebar team blog

1)      Create an actual folder

2)      Perform a search of pictures

3)      Save search to created folder

4)      Point the Slideshow gadget at the created folder

5)      Make sure “Include subfolders”  is checked

Lo and behold it works!

Got my Vista on

Our action pack arrived last week so i spent yesterday upgrading my PC to Vista and installing Office 2007

The installation went (generally) well. I opted for a clean install so i’m still in the process of tweaking everything to my liking

So far i’m pretty impressed. Even though i ran the beta for a while it’s nice to keep finding out things!

Also performance seems ok. The machine i ran the beta on had twice as much RAM as my main PC but this is still pretty responsive.

I’m also very impressed with Office 2007 so far. I’m spending lots of time in Outlook so getting used to that and spent lasts night poking through OneNote. I’ve heard lots of good things about OneNote but i never really “got it” before. However i’m going to try and make it part of my working day so we’ll see how that goes.

When i was doing my backups before the upgrade i forgot to export my RSS feeds. I do have a copy of an old OPML file somewhere but i’m going to use it as an exercise for trimming the dead wood. Currently i only have four feeds

Coding Horror, SBSDiva, Vladville, UK SMB Girl

Certainly makes a difference from what i had before. I’ll add others in as i come across them

I’ll post more thoughts and tips as i find them!