If you’re having problems opening PDF files that have been damaged or corrupted you may have some luck with MuPDF.
I found this lightweight PDF reader when a colleague at work was having trouble opening a PDF sent in via e-mail. Adobe Reader, Adobe Pro, Foxit Reader and GScript all failed to open the file in question – MuPDF was the only one to succeed.
Plus there’s nothing to install – just extract the exe from it’s zip archive and run.
I decided to look into how easy it would be to build an app.
Bearing in mind that I’ve no experience programming mobile applications I had a look to see if there were any drag and drop based code design environments.
I discovered Tiggzy and right away I could see it contained some powerful design features. Here’s a list of the highlights.
You can access my very first Android app here
I found the source of our Direct Access problems back in May during a lull period at work. Sorry for not updating then guys…
Here’s a link to my previous Direct Access post
I had a suspicion our anti-virus may have been causing our Direct Access problem so I went ahead and removed Symantec Endpoint Protection using CleanWipe which you can find here
I’m not that big a fan of Symantec as we had problems with our previous generation of PC’s – we suspected it was causing random out of the blue power downs of some PC’s while users were working. We could never prove it though as no event viewer logs were recorded just before the PC’s powered down unexpectedly. Luckily we’ve not had any problems of this type on our current generation of PC’s – they do have a new version of SEP installed though! In hindsight I should have tried removing SEP to test with Direct Access sooner in light of my previous experience with Symantec.
Anyway – Back to Direct Access. Once SEP was uninstalled with MS Security Essentials replacing it – Direct Access started behaving as it should on our laptops over a HSDPA/3G connection, and I didn’t have to run the “netsh interface 6to4 set state disabled” command indicated in my previous post anymore.
I then decided to do some more digging on the subject once I realised SEP was causing the problem and found this little nugget from a Symantec forum post.
So if you’re thinking about deploying Direct Access and have SEP deployed you have three choices:
1. Wait for the SEP update to come out in August 2012.
2. Uninstall SEP and replace with an antivirus that works with Direct Access (might be workable if you’ve only a small group of users that need to use Direct Access) i.e. replace AV for that group and leave the others with SEP.
3. Create a batch file that will run the “netsh interface 6to4 set state disabled” on start up on each laptop.
Hope this helps guys
If you’re having problems with Firefox crashing on your PC – the most likely culprit is Flash.
You’ll need the latest version of the Adobe’s Flash Plugin which you can find here:
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
If the install fails using the above link the most likely reason is that your proxy/firewall is stopping the online installer from downloading the required install files.
In that case try downloading and installing from here (hopefully you have local admin privileges on your PC):
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/support/install_flash_player.exe
This is one for the Windows dual screen users out there.
I found this app just today but it seems to be working a treat.
If you’re a dual screen user you know only a single task bar can be displayed in Windows even though you have access to two screens.
Well not any more. Actual Multiple Monitors takes care of the above shortcoming (at least until Win8 comes out) by displaying a Start Menu on each monitor, each with their own set of windows so you can minimize or maximize to either monitor. How cool is that?
In what looks like a boon for IT Admins everywhere news of a new BIOS based VNC Server solution comes from a partnership between Intel and RealVNC.
This motherboard based VNC Server will allow admins to VNC to a remote PC if the computer is off or doesn’t have a functioning OS.
Nice – Remote installs anyone? I’ve been waiting for a feature like this to come along for a long time.
You need a specific version of VNC (VNC Viewer Plus) along with a vPro Processor and AMT6.0 to support this. You also need a license for each installation of VNC Viewer Plus, but wow what a leap forward!
I had investigated AMT a few months ago but couldn’t figure out its benefits. The recent news makes it all clear…
This should make my job a lot easier – I’ll be able to connect PC’s directly up to the end-user network – no need to move them into the network room to build and have to move them a second time to users desks. I can build on the spot…
More information here
nLite was a great little tool to customize your Windows XP OS before actually installing it. I mainly used it to remove pesky addon’s like Games from the default installation source then integrate drivers and OS updates into ISO’s before burning these onto disc and using them to install the OS.
It was also possible to integrate silent software installs with nLite – but with software release updates coming out all the time what would be the point?
The need to integrate drivers has been eliminated from Win7 since it does such a good job of finding the correct drivers from the Windows Update site – however updates are still required.
Enter RT Se7en Lite to pick up where nLite left off.
I haven’t tested RT7 yet but if it’s half as useful as nLite – than its a keeper. You can find it here
Image manipulation isn’t something the average home user has to worry about for their average day to day computer use – but come on Microsoft, Paint hasn’t been updated in a major way since – what Windows 95?
Before posting this blog I had a look at the Paint application on my new Win7 Ultimate installation and the only new additions to the app I could find are shapes, new brushes and the ability to save files as png…The UI has changed – I’ll give you that but that doesn’t add any new functionality!
Ok – The new brushes are cool – but where’s the layer based image composition?, the magic wand-like selection tool? and all the other blahde blahde blah yakedy smakedy?
Well they’re not there…
So do yourself a favour and get Paint.Net installed. It’s got more than enough features for the average PC user that doesn’t need Photoshop.
Are you tired of those Mac users that always whine about how their OSX operating system “never gets viruses….” blah blah blah? Are any members of your family Mac fanboys?
If you answered No Please-please-please enjoy the silence while it lasts. Those moments are golden.
If you answered Yes – I commiserate because I feel your pain…
You could try hitting back at these fanboys by saying that Microsoft operating systems get viruses because they have a greater market share. If there is a greater percentage of interconnected PCs running the same OS it makes for easy virus propagation. Estimates of global OS usage can be found here but statistics just seem to boggle the typical fanboy. There’s no place for numbers in their minds…
Finally Microsoft have also decided to strike back. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free A/V scanner which will use the same anti-virus definitions used in Microsofts Forefront line of security products, so MS is putting their business money where their mouth is…
Benefits:
Its free – Is free good?
Low resource usage Microsoft say
Drawbacks:
Unproven as yet
I’ll be installing it on my desktop PC which is running Windows 7 Ultimate – Thanks Microsoft!!
Update 01-11-2009 Microsoft’s Security Essentials been rated the best free anti-virus for Windows
