Extra Line Breaks Removed in Outlook

Ever get that subtle message that Outlook has changed the contents of an email you may have received?  It looks like this:

This causes a big problem for things like automated email alerts.  There is a way to prevent your Outlook from messing with your text-based email messages.  See Microsoft's KB article: 287816.  It's pretty simple, really, but difficult to find:

1. Open up Tools -> Options
2. Click the "E- mail Options..." button on the "Preferences" screen.
3. Uncheck the box labeled "Remove extra line breaks in plain text messages
4. Click OK twice and then next time you view a plain text email message the message should be gone, and the message will be formatted as it was intended.

Another place where this can be fixed is on the sending end.  Basically, if you add two space characters as the beginning of every line before you send the message, Outlook will not trim the line breaks.  See here for more details:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/newsletter_publishing/newsletter_formatting/remove_line_breaks_issue_Microsoft_Outlook_2003_when_publishing_text_newsletters_20051217.htm

Slow browsing in Explorer

Sometimes you'll find that browsing through explorer can get really slow.  Especially on network drives.  One reason may be that Explorer is trying to expand zip files to get you the list of files in there.  In Vista you'll recognize this by the magnifying glass circling the folder in the tree view on the left of an Explorer window.  Here's an article that shows an easy way to disable the zip folder expansion:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/prevent-explorer-from-freezing-with-large-zip-files-on-vista/

Make sure that you do have a zip file manager.  I recommend 7-zip for it's speed and file format flexibility:
http://www.7-zip.org/

The other one I use is ZipGenius.  There are a few things I particularly like with ZipGenius:

• Command line interface is pretty good
• Ability to create self-extracting archives through command line.  Great for automating tasks or making them repeatable
• The ability to fix broken zip files and extract usable files from them!

You'll find ZipGenius at: 

http://www.zipgenius.it/ or on Cnet's Download.com

System (BIOS) Beep

So there are the Windows sounds in Windows.  They can get annoying, but you can usually affect the volume with the Windows volume settings to make it better.  Vista helps a lot here by providing a "source" mixer.

There are some beeps, however, that are not Windows sounds.  This beep may happen to you, for example, if you hit more than 2 or 3 keys at the same time.  Here's how you can disable it:
(From: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/turn-off-the-annoying-windows-xp-system-beeps/)

Disable Beep in Device Manager

Open up Device Manager by right-clicking on Computer and choosing Properties, then on the Hardware tab you’ll find the button for Device Manager.

Select View \ Show hidden devices from the menu.

Find Non-Plug and Play Drivers in the list, and then right-click on “Beep” and disable it:

When it prompts you to reboot, select no, and then right-click again and choose Properties this time. On the Driver tab, change the Startup type to “Disabled” and then click the “Stop” button if you are able to.

This should disable the system beep speaker, but it probably won’t change the volume control beep, so continue on.

What happened to "mstsc /console"?

Those of your more geeky folks may have been used to connecting to a remote computer using Remote Desktop (RDP) and connecting to the console session so you can see the programs running there.  In an update to the Terminal Services client available from Windows Update the command line parameters have been changed.  You now need to use:

mstsc /admin

For those of you using Vista thinking that you'd lost all access to the console session on remote servers, use the same command as above.  You can always find out the right option to use if you're borrowing someone else's computer by running:

mstsc /?

Got an AMD Dual Core?

If you do, then try this:
ping 127.0.0.1

Take note of the response times.  See anything odd there?  If your computer has been on for any length of time, and you've got an AMD Dual Core processor you might see some negative values.  This indicates your computer has beaten the laws of time and space to get a reply before the request was sent!

Unfortunately that's not exactly the case.  There is a problem with how software interacts with the processor timers.  Here's a description from HP on the problem:

"This condition affects operations such as network communications and performance monitoring tasks that are sensitive to system time."

Here's a link to fix the problem:
http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dynamicDetails.aspx?ListID=c5cd2c08-1432-4756-aafa-4d9dc646342f&ItemID=153 (If that doesn't work go to AMD's support site and search for Dual Core Optimizer)

Here are a few posts with people having problems as a result of this processor issue:

• http://www.paessler.com/blog/2007/08/29/ipcheck-server-monitor/negative-ping-times-in-amd-dual-core-processors-solved/
• http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=430695
• http://wiki.ljackson.us/Negative_Ping_Time
• http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=446006&prodTypeId=15351&objectID=c01075682

Finding missing devices in Device Manager

Device Manager doesn't like to show you devices that are no longer connected to the computer. This can cause trouble with devices like Network Cards that have IP addresses or gateways assigned to them. Here's how to show them in Device Manager so you can remove them:

1. Start command prompt
2. Type in: set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
3. Type: start devmgmt.msc
4. Now go to the view menu and select "Show Hidden Devices"
5. Expand the correct branch in Device Manager and you should see all the unconnected devices
6. Uninstall them to your heart's content

This information was thankfully gained from Microsoft's Knowledgebase at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315539

Reset TCP/IP Configuration in Windows

So tonight I discovered that my sister-in-law's computer didn't like to do DHCP. We got the following message in the Event Viewer:

Your computer was unable to automatically configure the IP parameters for the Network Card with the network address XXXXXXXXXXXX. The following error occurred during configuration: The parameter is incorrect..

(Yes, the double punctuation mark at the end was part of the message..)

She's running Vista x64 SP1 for those who are interested. This was happening on her wireless connection. When configured with a manual IP address, or with a manually specified fall-back address for DHCP the system worked fine on the Internet. This was convenient as it allowed me to search on the Internet.

I wanted to try and re-install the DHCP client, or all of TCP/IP. Instead, I found this really cool command that reset the registry and other configuration settings related to TCP/IP:

netsh int ip reset [ log_file_name]

The command required to be run as an adminsitrator, so I had to open the command prompt as an administrator and had to pass the TSA... um... I mean UAC test. Then I ran the command and it was suggested I reboot the computer. Attempting to avoid any chance of a pat-down like my friend Luke I immediately complied. After the reboot, her computer was able to get an address through DHCP and I will be able to sleep better tonight. Thanks Petri IT Knowledgebase for providing this info!