The Musings of Dale Dietrich
If the warning above annoys you as much as it does me whenever you open an attachment in Outlook 2010 (or outlook 2007) the video below shows you how to get rid of it.
[Note: This is a reprise of an earlier post where I showed how to do this in the context of Outlook 2007.]
There is a known video rotation issue when importing videos into Windows 7 that were taken in landscape mode with the iPhone 4 and 4S . In Windows, iPhone videos will be upside down if, when you took them, you held the iPhone horizontally with the recording on/off controls at the top. Turns out that if you want your video to be right-side-up when importing them to the PC you will need to hold the iPhone upside down when taking the video.
Also, all videos taken in portrait mode on the iPhone will appear sideways when imported onto the PC. There is no way to take portrait videos on the iPhone 4 and 4S without them appearing sideways on the PC.
In the video below I show you how to use the terrific free ‘Freemake Video Converter’ app to solve this problem by rotating your imported videos to the proper orientation.
Continue reading “Easily Rotate iPhone 4S Videos with Freemake Video Converter”
There is a known Windows 7 rotation issue with portrait photos taken with the iPhone 4 and 4S. Unlike with the 3G or 3GS, photos taken in portrait mode on the iPhone 4 and 4S do not auto-rotate when imported in to Windows 7. This is the case: (i) whether you sync your photos via iCloud; or (ii) whether you physically import them via USB; even when you explicitly set the Windows import utility to auto-rotate them on import. The issue is being discussed here, here , here and here on the Apple support forums and here on the Microsoft support forum.
To make matters worse, a good portion of these photos end up locked in such a way that you cannot subsequently rotate them with the various photo rotate tools built in to Windows 7 (see error message in the image above).
If the warning above annoys you as much as it does me whenever you open an attachment in Office 2007, here’s how to get rid of it.
Microsoft has understandably made security a cornerstone of its recent software releases. Each time you attempt to open a possibly malicious attachment in Outlook 2007, a warning dialogue box like the one above appears. It presents an always-checked, always-grayed-out box that reads: ‘Always ask before opening this type of file’.
Because Word, Excel, PDF and other document types can contain malicious code, you should, as the box warns, only open attachments from trustworthy sources. But, if you have a modern Anti-Virus program such as AVG or Microsoft’s Security Essentials (both of which are free), attachments in your emails should already be checked for malicious code. When this is the case, this warning dialogue box is an unnecessary interruption that becomes increasingly annoying if, like me, you receive emails with attachments many times a day.
Warning: You should only do this if you have anti-virus software installed on your computer that checks for, and quarantines, all emails that contain attachments with malicious code. And, as the warning says, you should never open attachments from anyone that you don’t know and trust!
OK, you’ve been duly warned. Here’s how to do it:
While I am rather discouraged that Microsoft is not following Apple’s lead with aggressive Windows 7 pricing (snow leopard will retail for $29 U.S. in September), from June 26, to July 11, 2009, American and Canadian consumers can pre-order Windows 7 upgrades at deep-discounts (50% or more) off the retail price that Windows 7 will be selling for when it launches on October 22, 2009.
Below are tables showing the preorder and retail pricing available to Canadian and American consumers with links to Amazon.com and Amazon.ca where Windows 7 can be pre-ordered at the discounted price until July 11, 2009.
Note: See Paul Thurrott’s ‘Windows 7 Product Editions – A Comparison’ to see a detailed chart comparing the features of each. While I purchased the Vista ‘Ultimate’ edition in 2007, this time I will be purchasing the Home Premium edition for my PCs and laptops. I’ve been loving the Windows 7 beta and release candidate and heartily recommend it.
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Pre-order |
Retail Price |
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$119.99 U.S. |
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$199.99 U.S. |
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Pre-order |
Retail Price |
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$129.95 Cdn |
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$129.95 Cdn |
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$249.95 Cdn |
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$249.95 Cdn |
Continue reading “Steep Windows 7 Upgrade Pre-Order Discounts in the U.S. & Canada until July 11”
Windows has not provided .iso file burning functionality before. Rather than use a specialized tool, I have, until now, used my iMac to burn iso files. This morning I discovered that with a couple clicks of the mouse, Windows 7 users can now burn .iso files.
Here’s how:
That’s it. I’m surprised it took Redmond this long to finally include this functionality.
With Windows 7 RC1, Microsoft limited the number of Jump List items showing above taskbar icons to 10. (click image for larger view). In the beta there was no such limit.
I gather that more than 10 was confusing for some. For me large jump lists are very useful– especially for programs that do not make it easy to find and open recent files.
One such program is Windows Live Writer – the program I use to write blog posts. It remembers only the three most recent posts. However, I frequently tweak and retweak recent posts until I get it just right. The more prior posts showing up in the Jump List the easier it is to access and edit those posts.
To change the default number of items in the jump List that Windows 7 makes available:
Continue reading “How to Change Number of Items Showing in Windows 7 Jump Lists”
To me, and I suspect to many Windows users, it would be intuitive for Windows to bring whatever window the mouse is currently hovering over into focus without the need to click on that window.
It turns out that Windows 7 now makes this possible. I stumbled upon this tip when writing my ‘How to Shut Off Windows 7 Aero Snap – Stop it from Auto Arranging Windows’ post.
There are two additional reasons why I want Windows 7 to activate (bring focus to an ‘out of focus’ window) by hovering the mouse over it:
For the better part of a year I have been using the ‘single-click to open’ option in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (The option has been around since Windows 95). The idea behind this one-click option is to make the Windows use experience similar to the web-browsing experience. Instead of double clicking icons and options to open/access/activate them in Windows, you need only click icons, items etc. once.
Continue reading “How to Make Windows 7 Activate a Window by Hovering a Mouse Over It.”
Window’s 7 new Aero Snap feature is, no doubt, a useful feature for those with just one monitor. In my case, where I use multiple monitors, it is a major pain. Windows 7 frequently auto-adjusts windows across multiple monitors when I have no desire for this to happen.
In the picture above, my Firefox window was originally open in just the lower, central, window. I was dragging the lower right corner with my mouse (see yellow arrow) to adjust the window when, suddenly, it popped up across three monitors (see four red arrows above). Yikes!
Windows 7 does this because it thinks that if you drag an edge of a window to the edge of a screen (any screen) you want the widow stretched across the full screen (or in my case, multiple screens). Nobody would want the result produced above.
Before disabling Aero Snap this happened to me several times a day. It doesn’t any longer. To disable Aero Snap, follow these steps:
Continue reading “How to Shut Off Windows 7 Aero Snap – Stop it from Auto Arranging Windows”
I did an in-place Windows 7 Release Candidate (build 7100) upgrade on April 26, 2009. For changes made from the beta version of Windows 7 to Release Candidate 1 see:
Below are my first impressions and initial observations:
Continue reading “Windows 7 Release Candidate First Impressions and Observations”
I completed an in-place Windows 7 Release Candidate (build 7100) upgrade from the original beta build 7000. The upgrade took approximately 1.5 hours and went smoothly. The upgrade went faster than my original upgrade from Vista to Win7 Beta. See my ‘Windows 7 Release Candidate First Impressions and Observations’ post for post-upgrade details).
[May 5, 2009 Update: Download the Windows 7 release Candidate here. It will be available here until July. They are not limiting the number of downloads this time. The release candidate will function until March 1, 2010 after which it will nag you several times a day to purchase the RTM version. It will cease functioning on June 1, 2010. Until then, party!]
The instructions for how to do an in-place upgrade are set out below. I edited them to make them easier to follow from the instructions provided by Paul Thurrott on his SuperSite for Windows blog here. See similar instructions here (scroll down to the ‘How-To’ section).
Despite Thurrott’s ivory-tower purity of not recommending users do in-place upgrades, I went ahead anyway. At worst, I could have rolled back to my prior Windows 7 beta image. Doing a fresh install is obviously the best practice. But anyone that takes even a cursory look at my ‘The Windows Apps I Use and How I Configure Them’ post can understand why I was loathe to do yet another clean install for just a release candidate. That said, I probably will do a clean install when the RTM version comes out this summer.
In the mean time, here are the instructions for how to do an in-place upgrade:
Continue reading “How to Upgrade to Windows 7 Release Candidate”
The Daleisphere Command Center 🙂
In mid-February 2009, I made the unfortunate mistake or using a registry cleaner in hopes of tweaking even more performance out of my Windows 7 Beta (“Win7B”) setup. The net result – my ship was sunk!
All my data was backed up, of course, but it took me two months to gradually re-install and tweak ‘most’ of the dozens of apps I use to run my law practice, develop my websites, blog and otherwise run my world.
On the advice of my nephew Michael Kalistchuk, an IT consultant, I painstakingly documented the details of the applications I use and how I configure them. This post grew out of those notes.
It’s unlikely I’ll need these notes for recovery purposes because I have since used Windows 7’s built in image backup system to create a recovery image.
More likely, when the final version of Windows 7 is released, I’ll do a clean install (rather than install over my current install) requiring me to do all of this over again. These notes should dramatically decrease the time it will take to get my command center up and operational again.
Continue reading “The Windows Apps I Use and How I Configure Them”
In mid February 2009, shortly after installing Windows 7 Beta on my primary PC, I made the huge mistake of running an automated ‘Registry Cleaner’ program. Suffice it to say, it destroyed my system.
Because, my data is backed up on a nightly basis, I lost no data. But I did lose years (stretching back to my first Vista x64 install in January of 2007) of application installations and tweaks. Two months later I have finally (mostly) completed the long and laborious chore of re-installing and tweaking the many dozens of applications I use every day.
To ensure that I NEVER experience this special kind of hell again I decided to create an image of my primary system C:\ drive. I looked at various commercial system image/ghosting programs but decided that the system image feature built into Windows 7 was sufficient for my needs.
Below is a simple step-by-step description of how to use it. The process is simple:
Continue reading “How to Use Windows 7’s System Image Backup Feature”
On Sunday March 8, I spent several hours on the phone with both TiVo and Digital River’s (TiVo’s online license key fulfillment provider) technical support teams. After installing the generic TiVo Desktop 2.7 software under the Windows 7 Beta , the desktop software would NOT accept my TiVo Desktop Plus License Key. It kept telling me I had an invalid key.
The only solution TiVo’s support team had in its database was to reinstall the app – which didn’t work when I tried it. Digital River issued me a new license key. The TiVo Desktop 2.7 app rejected that key as well.
After a couple hours and four phone calls we/they all gave up. I was about to try installing the older TiVo Desktop version 2.6.2 when it occurred to me to try running BOTH the installer and the app in Windows Vista compatibility mode.
VOILA!!!! That worked!
TiVo Desktop 2.7 accepted my Desktop Plus License Key and the application has been working fine under Windows 7 beta ever since.
Continue reading “Solving TiVo Desktop Plus v. 2.7 License Key Issue Under Windows 7 Beta”
While I am not against providing feedback to Microsoft on their Windows 7 beta, I have constantly clicked on the ‘send feedback’ link on the top right of every window by accident.
To remove it:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
There has been quite a bit of debate recently on why Microsoft named Windows 7, Windows 7. There have been, in fact, a dozen or so versions of Windows released over the years (not including the multiple SKU’s per release).
As you can see from the picture above, Microsoft’s internal version number for Windows 7 is version 6.1. Ha! You can see this for yourself if you are running Windows 7:
Tada! 🙂
On Sunday January 11, 2009, I upgraded my 64 bit Windows Vista production PC to the 64 bit Windows 7 Beta (‘’W7B’) (available here until Jan 24 February 10, 2009).
The installation was straight forward. It took about two hours to complete on my system (I understand clean installs can be done in about 20 minutes). After answering a few questions, the upgrade took care of itself.
[Update: On Sunday January 18, installed W7B on my Lenovo x41 Tablet in dual-boot mode. So far so good. I hope to write a separate post about my tablet experiences with it soon.’]
Below I describe the problems, bugs, likes, dislikes and other observations I’ve made after constantly using the beta in a production environment for five days.
The upgrade went smoothly for the most part. But, I did experience the following problems, issues and bugs:
relative positioning settings (ie: where monitors sit next to each other); and (ii) the screen resolution settings s (ie: 1900 x 1200); used in Vista were futzed up after the upgrade. Plus, the procedure used to adjust the relative monitor positioning has changed in W7B. It took me some time to figure that out. To adjust each of these settings in W7B, right click on the desktop and select ‘Screen Resolution’ (click image for larger view). From there you can position your monitors and set the screen resolutions back to where they should be. Continue reading “Windows 7 Beta – First Impressions, Problems, Bugs, Likes and Dislikes”
Starting today, anyone can download the Windows 7 beta (W7B) here. Microsoft’s promotional W7B page is here. The definitive WB7 blog post (by Brandon LeBlanc) explaining how it all works is here. The W7B FAQ is here. Paul Thurrott’s W7B info is here.
[Jan 10, 2009 – 2:30 pm EST Update: Official Microsoft Servers are back up! Get it here now! Microsoft has removed the 2.5 download cap. Anyone can download beta for two full weeks (ending Jan 24 until February 10, 2009).]
[Jan 10, 2009 – 1:34 pm EST Update: Get it now! Click here for instructions on how you can easily bypass the official download channels and get official Microsoft beta keys and links to the download. I just did this and got two keys – one for each of the 32 bit and for64 bit versions.]
[Jan 9, 2009 5:49pm EST Update: Warning: As you can see here, the Microsoft servers were slammed. Check back at the windows blog from time to time to be notified when download servers are back up.]
Warning: From this download instructions page:
The Beta will stop working on August 1, 2009. To continue using your PC, please be prepared to reinstall a prior version of Windows or a subsequent release of Windows 7 before the expiration date. You won’t be able to upgrade from the Beta to the final retail version of Windows 7.
You’ll know you are starting to get through when you get to this sign-up screen (click for larger view):
You’ll be all set with the key and ready to download when you see this screen:
The beta is limited to the first 2.5 million downloads will be available to all until January 24, 2009. Both 32 bit and 64 bit versions are available. You will need a Windows Live ID (such as a Hotmail, MSN, Xbox Live account etc.). The beta will only upgrade computers with Vista SP1 installed. You can, however do a clean install from an XP machine (wiping out the OS and starting from scratch).
[Update: Sunday January 11: I have installed it. There’s been a few hiccups. It’s certainly faster than Vista. I intend to write a complete post about my experiences soon].
The download is an iso file. You’ll have to burn an .iso to a DVD in order to install. You can burn it to a DVD with Roxio or Nero. If you don’t have those, the free ImgBurn software will do the job.
If the warning above annoys you as much as it does me whenever you open an attachment in Office 2007, here’s how to get rid of it.
[FEB 21, 2012 UPDATE: I posted a video of how to do this in Outlook 2010 here.]
Microsoft has understandably made security a cornerstone of its recent software releases. Each time you attempt to open a possibly malicious attachment in Outlook 2007, a warning dialogue box like the one above appears. It presents an always-checked, always-grayed-out box that reads: ‘Always ask before opening this type of file’.
Because Word, Excel, PDF and other document types can contain malicious code, you should, as the box warns, only open attachments from trustworthy sources. But, if you have a modern Anti-Virus program such as AVG or Microsoft’s Security Essentials (both of which are free), attachments in your emails should already be checked for malicious code. When this is the case, this warning dialogue box is an unnecessary interruption that becomes increasingly annoying if, like me, you receive emails with attachments many times a day.
Warning: You should only do this if you have anti-virus software installed on your computer that checks for, and quarantines, all emails that contain attachments with malicious code. And, as the warning says, you should never open attachments from anyone that you don’t know and trust!
OK, you’ve been duly warned. Here’s how to do it:
