Tips on how to fix/tweak Windows applications and Microsoft Windows

• USB Drives
  • If you use an external USB disk drive with Windows 2000 or XP (and maybe with Vista), set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate = 1. This reduces updates on the external drive. Having a lot of updates puts your MFT at risk if a poorly designed devices munges the USB bus for a second.
    
• Bluetooth
  • If your computer and your Bluetooth device aren't connected, check to see if Bluetooth Settings (via the Bluetooth icon in the tray) shows it as a connected device. If it is not shown as a device:
  • • Close Bluetooth Settings, disable your Bluetooth via the computer's hardware or keyboard switch, and re-enable Bluetooth. This fixed it for me at least once.
  • If you're using the Microsoft Bluetooth stack, you should see both of the following in Device Manager:
    • [computer-name]/Bluetooth Radios/[your-Bluetooth-device-name]
    • [computer-name]/Bluetooth Radios/Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator
      
• VMWare - See VMWare
• Delay Connection to Windows Mapped Drives
  • When you map a network drive in Windows and select the "reconnect at logon," Windows will re-map the drive when you next reboot and it will also "connect to" the drive. If you'd like to defer the connect until your first access of the drive:
    • Set (or create DWORD) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider\RestoreConnection=0
    • You'll get the drive re-mapped and it will show up in Windows Explorer with a small red X until you actually access the drive.VMWare

• Windows Mobile 5 (Smartphone) - Cingular 3124 (HTC StrTrk)
  • how do i disable the startup and shutdown sounds on a Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone
    • Delete the value of WAV (\windows\STARTUP_422.wav) in HKLM\SOFTWARE\HTC\Startup
    • Delete the value of WAV (\windows\STARTUP_422.wav) in HKLM\SOFTWARE\HTC\Shutdown
  • Recording voice tags
    1. Make sure you are in a quiet room when you record the tag.
    2. Ensure at least one hard consonant in the tag.
  • Using voice tags
  •  
    1. Briefly press the "Comm Manager" button (left side, nearest the hinge)
    2. Speak the tag
  • The buttons! What do they do?
    • Edge buttons
      • Closed
        • ALL - single-click = show external display
        • Right double-click = camera on
        • Left toggle double-click = volume control display (it works as volume control up/down when volume control is displayed)
      • Open
        • Right single = camera on; camera shutter
        • Left single click = enable voice dial and voice shortcuts
        • Left single hold = enable voice recorder
        • Left toggle = volume control
          
    • Interior buttons
    • Face buttons
      
  • x
    
• McAfee VirusScan Enterprise
• One of the McAfee modules provides "Buffer Overflow Protection" (BOP).  In theory, this is a good thing.  It prevents a virus from executing code by overflowing a data buffer into the stack or code area.  In practice, you can get a BOP error if you have an add-on to Microsoft Outlook that writes a single byte past the end of a buffer.  Since you're running the Enterprise edition of McAffee, your network administrator controls BOP, and any changes you make on your PC get overwritten within a few minutes.  Your network administrator probably doesn't want to make a BOP exception for you.  But there is a work-around.  BOP monitors only a few .EXE files.  Just copy OUTLOOK.EXE to NO-BOP-OUTLOOK.EXE and run the copy instead of OUTLOOK.EXE.
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