Archive for the Windows Category

If you ever find yourself in need of a screen capture, both Windows and Max OSX have the built-in capability to do it for you. No, you do NOT need to buy some extra-special software just to take a picture of what’s on your screen. Here’s how you do it.

Windows:
Find the PrintScreen key on your keyboard.

PrintScreen - will capture the entire desktop
Alt-PrintScreen - will capture the current application’s window

Use Control-V to paste the captured images in your image editor of choice.

MAC OSX
Find the Command key on your keyboard. (That’s the weird-looking apple squiggly-thing key)

Command+Shift+3 - will capture the entire screen
Command+Shift+4 - will turn the cursor into a crosshairs, allowing you to draw a rectangle around whatever you want to capture.

On my Mac, the copied images are automatically put on the desktop as PNG files. If you’d rather have the images end up on the clipboard, hold down the SHIFT key while using either of the above keystrokes. After capturing, a simple Command+V will paste the captured image.

Popularity: 8% [?]

In order to connect to a database using an ADO object, you need a connection string. Here’s a simple way to get one in Windows, and all you need to do it is… your desktop.

New Text File
First, right-click on your desktop and create a new text file. It doesn’t matter what you name it, I usually keep mine as “New Text File”

 

UDL File
Next, rename your new file with a .UDL extension. Notice that when you do, the icon changes to something that ISN’T a text file.

 

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Popularity: 12% [?]

Most computers have internal clocks dedicated to maintaining system time. The internal real-time clocks rely on relatively cheap crystal oscillators, which are very inaccurate. In many cases computer system time can drift by several minutes each day. This article describes various methods of keeping a highly accurate time on your computer. It describes how to utilise Internet time servers, radio and GPS clocks and dedicated NTP server systems.
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Popularity: 12% [?]

I used to tell people that Remote Desktop was the best (only?) good thing that Microsoft has ever done in any of its products. Not any more. System Restore has now replaced Remote Desktop as M$’s premiere bragging point as far as I’m concerned. The System Restore function goes beyond merely saving time and effort and jumps straight into the realm of literally saving your ass. Like it did mine just the other day.

I was on a client site, and in order to get the job done I hadto put my company-issued laptop on the client’s local domain. That’s a big no-no at my company for a variety of very good reasons… all of which I ignored in the interests of getting things done. So, I changed my laptop’s name and associated it with the client’s domain. I logged in. I was instantly greeted with a window informing me that Windows was uninstalling all the “managed software” from my OLD network.

“Managed Software”?

Yeah…. you know, stuff like Word and Excel and PowerPoint. And Adobe Acrobat. All gone. Microsoft Outlook? With all my emails? Gone! I don’t mean “shortcut removed from the desktop” gone, I mean Entire Application UNINSTALLED GONE!

The Problem:

The client didn’t have licenses for my installed application, so when I joined their domain, the domain controller unpimped my laptop.

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Popularity: 8% [?]