You may already know you can select a bunch of pictures to cycle through as a slideshow in Windows 7 theme, but what you may not know is you can also utilize the power of RSS feeds too.
It is a documented but not well-known feature in Windows 7 theme that provide the ability to specify a RSS feed as the source of slideshow images. However, due to the limitation of the RSS feed use in Windows RSS Platform, you can’t easily specify a RSS Feed inside the Control Panel Personalization window. It must be created manually. Here is how.
Step 1, create or modify the theme pack file
The easiest way is to find an existing theme file, make change to it, and save as a new theme file.
The system default themes are located in
%systemroot%\Resources\Themes
And the user customized themes are stored in
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes
Open the .theme file in notepad or any text editor, and locate to the [slideshow] section, and change the content as following.
[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed=http://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages
Save as the theme file to your desktop. And make sure .theme as the file extension name.
Note that this theme will pull the images from Bing as the source of slideshow pictures.
Step 2: Activate the theme you just made
Double-click the theme file you just made to set it as your visual theme. If this is the first time you subscribe this feed, the following window will pop up asking
Make sure you click the first option “Download Attachments”, and then the new created the theme will show up in Personalization window. To activate it, just simply click it.
A couple of notes
1. The feed specified in the theme file will be subscribed through Internet Explorer, you can check and change the feed properties from the Feeds panel in Favourites.
For example, the default frequency of update to the feed is set to 1 day, you can change it from the Feed Properties window.
2. As noted above, in order to get the feed to work, images inside the feeds must be adhering as an enclosure item in the feed. Therefore, unfortunately, not every feed can be used as the source of slideshow images.
Some good resources to use
Other than Bing: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages, Flickr will a very good resource to use, as their feeds to different set or users pictures are Windows RSS Platform compliant.
Filed under: Windows 7 | Leave a Comment
When you try to download any suite, application or edition release Microsoft Office 2007 retail products or Office 2K7 Enterprise edition installer setup file online, you will need to login with your Windows Live ID or Microsoft Passport account, and/or have to fill up profile information such as name, contact address, email address, phone number, company name and other personal details. However, all this order and checkout process to download the setup binaries of Office 2007 is just the requirement to obtain a free trial product key which valid for 60 days to evaluate Office 2007 program that has been downloaded.
If you just need the full standalone setup installer for Microsoft Office 2007 suites such as Office 2007 Enterprise and Office 2007 Professional, or redistributable setup package for individual Microsoft Office 2007 applications such as Office Groove 2007, Office OneNote 2007, Office Publisher 2007 and Office Visio 2007, and do not need the free-of-charge evaluation license or product key, you can skip the sign up step and download directly from Microsoft the full setup files which will install complete features and functionalities that the genuine perpetual purchased versions will get, if you can provide the installed Office program a genuine and legal product key and successfully activate it.
Office 2007 Direct Download Link:
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007
Microsoft Office Professional 2007
Microsoft Office Small Business 2007
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
Microsoft Office Standard 2007
Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2007
Microsoft Office Groove 2007
Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007
If you own volume license agreement and VLK, you can download Office 2007 from Microsoft Volume Licensing Services site.
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Tags: download, office 2007
I have just had this problem and it was driving me mad, I was thinking it was down to Windows Live Writer, which I had just installed but after a little investigation turns out it is a common word 2007 issue, anyway here is the fix.
*********************************
Delete the Word Data registry key:
Most of the frequently used options in Word are stored in the Word Data registry key. A common troubleshooting step is to delete the Word Data registry key. The next time that you start Word, Word rebuilds the Word Data registry key by using the default settings.
To view these options in Word 2002 or Word 2003, click Options on the Tools menu.
To view these options in Word 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options.
Note When you delete the Word Data registry key, Word resets several options to their default settings. One such option is the "most recently used file" list on the File menu. Additionally, Word resets many settings that you customize in the Options dialog box.
To delete the Word Data registry key, follow these steps:
1. Exit all Office programs.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry subkey, as appropriate for the version of Word that you are running:
• Word 2002: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Word\Data
• Word 2003: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Data
• Word 2007: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
4. Click Data, and then click Export on the File menu.
5. Name the file Wddata.reg, and then save the file to the desktop.
6. Click Delete on the Edit menu, and then click Yes.
7. Exit Registry Editor.
8. Start Word.
If Word starts and works correctly, you have resolved the problem. The problem was a damaged Word Data registry key. You may have to change several settings to restore your favourite options in Word.
Filed under: Office | Leave a Comment
Remote Printer Map
I have been recently looking a for a remote printer script so that when I setup a domain server I can attach one batch file to each user and when they logon to the new machine on the domain the script would install the printers, you can see below the script I found:
“rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /n\\<servername>\<printer sharename>”
Obviously replace the server name and share name with you server name and share name.
I will admit this isn’t the best script as it installs the printer whether it is already installed on the machine or not but at least you know it will always be installed for the user, if you do find anything better then please let me know.
Filed under: Windows Server | 1 Comment
Environment
- BlackBerry® smartphone
- BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft® Exchange versions 2.1 to 5.0
- Microsoft® Exchange Server versions 5.5 to 2007
Overview
Wireless calendar synchronization occurs only one-way from the Microsoft® Outlook® calendar to the BlackBerry smartphone calendar. It does not synchronize from the BlackBerry smartphone to the Microsoft Outlook calendar. Continue reading ‘Blackberry one-way wireless calendar synchronization issues’
Filed under: Blackberry, Exchange Server, Windows Server | Leave a Comment
When you install Windows, Setup requests that you enter your name, and optional…
When you install Windows, Setup requests that you enter your name, and optionally, the organization name.
This registration information is displayed under Registered to in the General tab of System when you click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
To change your name and company information after Windows is installed on your computer, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
4. To change the company name, do the following:
In the right pane, double-click RegisteredOrganization. Under Value data, type the name that you want, and then click OK.
5. To change the name of the registered owner, do the following:
In the right pane, double-click RegisteredOwner. UnderValue data, type the name that you want, and then click OK.
6. Click Exit on the File menu to quit Registry Editor.
Important
This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/ ) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows
Filed under: Windows | 1 Comment
Tags: change name, company information, install windows xp, registry
WHS Drive Balancing Tool
The AV Science Forums have a post for Windows Home Server users about a new tool that helps with drive balancing.
The utility balances all the data on your drive pool equally, the main purpose being that when a person adds a drive to the pool, it doesn’t necessarily start getting used for a while. While Microsoft has made changes to the usage of the Landing Zone (as in it doesn’t exist anymore), some people’s systems might still be in a non “evened out” state and wish to correct this. On the authors own system, he routinely gets within 2% of perfect balancing on all pooled drives.
NOTE: Usage instructions are available in the following forum post. Make sure you download the latest version, which at the time of publishing is version 1.01 and remember it can take a few hours to balance some systems.
Filed under: Windows Home Server - WHS | Leave a Comment
Tags: WHS Drive Balancing Tool
A while ago now, Kevin Royalty wrote an article on how to use the Windows Software Update Services (WSUS) using your Windows Home Server. What this meant is that you could use WSUS to download any Microsoft updates and have your computers get the updates from the WSUS instead of each one having to go out to the Internet for updates. This also meant that you could control what updates are installed.
Kevin has since updated the article to include an automated way of performing maintenance. So, here it is – thanks Kevin!
By Kevin Royalty, SBS MVP
Thanks to many of the Small Business Server and Home Server MVPs for their invaluable input and suggestions to improve this document. I’m proud to be one of you.
Thanks to Andrew Edney for hosting this update on UsingWindowsHomeServer. Continue reading ‘Extending Windows Home Server with WSUS’
Filed under: Windows Home Server - WHS | Leave a Comment
Tags: Extending Windows Home Server with WSUS
The Windows 7 Sidebar and Gadgets do not work correctly if a user disables the User Account Control in Windows 7. There is however an easy way to make the gadgets and sidebar work again without having to replace system files (that was the way suggested in many forums).
All that needs to be done is to change one value of a parameter in the Windows 7 Registry to make the sidebar and gadgets work even with UAC disabled.
Open the Windows 7 Registry by pressing [Windows R], typing [regedit] and hitting [enter]. Now navigate to the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Setting and change the value of AllowElevatedProcess to 1.
Restart the computer or logout and login again to see if the changes work as intended. The Registry setting ensures that the gadgets and the sidebar are working in Windows 7 properly even if UAC is disabled.
Update
This post was originally written for Windows 7 beta but since the Windows 7 RTM has arrived the reg path has changed to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings
You should probably notice that settings is not present so you will need to right click sidebar and create key called settings. Once created you will now need to create a “DWORD” inside settings called “AllowElevatedProcess” and giving it the value of 1 when asked, click ok and then logoff and then log back on, you should now find your gadgets working without fault.
Filed under: Windows 7 | Leave a Comment
Tags: Run Gadgets In Windows 7 With Disabled UAC
Windows 7 can run on machines with lower specs than required for Windows Vista, and many users are actually finding it runs better than Windows XP on lower spec machines. It’s also ideal to run on newer netbook machines, but unfortunately many of these do not include a DVD drive so how do you install windows 7 on a machine without a DVD drive?
I spent yesterday researching this exact problem and I managed to install Windows 7 on my Acer Aspire One netbook in around 20 minutes using a 4GB USB Drive. Setting up the USB drive to install Windows 7 was fairly easy in the end, and the installation was quicker than a DVD drive, so this method is perfect if you want to install Windows 7 quickly on several machines.
How To Install Windows 7 From A USB Drive
- Find a standard 4GB USB Drive and plug it into your machine
- Click Start in your enter ‘cmd’ in the run field. Once cmd is open type in ‘diskpart’ and a new window will open
- In the new diskpart window type:
- ‘list disk’ : This lists all the disk drives attached to your machine
- Look for your USB drive and note the number and then type: ’select disk #’, where ‘#’ is your USB disk number
- then type ‘clean’
- then type ‘create partition primary’
- then ’select partition 1′
- then ‘active’
- then ‘format fs=fat32 quick’
Once you’ve finished these steps you then need to copy your Windows 7 files to the USB. To do this you have to mount your Windows 7 ISO as a virtual DVD. Doing this is easy:
- Install MagicDisk (free)
- once installed, right-click on MagicDisk in your system tray click on ‘Virtual CD/DVD-Rom’, select your DVD drive
- then ‘Mount’ and in the dialog window that opens up, select your Windows 7 ISO
- Now in windows Explorer, click on your DVD drive and you should see all the Windows 7 Files. All you have to do now is copy and paste all the files to your USB key and you have a Windows 7 USB Installation Stick!
- Install the stick in the PC you want to install Windows 7 on and boot up. Remember to change your bios to allow booting from USB
If you follow the steps above then you should have no problems installing Windows 7 from a USB key. But if you do, leave a comment below.
Filed under: Windows 7 | Leave a Comment
Tags: How To Install Windows 7 From a USB Hard Flash/Hard Drive
BBC Technology- UK climate unit's e-mails hacked Friday, November 20, 2009The e-mail system of one of the world's leading climate research units has been breached by hackers.
- YouTube gets automatic subtitles Friday, November 20, 2009Automatic captions for YouTube videos are to roll out across its channels, says parent company Google.
- Facebook acts on follower trade Friday, November 20, 2009Social networking site Facebook has threatened legal action against a site that sells friends and followers.
- Dell sees quarterly profits fall Thursday, November 19, 2009US computer giant Dell reports another decline in its quarterly profits, sending its shares 7% lower.
- Google previews operating system Thursday, November 19, 2009Internet search giant Google previews its Chrome OS operating system, to be available to users by the end of 2010.
- UK climate unit's e-mails hacked Friday, November 20, 2009
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