Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Wiping my Treo 700w

Just a few short days ago I bought a "new" phone. It was actually a purchase from Craigslist. My contract with Verizon is actually up tomorrow!!! After 10 years of locked in commitment, I'm done (at least until the next really great deal comes along :)

Changing to the new phone was a snap, I just called *228 and chose option 3 from the new phone. It was that easy to switch phones, and it didn't actually involve a real person (are they passing those savings on to us? (I think not.)

So now my Palm Treo 700w is on Craigslist. Of course my info needs to be gone, and that's simple to do as many sites show. I looked it up on the Michigan State Univ. site, so I'll give them the credit.

What's needed is a hard reset:
- Hold down the red power button while pushing in the reset button under the battery case lid. When it begin to reboot, it'll ask if you want to erase all your information. (Should you have an SD card, it will be left in tact.)

As for my choice of phone, I got a VX6800 running Windows Mobile 6.1 and I'm very happy with it; but that'll be another post...

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Wrong Office 2007 Key

Have you ever used the wrong Office 2007 key and find out you can't activate your installation?

Never fear, Lancelhoff has the answer (and a few others as well), but I thought I'd add myself to the mix.

To change the Office 2007 Product Key:

1. Click Start -> Run
2. Type regedit and click OK
3. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registration
Under Registration, there is subkey that is like: {91120000-0030-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}
4. Under Registration, you might find several subkeys that contain a combination of alphanumeric characters. Each key is specific to a program installed on your computer.
Open each subkey to view and identify the Office product version by the ProductName registry entry in the right pane. For example: ProductName=Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007
5. Once you have the subkey that contains the Office product you wish to update the license key for, delete the following registry entries
DigitalProductID
ProductID
6. Close regedit
7. Start Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook or another Office application, you should now be prompted to enter a new product key.
8. Enter your new Office product key, and click OK
9. If prompted to choose your preferred type of Microsoft Office 2007 installation, select Install Now
10. Microsoft Office 2007 should now have your new CD key

And in doing this I was successful in activating Office and all was right in the world once more.

UPDATE: Should the install be on a 64-bit system, you can find the keys in question under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\version\Registration

And at least with Office 2010, you can go to Programs and Features, highlight the product and click Change, you'll be presented with Enter a Product Key as a choice.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Turn Up IMAP Logging in Exchange 2007

This one took me a little while to find, but there are two ways to modify IMAP logging in Exchange 2007. (BTW, I'm trying to get cross-site connectivity with IMAP to work.)

Open Regedit, go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchange IMAP\Diagnostics and change the General value to something useful for you: 0 (Lowest), 1 (Low), 3 (Medium), 5 (High), and 7 (Expert).

You can also makes this happen via the EMS by using:
Set-EventLogLevel “MSExchange IMAP4\General” -Level High

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Emergency Patch Today!

A critical flaw in Internet Explorer (some say Exploder) has been found and patched today.

This is a very critical update due to the fact your system can be affected by just visiting a website.

Go to Windows Update and patch your system!

Monday, December 8, 2008

X-Mouse on Vista

Anyone used to using a UNIX-based OS like FreeBSD or Linux is familiar with X-Mouse.

In short, it changes the foreground focus (window, application or desktop) based on wherever the mouse cursor happens to be. This for many, speeds up productivity a bit by saving clicks (about a nano-second each).

To enable this in Vista, go to the Control Panel > Ease of Access Center (or press the Windows key + U). Click the link "Make the mouse easier to use" and choose "Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse" and then Save.

Once you start moving your cursor around you'll notice the focus will change automatically after a short delay. It's not for everybody, but can be helpful when using multiple monitors. Start saving nano-seconds now :)

Friday, December 5, 2008

Mark Minasi's News

It there's one tech author I enjoy reading it's Mark Minasi, he has a way of turning dry, stale tech books into something worth reading. Anyway, I digress...

If you head over to his site, you can sign up for his free newsletter. It's not as regular as it could be, but life isn't always on a schedule. All the issues have useful content and there is a full archive. The latest news has a great list showing the benefits of Windows 2008. It is definitely worth subscribing.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Vista SP2

There seems to be quite a laundry list of items coming in Vista SP2. This service pack actually covers Windows 2008 as well, in case you missed that news a while back. The advent of Vista SP1 coincided with the release of Windows 2008 in order to once again unify the kernel, ala NT4/W2K.

What's in the update you ask? Check out Mary-Jo Foley's post listing all the goodies.

The stand-alone download for this thing is probably going to be ginormous since it will include the previous service pack, so I'd suggest using Windows Update when it becomes available unless you just can't wait.