This driver is blocked due to incompatibility issues

Yeah this kept popping up and although it told me that the Driver: Virtual PC/Windows CE Emulator was the problem it firstly didn't tell me where it was (i.e. filename) nor how uninstall the damn thing?! (just some useless 'check for solutions online' button).

Finally I tracked it down using Microsoft's (was the excellent Sysinternals) LoadOrder tool and the very handy Autoruns. I tracked it down to: "VPCAppSv Provides application services for Virtual PC. Connectix Corporation c:\windows\system32\drivers\vpcappsv.sys" which turns out to be a black listed driver for WinXP. Nice.

So I just deleted from driver list (under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services) in Autoruns, then rebooted - and no more warnings ;) Then it can just be deleted.

Varilight dimmer remote control

Got one of these things a while back - they're neat dimmer switches with a touch control - no moving parts - get 'em from Homebase etc. They're remotely controllable (over IR-InfraRed) - and you can buy a specific remote for from about £5 upwards.

However these Varilight dimmers are smart - you can program them to do a bunch of things - depending on which model you have. It's not clear how to work that out (apart from testing it using its programming mode - see below), but all of them can be programmed to work with any remote control you have - e.g your TV remote. Just choose a spare button that you don't use and you can get the varilight to use it to turn the thing on and off! As mentioned here:

1. Tap switch 6 times - takes it in to 'learning mode' (After the 6 taps the light will go and off once more to indicate it's in learning mode).
2. Point your choose remote at it whilst pressing (for 2 secs or more) that your chosen button at it - the lights will go on and off.
3. Point the remote at the it again whist pressing the button and the lights should go on and off
4. You're done - it should work as your new remote control!

Windows Mobile device sync problem finally fixed!

Finally - after trying a bunch of stuff since November last year I have managed to locate a cure for my 'Error' in WMDC. Amazingly enough this(also ripped off here) was the cure - it cures a related problem I also saw in IE when I attempted to download a cab: "this device is restricted from downloading this file type" - I was led here from the excellent xda forums

• The problem and fix are incredibly created using Mobile Word ??!!** - when saving docs as plain text files - so beware. Here's the proceedure cribbed from the the link above (in case it disappears):
  
• 1) soft reset device
  2) Start / Office Mobile / Word
  3) Create a new document (click on New)
  4) type some text (just plain text - no formatting - it was 'plain text document') just a few characters
  5) File / Save As...
  6) I have selected type 'Plain Text'
  7) It asked me whether I want to save it at 'Word document instead' - I clicked No.
  8) I have powered off the device and did soft reset
  9) Start file explorer, find the file (it was in My Device / My Documents), click on it - it opens Word again.
  10) Add some formatting (I have selected part of text and changed font to bold)
  11) Close Word - it asked whether to save it in Word format - this time I said Yes
  12) Power-off the device and press soft reset again

As to why this works is anyone's guess... I did take the trouble to dump my security registry keys (HKLM\Security\Policies\Policies) before I performed the magical fix but I found no difference in those key values before and afterwards.... But there seems to be a mountain of security related controls in Windows Mobile - see MSDN's Security Policy settings, Provisioning Security Settings - I'm sure somewhere in there is the answer....

Dirty Sexy Money S02E10 - doesn't exist!

Are looking for the "final" episode of Dirty Sexy Money .... or, even worse, have you already downloaded Dirty.Sexy.Money.S02E10.HDTV.XviD-NoTV.avi or Dirty.Sexy.Money.S02E10.HDTV.XviD-NoTV.avi.rar?

And then it asked you for that pesky password from some spam website:www.askmu.com?

Look no further ... You've probably seen the last episode of this series already (S02E09) - this E10 is just a bullshit lure. Check the ABC website to check what you have seen.... And save yourself the wasted time...

[update 27may09]: It seems that this episode and newer ones are now/soon becoming available as the series reaches its finale (see comments below for more details).

Windows on VMware fusion crashes: STOP 0x0000007B

I installed VMware fusion on my Mac and got it to boot my native installation of Windows but on boot up in the VM it crashed with a blue screen message STOP 00007B. Took me a while to find it but I actually followed some advice from Microsoft themselves which mostly fixed it. The missing piece to the puzzle was one of the sys files you need to copy over was in %SystemRoot%\Driver Cache\I386\sp2.cab (in addition to Driver.cab).

It works great but then I got asked to reactive windows - there seems to be a fix here.

Windows Mobile Device Centre fun....NOT [FIXED!]

Hmmm - As someone said WMDC is a great sales tool for the iPhone/GPhone! I plugged in my pesky Windows Mobile 6 phone and it just pops up with "Error" one day... Not useful, at all. I've spent quite a while trying to track down the problem. There's a few sites (pocketpcfaq, modernnomads) out there that do offer useful advice but they didn't solve my problem.

• Firstly I found out how to enable debug logs for WMDC - note you can also see some of the error messages if you use DebugView.
• There are also error logs in the Windows Event Viewer 0x8007274a
  
• Looking at the wmdc logs I see an 0x80004005 error which a general code for permission denied.
  
• Some of these Windows Mobile Power Toys were interesting.
• This guy (translated from French) has some useful info on security on Windows Mobile.
• Microsoft's Vista MDC guide
• Microsoft MDC troubleshooting
  
• Finall - I found a fix! - after following up a solution to this error when using IE to download a cab or pdf file: "this device is restricted from downloading this file type" - see my latest post on the matter.

[updated: 26aug09]

Stopping all OSX Google background 'updater' apps

Once you install Google software you get lumbered with various 'updater' daemons running on your machine. If you want to stop 'em running the Google way then you're obliged to uninstall all Google apps... However there always another way... Here are all the offending processes listed by process name as seen in Activity monitor:

• "Google Updater Helper" - Firstly started by /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist (from here) and subsequently by launchd - (seen by running launchctl list | grep com.google.Updater.helper) - more info on startup from Apple.
  Removal: edit/remove the google item in that file using property editor/textedit/Pacifist
• "googleml-modwatch" - Started by launchd from: /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.google.GoogleML.plist.
  Removal: rename com.google.GoogleML.plist to com.google.GoogleML.plist.off e.g.:
  sudo mv /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.google.GoogleML.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.google.GoogleML.plist.off
• "GoogleSoftwareUpdateDaemon" - another launchd startup
  Removal: sudo mv /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.google.keystone.daemon.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.google.keystone.daemon.plist.off
• "GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent" - another launchd startup
  Removal: sudo mv /Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.agent.plist /Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.agent.plist.off

Then Restart and they should all be gone.... You can still manually run the updates when you want to by running:"/Library/Google/Google Updater/Google Updater.app".

How to open .eml [outlook] email attachments

To read an email sent as an attachment from another email client (e.g. Outlook) you just save the file and give it an .eml extension - then you can open it using Mozilla's Thunderbird (on Windows, Linux or OSX) - Just go to the 'File' menu and select 'Open Saved Message...'. I assume you should also be able to use Outlook on Windows.

You can just open the message in a text editor - like Gedit, Notepad, Notepad++, Textedit, etc

There are also some utilities out there to convert .eml to mbox format.