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.

Gmail labels and date sorting

When you apply a label to a GoogleMail message that message is sorted by the date that label was applied (not the date of the latest email in the conversation) - which can be a bit confusing as the Inbox messages are sorted according to latest dated conversation?! Is this a bug or a feature....

Anyway you can get Gmail to resort all your messages in a particular labelled directory/folder by going into the folder and selecting all messages in folder and reapplying the same label - magically the messages will be sorted according to lastest conversation date!

An alternative approach (which keeps the same ordering in the original folder) is to again select all messages in the folder and the apply a new label - this new labelled folder will contain a properly date sorted list of emails.

Dynamic library dependencies - direct or not?

So you're looking at some (Linux) binary and wondering what libraries it uses - You can use ldd to list all the dependencies:
ldd /path/to/your/app
However this shows direct and indirect (i.e. those needed by other libraries) dependencies, so you can tell what are just the direct dependencies by using readelf:
readelf -d /path/to/your/app
The direct dependencies are the libraries listed as NEEDED.

Leopard upgrade and kernel crashes/panics

I just upgraded from Tiger (which I was very happy with) to Leopard - which has crashed no lees than four times since I installed it?!! I was going to do a clean reinstall but apart from not wanting to sink more time into I did some Googling and found some possible cures - basically due to older (non-Leopard compatible) versions of software - particularly kernel modules (kext stuff). You can have a look at the kernel modules loaded by running kextstat and looking out for non apple ones. Or better you can use the following incantation to show you all non apple kernel modules (including from the Startup folder) on your system (shows you their bundle name, ID and path):
kextfind -e -f /Library/StartupItems/* -not -bundle-id -i -substring 'com.apple.' -report -b -B -print
Or to do the same for loaded modules only (which are a possible immediate problem):
kextfind -e -f /Library/StartupItems/* -loaded -not -bundle-id -i -substring 'com.apple.' -report -b -B -print
To cure suspect (if you see them in a crash report or seeing nasty logs about them) kext modules - either find an appropriate upgrade, uninstall them or unload and remove them (e.g sudo kexunload /Library/Extensions/Dodgy.kext && rm /Library/Extensions/Dodgy.kext) and reboot.

You should also go and have look at the system logs (Console app) to see if there's nasty messages in there about dodgy goings ons.

Here's s of the known ones that cause issues:

• Doublecommand - Upgrade or uninstall it - The old version seemed to be the cause of a some USB related crashes.
• SmartSleep - Seems not to work properly and leaves quite trail in the log files.
  

I hate Office/Word 2007/2008 Ribbbon crap

The change to Microsoft's "Office" suite with their new ribbon thingy is plain annoying/frustrating and big time waste. I have used Word for years and been comfortable with it (as far as is possible) I knew where things were - but now in 2007 I haven't clue. I'm not saying they were that logical before but they're no more so now and I imagine just annoy/alienate a vast number of existing users.

The stupidest thing was they didn't include some form of helper system for transition or provide a way to switch back to 'classic' mode. Though it turns out that there is some online info, including a Flash interactive helper to help you to find commands from Word 2003 in 2007. An one can purchase an external plugin, Ribboncustomizer, that provides access a version of the old interface - the free edition has some basic functionality including a 'Classic UI' tab.

There are plenty of other word processors out these days and instead of relearning Word I'm keen to move to something else - Open Office is getting better these days and Apple's Office suite is good too. Also online Office suites are getting very usable now - most notably Google Docs and others.