terrypin

I mistakenly thought QTLite was a 'non Quicktime' alternative, but I see it still has that brand. So I've uninstalled it (in case it starts pestering me for updates, loose change, etc). I seem to have got rid of that odd entry by fiddling in various ways. And associated MOV with VLC for now. I'll try MPC shortly. One other associated issue is that initially d-clicking an MOV attempted to play IrfanView, with which it was associated (at IV installation time). But it promptly crashed. I do have the IV Quicktime plug-in, so that's puzzling. Any thoughts please? Mainly out of academic interest. IrfanView is great at most stuff (with image files) and I suspect I'm missing something that would make it equally good for video too. I've dropped the author an email. Sorry about the screenshot. For completeness, here it is: -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

After trying to add a new program QTLite (an alternative to QuickTime) to the Open With list for an MOV, instead of QTlite appearing in the list I have the strange entry shown in this screenshot: http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?i...problem1nr9.jpg (I tried using it but not surprisingly nothing obvious happened.) Anyone a) Have any idea how this came about? B) Know how to get rid of it? After some googling I found this link http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=258860 but the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Explorer\FileExts\.MOV\OpenWithList doesn't have a Setup/Uninstall entry. c) How to achieve my original aim of adding QTlite to the OpenWith list? Thanks. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

It's only a cosmetic issue but a sprinkling of the icons in the Start Menu (at various levels) are the 'standard yellow folder', instead of the proper one. I could change every one individually but that's tedious. Is there some way to fix the lot in one go please? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks both, appreciate your help. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

On my old PC (OEM supplied XP Home, 6 years old) I can run sfc /scannow with no CD. But on my new PC, from same OEM (MESH, UK), I am asked to insert the 'XP Pro SP 2 disk'. I only have the MESH Recovery CD and that didn't work until I made an identical copy of it and used that! So that's the first question: does that mean it's a flawed CD? If so, how can the copy apparently work? Anyway, after making an 'identical' copy (and verifying it in the process), it seems I can now run sfc. Very slowly. Darned if I can recall how I set it up 6 years ago to use the HD instead. Presumably I copied some/all files from the recovery CD to a folder on the HD? But which files, and to which folder? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks, but how would that fairly complex step help? Anyway, the profile I'm using already is a new one. (I changed it because OEM supplier had called the original 'Admin', and I didn't like that.) Any other ideas anyone please? Is this behaviour the default? If so, I'd have thought most users would also want to change it? Getting thumbnails every time you try to Open or Save My Pictures is a real pain. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

No one with any suggestions on how to do this please? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I have all my folders set to List View. But most applications insist on opening Save As > My Pictures (and Save As > My Videos) in Thumbnail view. As these folders contain scores of subfolders, that's never appropriate for me. Is it possible to change that behaviour for XP generally please? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I reckon I may have the solution a few minutes later. Bit obscure, but it seems that this particular site needs javascript enabled, and I had blocked it using a Firefox extension called NoScript. I'd already unblocked it for the BBC site. So presumably XP detected that this task hadn't been terminated properly? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I'm having various problems with setting up scheduled tasks on my new XP Pro PC, but I'll keep them to individual posts, One quirk that puzzles me is this r-click option to End Task. It's greyed out for all but one of my tasks. That simply runs Firefox with a link to a weather forecast. But it has Run permanently greyed. If I use End Task, that closes Firefox itself (badly, leaving it in Task Mgr). Yet for a similar task, to visit BBC News, the 'End Task' command remains greyed at all times. That's what I'd expect, as the task is presumably just equivalent to clicking a URL. So the concept of 'ending' that doesn't make sense. Anyone have any thoughts/insights please? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

That was premature I cannot get the task to accept the password I used on the old PC! -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Is there a neat way to transfer all my Scheduled Tasks from the old PC to the new please? Even if some further manual effort is necessary, this would be far better than starting from scratch and re-entering every definition I've accumulated over 6 years. --------- EDIT: OK, sorted thanks. Lots of work yet to be done, but the basic transfer can be achieved by copying across the added contents of C:\Windows\Tasks. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Sure -> TTT.zip Copy "ToolTipFix.exe" to your system32 directory, execute it and then import the ttfix.reg file. The program will then always start with Windows and run continously in the background, polling the tooltip windows periodically and bring them on top of the taskbar/system tray. The tool uses very little resources. Let me know how it works for you. Thanks. For last 24 hours or so my pop-up tooltips have been behaving. At the next occurrence of the problem I'll try your solution. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Really? This bug has been around for years now, also in Windows 2003 Server. About a year ago I got fed up waiting for a fix from MS and wrote a tool that fixes this for good (all the reg patches I tried did not work). Is it something you can share please? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks. But on closer examination it seems that the pop-ups are also getting obscured by application windows too! -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

On my newly-installed XP Pro PC, a short while into a session I keep finding that when I hover over an item in the System Tray (rh side of Taskbar) the yellow pop-up description is almost hidden behind the tray. Under Properties I have all these checked: Lock the taskbar Keep the taskbar on top of other windows Group similar taskbar buttons Show Quick Launch and this is unchecked: Auto-hide the taskbar Anyone know what cause might be please? There are only a few new unfamiliar icons on this new PC and obviously I'll quickly be familiar with them, but it's irritating! -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

On my new (much faster) PC, when I click either of the two 'one-step' arrows at the end of a vertical scroll bar, the movement is really sluggish. On my old PC it's immediate. Where is the setting that controls this please? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks GL, got it. I'll use TweakUI. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks both, appreciate your advice. GL: Could you amplify a bit on the 'Places Bar' comment please - not sure I know what you mean. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

My new PC's file structure has the initial standard organisation: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users (86 MB) C:\Documents and Settings\Default ( 1 MB) C:\Documents and Settings\Terry ( 3 MB). I'll keep running my old PC until I have an appropriate selection from 6 years accumulated applications, tweaks, macros etc satisfactorily working on the new machine. Using my broadband router I've copied across most of the data and setup executables I need. This is organised how I set it up years ago, not in the standard fashion. For example, on the new PC I now have temporary folders preserving the old PC structure, like these: C:\Docs (13 GB, my re-location of 'My Documents') C:\Docs\Sundry (2 GB, one of scores of sub-folders) C:\Docs\My Pictures (Virtually empty) C:\Docs\My Music (Virtually empty) C:\Docs\My Videos (Virtually empty) C:\My Pictures (37 GB) C:\My Music (12 GB) C:\Movies (14 GB) etc So the question facing me now is whether to keep that structure or go back to the MS 'standard'. The main reason I re-organised in the first place was because I hated all those long path names, which were usually impossible to see in full, like C:\Documents and Settings\Terry\My Documents\Sundry\Restaurants.txt With my structure, it's C:\Docs\Sundry\Restaurants.txt which fits comfortably in the title area of most folders. Also, I've never felt comfortable with such enormously large folders. Mine are large enough, but if they were all inside C:\Documents and Settings\Terry\My Documents\ they would make that around 70 GB, and growing. But there's another important advantage now. Six years in, I have hundreds of shortcuts (and macros) that use the existing structure, which would now have to be changed. However, on the other side of the coin, there are some factors making me hesitate. For a start, it's obviously easier to 'go with the crowd'. Setting the standard approach up on the new PC would be simple - just move the contents of each of my folders into their appropriate equivalents inside 'My Documents'. Another problem with my non-stadard structure is that several of my applications insist on trying to save (and open) folders that follow the MS pattern, and I have to intervene. For example, I make DVDs, and some of my video editors and burning programs have a fixation on 'My Videos', whereas all my stuff is in C:\Movies. So, faced with those pros and cons (and probably some I've missed), I'd greatly welcome other experienced users' views please. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks a lot Geek, those detailed instructions worked perfectly. I would have got it wrong at some stage or other without them! With that done, my next step is to decide on my file organisation structure, and I'd much appreciate advice from anyone on that too. But I'll raise it as a separate thread, 'Organising My Documents?' -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks, I'll try that tomorrow morning. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Instead of using my own name, the suppliers of my new PC have set up XP Pro with the name 'Admin'. So my data is currently in C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\My Documents. How can I change 'Admin' to 'Terry' please? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

I'm getting some very bizarre behaviour here. I'm in a program called Magix Movie Edit Pro - although I don't think that's necessarily going to prove central to the issue. I click a button that's supposed to take me to an online site for downloading video resources. A window appears titled 'Security Alert'. Its message is: "You are about to leave a secure Internet connection. It will be possible for others to view information you send. Do you want to continue?" That's a fairly familiar window - from a web browser - but as I said, I'm not. Anyway, I clicked No. That started a unstoppable flood of 'empty' IE6 windows! All titled something like 'No page to display'. Within seconds I had over a hundred covering the desktop. And I don't even *use* IE - my browser is Firefox. XP Home Task Manager brought an end to this, but I had to force closure of Movie Edit Pro and then IE6. 'Yes' takes me to the site, where I'm asked to register. I decline, so close that page. That returns me to the 3 options. 'More Info' gives a window titled 'What's new in Internet Explorer'! Where does that come from? Its content is the familiar one: "Entering a non-secure Web site from a secure Web site. The Web site you were viewing was a secure site. A secure Web site provides secure communication and has a valid certificate. blah blah ... If you do not feel confident about viewing this site, click No." Which is where I came in... Can anyone offer any clue as to what might be going on here please? Needless to say, I've emailed Magix Support, but another Magix user couldn't duplicate the behaviour so somehow I have a feeling this is an obscure conflict or XP issue. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Thanks for the follow-up. I'll try both DriverCleaner and JV16. -- Terry, West Sussex, UK