Author: nrogoff

How to fix Adobe PDF preview in 64 bit Windows

This will fix previews in both Outlook and Windows explorer on Windows 7 64 bit machines.

If you get

This file cannot be previewed because of an error with the following previewer: PDF Preview Handler for Vista

in outlook when trying to preview PDF’s or just get no previews of PDF’s in explorer..

..then try the following.

Caution: Changing the registry should be done with great care…so make a backup of any changes!

  1. Start the Registry editor by using Start->Run (or Windows Key + R) and type regedit and click OK
  2. Expanding the tree to locate
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193} and select it.
  3. Now to make a backup of the previous settings just in case this does not work for you, right-click on the branch in the left pane and select export. Choose a location you can find again later (just in case! Although you should do this for any registry changes too.). You only need to export the selected branch. Windows 7 automatically takes full registry snapshot in case of major problems.
  4. Now on the right hand side double-click to edit the AppID value and change it to {534A1E02-D58F-44f0-B58B-36CBED287C7C}.
  5. I preview started working immediately even without restarting outlook! However you may need to restart?

Now, I can’t take credit for this brilliant solution. I found it at http://bink.nu/news/fix-adobe-pdf-preview-handler-on-64-bit-windows.aspx and only write it again here to make it easier to find for all! Why adobe don’t fix this I am not sure!

Easy Deep Zoom Panoramas with Microsoft’s ICE

Microsoft Research have produced a great panorama application that requires almost no input at all! It’s called Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE).

image

Now there are several programs out there that will do panoramas and you probably got one with your camera. However what is really great with this is the stitching algorithm seems very good and best of all is the very easy export to Deep Zoom Tileset!

(For more info on Deep Zoom see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645050(VS.95).aspx or for the very good Deep Zoom Composer application for creating them go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd409068.aspx)

It can also export in a new format called HD View.

(For information on this tool and plug-in see http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/IVM/HDView/HDcreate.htm.)

You just add your images and the rest is pretty much done for you. I have quickly tried it a on a couple of panorama I took while on holiday in Spain. These are the out the box Deep Zooms and took no other intervention from me. 5 minutes and done.

This one was taken on a tripod using a Nikon D300. 15 Images.

Click to see Deep Zoom Panorama of the Villa

and this using a compact Panasonic DMC-FT1 camera hand held, but using the Panorama help function. 7 Images.

Click to see Deep Zoom Panorama of Andalucia

You can get and download ICE for free at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

 

 

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Changing the MS Office 2007 Product Key – 32 and 64-bit

Just installed Office to discover that the Key I used has been used too many times and the activation fails. Follow the either of the two instructions below to allow you to put in an alternative key (if you have one!).

If you are using  a 64-bit operating system then Office detects it and install slightly differently. The registry key(s) on 64-bit are at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Registration

Mike’s Blog that explains how to do this (http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/mglaser/archive/2006/12/12/Change-Office-2007-Product-Key.aspx)

or

the Microsoft  KB Article ‘How to change the product key for Office XP, for Office 2003, and for the 2007 Office system’ (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/895456)

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Project Web Access Site Error – “The administrator has taken this farm offline. Project Web Access is not available at this time”

I have recently had this error when finishing my Project Server 2007 installation on an existing SharePoint 2007 server farm.

After creating the Project Web Access site (in my case using a host header), I received the following error message

“The administrator has taken this farm offline.  Project Web Access is not available at this time”

The trick here is to remember to take the farm out of Quiesce mode!

  1. You must go to Central Administration > Operations > Quiesce Farm
  2. click the ‘Reset’ button
  3. Now try your PWA URL in a browser. The page should render after some time.

Once the site is live ‘un-Quiecsed’ the PWA should jumped into life and the two project services (Microsoft Office Project Server Queue Service and Microsoft Office Project Server Events Service)will start automatically

Using Windows Live Writer to publish blogs

This post has been written and publish using Windows Live Writer. It seems to work with quite a wide range of blog engines. This particular blog is based on BlogEngine.NET which works well with Live Writer. It also works with a Windows Live blogs, SharePoint blogs and I am sure a lot more.

image

Live writer has great facilities for making writing blogs extremely easy and allows publishing to multiple blogs too. It very cleverly downloads your skins, which give you the feel of writing on your blog page. Full spell checking and the usual good word processing facilities.

You can download Windows Live Writer from Microsoft at http://download.live.com/writer and a whole host of other free ‘Live’ software at http://download.live.com/

How to change Product Key of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition

I had been struggling to upgarde my Team Foundaion Server 2008 from a Workgroup Edition to an Standard Edition one. So I though I would post the solution to help any others with the same problem.

 
I had installed TFS 2008 Workgroup edition (from the MSDN) over an existing TFS 2005 install (that’s another story!).
I then arranged to purchase the Standard Edition key and proceeded to follow the instruction to do the upgrade. Normally this involves using ‘Change\Remove’ from the Add/Remove Programs to enter TFS Maintenance Mode Options.
In theory here you should select the ‘Upgrade to Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server’ and enter your CD key. However no matter what I tried the CD Key fields remained Greyed out and pre-filled. One possible solution was to run the setup from the installation rather than entering the Add/Remove programs. This did not work for me.
 
I then found the following solution which did the trick and credit must go to KukoricaJanos. See original post at How to change Product Key of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition
 
The solution:
  1. Open in notepad the following file "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server – ENU\setup.sdb"
  2. Locate the [Product Key] section
  3. Change the 26 license key to one that was obtained officially or use a license key from a trial version
  4. Run again the Change/Remove for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server – ENU from Add or Remove Programs
  5. The CDKey entry should contain the new license key or should enable to edit it (in case of a trial key)
Do remember that once TFS is in full server mode the ‘Licensed Users’ group is no longer used. So don’t try and add more users to this group as it will still not allow more than 5 accounts in it anyway.