Archive for the 'windows' Category

Stuff to install on a new Windows PC

Published on September 17, 2008 in tool and windows. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .

That is, the stuff I install on a new Windows PC. Since I need this list several times a year, why not make a blog post of it. As you will see,I have a more than average interest in video (conversion) and sysadmin (SSH/FTP). The links typically go straight to the download page.

Audio/video

  • iTunes (+Quicktime): excellent music manager and it rips to MP3 really fast
  • CDBurnerXP: for burning CDs, DVDs, ISO files
  • Irfanview: image viewer, editor and converter – for people who think Photoshop is overkill
  • Picasa: photograph workflow & archive manager (from Google)
  • VLC Player: ultimate video player, very complete set of codecs
  • ffmpeg with a GUI like GVC: video conversion: AVI, MOV, MPG, MP4, …
  • Handbrake: will make a good MPEG4 of any DVD in one go

Internet

  • Skype: for chat, phonecalls and SMSes with people far away
  • Chrome, Firefox or Opera browser – personally I like Firefox less. Opera is solid and fast, Google Chrome is an interesting new kid on the block.
  • FileZilla: FTP client
  • Putty: SSH and telnet terminal
  • EditPlus: customisable editor for text, HTML, CMD … that also works over FTP
  • uTorrent: because sometimes you need to … get stuff, you know

Tools

  • Google Pack: contains Picasa, Skype, Google Toolbar and a whole bunch of other useful programs
  • Adobe PDF reader: for reading PDF documents, and everything is in PDF these days
  • 7-Zip: compression/expansion of ZIP, RAR and 7z archives
  • CutePDF with GhostScript: printing to a PDF file (also allows converting a PostScript PS/EPS file to PDF)
  • UnixUtils: I’m a sucker for GAWK and WGET
  • Nokia PCSuite: for synchro with my Nokia N91 (yes, it’s still my phone!)
  • XAMPP: for developing with Apache/PERL/PHP/MySQL on Windows

From XP to Vista back to XP

Published on July 17, 2006 in windows. 4 Comments

I finally got too fed up working with a crippled PC and installed the Windows Vista Beta 2 on my laptop. It looks really nice, although slightly slow. I connected my camera and, lo and behold, the Picture import works flawlessly, creating a separate folder per session, the Vista Photo browser and editor remind me a lot of Google’s Picasa. Internet Explorer 7 has tabbed browsing at last, and seemed quite stable and robust. In all, I was quite happy to have a working system again.
vista performance: I'm a '2'
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IVI: Internet voor Iedereen

Published on April 12, 2006 in bandwidth, Belgium, internet, Society and windows. 1 Comment

Internet voor iedereenIf your (Belgian) parents or grand-parents want to buy a cheap PC to get started on the Web, tell them to hold back for a couple more days. The Federal Government – through FEDICT – has set up a program to sponsor a complete package of PC + software + broadband + training for a sharp price. The title of the project: IVI or “Internet voor Iedereen” – the launch is planned for next week, April 18th.
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Fix by disabling: error 1016 in event log

Published on June 21, 2004 in windows. Closed

Due to one of life’s mysteries, the following error shows up dozens of times per day in the event log of one of our web servers (Win2000/IIS):

Event ID 1016: The data buffer created for the “NTFSDRV” service in the “C:\WINNT\system32\snprfdll.DLL” library is not aligned on an 8-byte boundary. This may cause problems for applications that are trying to read the performance data buffer. Contact the manufacturer of this library or service to have this problem corrected or to get a newer version of this library.

A search on Google delivers nothing. Similar Performance Monitor problems are mentioned in

  • MSKB 267831, but for IIS related services (ASP/W3SVC/FTP/…). The remedy cited involves unlodctr/lodctr commands in a CMD box.
  • MSKB 324712 and MSKB 249138, same error 1016 for other dll and ‘fix by disabling’ solution.

    I choose for the 2nd solution: adding a value to the registry. I create a .reg file that contains

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib]
"Configuration Flags"=dword:00000001

    It works. That is, the warnings in the event log disappear. Have I just disconnected a fire alarm or was it innocent? Time will tell …