Cleaning Context Click Conundrums in Vista

Over in my old blog, I recently had an entry about cleaning up the context menu in XP with PowerToys to fix a problem where Windows Exlplorer was even slower than usual.

Alas, Power Toys are not available for Vista, and even cleaning out the context menu will not speed it up. But, cleaning up the context menu does make it easier to use simply by narrowing down the choices by eliminating those you don’t use.

One habit I am trying to get into is adding a link to my Google query so folks can a) point out how I could have got better results and b) teach the less sophisticated Googlers how to improve their own results.

For the curious (and those who have not done much with Windows under the hood), there is a good summary of why your context menu may be annoying in an article at My Digital Life. The article includes a link to a ShellExView v1.37 by NirSoft. ShellExView is a cool tool if you are computer savvy, but not something I would recommend for your grandmother.

Of course, you can always do it the old fashioned way, i.e., regedit. Instructions on where to make the changes can be found at The WinVista Club.

On a related note, there is a good article at Computer World on how to manage your context menu in the “normal” way.

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© Scott S. Nelson

A Real Annoyance

The point of this post is getting rid of that annoying incompatibility notice about Real every time an update is made to FireFox. But first, a rant…

I am not a fan of the Real Player to begin with.  I certainly give it credit for being one of the early multimedia players. I also give them credit for being one of the first major abusers of the installation process, changing extension mappings without asking, installing itself as a service when it is only used occasionally, and being really obtuse in how to fix these problems afterward.   When I did PC maintenance service (before the Geek Squad, which people keep reminding me that I thought of four years before they did) I routinely removed the RealPlayer service and was always thanked for speeding up the machine.

I even tried to give the Real Player a second chance when they bought the Napster name. That lasted about 2 minutes past the installation where it still did all the things that annoyed me about the their 1.0 version. The Real Player is not installed on my personal machine. I used to routinely uninstall it from my work machine until my current employer decided to build their compliance training application using it. Which brings me to my point.

After updating the excellent password manager I use (RoboForm), I was once again confronted with this annoying screen.

Real Extension Annoyance
Real Extension Annoyance

My first shot in Google (remove incompatible firefox extension) got me pretty close to a solution with a Mozilla Support thread. The last entry in the thread did the trick for me. In case that link is dead, the entry was:

Ok, run the program “regedit” and goto “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMozillaFirefoxExtensions”

If there is nothing there try “HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMozillaFirefoxExtensions”

There you should see the extension… delete the registry entry.

That worked for me…

The first path worked for me, too, specifically the key {ABDE892B-13A8-4d1b-88E6-365A6E755758}, with the value of “C:Program FilesRealRealPlayerbrowserrecord”

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© Scott S. Nelson

For Boston Web Heads

A great resource if you work in the Boston area  (or want to)   in a web technology field is http://beantownweb.blogspot.com/ It is also handy if you don’t live in the area if you don’t mind following the links for the national information.

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© Scott S. Nelson

The Upgrade Path Not Taken

I did not find any reference to help with migrating my entries from WordPress 1.2.1 to 2.7.1. The closest I found was from 1.5.2, where the poster mentioned that they didn’t think such an old version was around anywhere. Ouch. I set up Frequently Unasked Question on 4/1/2006 as an upgrade to my first version on b2 (predecessor to WordPress), launched in 2004.

While considering doing the migration myself (which would have been much easier before I downgraded from Windows 2000 to Vista), I started re-reading old posts and it turns out to be a blessing in disguise that I cannot migrate instantly as I really should pick and choose what I bring over. I’ve never liked reading my old work, but had forgotten about that.

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© Scott S. Nelson