Applies to:

• Windows Live Mail 2012

What?
A quick article on how to update the Microsoft Live Server URL for Hotmail using Windows Live Mail. Well how to deactivate an account and set up a new one in Windows Live Mail. If you used IMAP all along then the new account will have all your mail.

The error

Unable to send or receive messages for the Hotmail (someone) account.

Subject 'your Microsoft Issue'
Server Error: 3219
Windows Live Mail Error ID: 0x8DE00005
Unable to send or receive messages for the Hotmail (someone) account.

Server Error: 3219
Server: 'https://mail.services.live.com/DeltaSync_v2.0.0/Sync.aspx'
Windows Live Mail Error ID: 0x8DE00005

How?
I don't remember the time when the Microsoft website became helpful but as they already have an article on this, I'm going to do a bunch of screenshots:

What?
A quick article with the code to retrieve your product key in Windows 7 with a small VB script file. There are other articles on the web about this but the ones I found returned errors such as WshShell not valid. This article has a working example applicable to Windows 7 Professional.

Why?
With the Windows 10 operating system offered as a free upgrade (for Windows 7 or later at time of print), I needed the serial number / product key from my Windows 7 Professional 32-bit operating system. I didn't want to dig through my CD/DVDs to find my original windows 7 disc and no longer have access to the email account when I purchased Windows 7 (my university one).

How?
I'm going to use my trusty notepad program, copy the following code to it, and run it:

Applies to:

• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional

What?
Looking at ways of displaying different drives per user on a single computer. This one is by modifying the system registry, so if you aren't familiar with the system registry in MS Windows, you may need to find someone who is.

How?
As a proof of concept, let's see how to hide a specific drive. Note that this section applies to the currently logged-in user.

Applies to:
- Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise
- User with Local Administrator Privileges (required for setup)


Why?
Our work has group policies and two of our programs, Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate (VS2010) and Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS), require elevated or administator rights/privileges when run. This is so that these programs can write back and forth to our C drive. If we don't run them as local administrators on the workstation, they error incessantly and never manage to do what you want them to do.


What?
I want to create a desktop shortcut that I can double-click and it will run the above programs in administrator mode without confirmation by the Windows operating system. At home this may not be a problem but this is intended for those in an office environment and we get prompted to login (with the same account as we're currently logged-in with???) instead of being able to just click on "Yes".


How?
The gist is that we're going to create a scheduled task (that won't be scheduled) and a shortcut to that task:

What?
Applies to Windows 7.
Requires a Vogonian environment of red tape and bureaucracy.

This is an article to describe an alternative method then "right-clicking on the desktop", "selecting Personalize", "clicking on Desktop Background", "browsing to the Picture Location". The problem happens when browsing to the picture location and it doesn't seem to remember which folder you selected. At home, this would be a breeze, but that's because I don't implement group policies at home.

Why?
We get problems with this because none of our staff are full administrators of their local workstation. As IT staff we have elevated privileges but not absolute rights to configuring our computer. And we still need to re-login for every change. About a zillion group policies control our every deviation from the standard staff image and so we spend more time on "how do you make it like it was in XP?" situations.

How?
Who doesn't want to change their desktop background wallpaper? Using Windows 7, who doesn't want it to be a slideshow as well?

Why?
A friend asked me if there was a quick way to simply right-click on a folder in Windows Explorer and it would generate a text file with the contents of the directory he right-clicked.

What?
We can do this by adding an entry to the context menu (when you right-click on an object). The following is a method of adding this as a single command similar to how we add the "Command prompt from here" option (now built-in to Windows 7). I added this option for him in Windows 7 Ultimate using the system registry (see "How: for Windows 7" below).

-- yield

a_subfolder_in_this_folder
a_file_in_this_folder.txt
another_file_in_this_folder.doc

How?

Just a quick note here. This is an article based on the REG file from Kelly's Korner (@www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm). I'm not fond of downloading REG files and running them even if I have checked what it's doing. I'm putting a note here just for me:

1. Start > Run > Regedit > OK
2. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
3. Create New DWORD Value
4. Name it "MaxRecentDocs"
5. Double-click on the new DWORD
6. Set value data to "19" ( equals 25 )
7. Leave Base as "Hexadecimal"
8. OK
9. Restart your computer

---

What?
This is an article intended for IT Support. It is a list of the system tools available in the Microsoft Windows OS that can be run from the "Start > Run" option.

How?