Alexander’s Blog

If you work with Dreamweaver 8 for Windows and have noticed that your FTP login settings in the Dreamweaver site definitions are lost when you close and re-open the program or after you reboot your computer. If you have an earlier version of Dreamweaver, you may not encounter this problem.

According to Adobe, there are two known causes for this.

1. The most common cause is that Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is installed on the same machine as Dreamweaver 8.
2. A less likely cause is that the following registry key is missing or is empty:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Explorer\User Shell Folders\AppData

If You Have IE7 Installed on Your Computer

If you have IE 7 installed then installing the Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater should resolve your problem in most cases. Make sure that you verify the installation of the updater. In Dreamweaver, go to Help > About Dreamweaver > and click the scrolling text to reveal the version number. It should say Dreamweaver 8.0.2. You should not have to reboot the computer after installing Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater.

If You Don’t Have IE7 Installed, or if the Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater Doesn’t Solve the Problem

If you don’t have IE7 and are experiencing the problem then install the Dreamweaver 8.0.2 Updater as described above and then perform the following steps.

Warning: Modify the registry at your own risk.

1. Launch the Registry Editor by clicking the Start button, choose Run, then type “regedit”. In the Registry Editor, navigate to this folder:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Explorer\User Shell Folders\

2. See if there is a key called AppData, as shown in the screen shot below:
   
3. Backup the Users Shell Folders registry branch as follows:
   1. Right-click the Users Shell Folders folder and select “Export”.
   2. In the “Export range” section, choose “Selected branch”.
   3. Save the .reg file to the desktop.
   4. If problems occur after editing the registry, double-clicking the .reg file will re-install that registry branch.
4. If the AppData key is missing, then perform the following steps. If the AppData key exists, then skip to Step 5.
   1. On the right side of the Registry Editor explorer pane, right-click in a blank area anywhere under the last key in the list. You should get a context menu that says “New” with a flyout menu.
   2. In the flyout menu, select “Expandable String Value” and name the new key AppData.
5. Right-click the new AppData key (or the existing one if it was already there), select Modify, and enter the following in the Value Data field: %USERPROFILE%\Application Data. If the values for the other keys in your User Shell Folders directory don’t start with %USERPROFILE%, then use the value that your other keys use. For example, if your Local Settings key has a value of u:\Local Settings, then try usingu:\Application Data.
6. Open Dreamweaver, re-enter the FTP login information for one of your sites, and see if the FTP login is now saved when you close and re-open Dreamweaver.

When working with the Search feature in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 you may have encountered the following error:

Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this account, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content.

I have experienced this error on Windows Server 2008 R2 (and SQL Server 2008) as well as Windows Server 2003 R2 (and SQL Server 2005). In both cases I was running MOSS 2007.

SOLUTION 1 -  Specify the Content Access Account & Password

To resolve this error, the most obvious thing to try is to add the Content Access account to the crawl rule as described below. However, this may not solve your problem. In any case, try this method first before you try solution 2.

1. Go to Central Administration and click on the Shared Services Provider (SSP) where you want to configure search.

2. From the home page of the Shared Services Administration, under Search click Search settings.

3. In the left navigation bar, under Crawling section click Default content access account.

4. Enter the Content Access account in the form DomainName\AccountName. For example, SeattlePro\Content. Alternatively, you can also enter it in the User Principal Name (UPN) format, such as AccountName@DomainName.com.

NOTE: Some people have reported that they have fixed the above error simply by changing the format from DomainName\AccountName to AccountName@DomainName.com. However, that solution didn’t work for me.

SOLUTION 2 – Disable the Loopback Check

Another solution is to disable the loopback check by setting the DisableLoopbackCheck registry key. The loopback check security feature is designed to help prevent reflection attacks on your computer. Therefore, disabling it has its consequences. Microsoft describes the disabling of loopback check  in more detail in KB896861. Here’s how.

Follow these steps to set the DisableLoopbackCheck registry key:

1. Set the DisableStrictNameChecking registry entry to 1. For more information about how to do this, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
   281308 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281308/ ) Connecting to SMB share on a Windows 2000-based computer or a Windows Server 2003-based computer may not work with an alias name
   NOTE: I was able to fix my problem without making the registry change mentioned in this step 1. I only made the change described below.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
4. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
6. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
7. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
8. Although Microsoft suggests that you need to restart your computer, I have been able to make the above change and fix the problem without restarting the server.

WARNING! There’s one thing that you ought to know about disabling the loopback.  It’s okay to disable it in a test/development environment but not in a production environment. Microsoft SharePoint MVP Spencer Harbar has written a blog post about the consequences of disabling loopback in the production environment that is a must read.

There’s is a known problem experienced by many Vista users where the Help and Support stops working. When you try to start Help and Support you get the following error.

Internet Explorer cannot download / from help.

Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later.

The error message is completely useless and gives you no indication as to what the problem might be. Instead it tells you to try later, hoping something will magically fix your problem. This may be very confusing for users who are not even connected to the Internet and are being informed that Internet Explorer was unable to open the Internet site, as if they were trying to browse the Internet.

You can reboot and reinstall Office and try just about everything else……chances are that nothing will help. The problem has to do with the registry setting for .xml file types. This often happens when there’s something wrong with the Content Type and luckily there are a couple of things you can try to fix the problem.

Solution 1

Try to register msxml3.dll by using the regsvr32 command by typing the following at the Start, Run:

regsvr32 msxml3.dll

Note: You will need administrative privileges to run the above command.

If this method doesn’t work and you have Dreamweaver installed then try this second solution. Most users with Dreamweaver have reported this problem. I also run Dreamweaver on my computer and was able to fix my Vista Ultimate by using this second method.

Solution 2

Copy the following text into Notepad and save the file as a text file with .reg extension (e.g. fixhelp.reg). Make sure that the file has .reg, and not .txt, extension.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml]
@=”xmlfile”
“Content Type”=”text/xml”
“PerceivedType”=”text”

Right-click the fixhelp.reg file (or whatever you named it) in Windows Explorer and select Merge.

You should now be able to open Help and Support normally.

Windows Vista has a ReadyBoost feature that can improve the performance of your Windows Vista computer. ReadyBoost has certain requirements so not all USB flash devices can be used for Windows ReadyBoost. Here’s a method that you can try to force ReadyBoost on a USB flash drive. I am not sure if it has any adverse effect so use it at your own risk.

1. Plug in your USB flash drive in Windows Vista.

2. In the AutoPlay window, click on the “Speed up my system” option. You may see the following on your screen which indicates that your USB device doesn’t support ReadyBoost.

If you don’t see the AutoPlay window, go to My Computer, right-click the USB drive, click on Properties, then click the ReadyBoost tab.

3. Uncheck the box “Stop retesting this device when I plug it in.”, click OK and then remove the USB drive.

4. Start the registry editor and go to the following location: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt.

5. Look for the folder that starts with {“_??_” as shown in the following screen shot.

6. Set the values of ReadSpeedKBs and the WriteSpeedKBs to 1000 (decimal).

7. Plug in the USB device again and you should be able to use ReadyBoost.

This method may not work on every USB flash drive and you should know that you are modifying the registry at your own risk. However, I don’t use the same drive that I am using for ReadyBoost for storing my data so I am not worried about losing any data on the USB flash drive.

If you have been using Microsoft ActiveSync to synchronize your Windows Mobile powered devices in Windows XP and now are planning to upgrade your PC to Windows Vista, this blog entry is for you.

I recently did a fresh install of Windows Vista on a client laptop that was previously running Windows XP SP2. I wanted to make sure that Microsoft Outlook will synchronize with the Pocket PC Phone, just like it did in Windows XP. I assumed that the support for mobile devices is better on Windows Vista so that should be a no brainer. It turned out that I was completely wrong. Microsoft ActiveSync 4.2, which is the latest version of ActiveSync synchronization software for Windows Mobile powered devices, doesn’t work on Windows Vista. It only supports Windows XP and earlier versions. There is a Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5 Beta 2, which is also not supported on Windows Vista.

On Windows XP, you can use ActiveSync 4.2 to synchronize your PC via USB cable, Bluetooth, or infrared connection. According to Microsoft “If you have Windows Vista, your synchronization settings will be managed through the Windows Mobile Device Center. Windows Mobile Device Center is available through Windows Update and the Windows Mobile Device Center page.” I am sure there are good reasons, which I don’t know, for not including Windows Mobile Device Center in Windows Vista.

Although you can download the Windows Mobile Device Center (Beta 3 release) from Microsoft’s Web site, it is only meant for Windows Vista RC1. In addition, Microsoft recommends that you do not use this beta software on your production computer. To summarize, Windows Vista doesn’t support ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center is still in Beta and is only supported on Windows Vista RC1. Just out of curiosity, I downloaded and installed the Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center Beta 3 for Windows Vista (published on 10/6/06), only to find out that it didn’t do the job.

After a lot of googling, I discovered a solution that involved hacking the registry to include a WHOS key. This solution posted on microsoftweblog.com finally solved the problem and showed me the update that was missing after running Windows Update. Here’s the solution.

1. Start the registry editor (regedit.exe).
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft.
3. Right-click the Microsoft key and then select New, Key and add a key called WHOS.
4. Reboot your computer (some people have been able to get this to work without rebooting but I had to reboot to see the results).
5. Run Windows Update. You will notice a new update that will allow you to configure and synchronize using Windows Mobile Device Center. You should reboot again after the update.
6. Configure your mobile device and synchronize with your Windows Vista PC.

Needless to say, there are some questions as to how well Windows Vista supports mobile devices. Windows Vista was RTM’d in November and as of today there is still no official replacement for Microsoft ActiveSync. In addition, you can only add one mobile device at a time in Windows Vista, which is not Microsoft’s intent but perhaps this is an issue because the Windows Mobile Device Center is still in beta. And there is still no support for podcasting.

Despite all these hassles with ActiveSync, do I still recommend that people upgrade their Windows XP computers to Windows Vista, the answer is ABSOLUTELY! The advantages of upgrading to Windows Vista far outweigh the disadvantages.