Stuff I Do

I finally took the time to disable this annoying trait of XP. Anytime a new user logs onto a workstation they would have that annoying XP tour pop up in the task tray and you would have to run it once to make it keep from coming back each time the user logged in.
So here is the KiXtart code to make it never show up.

; Turn off XP tour on first logon
$ReturnCode = WriteValue("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Tour", "RunCount", "0", "REG_DWORD")

We don’t run the Windows Desktop Search tool and when you launch Outlook 2007 it prompts you with the following message;

“Windows Desktop Search is not currently installed or not up to date. Outlook will not be able to provide fast search results when using the new Instant Search functionality unless this Windows component is installed.”

Not wanting the userbase to see this message, added this line to the KiXtart logon to make it automatically disabled.

; OUTLOOK 2007 - turn off prompt to download Desktop Search
$ReturnCode = WriteValue("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options\General", "PONT_STRING", "60", "REG_SZ")

We are in the process of rolling out IE 7 and Outlook 2007 to all our workstations. Ran into a few things that were annoying so here is how they are now fixed up.

After you install IE7 there is that annoying Language Bar that shows up in the task bar next to the clock. Since we don’t use this thing and it confuses our users and we don’t want to field all the calls of freaked out users wondering what this thing is, we disable it.

Since we use KiXtart as our logon scripting language I will give you the syntax for that, but it is just registry entries so you can use the same thing with what ever tools you use to push out registry changes.

; Turn off Language Bar
$ReturnCode = WriteValue("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CTF\LangBar", "ShowStatus", "3", "REG_DWORD")
$ReturnCode = WriteValue("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CTF\LangBar", "ExtraIconsOnMinimized", "0", "REG_DWORD")
$ReturnCode = WriteValue("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CTF\MSUTB", "DontShowCloseLangBarDlg", "1", "REG_DWORD")
$ReturnCode = DelValue("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CTF\MSUTB", "ShowDeskBand")

My favorite file encryption tool is now (as of early July) available on OSX! I have used TrueCrypt for a few years on the Windows side of things but have always had to launch a virtual or a physical Windows machine to get to my protected files. No more as the OSX tool works very well with those protected files.

While funny, I can’t say these spots make me warm and fuzzy about Vista. Vista still sucks donkey, technically speaking that is. Maybe they shouldn’t waste time and money on silly commercial about shoes, and write a good operating system with that time and money.

Wanted to try out the new browser but it is a Windows only thing! Crap, oh well I guess I will keep using Firefox on my Mac.