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Free (and not so free) Windows FTP Clients

andy gaskell — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:29:43 +0000

SmartFTP started charging for their Windows FTP client so I decided to look for a suitable truly free replacement (not a lite version or one with nag screens) and FileZilla seems like the best option out there.

Filezilla isn’t quite as pretty as SmartFTP but FileZilla does have a local and remote browser similiar to SmartFTP – super easy to use. I’ve used it to upload and modify files on my host as well as FTP files over to a WinCE device that I’m developing on – so far it’s worked great.

Disable Blocked File Protection Control in Windows Vista

andy gaskell — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:54:30 +0000

In my neverending quest to make Vista more usable, I finally caved and took the time to figure out how to disable Blocked File Protection Control. This “feature” requires you to unblock files you download before they are usable (for the most part). This is a bad decision in my opinion – I decided to download a file and of course I’m going to want to work with it. I don’t want to figure how how to unblock before I can use it. What a pain – anyway enough with the rant.

If you want to be able to use your files after you download them, you’ll need to either use the Group Policy Editor described here in as Method #3 or edit the registry.

Unfortunately I happen to be running Windows Vista Home Premium on one of my systems – this means no gpedit. The entry we need to set is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Attachments\SaveZoneInformation

This value needs to be a DWORD set to 1. You can enter this manually or download the reg file and “Unblock” your last file! Be sure to close all instances of Internet Explorer or reboot your computer after making the change to your registry.

The requested operation requires elevation in Windows Vista

andy gaskell — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 05:02:29 +0000

So I’ve been using Vista for a few weeks now and for whatever crazy reason I decided I needed to flush dns. I received this message: “The requested operation requires elevation”. Okay, to get around this go to All Programs, Accessories, right click Command Prompt and click Run as administrator. Good to go!

Update:
I’ve been running Vista for quite some time now and finally got fed up with User Account Control (UAC). What UAC really turns into is security by nagging so I disabled it altogether. To disable UAC open the Control Panel/User Accounts then click Turn User Account Control on or off. Uncheck the box. Click OK.

Getting “What I’m listening to” working with Windows Media Player 11

andy gaskell — Sun, 21 May 2006 05:34:24 +0000

I just got the new Windows Media Player 11 Beta and it’s pretty cool. The upgrade broke the Turn on “What I’m listening to” feature in MSN / Windows Live Messenger. Here’s the steps to getting Turn on “What I’m listening to” working again.

Click the Now Playing menu (not the button).

Scroll to plug-ins – Other – and make sure that “Windows Live Messenger Music Plugin” is selected. I’m guessing there’s similiar option for MSN Messenger Music Plugin, but I can’t say for sure.

How to remove Comcast branding from Internet Explorer

andy gaskell — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 03:46:56 +0000

I just switched over to Comcast’s 8 meg connection – wewt! Anyway, I wasn’t too happy with their software branding IE and resetting my homepage.

Here’s how to remove the branding:

Click Start, then Run… type

Rundll32 iedkcs32.dll,Clear

exactly as shown. Click OK.

Another great idea is installing Firefox – the download is small and it’s a very nice, secure web browser. Click the link below to learn more about Firefox.