If you're using Firefox as your default Internet browser and Outlook as your email client, then you may have noticed that when you click on a URL link in an Outlook email, you get a popup dialog box titled "Locate Link Browser" and then Firefox will load normally. It doesn't seem to cause any problems, but it's certainly very annoying having to close that dialog box every time!

Note: You will not get this dialog box if you already have Firefox open on your computer. It only occurs when you click on a link and Firefox is not already open. Also, if you're using IE, you won't have this issue at all.

So how you can get rid of this annoying dialog once and for all? Follow these simple steps to fix the issue on Windows XP:

Step 1: Open My Computer from the desktop or Start Menu.

Step 2: Go to the Tools menu and click on Folder Options.

Step 3: Now click on the File Types tab and you'll see a list of registered file types, Extensions and File Types. Under the Extensions column, look for the entries with (NONE) and in that subset, find the entry under File Types that is called URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol.

Step 4: Click on the Advanced button at the bottom and then click on the Edit button.

Step 5: Go ahead and uncheck the DDE option. It is called "Use DDE" and it's checked by default. We want to make sure it's unchecked.

Go ahead and click Ok and then Ok again and then close! Now give it a shot and it should work! You can also do the same for this entry: URL: HyperText with Security. This is for HTTPS links. Worked like a charm on my computer!

Note that if the textbox "Application used to perform action" is blank, then you can click Browse and find the Firefox.exe application.

If you're using Windows Vista, the method above may not work. In Vista, you have to delete some registry keys in order for the dialog box to go away. Here's how.

Step 1: Click on Start, then Run and type in regedit. Or just type in regedit in the Instant Search Box and press Enter.

Step 2: Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\HTTP\shell\open\ddeexec registry key.

Step 3: Delete the "ddexec" registry key

Step 4: Repeat for the following keys:

"HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\HTTPS\shell\open\ddeexec"
"HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL\shell\open\ddeexec"
"HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML\shell\open\ddeexec"

This should fix the issue in both Windows XP and Windows Vista! Enjoy!

One of the most frustrating changes in Windows Vista is the lack of the "Up" button when browsing the file system. Sure, there's been a slightly buggy add-on that you can use, but how about a really solid Up button that just works and doesn't bloat your system?

If that's what you are looking for, and you don't mind paying $5, there is an add-on called Mavis Up Button that does exactly that, and nothing more.

The Up button works in Explorer:

Or in Control Panel:

There's only one bug… the button stays "active" even if you are "up" as far as you can go (the Desktop). It's not a big deal, but perfectionists might be annoyed by it.

If you are using a custom visual style, you'll also notice that it doesn't change with those themes.

Download Mavis Up Button Trial Version

Probably one of the most frustrating things that can happen to you in Windows is not being able to logon to your user account because you changed the password and then forgot it or because you accidentally deleted the account. If you don't know the password for any other Administrator account, you have a big problem!

Most people immediately begin searching for a way to crack the Administrator account password using some free tools or hacks off forums. However, it's nearly impossible to crack a password on Windows Vista with the high level of encryption.

Yet there is a way to get back into an account without having to crack the password. It's by using the System Restore feature built into Windows.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This only works in cases where you changed your password to something new and then forgot it or deleted a user account by accident. In order for this to work, there must be a System Restore point at which a logon was successful for the problem account. Also, this is not a problem if you are in a domain environment because the Domain Administrator can always reset your password.

First Step - Boot to the Windows Vista DVD

The first thing you'll need to do is make sure you have your Windows Vista DVD or a repair disc. Insert the disc and then restart the computer. When asked to "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD", go ahead and press any key.

Click Next until you get to the screen that has the option "Repair your computer", select the operating system you want to repair and then click Next.

Note: Before reaching this screen, you may have to set preferences for the language to install, time and currency format, and the keyboard or input method.

In the System Recovery Options dialog, choose System Restore from the list and then click Next.

Now you need to choose the system restore from the list. You want to choose a restore point that will return the computer to a state where the logon was successful and that was using the old password.

Then click Next to confirm the disks, then Finish to confirm the restore point and finally Yes in the warning window to begin the restore.

Important Note: After you use the System Restore feature, you have to reinstall any programs or updates that were done on the system after that restore point. You will not lose any personal documents; however, you may have to reinstall programs. You might also have to reset some personal settings.

When the restore is complete, click on Restart to restart the computer. Click Close to confirm that the restore was successful.

You can now try to logon using the older password (in the case where you had reset a password on an user account and then forgot it) or using the normal password (in the case where the account was deleted by accident).

If you have simply forgotten your password, then this method will not work and there are some possible methods you could try to reset your Administrator password, but it's tough and costly. All the best!

Editor's Note: Online-Tech-Tips is a great site covering a wide variety of topics, and is well worth subscribing to.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Patching windows isn't necessarily "safe" and shouldn't be attempted unless you are willing to troubleshoot problems. There's also some chance that it would void your warranty, etc etc. The point is that you might encounter problems.

First Step - Download the Patched Theme Files

This is an incredibly important step, as you don't want to rename any files in the system32 directory without having the patched versions for the right version of Vista.

You'll need to browse to the Within Windows site and download the correct version for your operating system. If you are running SP1, make sure you get the correct version, whether 32-bit or 64-bit.

There are three .dll files included in this package:

• themeui.dll
• uxtheme.dll
• shsvcs.dll

All of these files are normally located in the C:\Windows\System32 directory. Those files will need to be replaced with the patched versions in order to enable custom themes.

Once you've downloaded the files you'll need to extract them using a utility that can process .rar files, like WinRar or the free jZip utility. Make sure that you have extracted the files before you move on to the next step!

Second Step - Create a System Restore Point

You should create a system restore point before moving fowards, just in case there are any problems, so you can roll things back.

Create a System Restore Point in Windows Vista

Patching Files Using Take Ownership Utility

Patching these files is easiest if you use the Take Ownership context menu item, which will help you assign ownership of these files to your user account which will allow you to rename the files.

Browse down to C:\Windows\System32\ and then put the following into the search box so you can see all the files at the same time (make sure to use capital letters for "OR")

themeui.dll OR uxtheme.dll OR shsvcs.dll

Right-click on the files and choose "Take Ownership" from the menu, and then click through all the UAC prompts.

Now you'll need to rename the files and append .old to the end of the file (either right-click and choose Rename or use the F2 key).

At this point you should have 3 files with the .old extension. Whatever you do, DO NOT RESTART your computer at this step, or you'll be using system restore and probably asking for help on our forum.

Now we need to copy the patched files into the system32 folder. You can just type C:\windows\system32\ into the address bar, and then copy / paste or drag the patched files you downloaded into this folder.

The most important thing here is to make sure that those three files are sitting in the System32 folder. Now you should be able to restart your computer.

Patch Theme Files Using the Command Line

I recommend using the take ownership script above, rather than this method, but for completeness I'll explain it as well.

First you'll need to open a command prompt in Administrator mode by right-clicking the command prompt and choosing Run as Administrator, and then run these commands to take ownership of the files, and then grant access to the administrators group:

takeown /f c:\windows\system32\themeui.dll

takeown /f c:\windows\system32\uxtheme.dll

takeown /f c:\windows\system32\shsvcs.dll

icacls c:\windows\system32\themeui.dll /grant administrators:F

icacls c:\windows\system32\uxtheme.dll /grant administrators:F

icacls c:\windows\system32\shsvcs.dll /grant administrators:F

Note: Whatever you do, don't try and run takeown *.*, because taking ownership of every single file in the windows directory is going to cause all sorts of problems.

Now that you have taken ownership of the files, you can rename the files to *.old by running these commands:

ren c:\windows\system32\themeui.dll c:\windows\system32\themeui.dll.old

ren c:\windows\system32\uxtheme.dll c:\windows\system32\uxtheme.dll.old

ren c:\windows\system32\shsvcs.dll c:\windows\system32\shsvcs.dll.old

Note: at this point you should be very careful to NOT RESTART your computer, because if you do so things will break.

Now you can copy the files that you downloaded and extracted into the system32 directory by running a command similar to this one (adjusting for wherever you extracted them to)

copy c:\users\geek\downloadedfileshere\* c:\windows\system32\

At this point you can now restart your computer.

How to Un-Patch Your System

If you want to reverse the process, you can simply remove the .dll files that you copied, and then rename the .old files back to .dll.

What To Do if You Have Problems

If you are having any problems, you should unpatch the system first, or can run System Restore to put the system back to normal. If you are still having problems, head over to our forums and ask your question there.

Where to Find Custom Visual Styles

If you want to download the custom theme from the first screenshot above, it's called Ways of Light and can be found here.

One of the best places to find custom visual styles is deviantART:

Browse Vista Visual Styles on deviantART

NEXTLevel

This is one of my favorite themes:

Download the NEXTLevel theme.

How to Install a Custom Visual Style

When you download and extract a custom Visual Style, you'll need to copy them into the C:\Windows\Resources\Themes directory, usually into a new folder:

You'll want to make sure that the folder contains the visual style file within it, and not within a subdirectory of the theme folder:

Note: Some visual styles are structured incorrectly and will have problems. Read this post for more information.

Now that you've patched Windows and installed the theme, you need to open the Classic appearance dialog by right-clicking on the Desktop, choosing Personalize, then Window Color and Appearance. Then you can click the link at the bottom to open the classic appearance properties dialog:

Now you can choose the theme in the list. Note that some themes are based off the Window Aero theme and will show the same name, so if one is selected then just choose the other one. You'll need to have Aero available in order to use a theme based on Aero, of course.

At this point you should be able to see your new custom themes. Enjoy!

Windows Vista uses the built-in Task Scheduler to kick off most maintenance tasks, instead of requiring something to be running all the time. By going into Task Scheduler we can actually change the schedule of main system tasks, including System Restore.

Change Schedule for Automatic System Restore Points

Type in "Task Scheduler" into the start menu search box, or browse through the start menu's Administrative Tools section.

Once you've got Task Scheduler open, look under Microsoft \ Windows \ SystemRestore on the left-hand pane.

Now you'll see a single item in the middle pane that says "SR Queued Multiple triggers defined". Double-click on that item to change the details.

The Triggers tab is the first place you'll want to look, and you'll notice that by default System Restore is set to run at startup(more on that below), and at midnight every day.

To change the trigger, click on one of the items and then Edit to change the trigger.

The Edit Trigger dialog allows you to change all sorts of settings, the first one to notice is that the "At startup" task is set to also "Delay task for 30 minutes", meaning that the system restore task won't happen during boot.

If you look at the other trigger that is scheduled for midnight, you can choose the time of day that it runs… midnight might not be the best time for you, so you can change it to some other time if you'd like, or even schedule it to run weekly instead of daily.

The Conditions tab allows you to tell the task that even though it's set to start at a particular time, it still shouldn't start unless the computer is idle, or not to run on battery power.

Note that this overrides anything set in the Triggers section, so even though by default Vista schedules System Restore for 30 minutes after startup, it won't kick in if you are using the computer.

One of the more interesting settings here is the option to "Stop if the computer ceases to be idle", which means that even though System Restore might kick off after 10 minutes of idle time, it will stop if you come back to the computer. It's also interesting to note that according to these settings, a computer only used on battery power will never have a restore point created… interesting.

The History tab will show every time the task has run in the past, and what the output was.

I wouldn't recommend changing the default settings too much, because system restore is a very useful tool. You should also keep in mind that installing software usually automatically triggers a restore point, or you can always create a restore point manually.

To illustrate the problem, you try and select a number of files by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on each one… and then suddenly you've got a ton of copies of all your files. This gets even more annoying in a large directory, because now you've got to remove the copies.

The reason this happens is because you moved your mouse more than 4 pixels while clicking down on a file, so Windows assumes you've dragged the files and want to copy them, and is happy to litter your folder with duplicates.

Fixing Copy Annoyance in Windows XP

If you are running Windows XP, you can use Microsoft's free Tweak UI utility to configure the drag setting easily. What we'll do is tell Windows not to assume that we're dragging until we've move more than 4 pixels, which should eliminate this problem, but still make drag and drop work fine for regular operations.

Just click on Mouse on the left-hand side, and then change the value under "Drag" to something more than 4 pixels.

I wouldn't set the value too high, because then it will make it difficult to drag things the way you normally would. Somewhere between 10-20 should help stop the accidental copying, but you might need to set it higher. You can test the effect by dragging the test icon around.

Fixing the Annoyance in Windows Vista

Unfortunately Tweak UI doesn't work in Windows Vista, so you'll have to make the registry setting manually, or use the downloadable registry hack file I've provided, which will set the drag size to 20 pixels.

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

On the right-hand side you should see two values, DragHeight and DragWidth. Just double-click on them and change the value to something higher. You might have to experiment to get it right for you, but I'd start with somewhere between 10 and 20.

Note that you can pretty much disable drag and drop by setting it to a really high value.

Download Registry File (Vista or XP)

This registry hack file will set the values to 20 pixels, which may or may not be right for you. You can always just edit the file if you want different values.

To install, extract and double-click on the StopDragDroppingAnnoyance.reg to enter the information into the registry. There's a reset file that will change the setting back to the defaults as well.

Download StopDragDroppingAnnoyance Registry Hack

For extra credit: you can also enable checkboxes in Windows Vista's Explorer for easier file selecting.

The problem exists because system policies were set that probably shouldn't be, but either way your icons are missing:

Normally you can re-enable the items by right-clicking on the Taskbar, choosing properties and going to the Notification Area tab:

But they are grayed out… what's up with that?

Note: I'm assuming you already did the normal Windows fix-it technique of rebooting, and the problem still exists.

Fix for Notification Icons are Missing and Checkboxes are Grayed Out

You can solve all of these problems by looking in two separate places in the registry, and then deleting a bunch of keys in each location. We'll detail all of the keys here, but you can skip down a bit for a downloadable registry hack file.

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

If you see any of the following key names in the right-hand pane, delete them:

• NoTrayItemsDisplay
• HideClock
• HideSCAPower
• HideSCAVolume
• NoAutoTrayNotify
• HideSCANetwork

After deleting the values in that pane, browse to the following key and then repeat the process:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

You'll have to logout and then back in, and then most likely go back into taskbar properties and re-check the boxes for each.

Download Registry Hack

Just download, extract, and double-click on RestoreMyTrayIconsPlease.reg to enter the information into the registry.

Download RestoreMyTrayIconsPlease Registry Hack

What if the Volume Icon Still Doesn't Work?

Over the last year, many people have reported a related problem to me: They just have no volume icon… and also no sound.

If you encounter this problem, you should immediately open Device Manager and make sure that there are no exclamation points next to your sound card, because the problem is likely that your sound card driver isn't working.

If there are exclamation points, or the sound card is missing and there are a bunch of "Unknown devices", you usually need to reload the sound card driver from the manufacturer, but sometimes you can right-click on the device and choose to "Update Driver".

Note: I've also run into this issue with Toshiba and Acer laptops, the solution for those usually being a BIOS update.

If you still have problems, head over to our forum and ask your question over there.

Important Note: Numerous people have reported to me that this problem happens much less after installing Service Pack 1, so you should probably make sure you are all patched up as well.

This isn't really a hack, it's just a useful setting tweak that hadn't occurred to me before, so I figured I'd write it up for everybody.

Now you can see at a glance that one of the items is from your task list, and the others are emails that were flagged for followup:

Adding the Icon Column to the To-Do List View

Just right-click on the column list and choose Custom…

Then click on the Fields button…

And then add the Icon column from the left side, and make sure you use the "Move Up" option to move it to the top of the list on the right-hand side.

It's a really simple tip, but very helpful!

Don't you hate it when you try to uninstall a program it either does not include an uninstaller or when using Add / Remove Programs in Windows, there are several traces of the software left?  It is definitely one of my bigger pet peeves … just check out my iTunes uninstall rant.  I came across a cool little program the other day that claims to do a much better job of uninstalling applications and all of the tidbits and left-overs associated with them.  Revo Uninstaller.

When first launching Revo the first thing I noticed were all of the additional features not included with Window's Add / Remove utility. 

Here I am going to show the process of uninstalling an unwanted toolbar from a Vista machine.  After double clicking the program you want to remove the familiar 'are you sure' message will pop up.

Now for the cool part!  Revo lets us choose how to uninstall the application using different mode levels.  Here I am going to choose the Advanced mode.  I don't want a single trace of this toolbar left of my hard drive.  **Keep in mind that if you are on a domain, software information will still be kept in the AppData folder under your profile.**

Progress while scanning including the steps Revo is taking.

This is what I like to see the most … Scanning for leftover information!  This is the entire reason I really dig this application.

And here we are, it turns out this toolbar did indeed decide to leave some additional information in the registry.  If there were left over files or folders associated with the program it would show those as well.

Revo Uninstaller is available in multiple languages!

Other options you can tweak to your liking.  As you can see some features are not available in Vista but I am sure updates will include more features.

This application works on both Windows Vista and XP.  Other options include deleting your Internet browsing history, and deleting certain start up programs and services.  Oh!  And I didn't even cover Hunter Mode!  I must say this is quite an impressive utility!  Download Revo Uninstaller.

Note: This article is courtesy of a conversation I had yesterday with my good friend Ross, who runs the excellent SimpleHelp blog that you should check out (and subscribe to).

Set Automatic Defrag Options

Launch Disk Defragmenter by typing dfrgui into the start menu search or run box (or you could just search for defrag in the start menu or control panel)

Once you are there, you will notice the new "Select volumes" button that wasn't there before Service Pack 1:

This will launch a dialog where you can choose which drives should be automatically defragmented at the scheduled time:

Of course, you can also use this same new feature to manually defragment all your drives at once, instead of having to use a batch file.

There's really not much to it, is there?

Note: Vista most likely already scheduled all your drives to be defragmented by default, or at least it did in my testing.