Smallvoid.com

Had planned a small before-christmas vacation, but this was suddenly changed when the news arrived about my webhost provider had gone bankrupt. Have now been busy restoring the website on another webhost and started the domain transfer. It seems I was lucky with getting hold of the Auth-code, so the domain should be transferred within 5 days.

It is sad that Needhost.dk has been taken down, since they provided a very feature rich solution on the Windows platform. Compared to other low-budget webhosting solutions, then there are none in their league (Everyone is on the Linux platform). Really liked the combination of the Helm Control Panel and SmarterTools.

My new webhost is UnoEuro.com and I'm really surprised how fast my website is performing on this new webhost. The support have also been very helpful in my moment of need, and I'm planning to give them a good review if everything is up and running before new year.

Added some articles while waiting for the domain transfer:

• Added Windows Vista/2008 Network Tip about enabling support for Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)
• Added Windows XP Embedded Theme signed by Microsoft. Credits Tweaking with Vishal
• Added Windows XP Tip about accessing exFAT partitions by installing Vista's exFAT file system driver. Credits ItsMyWindows.com
• Added Windows Search Tip about extending the indexing service with IFilters to search within documents. Credits LifeHacker.com
• Added File Recovery Tip about performing a file copy from a scratched CD / DVD.

First the new articles added:

• Added Vista Tip about how to analyze boot time performance using the Windows Performance Toolkit.
• Added WinXP Tip about faster Start-menu navigation using search functionality. Credits LifeHacker.com
• Added Vista Tip about the special "All Tasks" folder. Credits ItsMyWindows.com
• Added Windows Tip about the shell-keyword, and how it can be used to quickly access common folders. Credits Winhelponline.com.

Secondly the bbPress forum has been upgraded to ver. 0.9.0.2 (From ver. 0.8.3). At the same the user integration between bbPress and WordPress has been removed. It seemed natural at first, but this slowly changed:

• Many of the security issues discovered in WordPress (and fixed) take offset in a registered user (Have now disabled user registration in WordPress).
• When posting a comment in WordPress, then one seldom want to bother with user login.
• bbPress is still in beta, so any security issues that might give it access to the Wordpress database is unwanted.
• bbPress has upgraded the password security, but this is not compatible with the old horse WordPress 2.0

With the upgrade, then it is now possible to perform anonymous posting like when posting comments in WordPress. This has also been used to transfer the topics from the old boardnation forum to bbPress.

Have spent the last few months writing a few articles for CodeProject.com. During this time the collection of unpublished tips have been growing. Here is a few to start with:

• Added Vista Tip about how to run programs elevated without UAC prompt. Credits HowToGeek.com
• Added Vista Tip about how to change the OEM branding of the Welcome Center. Credits Unlock for Us
• Added Vista SP1 Tip about how to restore the search context menu option. Credits VistaX64.com
• Added Vista Tip about how to enable auto-tuning of the RWIN in Internet Explorer

Have also been playing around with Wordpress to add support for HTTP 304 return code when using wp-cache. After enabling the support, then this blog returned 3 times as many 304 responses, though the bandwidth usage is pretty much the same according to the website statistics.

I changed from Windows 2000 to Vista some time ago, and low and behold Vista uses a wee bit more disk space. Sadly enough the system partition is only 15 GByte, so it is a "daily" struggle to keep disk usage down (Especially when SP1 had to be installed). Right now there is 2 GByte available free space, after installing all my usual applications, this lead me down the futile road of trying to minimize the size of the Windows install.

• Using NTFS compression to save disk space is not a recommended strategy when using Vista, but there are some candidate folders when using WinXP.
• Saving power using CPU throttling is automatically enabled on Vista, but it can also be done on Windows XP.
• It is quite easy to change the default folder view for all folders in Windows XP.

Note AVG is frequently nagging about upgrading to version 8.0, and the new AVG version introduces a Link Scanner plugin. The Link Scanner will be installed even if selecting not to install it. The Link Scanner will make hooks into you web-browser, and be activated whenever a link is clicked or a search result is displayed. If not interested in having this babysitter around, then one can uninstall it with this command-line (Better than disabling as it will prevent the warning about an AVG component not running):

avg_free_stf_*.exe /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch

Microsoft have made Vista even more stable with SP1 (though the major contributor is probably Vista ready drivers), and have at the same time given XP some love by collecting all patches released since SP2 into a single tested SP3 package.

Vista SP1 introduces a new Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol service, which allows VPN over SSL and makes it easier to setup VPN connections.

WinXP SP3 now also includes the Network Access Protection Agent, which makes it easier to protect the network against simple user mistakes, such as forgetting to apply security and antivirus updates. The Wireless Zero Configuration have been split into two, so now it only takes care of Wireless 802.1X authentication, while the new Wired AutoConfig service takes care of wired connections.

Note Firefox 3 RC1 also seem ready for prime time (besides the usual bug fixes). Been using FF3 the last few weeks and it has been very stable (Had to upgrade my firefox addons and the Flash Player plugin manually). Really like the new features in the address-bar, but I miss the persistent Go-button. Another new feature is the ability to duplicate a tab by holding down the CTRL-key while dragging the tab with the mouse (Would be nice with a right-click option). Detailed list of Changes in Firefox 3