Powershell 1 liner – Get logged in user

(Get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem -computerName “ComputerName”).UserName

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Application Compatibility on a network drive

Running a program locally you can use the App Compat Toolkit to shim all sorts of compatibility settings. Running the program from a network drive, you’ve got far less:

It looks like there’s 3 things we can try:

1. Add an entry in this key
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers
   Something like: F:\Folder\App.exe=WIN98
2. Add an entry in this key
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers
   Something like: K:\Folder\App.exe=WIN98
3.  Or create a batch file like so:
   set __COMPAT_LAYER=Win98
   K:\Folder\App.exe

There’s some info about the batch file method here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286705

There’s a little bit about the reg key method here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb756937.aspx

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Disable wireless on LAN

I’ve been looking for a little while to prevent that security bugbear of laptops bridging the corporate network by keeping the wifi or 3G connection running while connected to the domain. A neat product I’ve come across is Accessity 1Net. Easy to install, runs a lightweight service and it was pretty snappy at disabling the unwanted connection. It identified the domain straight off and prevented other unwanted connections while on the domain. I could still take a laptop home and connect via wifi.

You can set the configuration via Group Policy which is nice.

You can set some HP models in the BIOS to disable a wireless connection when a wired one is available, but I haven’t seen it from all manufacturers.In the 1NET install you can set the command line property

ALLOWWLANONDOMAIN=N if you want to disconnect the wireless when the ethernet is connected or

ALLOWWLANONDOMAIN=Y if you’re happy to allow both connections.

It worked very well for me, so take a look if you’re trying to prevent network bridging or to disable wireless while on the LAN.

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Acrobat X F1 Help Menu – FIXED

If you’re getting an error in Acrobat X like “Online Help content cannot be displayed. Verify you can launch your web browser and have access to the Internet.” but don’t like the less than acceptable solutions Adobe provides don’t lose hope, there is a workaround!

1. Check if you have a file C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Help\en_US\acrobat\X\pro\using\helpmap.txt
2. Check it isn’t empty
3. Either way, make sure it has a line that looks like this (note that those gaps should be tabs except the spaces in “Home Page for Pro”:

AH_HOME WS76F8368A-2F01-421d-9437-06EEB1C68BA4.html Home home.xml Home Page for Pro

The helpmap.txt file that Acrobat X produced for me in 10.1 had a whole lot more than that, which you can see in the uploaded helpmap.txt.pdf file.

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Visual C++ 1603 errors

A number of applications including Acrobat Pro, ArcGIS, Visual Studio and AutoCAD can at times fail with error 1603. It’s been a little while since I saw this, but the symptoms are something like:

• Software installations on the machine fails without a clear error message (In our case it was: “Micro​soft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Failed Installation aborted, Result=1603”). (From OpenLM Software Licensing Blog)

The resolution for this is to set the Registry Size Limit to “unlimited” and then reboot:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\RegistrySizeLimit
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0xffffff (4294967295)

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Adobe CS5.5 Help Content

As ever, Adobe refuse to make things straight forward in installing their Creative Suite. To their credit, the Adobe Application Manager Enterprise Edition (AAMEE) is getting better, but there’s still this tricky point that you need to install help separately to the main installation.

What happens si you step through AAMEE creating an installation and you wind up with 2 folders, Build and Exceptions. The Build folder contains the stuff you selected in the install and an msi to execute. So far, sounds good. However to have Help available via the menus you’ll need to install AIR and then install the Help content. Once you’ve got AIR installed, you can get your content installed by running something like:

“C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe AIR\Versions\1.0\Adobe AIR Application Installer.exe” -silent -eulaAccepted “%PATH%\32\Exceptions\AdobeHelp\AdobeHelp.air”

What happens with the Help content is that it doesn’t download to a single location on the machine, but goes into the user’s profile in a folder called “%APPDATA%\chc.4875E02D9FB21EE389F73B8D1702B320485DF8CE.1”. You can try co-ordinating this centrally, but it may not function correctly (as in display anything) for all CS programs.

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ActiveSetup – your nemesis?

I’ve written before about the usefulness of ActiveSetup, but today am here to warn you about a pitfall of using ActiveSetup.

When working with roaming profiles, depending on how your environment is configured, the HKCU registry hive will also roam with users. This is fine if your active setup action is a profile related thing (perhaps create a file in their profile, run a script to move something in their profile). However, if it’s not (maybe creating a local AppData file or something else local), ActiveSetup will work fine the first time, but won’t re-run for the user when they logon to another computer. This could break what you were trying to do.

So, some final words: take care with ActiveSetup, it may not be the tool for your job. An alternative could be the Run key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run) or RunOnce (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce)

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