May/102
OpenOffice: Recovery Window keeps popping up for a deleted file
Calc, the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet program can sometimes crash for me when doing cut and paste. On one occasion I deleted the file I was working on.
Since then the recovery window pops up every time the program gets started and fails because the item doesn’t exist.
The solution is to delete the OpenOffice.org recovery file. Its located at the following subdirectory of the user data directory.
AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org\3\user\registry\data\org\openoffice\Office\Roaming.xcu
May/100
Windows 7: Deleting or Rename Files still appear in Windows Explorer until they are refreshed
I was experiencing a problem with Windows 7 Explorer in that deleting a file left behind a ghosted out version of the file in Explorer with the same name. I couldn’t actually do anything with this file as it was actually deleted (or moved if I had renamed it) but it was still listed until the folder was refreshed through the magic of the F5 key.
Finally when having to rename a load of these files I’d had enough. Googling the answer pointed me to some Microsoft forums which gave technologically advanced answers like registry editing and someone even suggesting recreating your user profile. This was from Microsoft!
Somewhere in one of the threads someone pointed out that this only happened when accessing the Documents through a ‘Library’. Libraries in Windows 7 are a useful feature to my personal account as they are a useful way of accessing a spread apart music or video collection via a single access point, especially given an external disc. But it seems some sort of caching issue creeps up with accessing folders in the Library.
The problem I had was that accessing something as u:\users\rishistar\My Documents\test\ still resolved to a Libraries path so I right clicked on each library and deleted each one. I don’t use them on my work account so this was fine for me. YMMV.
As a coda I did have to re-create my favourite shortcuts in the top left of the Explorer pane but that was no big deal.
Oct/091
Windows 7 is Windows Heaven
As you have probably read about the new Windows release is absolutely the best Windows upgrade ever. It feels light and responsive and the laptop battery gets an extra half hour of juice (through normal usage if not any formally quantified test).
Don’t forget also that Ubuntu also has a new release coming up! Which is free 
Aug/090
Removing And Reinstalling MySQL on Windows
I had to reinstall MySQL 5.1 on my Windows machine, and ran into an issue – the service was still installed even though the program was removed.
To get rid of the service go to the registry (type regedit in the Program search menu).
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services
find MySQL, delete, and restart Windows.
Aug/090
Windows Vista/7 : Placing New User Accounts on a seperate partition
One of the irksome things with Windows is being able to place the entire user account subdirectory onto a seperate partition. Not just the Documents and Music folders (which you can move by right-clicking on and changing locations using the Properties dialog), but the whole shebang. This whole shebang is referred to as a ‘User Profile’.
I recently had the fortune to purchase a new laptop – a Sony Vaio BZ21VN – C2D P8700 2.53Ghz 4 Gb 400 Gb DVDRWDL 15.4 inch X-BLACK Vista Biz if you are interested – and thought I’d sort this out from the start.
Windows by default stores the User Profile under C:\Users – this is what used to be Documents and Settings under XP. The account created on startup will be placed there – so I called my initial account ‘Install’ – you have the freedom of keeping or disposing of this later as you like.
Once you’ve set up and updated Windows, clicked the 742 licence agreements and gone through the 16 restart cycles we can start dealing with the User Account location issue.
MAKE SURE YOU CREATED RESTORE DISKS OR HAVE YOUR INSTALL DISKS TO HAND IN CASE SOMETHING GOES WRONG. NO LIABILITY ACCEPTED FOR THINGS THAT GO WRONG HERE!!!
Sort out the desired location of the user files
It can be either a second hard disk or a partition that you’ve created. Partitions can be created by going to Control Panel and typing in Partitions in the Search Panel to get to the Partition tool. (I like this tool a lot!).
Partitioning now feels a lot less scary than it used to be. Remember the C: drive will be for Windows and your programs you install – so give that an appropriate size to match – I use 100G for that. I also called the location of my user accounts the U: drive.