Tag: Windows

Adobe CS4 Installation Fail

January 23rd, 2009  |  Posted in Developer Blog   |  Tags: ,

I’ve spent the past 3 days trying to install Adobe CS4 Web Premium on my home Windows XP computer (as the second install of my license at work). I kept getting an error before anything would install telling me something like “the following programs failed to install” (I forget the exact wording).

Upon checking the Windows System Logs (Event Viewer -> Application), all it would tell me was “Product: Adobe Anchor Service CS4 — Installation operation failed.” With no other explanation.

After spending a bunch of time trying to find the answer with Google and on Adobe’s website, I finally came across the solution. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that CS4 is so new there isn’t much help out there for it yet. In the end, the solution is for CS3 but works beautifully for CS4 as well.

Basically you need to complete 2 simple steps.

1) Download and install the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

2) Download, unzip, and run the Adobe Windows CS3 Cleanup Script (which relies on the Windows program mentioned above to run) here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs3clean.html

I only had to run level 1 of the cleanup script to make it work.

As I said before, even though the Cleanup Script says it’s for CS3, it did work for me in installing CS4 as well.

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Access frequently used stuff without minimizing

July 2nd, 2007  |  Posted in Developer Blog   |  Tags:

Ever grow tired of minimizing whatever you are working on in order to get to a frequently used directory or file?

I recently submitted this screencast as a contest entry on lifehacker as a way to solve this annoyance. Which, by the way, won me a signed copy of Lifehacker the book.

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Simple Windows Reminder

May 19th, 2006  |  Posted in Developer Blog   |  Tags:

I’ve always wanted to set up a little reminder to tell me to go home at the end of the day. Today I finally built one for myself using a pretty simple technique and without installing any additional software. Although, it does require turning on the Windows Messenger service, so if you aren’t behind a firewall I don’t recommend it.

1) turn on the Windows Messenger service (if not already running).

2) open notepad and enter the following text:

net send yourcomputername Go Home

and save it as gohome.bat somewhere convenient on your hard drive.

3) Set up a Scheduled Task to run the .bat file every weekday at 4:45pm.

Sweeeeeeet…..

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USB Autorun

April 13th, 2006  |  Posted in Developer Blog   |  Tags:

This solution doesn’t create an actuall Autorun, but it does allow you to specify an app you want to run when double clicked from My Computer using the AUTORUN.INF

First I turned off all XP Autorun for my USB drive by right clicking the drive in My Computer folder, selecting the Autorun tab, then selecting each media type individually and selecting the “take no action” option.

Next I created a file called AUTORUN.INF and set it to be a hidden file. I placed that hidden file on the root of my USB drive. Then I opened the AUTORUN.INF file in notepad and entered the following:

[autorun]
shellAuto=&Autoplay
shellAutocommand=appspstartPStart.exe
ICON=appspstartPStart.exe
 
shell=Auto
label=My USB Drive

Where appspstartPStart.exe is the application to run when double clicked in My Computer.

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