Fix Internet Explorer security, even for XP - & a trap to watch out for

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You should have heard there's a security hole  in Internet Explorer versions 6 to 11 (ie most modern versions), a fatal flaw which could let attackers plant malware on your PC. This zero day vulnerability, announced by Microsoft a few days ago, was considered serious enough that the US and UK authorities issued warnings about it, as did the EU security agency ENISA.

To their credit, Microsoft in short order released a fix for this critical issue - even for browsers running on Windows XP, for which support has now ended generally (so if you're still on XP, for the sake of your security you should move off it ASAP).

How to update your Internet Explorer for the fix? Use Windows Update. For many people you'll be prompted to type 'Windows Update' in your Start menu search box.

There is one trap you have to watch if you have your Windows Update settings set to 'Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them'. (I use that setting because Windows updates have been known to stop computers from starting up altogether! So, for non-critical updates, I usually wait a few days and search to see if there have been cries of despair online about failure or inability to boot after the new update, before I apply the update to my own computers.)

If you have that setting for Windows Update, after you check for updates you MUST click on '1 important update is available'  (or '2 important updates'. or whatever it says):

When you do that, you'll see the list of important updates. Now here's the important bit: on my Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers, often items in the list of important updates are NOT ticked by default. You have to manually tick them. This is what happened to me in the case of the critical Internet Explorer update on Windows 8.1. The option was not ticked!

So you must tick all the important updates, especially that one. Then you can go ahead and click all the 'Install' / 'OK' buttons, and restart your computer when prompted.

I've noticed this happen many times with Windows 7 and Windows 8 Windows updates. Also, important updates like Microsoft Security Essentials or Windows Defender are often listed under 'Optional' updates rather than 'Important' updates, so you must go and check your Optional updates too, which is not good. I hope Microsoft fixes it so that security updates, especially critical ones, are all TICKED by default without users having to check, and that security updates are all under the 'Important' rather than 'Optional' section.

Open Word or Excel document read-only - add context menu item

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If you'd like to right-click on a Word or Excel document in Windows Explorer to open it as read-only, supposedly you should be able to hold down the Shift key, rightclick on the filename, and there should be an option to "Open as Read-Only".

However, choosing this Shift-rightclick option doesn't actually open the document as read-only. This seems to be a known bug in Office 2003 and Office 2007, and also in Office 2010 and Excel 2010.

There's one workaround and one fix.

Open in protected view

The workaround is that, if you Shift-rightclick on a Word or Excel .xls file in Windows Explorer, there's also an option to "Open in Protected View".

Choose that, and it works pretty much as read-only: you can't change anything, you can't save, but you can copy/paste from that document. This works for Excel as well as Word.

Rightclick context menu item

What solves the problem completely in Word, which I used myself, is to edit things to add a new rightclick Open Read-only context menu option that actually works to open Word documents as read-only. I based this solution on a combo of this post (which wasn't actually on opening read only) and this page (about opening read-only, but for XP only, not later versions of Windows).

Here's how to add a right-click context menu item to open Word files as read only, properly - works for me using Windows 7 and Word 2010:

First, download FileTypesMan (free, but donate if you can, the man certainly deserves it!) - you have to scroll quite a way down for the "Download FileTypesMan" link (I used "Download FileTypesMan for x64" as my computer is Windows 7 Pro 64-bit).

Next, unzip/extract the files (rightclick on the zip fiule downloaded and Extract all to create a new unzipped folder) and open the new folder, then run FileTypesMan.exe.

On the left, scroll down till you find and highlight .docx (or use menu Edit > Find and and type docx to find it, make sure you then highlight that line):

Now in the menu choose Actions > New Action (or press Ctrl-n).

In the box that pops up, fill it in like this (and see diagram just above the list):

• Action name - I used  "Open read-only" without the quotes, you could just use "Read only" etc as you prefer
• Menu Caption - I used "Open read-only" again
• Command-Line - you can click Browse to find your Winword.exe under Program Files or Program Files (x86) (you will have to drill down to find Microsoft Office, Office14 or Office11 etc depending on your version), or Select from Running Programs if Word is already running, which is the easiest. You could alternatively enter the full path to Winword.exe, with quotes around it, as shown below, but it's easiest to Select from Running Programs (you can launch Word just before you click Select and it should work, just scroll down to find it in the "Select Process" list, possibly to the end):

After you've used Browse or Select, it will fill in the Command-Line box for you with something like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\WINWORD.EXE" "%1"

Now, you have to edit what's in the Command-Line box, by inserting after the "%1" the following (which you can copy/paste from the next line) - just after the 1 but before the close double quotes, and make sure there's a space between the 1 and the first /:
/h /n /dde

In my case, the Command-Line box ended up reading like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\WINWORD.EXE" "%1 /h /n /dde"

Next, in the DDE section in the Message box, you should enter  the following, which again you can copy/paste:
[AppShow][REM _DDE_ReadWriteOnSave][FileOpen .Name="%1",.Revert=0,.ReadOnly=1]

(In the Application box you can enter Word if you like, but it will still work even if you don't.)

Finally, click OK. This adds a new Action to the bottom half of the FileTypesMan window, which you can doubleclick to edit in future.

Now, when you rightclick (no need to hold down the Shift key) a docx document in Windows Explorer, you will have a working "Open read-only" menu option (or whatever title you gave it in the "Menu caption" box above).

Furthermore, in FileTypesMan you can select (in the lefthand column) the type .doc for old-style Word documents, and rinse and repeat the steps above, if you wish.

Excel protected view - rightclick only

For Excel spreadsheets, unfortunately the above fix doesn't work, so you have to open them in protected view.

But to make life easier for yourself, you can use FileTypesMan to change things so that you don't have to Shift-rightclick to get the "Open in Protected View" menu option. Here's how to get that option to display just on a simple rightclick:

In FileTypesMan, find and highlight.xls on the left (scroll or search, as with docx above).

Now in the bottom half of the window, find and doubleclick "ViewProtected" (outlined in red above).

In the box that pops up, UNtick "Extended", and OK:

Now a simple rightclick, as opposed to Shift-rightclick, will call up the "Open in Protected View" option.

Windows 7 "audio service is not running" - solved

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If you get no sound, and there's a white cross on red background against the speaker icon in your Windows 7 system tray (bottom right hand side), with the message "The Audio Service is not running" when you hover your mouse over the speaker icon, there is often a simple solution to this problem.

Restarting the audio service usually works to fix the lack of audio sounds in Win 7 (follow this link for instructions on how), just like it usually does in Vista.

A simpler solution may be to just move your volume slider (click the speaker icon then move the slider).

Error 0x80070052 The directory or file cannot be created - can't delete files - solution

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Can't delete folders or files? I kept getting error code 0x80070052 in Windows when trying to delete files, and they just wouldn't delete. Bit of a problem.

However I found that I could permanently delete files (hold down Shift when selecting Delete or pressing the Del key). Ie bypassing the Recycle Bin.

I kicked myself when I realised the answer was simple. Just empty the recycle bin first! (Just rightclick it and choose Empty, for those unfamiliar with the process. It make take a while.) Then you can delete documents, pictures and other files again.

Nothing to do with file or folder rights or permissions, just as well as I couldn't take ownership of files where I was already the owner!

I just wish the error code was "Recycle Bin too full, please empty it!". That would have been rather more helpful.

Hope my posting this tip saves others some searching.

(If you get error 0x80070052 with USB flash drives apparently the solution there is to move files at the root into an existing folder, or new folder if you can create it.)

How to network Windows 7 and Vista computers to share files, folders & printers from the Windows 7 PC

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If you've had trouble networking Windows 7 and Vista computers, and even when you've turned password protection off it keeps asking for a username and password when trying to access files remotely from the Windows 7 PC but won't let you login and says "Network logon failure unknown user name or bad password" or similar, this post suggests some possible solutions. Note that I've only looked at sharing specific folders on a Windows 7 PC to a Vista PC (and not vice versa).

To fix this problem, this is what worked for me, after steps like these didn't work. This gave the clue! Short answer: make sure you've enabled the Guest account, or (better) create an account on the Windows 7 computer for network sharing purposes.

Step by step:

1. First, make sure you've done all these essential preliminary steps (though I'd leave out the firewall settings for now), ie: put both computers on the same workgroup (any name you want for the workgroup, as long as it's the same for both computers); set their network locations to Home; turned on network discovery, file and printer sharing, and public folder sharing.
   
   
   
   
2. Then:
   1. EITHER:
      1. in the settings above, turn OFF "Password protected sharing"
      2. turn ON the guest account (it was off on my Windows 7 computer by default)
      3. then, to access shared stuff from the other computer, go to Network (in Computer or Windows Explorer), doubleclick the name of the Windows 7 computer, and when it asks for username and password, just type in 'guest' for the username (or if that doesn't work, try YourWindows7ComputerName\guest), but leave the password blank, tick the box below if you want to save having to re-enter details during the same session, then hit OK.
      4. BIG RED WARNING - note that this is not very secure as it adds a "guest" account onto the Windows 7 computer which anyone can use to access that computer without a password, including accessing attached external hard drives. So, either rename the guest account or (better yet) secure the guest account, which may be a bit involved, or just create a special account on the Windows 7 computer as per 2.2. below, which may be easier.
   2. OR, alternatively, and this better for security:
      1. create another account on the Windows 7 computer with username/password, just for networked file and printer sharing
      2. on the other computer, again in Computer or Windows Explorer go to Network and doubleclick the name of the Windows 7 Computer; when the login prompt pops up, enter the username and password you created.
         1. note: the box to tick to remember your credentials shouldn't be there for Vista Home versions, because even if if you tick it, it won't remember your user/password (cached credentials) for network shares, beyond the session. Next time you reboot or restart the Vista computer, you'll just have to enter them all over again if you want to access stuff shared from your Windows 7 computer.
            Easiest workaround: create the special account on the Windows 7 computer with the same username/password as on the Vista computer.
         2. this (go to the "Concealing…" section) shows how to hide the special account from the logon screen on the Windows 7 computer if you wish, so that it's not visible on the Windows 7 PC when you  turn it on
      3. Note that the username may need to be in the form "Windows 7 computer name\username" (without the quotes)
      4. In this case, of course, you should turn "Password protected file sharing" in step 1 back to ON.
         
         Now if, after doing that, on the other computer you can see the shared files and folders on the Windows 7 computer, but on trying to open them you can't, and get a message like "The Network Path Cannot be Found - Error code 0x80070035", just try this Netbios fix on the other computer (NOT the Windows 7 one). Step 2 of that worked for me, no reboot needed and no need to tinker with firewalls!

Important - before the other computer can see files etc on the Windows 7 computer, you still have to take some extra steps on the Windows 7 computer first:

1. Set the properties of the folders or files that you want to share, so that they're Shared.
   
   And don't forget to "Limit the number of simultaneous users" to the maximum number of computers in your network - it defaults to 20!
   
   
2. Also, check your printers to make sure the ones you want to share are shared, and share them if necessary:
   1. Go to Start, Devices and Printers
   2. Rightclick on the name of the printer you want to share, and go to Printer properties. IMPORTANT: don't go to Properties, don't go to Printing preferences, go to Printer properties!
      
      
   3. Pick your printer, if more than one, and go to the Sharing tab and tick "Share this printer" - give it an intelligible name, and OK.
   4. On the Vista computer, under Network you should now see the printers - just doubleclick on a printer to install it (if necessary).

Windows Live Writer ribbon and menu disappearing?

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When I recently moved to Windows 7, even though WLW came pre-installed on my new computer, I found that the ribbon and menus were not there whenever I opened WLW – see the pic above!

How to solve this problem? What worked for me was just click the restore or full size icon at the top right of the window (between the – and the X icons), and then click it again to get back your previous window size, and voila - the ribbon returns!

The fix is straightforward, but this is an annoyance as I have to do it every time I launch Windows Live Writer after starting up my computer. Windows Live Writer is to me the best free blogging software there is – it works for Blogger/Blogspot as well as Wordpress.com and many other blogging platforms - so I hope there's a permanent solution soon.

(And no, it's WLW, not my computer or monitor - the 'ribbon vanishes' issue doesn't happen with any other application, for me.)

Can't find Microsoft Office programs inside Program Files?

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If you've installed Microsoft Office in Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, and you can't find Office's Winword.exe for Microsoft Word, or other EXE files in the Program Files folder for Excel etc, here's how to find them. They're not actually missing, so you can stop tearing your hair out.

The solution to the problem is this: you may have installed 32-bit Microsoft Office, but the 64 bit Windows system creates two Program Files folders in your C drive - "Program Files", and "Program Files (x86)".

The weird thing is that the "Program Files" folder still contains a "Microsoft Office" folder with "Office14" subfolder (if you have Office 2010, or "Office11" if you're on Office 2007). Which is what threw me at first.

However, those folders will be rather empty - you won't find many Office files within them!

If you want to find the real Office 2010 programs and other Microsoft office files, you will have to look in "Program Files (x86)". It's the "Microsoft Office" subfolder there that you want, probably Office14 (or Office11 for Office 2007).

Some may think this is obvious, but, being new to 64-bit Windows, I missed it at first, and it seems and others have too, so I hope this saves someone else from going mad trying to find the Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc applications inside "Program Files"!