Technology

In this section you'll find all the articles from the original Jonathan Young's Computer Site, as well as new articles that discuss different topics relating to technology. Below you will also find a collection of random computer knowledge tidbits that I've collected over the years.

July 23, 2011 - A couple of complaints and resolutions today:

First, Google doesn't seem to work as well as it used to. Sometimes I input a term that Google thinks is misspelled, and it automatically shows me results for the corrected word.

To fix, use quotation marks around the word to identify to Google that this is a literal search.

Second, regarding Windows 7 jump lists:

Every so often, a jump list becomes corrupted. Items that you've pinned no longer appear, and you will not be able to pin any new items. There is no fix that I have found other than obliterating the jump list and starting over. Luckily, items in jump lists reside in files, and you can back up these files on a regular basis so that when a jump list does become corrupt, you can restore it from backup.

Not so luckily, the jump lists all have some crazy names. A couple that I have identified are:

Excel 2003 jump list - 75d01b5b7df0d177
Acrobat 8 jump list - 6807f6e0bc8d4ca7

The place to find these files: %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

Be sure not to accidentally back up a corrupted jump list, or else it will be too late!

January 31, 2011 - If any of your Start Menu items ever disappear in Windows 7, start the Task Manager, end the Explorer.exe process, and click File->Run to start Explorer.exe again. Your items will now magically reappear.

January 20, 2006 - ActiveX controls can be removed from C:\Windows\Downloaded Program Files

December 22, 2005 - To run Windows XP in memory, if you have 1 gigabyte or more of RAM:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Session Manager -> Memory Management

Set DisablePagingExecutive to 1 and reboot.

December 19, 2005 - Some console commands for Doom 3:

set com_showFPS "1" - show an FPS counter in the upper right corner of the screen.
set com_videoRam "256" - set the amount of VRAM your video card has (Doom doesn't always get this right).
timedemo demo1 - start the built-in timedemo.

July 2, 2005 - To show nonpresent devices in Device Manager, do the following:

Open a command prompt by typing cmd in a run box.
At the command line, type the following: set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
Hit enter, then type: devmgmt.msc
Once Device Manager opens, click on View, then Show hidden devices

This is a great way to delete a corrupt driver that keeps re-installing itself. Just be careful not to delete something you need!

November 28, 2004 - How to make Adobe Acrobat 6 load faster:

Navigate to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Acrobat
Create a folder called plug_ins_disabled
Enter the plug_ins folder and select all files and folders except Paper Capture, Preflight, EWH32.api, Search5.api, and Search.api
Cut selected files and paste them into the plug_ins_disabled folder you just created
Load Acrobat 6 and enjoy the loading time decrease

Note that some of the files I left in the plug_ins folder can be removed to the disabled folder, but since I require scanner function, I left some of them in. To get a clue as to what each plug-in does before you disable them, click on Help, then About Adobe Plug-Ins while inside Adobe Acrobat.