Tag Archives: vista

Fix Vista not indexing files

Posted on September 22, 2008.

I had a strange problem where Windows Vista’s desktop search wasn’t indexing files. I tried to rebuild the index and after a couple of weeks only 10 files were indexed.

I finally came accross the fix to this problem here to change the Search and Index power options from PowerSaver to something else.

Open Power Options in Vista (Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Power Options).
Under your current selected plan, click “Change plan settings”.
Click “Change advanced power settings”.
Under “Search and Indexing”, change to Balanced or High Performance.

The indexing took about an hour after that, and all missing files were finally included.

Synchronize Windows with a Linux ntpd server

Posted on September 5, 2008.

I have a Windows Server 2008 DC and I wanted to use my internal time server on a linux box running ntpd.

After a little hunting around, I found the command required to set Windows up to use the correct time peer.
w32tm /config /update /manualpeerlist:"0.pool.ntp.org,0x8 1.pool.ntp.org,0x8" /syncfromflags:MANUAL

After making this change, you need to restart the Windows Time Service by issuing the following 2 commands,
net stop w32time net start w32time

If you have problems, first make sure the Windows Time Service is enabled.

This works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

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Location of the All Users Start Menu & Desktop in Vista

Posted on June 18, 2008.

In Vista, the public shared Start Menu and Desktop folders that are now at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

And the Desktop is at C:\Users\Public\Desktop

Mapped Network Drives and Vistas UAC

Posted on June 10, 2008.

When a non-administrator is prompted by Vista’s UAC to enter Administrator credentials for security elevation, the program that then runs under Administrator priveleges will not have access to the logged in users mapped network drives.

For example, if Mike the user was to copy some files from the mapped network drive S: to C:Windows, he would be prompted by UAC to enter Administrative priveleges. So the Administrator John enters his details but then the copy fails because the network drive is no longer available now that the user is elevated.

This scenerio happens also when installing programs that require administrative priveleges during installation from a network drive.

To fix this, an administrator can make the following registry change,

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"EnableLinkedConnections"=dword:00000001

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]

"EnableLinkedConnections"=dword:00000001

You can also download and run this registry file to import the above change to your registry,
EnableLinkedConnections.reg (134 bytes, 2,616 hits)

Administrative Rights on Startup/Logon in Vista

Posted on October 3, 2007.

The new User Access Control (UAC) in Windows Vista is an interesting feature. Whilst it keeps me well informed as to the security status of each program I run, it can become a hinderence to productivity.

One such issue I am having is loading programs at startup that require Administrative Rights. Currently Vista will not allow an elevated program to run on startup via the usual methods. But there is a work around using the Task Scheduler as I found on the Lavalys forum.

In order to create a task which runs with admin rights, you need to be logged in as an Administrator. These steps will not allow you to run an elevated program if you don’t already have the rights to do so.

Open Task Scheduler by pressing the Start button and typing task scheduler and pressing enter.
Create a new Task through the Action menu.
Choose a name for the Task, and make sure Run with highest priveleges is ticked.
Choose Triggers from the tabs at the top, and click New.
Choose At log on from the Begin a task option.
Either pick a user, or choose “Any user” if you want this to run on log on for everyone. Make sure everything else is not ticked except for “Enabled”. Click OK.
Choose Actions from the tabs at the top, and click New.
Click the Browse button and find the program you want to load at logon/startup. In the Lavalys example it would be the Everest executable. Click OK.
Click the Settings tab and make sure the only checkbox ticked is Allow task to be run on demand.
Click OK again to save your new task. Check it has been created properly by clicking on Task Scheduler Library on the left pane of the Task Scheduler. Thats it, you’re done. Reboot and see if it works!