Friday, January 28, 2011

Login to Skype 5 opens multiple tabs (pop-ups) in Internet Explorer

Problem: after login to Skype 5, multiple IE tabs are opened trying to connect to a Facebook URL

Solution: disable Facebook integration in skype 5. The easy way is to click on the "Don´t show facebook on skype" link located on the Facbook tab. However, if like us, you have blocked access to facebook from inside the Company network, the facebook tab won´t never show that link.

So the manual procedure is as follows:

1)      End any network connection from the computer with the problem. This will prevent the tabs being displayed.


 2)      If opened, log-out from Skype


3)       Go to the folder %AppData%\Skype using Windows Explorer


 4)      Search for a folder with the same name of the username used with skype


5)      Using Notepad or any other plain text editor, open the file config.xml and search for the line <FlamingoDisconnected>0</FlamingoDisconnected>.


6)      Change the 0 to 1


7)      Save and close the file and login again to Skype. Tabs should not open.





If you cannot find the FlamingoDisconnected text in the config.xml file you can add it under the <General></General> section.  I have found that the FlamingoDisconnected text is only added to the xml file if  the content of the Facebook tab is displayed at least once in Skype.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Replacing Blank Cells with any character in Excel 2007/2010

1) On the Home tab, select the Find and Select dropdown menu  which is located on the Editing Group of icons
2) Select Go to Specials ... and select the Blanks radio button and then click OK. All the cells with no data are selected and showed with a fill color. Do not click on any part of the open Excel workbook.
3) Type any character that you want to replace the blanks with. You can include the format for the cell, for example, aligment. Do not press any key yet.
4) Press Ctrl+Enter. This will copy the character you enter in step 3 to all selected cells including the format you selected on step 2.

Friday, January 14, 2011

How to backup and restore SQL 2005 logins

I found a really useful article about how to backup and restore SQL 2005 logins in the following URL:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/howdoi/?p=140. Because it is a great information, I prefer not to only post the URL for anybody reference but include in my blog a PDF file containing the whole article. If the original link is broken, I can still access the content.

Te file can be downloaded here: Backup-Restore SQL 2005 Logins

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Errors 2275 and 1632 when you try to install software in Windows 7

When you try to install MSI based software in Windows 7, you receive an error message with codes 2275 and 1632. Both codes are related to the fact the %windir%\Installer folder cannot be created or read even if you are running the installer as an administrator. As a workaround, you can manually create the Installer folder and that solves the problem.