Dirk.Net

Highly interesting hacks to install and run WPF/E and even Silverlight on the best MS OS ever, Windows 2000. Rock on, Win2K!

When installing Spamfighter’s web version (downloaded file name spamfighter_web.exe) you may receive the “Error applying transforms. Verify that the specified transform paths are valid.” error on some systems. Before delving deep into the registry to fix dead *.mst references (which might or might not work), it might be quicker to download the full version instead of the web installer. Also check out the Spamfighter support pages. Hope it helps.

An expert exposition of Vista DRM (Digital Rights Management) examines not only the intrusive spyware Microsoft has the right to install on your Vista system, it also hints at the perfidious plan MS might be hatching to control the pipeline for all kinds of content including software and applications. Very scary indeed!
Not only does Vista introduce few new features as many announced “improvements” had to be abandoned for time concerns and MS incompetence, it also drains your Notebook battery and will require a system update for most users to make use of the shiny new features.
While user’s have hardly any benefits besides eye-candy, Microsoft benefits a great deal, especially in the areas of piracy protection and digital rights management. The latter prescribe a rigorous process of driver evaluation and certificate checking to ensure that no digital content is ever present on a computer system in unencrypted form. These techniques can later be expanded to other kinds of content such as music, DVD movies, and eventually application software. Your purchased software will only run if Microsoft says it’s ok.
Vista is like a behemoth not only for users but also for developers. The learning curve has been collapsing over many with of them with .NET and Visual Studio in three iterations, all kinds of XML techniques and countless technology offerings and server components introduced over the last fiver years. And now Win32 is thrown out in favour of .NET 3.0 and WCF, WWF and WPF introducing a brand new programming paradigm. No wonder there is a groundswell of defection from the Microsoft platform (.NET) to open source software and especially Ruby on Rails for web development. Even Microsoft guru Mike Gunderloy has left to get himself a fresh cup. 

Having bought a new SD card for my Pocket PC I discovered it came pre-formatted with the FAT (FAT 16) file system of yore. This file system has a volume size limit of 2 GB and some drawback regarding cluster size and fragmetation. So wouldn’t it be preferable to use the newer FAT 32 file system? It turns out that due to technical reasons detailed here classic FAT is actually better and delivers better performance in most cases. It seems like the old dog still has some bark in him.

There are several replacement choices for the aging Notepad, which is still it’s simplistic old self even in Vista. One great choice is EditpadLite (free) and the more expensive EditpadPro by fellow Thailand expat Jan Goyvaerts. If you want to edit Ruby with syntax highlighting, go for Notepad2 with Ruby. However, simply removing the old and renaming notepad2.exe to notepad.exe (located in your %systemroot%, usually C:\Windows\) won’t cut it, and XP SP2 and the latest security updates for Windows Server 2003 make it even harder.
Follow these steps for a successful replace:

Extract the downloaded Notepad2 files to your %systemroot% (usually C:\Windows or C:\WINNT).

Create a text file in the same directory and rename it to sth. like replacenotepad.bat.

Paste the following script:

@echo Replacing NOTEPAD.EXE with notepad2.EXE …
REM
REM 1. Prevent the protected file system from doing its thing.
attrib -r -h -s %systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386
ren systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.exe notepad.exe.bak
attrib +r +h +s %systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386
attrib -r -h -s %systemroot%\system32\dllcache
ren %systemroot%\system32\dllcache\notepad.exe notepad.exe.bak
attrib +r +h +s %systemroot%\system32\dllcache
REM
REM 2. Make backup copies of Notepad in the Windows, System32 and i386 folders.
copy %systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.exe %systemroot%\ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.bak.exe
copy %systemroot%\system32\notepad.exe %systemroot%\system32\notepad.bak.exe
copy %systemroot%\notepad.exe %systemroot%\notepad.bak.exe
REM
REM 3. Copy notepad2 to Notepad in the Windows, System32 and i386 folders.
copy notepad2.exe ServicePackFiles\i386\notepad.exe
copy notepad2.exe %systemroot%\system32\dllcache\notepad.exe
copy notepad2.exe %systemroot%\system32\notepad.exe
copy notepad2.exe %systemroot%\notepad.exe
REM
@echo Succeeded.
@echo
@echo NOTE: When the Windows file protection message pops up,
@echo click Cancel, then click Yes to confirm your intentions.

REM END OF SCRIPT

Then run the Command Prompt (Run>cmd), change to your %systemroot% (cd %systemroot%) and simply enter replacenotepad.bat (or whatever you called the file).

That should do it. Thanks to Blue Lander for the tip. Happy New Year 2007!