Recently a few of the items in my start menu have stopped working. Everytime I try to open the Run box I get a error message saying that windows cannot create a shortcut. I can get around this by doing Windows-Key + R. Help and support has the same error.

However, if I leave it too long, the whole of the start menu stops working then it's time to kill the explorer process and reload it. I tried rolling back to a previous state, and this seemed to have fixed it for a while. But it has started happening again.

I've read somewhere that regsrvr shell32.dll will work, but I've tried it with no success.

I haven't found any fix to this issue, and neither does anyone else. I'm investigating but we'll have to see if I'm going to have to rebuild my OS. If I do - I'll be really annoyed.

As someone who knows a thing or two about computers I'm frequently asked to fix problems.

When I do some work on a family PC I always give it a checkup: Virus scan, autorus from sysinternals, and a few other sys admin tasks. Recently I've noticed a huge increase in the amount of spyware that has found its way onto my family computers.

So I took the decision to set Mozilla Firefox as the default browser. No one seems to have noticed any difference yet so that's a real bonus.

Anyway I had my support hat on earlier today while talking my dad through a problem he had with word, I sent him a link to open office:

Dad: OK, I double clicked the link and its opening it in mozzarella firefox.

Well I had to laugh!

I'm not quite sure I'd go as far as Vishnu Vyas in his first paragraph, but it's such a good title.

What he does describe so elegantly is the two distinctly different disciplines you have to enjoy as a programmer. I've always taken more enjoyment out of fixing a bug than in creating a new application.

Some developers hate working on bugs, they see it analogous to a plumber looking at blocked toilet. At worst bug fixing is wonderful mental work out quick and rewarding. At best it is a challenge more akin to a brain surgeon trying to detect and fix a nervous tick in a patient. Of all the aspects of IT that I will miss it is this area.

Apparently there are 75 bands in this picture:

To get you started:
B52s
The Eagles
Gorillaz

etc..

RSS Enclosures also work in Google Reader.

I've just compared the following post in bloglines and google reader:
Scott Hanselman: DevRadio Podcast featuring Omar Shahine and I on DasBlog

With Google reader the audio is automatically included. Very nice.

Strange title I know. I found it after running a regmon on a dot-net executable.

Anyway, it's to do with assembly binding more can be found here: Assembly Binding Log Viewer (Fuslogvw.exe)

Raymond Chen's latest blog entry: Another Schadenfreude-filled look back at the dot-com zaniness reminds me of my brief life as a developer in a dot-com failure.

It certainly wasn't the biggest company that bit the dust, but to those of us working there it was big enough. We had a very similar aggregate buying model as Mercata, letsbuyit and a few others. However, in the 2 years that we were going one month stands out as spectacular. From the beginning the business model was clear and for a successful business our sales graph needed to look like a hockey stick. For months we were at the botton of the hockey stick never really making any sales.

Then, suddenly, in a single month we made more sales than the previous 6 months combined. We were finally going in the right direction. Sadly it turned out that all the deliveries of the widescreen tvs were being delivered to an empty house and all the sales that month had been bought using a stolen credit card. Celebrations were short lived and the company closed shortly after that debarcle

Nevertheless it was a great time.

The internet is abuzz with the latest offerings from Google.

The last fortnight has seen Google Base, and Google Analytics being released. I've signed up for Google Analytics already as I understand what this is for, and what I can get out of it: Pretty pictures of the world. Sadly the service doesn't seem to be working as well as it should

As for Google Base. I feel that I'm missing the point. So yes it's a way of giving Google loads of data and then allowing you to search for that data. Isn't this traditionally googlebot's job? If I were googlebot I'd be worried. I just can't get that excited this.

Nevertheless, what I can get excited about is that not a day goes past without some announcement from the big three IT companies. It's almost like being back at the start of the dot-com boom again. All of a sudden tools and technology that used to be expensive are being given away free. Visual Studio Express, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Antispyware software, practivally unlimited online storage.

Naturally, all this goodwill from the big three is just posturing, but with all the attention they are getting it has to be good for the industry as a whole.

I've noticed a couple of times recently that Google has been returning a different format of search results.

I've just performed the a search for the phrase md5hash. Instead of returning all the results for I've been sent three sections of results. The first few are for "md5hash" then a new section with a few results for "md5 hash".

What I don't understand is to what the results of the last section refer.

UPDATE: This is what I was looking for after all: Command Line Message Digest Utility