Windows

At work I use an Agilent 34401A Multimeter. It’s a great device, with a serial RS232 output, which can be connected to a PC. The problem is the software for this is a nightmare (I’m sure it works better on newer Keysight branded models with USB). The official download is Keysight BenchVue, which requires a separate licence, and also doesn’t seem to work. There is some talk of version 3.7 being a version that works and has a free multimeter mode, however I couldn’t get that to work with the serial meter at all. ...

I’ve recently set up a small Windows Server 2008 R2 domain for a non-profit. I made some notes as there’s nothing really basic on the internet that skips the 90% of information you don’t need, and concentrates on the 10% you do need. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone trying to do something similar. It will start out pretty basic, but I will flesh it out with plenty of details when I have a few minutes. ...

Have you ever wanted to do the opposite of everyone else and have a Microsoft Word document open directly inside Internet Explorer (in the Word ActiveX control), without the Open, Save, Cancel dialog box? If you have then this might be the trick for you. Make a registry file by copying the below into a text file and saving it with the .reg extension: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\AttachmentExecute{0002DF01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}] “Word.Document.12”=hex(0): “Word.Document.8”=hex(0): Now run that reg file to add the changes to the registry, and hey-presto, no more annoying popup prompts. This works on IE8 on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. Your mileage may vary on other operating systems.