Something that’s always bugged me about the scroll wheel is that it seems you have to upgrade your mouse with each new Windows in order for the scrolling to work properly.

For instance, I have an older Logitech MouseMan Dual Optical Corded mouse. Great mouse. Lousy scroll support.

The Logitech MouseWare drivers don’t scroll legacy app windows that have scroll bars but don’t react to the newer mouse scroll messages.

All the latest Intellipoint drivers don’t scroll legacy apps properly with it either (and possibly not even with a newer mouse, but I don’t have a newer mouse so…)

Way back when, I came across the Intellipoint 4.1 driver set that DID scroll legacy apps properly (like VB6, the main one I’m concerned with anyway).

Well, Vista flat refuses that driver set . I tried the latest Intellipoint, 6.1. It installs but doesn’t scroll right. I tried the latest SETPOINT400.EXE from Logitech. No good either. Uninstalled both and I’m back to the built-in Vista Mouse Driver.

Then I came across KatMouse. Tiny little app, but works a treat. Sends legacy scroll messages to the window under the mouse. And it doesn’t screw with newer apps that DO handle the mouse scroll wheel messages. Plus you can customize the scroll support per App or Window Class (and God knows my favorite thing to do is poke around windows with WinSpy looking up window classes so I can set each one to different scroll numbers<g>)

I’m sure there’s more involved, more flexible utilities out there to do the same thing, but I haven’t seen any yet. Any pointers?

Like any good developer, I have two ton crap load of Utilities, config, scripts, etc that I regularly make use of. Unfortunately, they’re all tailored towards Windows XP and I’m now in the process of setting up a Vista machine for development.

The first thing I ran into is that you can’t just dbl-click REG files anymore to merge them, unless they only modify the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive. Grrr. Running Regedit as Admin is a workaround, albeit not a great one.

A bit more problematic, though is my favorite DOSHERE.INF file. This little jewel goes back to, what, Win95 and the old PowerToy kit, I believe.

At any rate, here’s my modified version that works fine under everything up to Vista, but no-ops now.

;
; "DOS Prompt Here" PowerToy
;
; Copyright 1996 Microsoft Corporation
;
[version]
signature="$CHICAGO$"

[DosHereInstall]
CopyFiles = DosHere.Files.Inf
AddReg    = DosHere.Reg

[DefaultInstall]
CopyFiles = DosHere.Files.Inf
AddReg    = DosHere.Reg

[DefaultUnInstall]
DelFiles  = DosHere.Files.Inf
DelReg    = DosHere.Reg

[SourceDisksNames]
55="DOS Prompt Here","",1

[SourceDisksFiles]
DOSHERE.INF=55

[DestinationDirs]
DosHere.Files.Inf = 17

[DosHere.Files.Inf]
DOSHERE.INF

[DosHere.Reg]
;DWH Modified the below lines so that
;they work under NT
;How would you indicate the actual COMSPEC environment var?

HKLM,%UDHERE%,DisplayName,,"%DosHereName%"
HKLM,%UDHERE%,UninstallString,,"%10%\rundll.exe setupx.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 132 %17%\DosHere.inf"
HKCR,Directory\Shell\DosHere,,,"%DosHereAccel%"
;HKCR,Directory\Shell\DosHere\command,,,"%10%\command.com /k cd ""%1"""
HKCR,Directory\Shell\DosHere\command,,,"cmd.exe /k cd ""%1"""
HKCR,Drive\Shell\DosHere,,,"%DosHereAccel%"
;HKCR,Drive\Shell\DosHere\command,,,"%10%\command.com /k cd ""%1"""
HKCR,Drive\Shell\DosHere\command,,,"cmd.exe /k cd ""%1"""

[Strings]
DosHereName="DOS Prompt Here PowerToy"
DosHereAccel="Command &Prompt"
UDHERE="Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\DosHere"

From what I can tell, the main problem is that INF files just can’t alter HKLM or HKCR when run as a normal user (even with admin privileges).

I have used a simple little reg script from time to time also

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\DosHere]
@="Command &Prompt Here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\DosHere\Command]
@="C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\cmd.exe /k cd \"%1\""

and this works quite nicely on 2000 and XP, but it does not work when fires via the Context Menu in the tree portion of Explorer under Vista.

However, in poking around the registry on Vista, I discovered an interesting little tidbit.

Vista already has support for a “command prompt here” built in (at least Vista Ultimate does, which is what I’m using. The reg entry looks like this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd]
@="Command &Prompt Here"
"Extended"=""
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\command]
@="cmd.exe /s /k pushd \"%V\""

The Extended entry appears to cause the item to only show up when SHIFT is held down.

Notice the difference in the command line from the earlier version. Why the /k cd {path} doesn’t work from the tree, but the pushd %V does, who knows?

So, I hack a little to come up with this:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Cmd]
@="Command &Prompt Here"
;remove this property so that command shows all the time, not just when you hold down SHIFT
"Extended"=-

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Cmd\Command]
@="cmd.exe /s /k pushd ""%V"""

And lo, the angels sing and I can continue on my merry way.

Ok, I admit it. I have a bias towards VMWare. It’s been around forever, and it’s solid as a Bob Seger song. But, the Microsoft offering (Vitual PC) is free and it’s at least usable. But it certainly has it’s share of, shall we say, quirks.

Here’s the latest.

I have 2 VPCs that I use for InstallShield install builds and testing. Both share a folder on the host machine so that I can easily pass installations back and forth between the two.

This morning, a subfolder of the share on one VPC turned up empty. I refreshed the view. Empty. Popped over to the host machine and looked in the folder. It’s there, and has all its files.

I reset permissions. No luck. I unshared and reshared the folder via VPC. Still empty. Rebooted both the VPC and the host machine. Still empty.

At this point, it’s cost me about 30 mins of a Saturday when I’d much rather be anywhere in front of a VPC. I finally just renamed the subfolder, thinking I’ll copy a new set of files down from the network. Lo and behold, the newly renamed subfolder shows up on the VPC, and it now shows its contents! Keep in mind that this folder worked properly yesterday, and that there are other sub-folders in the shared folder that continue to show their contents just fine as well. Just this one folder is at issue.

Hmmm. So I renamed it back to its original name. It goes empty again. Doesn’t show any contents.

Ah, computer voodoo. Or in this case maybe the more appropriate term Microsoft doodoo. At any rate, the install is rebuilt, and I’m off to do something that doesn’t require a plastic rat and 2,304,000 square colored dots.