Turn off that annoying clicking sound in Internet Explorer/Windows Explorer

Annoyed with that clicking sound in Internet Explorer whenever you click on a link or hit the back or forward navigation buttons? Although I don't use Internet Explorer as my primary browser, I still have to use it from time to time, and I find the sound maddening. It's the same sound that you hear when you navigate through your hard drive in Windows Explorer (or My Computer, it's the same thing).

Want to shut it off? Here's how:

1. Open the Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel or Start > Control Panel)
2. Open the Sounds and Audio Devices Properties applet
3. Go to the Sounds tab
4. Scroll down to the "Windows Explorer" heading in the Program events list
5. Select "Start Navigation," then change the Sounds field to "(None)" (highlighted in red below)

Tip: Make Windows Desktop Search less CPU intensive

After installing Vista, I noticed that the CPU would peg itself at 100% for minutes at a time periodically. Using Process Explorer, I determined that the culprit was SearchFilterHost.exe, which is the part of Windows Desktop Search that indexes your documents for that zippy search you get from the Start Menu. SearchProtocolHost.exe and SearchIndexer.exe were also using more resources than normal. Stopping the "Windows Search Service" would fix the problem, but it also (obviously) stopped my documents and emails from being indexed. After getting used to using indexed searches on my emails, I was definitely not about to disable the service for good.

The problem was most prevalent when it was rebuilding a fresh index or after I modified a lot of files. It also seemed to bring my system to a crawl when running iTunes. After doing a little research on the web, I stumbled upon the answer: Disable the indexing of XML documents. It looks like the indexing XML documents is a CPU intensive process. Either that, or there's contention with other processes when they use temporary XML files. The reason I saw the issue with iTunes has to do with how iTunes manages its music library. It uses a number temporary XML files which Windows Desktop Search attempts to index.

To disable this file type, go to the Control Panel and launch the Indexing Options app. Click the Advanced button, then go to the File Types tab. Find the xml extension and uncheck the box next to it. Clicking OK will prompt you to rebuild the index. Do so.

Now, you may have your reasons for wanting to index XML files. If that's the case, you may not want to turn this file type off. In that case, consider excluding the iTunes library folder from the list of folders that will be indexed. Personally, the annoyance of having my CPU pegged more often that it should be was enough for me to turn off the XML file type for good. I may turn it back on at a later date, perhaps when Microsoft updates Windows Desktop Search.

I posted this because I thought that it might help someone else with the same issue. If you've found this via a Google search, hopefully this information will ease your pain. Keep in mind that this tip is not limited to Windows Vista users. To my knowledge, these tips work with all versions of Windows Desktop Search.

My Vista horror story

Ever since the release of Vista in January, stories of failed or expensive upgrades have been floating around the 'net. Many of these stories, however, seem to be overly dramatized versions of ho-hum "why didn't you tell me I had to upgrade my 10-year old video card?" I can understand that you're frustrated, but implying that missing device drivers for INSERT DEVICE HERE is a sign of a broken OS is, in my opinion, severely misguided. For the most part it seemed to be a relatively easy thing to do for anyone with a little tech savvy. Personally, I'm an IT consultant that has maintained more than one corporate network and have been building my own PC's for years. I'm a shoe-in for this stuff, right? Almost.

The Plan

First off, experience with every upgrade since Windows 95 has told me that a clean install is the way to go. I also heard that driver support wasn't up to snuff just yet and even that some of my hardware (like my Creative WebCam NX Ultra) would just plain not work. That, along with some application compatibility problems, prompted me to pursue a dual-boot scenario. This would allow my existing XP installation to remain untouched while I get my Vista installation set up to my liking. That would allow me take baby steps towards this brave new world.

Setting up a system for dual boot is actually much easier than it sounds like. In fact, I had already done this once before, following my own advice from an earlier post. My previous attempt with Vista RC-1 had gone off without a hitch.

Getting Started

It didn't take long for the problems to start. The first order of business involved using Symantec's Partition Magic 8.0 to resize the boot partition so that I could create another partition on that drive for the Vista install. When you do this, Partition Magic needs to reboot your machine to make the necessary changes to the partition. Like I said before, I had already done this quite a few times before so I didn't think that I had anything to worry about.

I was wrong. During this process, Partition Magic halted with error #1552. At this point my system rebooted, and I was greeted with a blue screen of death. My stomach dropped.

"No problem," I tried to tell myself. "These things happen from time to time. Let's just reboot and hope that this is a one-off deal."

This, and all subsequent reboots halted with the same stop error 0x0000007b: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. Initially, I tried running a number of the tools on the Ultimate Boot CD (if you don't already have this, stop reading. Download it. Burn it. File it away for a rainy day. Go ahead, I'll wait). Sadly, none of the tools fit the bill. In fact, most of them wouldn't even recognize the volume. After doing some research, it appeared that simply running chkdsk would take care of it. Since I had no XP boot disk, I booted into the XP install disc and ran the Recovery Console. Unfortunately, chkdsk consistently failed, complaining that it couldn't read the volume.

Moving On

At this point, I'm ready to give up. I had backed up most of my data, but I still had some documents and photos that would be lost. With my dual-boot dreams dashed, I figured that it was time to move on. Having resigned losing them, I decided to install Vista over my damaged volume. Thankfully, my boot volume was in a RAID 1 configuration, so it was mirrored onto another drive. If there was any chance that I could save data on the drive, it was by breaking the mirror. I'd install Vista on one, then try to salvage the other later.

After breaking the mirror, I installed Vista. The install progressed quickly, and it went smoothly. On its final reboot Vista recognized the other half of my broken mirror and decided that it had a problem and ran chkdsk on it. After rebuilding a few indexes, my newly repaired disk appeared fully intact in Explorer!

Post Mortem

Why did this happen? Apparently, the problem resulted from the fact that the disk that I wanted to repartition was RAID 1. What I didn't know at the time was that Partition Magic 8.x doesn't support RAID 1. What I should have done was break the mirror, repartition, then set up the RAID once again. Had Partition Magic detected my RAID configuration and warned me of this, I would have been saved a lot of time.

The irony of this is that with all of the Vista horror stories floating around, my problems weren't caused by Vista itself. In fact, Vista ended up bringing my data back from the void. Thankfully, short of losing my shot at a dual-boot configuration (and a few years of my life...it was a long night), I'm not too much worse for wear. I've been happily running the latest version of Vista for the past couple of months with all of my data in tact.

Hopefully, when your time comes your Vista install will go to plan. If not, maybe you'll find something in my story that will help. Failing that, know that there are others out there that feel your pain. It probably won't give you much solace but...there you have it.

Some useful XP PowerToys

Periodically, Microsoft releases some new PowerToys for Windows XP that either tweak your system, or add some functionality to it. They're shortcuts to little bits of additional functionality that can make life easier. Here are a couple relatively new PowerToys that I've found useful, along with an old one that I can't live without:

• RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer: If you've been reading Neologies lately, you have already noticed my recent interest in photography. This PowerToy lets you view your RAW camera images in Windows Explorer. You can view thumbnails, as well as view those images in the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (which can be used for slideshows). It comes in pretty handy when you're trying to manage your RAW images in Explorer, which I generally prefer.


• SyncToy (version 1.2): This is a pretty robust, yet compact way to synchronize files between a number of different devices and drives. It offers several different methods to do this, including the basic synchronization (both ways), echo (one-way), subscriptions (one-way if files exist), contribution (updates only one-way), and combine (files are updated and copied both ways). If you're not sure which method you'd like to use, it also offers a way to preview what will happen before any changes are made. That said, it would sure be nice if it included a mechanism for scheduling the synchronization of some folders.


• Image Resizer: This is a tiny utility that embeds itself as a Windows Explorer extension (it's a command added to the right-click menu) for image files. It allows you to resize any number of selected files to a preset resolution. If the presets aren't to your liking, you can plug in your own. I use this all the time when uploading images to the web or sending pictures via email. It's great when sending a full resolution photo isn't appropriate.

There are a couple other PowerToys available that may be worth a look as well, but these are the ones that I can't live without. Enjoy!

Link

The Windows XP Boot Process

Here's a rundown of the entire boot process for a PC running Windows XP, from when you first switch on the power supply to logon. It pretty much contains everything you wanted to know.

Link (via Digg)

How to dual boot Windows XP and Vista Beta 2

Lifehacker has a straightforward how-to on how to create a partition on your system drive for a dual-boot XP/Vista Beta 2 install. The Vista installer makes this process a breeze as long as you have Symantec's Partition Magic (a product that I'd recommend anyway). I was a little trepidacious about trying this at first, but it worked out perfectly.

If you're interested in giving Vista a try but aren't willing to trash your current XP install (which is wise, IMHO), this may work for you. Just make sure that you've got about 20 GB on your system drive to devote to the install.

Link