Sunday, January 16, 2011

How Matt Got His Geek Back

— Matt Harris @ 5:53 pm

A little over a year ago, I purchased a new Dell Studio XPS 8000 computer. Overall, I have been very happy with it, but a few months after I purchased it I tried to write a VBS script and got an error message: “Can’t find script engine VBScript”. Previous experience meant that I needed to install the dll, which is easy enough. Just open a command prompt and type “regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll”.

I did that and received a prompt sayuing “DllRegisterServer in vbscript.dll succeeded.”, which meant that it worked. However, when I tried running the VBS script again, I got the same error message. I spent severeal hours Googling it and trying various things. No luck. Fortunately, nothing critical I have needs VBScript. Also, I figured that it might be fixed in some windows update down the road. It still rankled, though, that my $1300+ PC couldn’t run it.

A week and a half-ago, I was working on a script at work and realized I needed a debugger. I came across VBSedit and tried it out. It seemed to be exactly what I needed, however, I would have to pay the $60 it costs myself, as technically it isn’t needed for my job. I figured that it would be much easier to swallow that if I could use it on my PC at home, so when I got home I checked to see if VBS was still broken. It was.

When I got home, I googled the problem again. This time I had a bit more luck. I found this page on NitroPDF where it mentioned a registry fix if registering the vbscript.dll didn’t work. Using that to refine my search, I found this page on answers.microsoft.com. I checked the registry for the class key mentioned. As mentioned in the thread, I found HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11cf-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}\InprocServer32 pointing to a McAfee directory. Now I knew what the problem was.

One of the first things I did when I bought my PC was to uninstall McAfee. I prefer F-Secure AntiVirus and already had a license for that. I guess that McAfee redirects the vbscript.dll to iteself so that it can catch script virues. When it uninstalls, it doesn’t fix the redirection, so that a) windows thinks vbscript is still installed and b) it points to a non-existant dll. So basically my problem was due to a crappy McAfee unistall program.

I considered just deleted the registry key, but figured McAfee might have left more junk around, so I ran the McAfee cleaner the thread mentioned. I reran the regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll command. This time, when I ran a vbscript – it worked perfectly.

I decided to post this just in case someone else has a problem with “regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll” not working.

P.S. I was doing the above while I was in my regular Wednesday night chat. When it worked, I mentioned to Elais that “I feel like a whole geek” again and summarized what I had done. She replied “How Matt Got His Geek Back”. Hence, the title of this post.

One comment
Sunday, November 16, 2008

Turn Off The Beep On Target Cheap Digital Watches

— Matt Harris @ 1:49 pm

I actually meant to write this post a while back, but just never got around to it. About 6 months or so ago, I bought a cheap digital watch at Target. Unfortunately, it didn’t come with directions and I couldn’t find a way to turn off the beep that happened on some weird schedule I couldn’t figure out.

Google to the rescue!

A quick Google search brought up this website which had the instructions for the watch hyperlinked, as well as the name of the type of watch (ProSpirit).

The instructions weren’t 100% accurate, but in the comments to the previous post was a note by a gentleman named Tim that showed exactly how to turn off the beep. If the backlight is activated via the upper left button, hold down the lower right button and then push on the lower left button.

2 comments
Sunday, March 16, 2008

High Quality YouTube Videos

— Matt Harris @ 12:36 pm

Once again, the Lockergnome has a useful and easy to implement tip that makes my life more enjoyable. Chris Pirillo shows how to improve the video quality of Youtube videos on his website today.

Two options:

  1. Add &fmt=18 to the end of a YouTube URL -or-
  2. Edit your account settings (if you have an account) and set your “Video Quality” settings to always use high quality video.

I tried it out and it improved the quality of several videos in my favorites; they were actually decent quality in full screen mode. Some other of my favorites didn’t improve. Based upon Mr. Pirillo’s post, I presume that they were .flv video files.

Anyway, I switched my default settings to always the use the high quality video. Thanks Chris.

Comments Off on High Quality YouTube Videos
Saturday, October 6, 2007

Turning Off Snap & ContentLink In Opera

— Matt Harris @ 2:50 pm

I went to a website today and everytime my mouse lingered over a hyperlink, there would be a noticeable delay and then a window would popup, previewing the site. It was very annoying, as there were a lot of hyperlinks.

There are several web enhancements that do this. The one one this site was Snap, but another incredibly annoying one is Kontera’s ContentLink. Thanks to the magic of Google, I quickly found out how to block them in Opera.

In Opera:

Source websites:
http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/593
http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/ad-block?cid=3719215

Comments Off on Turning Off Snap & ContentLink In Opera
Archives

  • 1530s Europe Campaign (15)
  • Books (7)
  • BTVS & Angel (24)
  • Cormaria (22)
  • Doctor Who (1)
  • Fanfiction Recs (19)
  • General (36)
  • Harry Potter (19)
  • Humor (16)
  • Java (1)
  • Microsoft Office (2)
  • Northridge Pathfinder (24)
  • OpenOffice.org (1)
  • Pathfinder (30)
  • Politics (4)
  • Programming (6)
  • Programs (5)
  • Reviews (2)
  • Role-Playing Games (D&D et. al.) (85)
  • Science (1)
  • Site News (120)
  • Smallville (2)
  • Stargate (2)
  • Tips (4)




  • Powered by Wordpress