Windows 7 needs memory on VirtualBox

Today finally time to install Windows 7 on a virtual machine. Only it ended fairly quickly with a "failed to start" message. Without any clue as to what might be wrong. Searching on the internet did not reveal the answer directly, but someone had made a description of his own installation, mentioning the amount of memory allocated. That rang a bell. VirtualBox's default is 192 MB. That's not enough. I raised it to 1024 MB and now Windows is installing happily.

Outlook knows what's good for you

Well, sure it does. But if I want to receive an Access database file (.mdb), I do not want to be held back by it. Luckily, Microsoft provided a solution. You just have to edit the registry and reboot your machine. Apparently this cannot be done easier...

For the solution, see the Microsoft Knowledgebase, article 829982.

Clone a virtual machine in VirtualBox

I have a 'standard' virtual machine with XPsp3 running under Sun's VirtualBox. Now I want to test Mule ESB, so I need a clone of this virtual machine to build Mule ESB on. I have the virtual hard disk file in .VHD format to keep it compatible with the company's standard (but less good) VirtualPC.

I started simple by copying the WinXPtest.vhd to WinXPMule.vhd. Then into VirtualBox, New Virtual Machine, use existing harddisk, add the WinXPMule.vhd to the device list, BANG! ERROR! Problem turns out to be that both have the same id.

Luckily some guy Stuart explained on his blog how to do this by way of the vBoxManage.exe. He suggested the use of the clonevdi command, but checking the commandline help of vBoxManage I found the clonehd command. So I entered (include the double quotes):
"c:\program files\sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" clonehd WinXPtest.vhd WinXPMule.vhd --format:VHD --variant:Standard --type:normal.
I actually don't know the meaning of the --variant and --type parameters, but Standard and normal sounded quite right. It took some time (copying a file of nearly 4GB always takes some time), but then the command returned with "Clone hard disk created in format 'VHD'. UUID: (some not very interesting GUID)"

Back to the VirtualBox program, New Virtual Machine, use existing harddisk, add the newly created WinXPMule.vhd to the device list - no error this time - and you're done.

Contact from Nokia to Windows Mobile HTC

My wife has bougt a HTC phone on Windows Mobile. Now she would like her contacts from her old Nokia imported. Could you do that?

Well, it can indeed be done, without the use of Outlook (I was afraid of messing up my own contacts that are in sync with Outlook). Here's how.
Mind you that the PIM backup tool will ask you to map the incoming columns (from your csv) to the internal contact fields. So make sure you tidy up your data prior to restoring, using Excel or OpenOffice Calc. And keep a copy of the data open on your computer while doing the restore, so you can see which columns to map where.
Be aware that whereas Nokia calculates the displayname from the first- and lastname, WM6 does not. So while tidying up, also add a column "displayname" in which you combine first-, middle-, last- and companyname as you see fit.
Fortunately, if you make a mistake, you can easily try again by selecting the restore-option to delete all Outlook-contacts on the phone prior to restoring. It won't touch the SIM contacts, if at all present.

In my case there were contacts on the SIM, and they should be hidden. Microsoft has decided that that should be very difficult (why???) and be done through the registry. Here's how. In case you need a registry editor first (it's not included in WM6), see here for PHM Registry Editor. Choose a version for installation on the device (a .cab file, not through ActiveSync). For both our HTC's (Touch Cruise & Touch Cruise II) I use "Pocket PC 2002,2003 (ARM/PXA)". Copy the downloaded .cab to your phone and doubleclick it there. It will install itself.

Chapter title in footer, MS Word vs. OpenOffice.org Writer

In the office we use Microsoft Office, in my case 2007. Apart from having to search my way to the ribbon, and missing some keyboard shortcuts that were present in previous versions, I can get used to it.

However, I am writing a frankly large document in which it would be nice if you could read the chapter title in each footer. Enter MS Word help. After some searching, I found that it can only be done with sections. That means that each chapter would have to start a new section in order to make this work. The other way round, you then have to make sure that every section gets the right header and footer by linking them together. More sections = more trouble, always.

Obvious question: "Would this be any easier in OpenOffice?" Start it, open help, type 'headers', and there it is, right in the index: 'chapter information'. It's easy: First determine the style you prefer for the heading that you want to use (generally that is Heading 1), then select it as a field in the footer (or header if you prefer).

Plus, all the commands are right where they should be, in a menu, accessable with the keyboard.

Now, why is my company so determined to use MS Office???

Saving your Outlook shortcuts

Outlook has a handy feature in the navigation pane: It let's you save shortcuts to often-used folders.
But I noticed that sometimes these shortcuts disappear (I suspect after an automatic update, but MVP says that cannot be true).
My system administrator has searched for a solution. You cannot make them disappearance-resistent, but you can make a backup of
C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\(profilename).XML.
Now, if you lose them again, simply restore this xml file from its backup location.

A related tip is to reset your navigationpane entirely (should you want that): Start | Run | outlook.exe /resetnavpane.

Blue screen, dump and debug

Bluescreen today, did not happen to me for a long time.
Found out that the dump-info is saved and that you can examine it with WinDbg (part of Debugging Tools for Windows).
Did not know where to find the file, but it turned out to be in C:\Windows\Minidump\.
If you load it in WinDbg, you need to load the matching symbol information along with it. I didn't bother to find out what to load to make it work. Maybe some other time.