Hands on: Bubble and tweak

Now switch to the Actions tab and click on the New button. The Action you want is ‘Start a program’, which should already be in place and the Program/Script you want is Msconfig.exe. OK this and back at the Create Task dialogue, switch to the Settings tab. Make sure the ‘Allow task to be run on demand’ option is ticked and that ‘Do not start a new instance’ is selected if the task is already running.

OK this, and you’ve created your task. You’ll see it listed in the top-centre pane of Task Manager. Now you need to create a shortcut. Right-click in the folder in which you want your shortcut to appear and click New, then Shortcut. In the box type:

Schtasks /run /tn “Run Msconfig”

The text between the double quotes should match the task name you gave it when you created the task. Click Next and give the shortcut a name – and that’s it. Double-click on the shortcut and you may see a command prompt flash on the screen, but then the Msconfig window will appear without further ado.

Uninvited update
Meanwhile, back in the comparative tranquillity of XP, a strange thing happened. In the Start menu, All Programs, right up at the top table with Windows Update, there appeared a new item – Program Updates – which also appeared in Control Panel. It appeared to have come from Installshield and ‘checks for updated versions of the programs installed on your computer’. I had no recollection of installing this piece of software. The Installshield Consumer Central website states ‘Software vendors purchase the Update Service from Installshield as a tool to deliver updates to you’. Checking through its settings revealed that the only program it was monitoring was Google Sketchup Viewer, which rather pointed the finger of shame.

So, off to Control Panel, Add/Remove programs, where I couldn’t find any trace of Installshield Update. But examining the entry in the Start Menu showed that it pointed to an executable in Program Files\Common Files\Installshield\ Updateservice and this folder had been created around the same time as Sketchup Viewer’s. It had also added two items to run at startup in the HKEY Local Machine section of the Registry. Now, we have a program that didn’t ask to be installed, does not provide any means for its uninstallation, starts itself for all users with Windows and only seems to be monitoring one program’s updates. This behaviour can be summed up in two words – ‘cheeky’ and the other is unsuitable for publication.

Installshield does provide a tool to remove this. Confusingly, this goes by a different name – Flexnet Connect Software manager – and you’ll find it at http://tinyurl.com/3z3pju. However, despite a message stating that ‘The Software Manager has been removed for your system’ all this appears to do is remove the Registry entry that loads it on Startup and the Control Panel item. Program Updates was still in the Start menu, and running this restored one of the Registry Startup entries. So, although this is not the usual recommended procedure, running the removal tool again, deleting the Updateservice folder and its contents finally got rid of it.

Background
In Windows 98 and ME, it was possible to assign a background image to a folder with right-click and Customise. XP removed this facility from the UI, but you could overcome it by creating a Desktop.ini file. Vista, however, removed the capability completely.

Developer Andreas Verhoeven has come to the rescue with Vista Folder Background. This adds another tab to the ‘Customise this folder’ dialogue, entitled Folder Background, wherein you can set the background picture and text colour. You’ll find it free at http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/vista/fo ld erbg.html.

Before you try this, there are two things you need to know. First you need to download and install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, which you can get free at http://tinyurl.com/ywoncl. Second, when you unzip the Vista Folder Background file, you’ll find you have two batch files – one to install and one to uninstall. Right-click on these and choose ‘Run as administrator’. If you don’t, the installation or uninstallation will fail, even though you are logged on with an administrator account.