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I was lucky enough to win a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate (WVU) a couple of years ago.

WVU didn’t offer much that you couldn’t get from somewhere else as a free download so I would have stuck with the Business edition otherwise.

One “bonus” of having the Ultimate edition (apart from geeky bragging rights) was Microsoft’s promise of regular “Extras” to make Windows more fun and easier to use.

The Problem

Unfortunately they only released 5 extras (not including the unnecessary Language packs)

• From http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/extras.aspx

• Hold 'Em Poker

  Take a break from work and add this to your Windows Vista game collection. The Hold 'Em Poker extra pits you against the computer for a high-stakes experience that won't empty your pocket. Have fun and bet what you want—the computer can't make you pay up.

• Microsoft Tinker

  Even robots get lost sometimes. Help this one get home by solving puzzles that untangle a surreal and misleading world. Tinker is a new game that features an original score, compelling visuals, and 60 levels. With the level builder download, you can even create your own level and baffle your friends.

• BitLocker and EFS Enhancements

  This extra offers tools to help secure your PC so you can worry less about loss or theft. The BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool configures your hard drive to run BitLocker Drive Encryption, which addresses the threat of data theft or disclosure from lost, stolen, or inappropriately decommissioned PC hardware.

• Language Packs (updated for SP1)

  Now everyone in your household can use their preferred language on the same computer. Each user can choose the language that displays when they log on. And if you're learning a language, you can easily switch back and forth between language options.

• Windows DreamScene and content packs

  Your desktop comes alive when you download DreamScene and content packs. Ditch your still photo or picture slide show background and replace it with a high definition video. Windows Vista Ultimate now offers an exclusive Windows clip, three vivid nature scenes, and other video content packs to download as options for your background. Or use your own video to truly personalize the Windows experience.

• Windows Sound Schemes

  You can choose what you want to hear. We combined the familiarity of classic Windows sounds with the new soft, clean visuals of Windows Vista. Check out two downloadable themes:

  • Ultimate Extras Glass Sound Scheme: a reflective, instrumental theme that echoes the iridescent visuals of Windows Vista.

  • Ultimate Extras Pearl Sound Scheme: a rich, percussive theme with a subtlety that matches the Windows Vista look.

  • Ultimate Extras Tinker Theme: a sound theme to match the Microsoft Tinker original score.

To add insult to injury, when you upgrade to Window 7 ultimate they are all removed!

I wasn’t very happy about this, it seems like a real kick in the teeth to the poor people that actually paid for the Ultimate edition. They aren’t exactly majorly complicated features that would have been hard to carry over. My son really likes having a dreamscape video wallpaper and the different sound schemes are popular within our family.

Experiments

I thought I would see if I could get some of them back on my Windows 7 laptop by copying the files over and I had mixed success.

• Hold ‘Em Poker & Inkball (not an extra but still removed)
  • I copied the folder from “%programfiles%\Microsoft Games” but when you run them nothing happens. The compatibility wizard didn’t help either
• Sound Schemes
  • As expected, the sounds can just be copied into “C:\Windows\Media” folder along with all the existing system sounds. You then need to manually assign them in the Sounds control panel applet which is very time consuming and something I’m not that bothered about.
• DreamScene
  • I love this, I think it looks really cool and futuristic and can’t understand why it’s not included as a standard feature. How hard would it be to allow a user to right-click a video and choose set as background. People complain it’s a resource hog but that simply isn’t true. Luckily (thanks to Xombie at Windows 7 Taskforce) there is a hack to re-enable it Woo-hoo! *How to Install and Enable DreamScene in Windows 7. It isn’t quite perfect (you can’t preview videos in the Desktop Background applet) but works really well. They should still include it by default though.
• Tinker
  • This is a very cute game where you can guide a little robot around an obstacle course. My son’s all enjoyed playing it and they are 4, 7 and 9. It was full of good little cryptic puzzles for them to solve. You could even create your own levels by downloading the still available editor. Luckily I could get this working! Just follow these steps
  • Copy the folder “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Tinker” (or “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Tinker” for non 64bit PCs) from a WVU machine to a W7U machine
  • Install DirectX9 from the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Tinker\DirectXRedist” or download and install from the Microsoft site
  • If you try and run it now you will get the error “Only supported on Windows Vista”. No problem, just go to the properties of tinker.exe and set the compatibility to Vista SP2!
  • You can add a link to this in the Games Explorer by dragging the tinker.exe file and dropping it into the Games folder
    • Tip 1: The shortcut is created using the exe name. To customize the name, first create a shortcut to the game somewhere, rename it, then drag the shortcut onto the games explorer window
    • Tip 2: Add “ –mce” to the “tinker.exe” shortcut to run the game in proper full screen Media Centre mode (e.g. “c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Tinker\Tinker.exe -mce”)
    • Issue: The Games Explorer window won’t show ratings/high scores etc.  because this is stored as XML strings in the registry. Maybe I could have copied them over too but the functionality wasn’t really worth the effort.

All of this tinkering got me thinking about other things I missed from Vista and XP, so with a bit of file copying it was easy to run the full Windows Movie Maker and even Pinball!

Hopefully, the release of Windows 7 will bring with it a surprise goody bag of bonus extra’s available to everyone (maybe through Windows Live or the Windows site) but we will have to wait for the RTM to see

* The linked file only works for 32-bit machines. However, I found a working solution for 64-bit machines on this forum. As you can see in the forum it does make your Desktop Icon text disappear when you play a DreamScene.

JustGiving are handling the sponsorship for my attempt at the Loch Ness Marathon in October.

They have just launched a redesign of their site to give it a more contemporary look. I like it a lot better than the old version although they don’t integrate with Flickr but just allow a top 10 pictures to be uploaded directly to their site.

They have also updated their widget and badges so I’m just going to test if I can use them on this space.

*edit –no they can’t, removed due to security issues apparently

Raising the money is a lot harder than I anticipated. I was hoping a quick message to everyone on my facebook list (over 200 people) would make my total shoot up but I guess people aren’t that spontaneous in their generosity. Hopefully I can still raise my target of £850 before the run on October 4th, I may just have to go around with the dreaded sponsorship form though! I’m hoping things will pick up nearer the time though.

I am an avid user of Google Docs. I use it loads for a running club website that I maintain.
I can store all the results for any race in a spreadsheet and then embed part of that in a web page.
You can see an example of this at www.wdac.org.uk/results.htm

However, Google have updated the embedding HTML to add unnecessary and ugly info, plus a link to sign up for Google Docs

So instead of

You get
 

Luckily I found a way to turn this off

A typical piece of code to embed a range of a spreadsheet now looks like this

<iframe width='500' height='300' frameborder='0' src='http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rAR-oNQkLhsyY62lYz7QxXA&single=true&gid=0&range=test&output=html&widget=true'></iframe>

To turn off the new links and other bits simply change widget=true to widget=false at the end of the code

Note: I tried to embed the spreadsheet in this blog but Microsoft stripped it out for “security” reasons

I am giving the Windows 7 Theme Sharing feature a go.

I wanted a theme that brings the sunny UK weather to my laptop and gets me excited about my summer holiday (or vacation for those stateside).

I got some great wallpapers from Interfacelift and icons from vistaicons.

Sharing Themes is simple in 7

• Right-click a space on the desktop and choose “Personalization”
• Set your sounds, wallpapers (choose multiple images for a cool desktop slideshow) and desktop icons (this is through a link in the sidebar)
• Save the theme for yourself or right-click the unsaved theme and choose “save theme for sharing”
• This saves the images into a .themepack file that can be transferred to a different PC or shared online
• The file is actually a compressed folder and can be opened by a Zip program such as 7-zip (works wonderfully in 7 x64) if you want to check the contents out first!
• The file just needs to be double-clicked and the theme will be applied.
• Download my Beach theme from my skydrive
  

Image Credits

• Computer & Recycle Bin Icons - Miriam Moshinsky http://www.klukeart.com/
• Personal Folder Icon – Aha Soft Team http://www.aha-soft.com/
• 15 High-res 1280x800 Widescreen Wallpapers – All from Interface Lift except the standard Windows 7 Betta Fish. Hopefully I will get around to crediting the individuals when I track them down

Many businesses like to market themselves with a unified brand across all of their materials, such as posters, adverts, emails, letters etc. Often this will mean a company will enforce their employees to use a certain font (type size and colour) in all their programs e.g. Word, Outlook etc.

When I was asked to do this I turned to my trusty Group Policy Management Console to find the policy relating to default fonts. For some reason, Microsoft feel it is unnecessary to provide this. I think it’s because (unknown to me until now) Group Policies cannot modify or create the necessary hexadecimal binary values that are used to specify fonts in Outlook. This took me on a journey of updating my skills with Group Policy Preferences (GPP) and admx files to allow me to achieve this, albeit in a limited fashion. This goal requires two different tools within Group Policy. To force the user to use a particular font we will add some new registry preferences. To disable Stationery (outlook XP-2007) and Themes (outlook 2007) we can create custom administrative templates.

Preferences

Group Policy Preferences were introduced into Windows Server 2008 & Vista to allow easier modification of settings that are categorised as preferences, e.g. a users printers or drive mappings. It’s a great way to move away from logon scripts that includes all the functionality of the GPMC. See the image on the left for an example of what can be set through GPPs. For more info on the difference between GP Policy vs. Preference vs. GP preferences check out this TechNet blog. One of the great features is Registry Settings and this is how we achieve our goal.

This will work on Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and Seven providing the client has the Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions (CSE) and XMLite installed. Each version of windows can download the CSEs, for its particular OS, through Windows Update or WSUS. XMLite is installed with Internet Explorer 7 or Windows XP SP3 and is included in Vista and above. There are links to all of these files in this Microsoft knowledge base article

Forcing Outlook’s font

To find the correct registry values we need to choose a test machine and configure it how we want.

• On a test pc with Office 2007 installed
• Open Outlook
  • Go to Tools > Options > Mail Format > Stationery & Fonts…
  • Use the Font… button to specify the size, type and colour of the font for new messages
  • Use the other Font buttons to specify replies and plain text settings if necessary
  • Click OK and close outlook
• Open the Group Policy Management Console (Part of RSAT – download here)
• Create a new Policy and open it in the Group Policy Editor
  • Go to User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry
  • You can either create the new keys yourself or use the much easier Registry Wizard
  • Right Click “Registry” and choose New > Registry Wizard (see Fig. 2)
    • Choose Local Computer
    • Navigte to the following Key
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\MailSettings
    • Tick the values ComposeFontComplex, ComposeFontSimple, ReplyFontComplex and ReplyFontSimple (see Fig. 3)
    • Click Finish
  • This will now import those settings into the policy. It will create nested folders (known as Collection in the GPE) for each registry key. These “Collections” are purely for administrative ease and can be renamed/moved/deleted as necessary.
• We also use Office XP (aka 2000) and Office 2003. This involves the same steps as above only the registry keys & values are slightly different
  • Office 2003 Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\MailSettings
  • Office 2003 Values: ComposeFontSimple and ReplyFontSimple
  • Office XP Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\Preferences
  • Office XP Values: ReplyFont and SendFont
• That is all that needs to be done.
• It will take effect the next time a users policy is refreshed and they restart Outlook.
• Note; This does not prevent a user from changing a font in the email editor or in Outlook’s “options” menu but it will reset the next time the policy is refreshed and Outlook is restarted

Forcing Outlook’s Theme & Stationery

Group Policy Policies use Administrative Templates to provide policies for Windows. You can download the office templates as part of the Office Resource Kit.

Vista & 2008 introduced a more standardised and flexible xml-based template format known as admx files. If you don’t have any of these Operating systems you will need to use the text based adm files. I will show both methods in this article

Creating a custom ADM file for Outlook 2003

• Open notepad and save the following text as OfficeTweaks.adm
• CLASS USER
  • CATEGORY !!CustomUserSettings
      CATEGORY !!OutlookVersion
        POLICY !!DisableNewStationery
          EXPLAIN !!DisableNewStationery_Explain
          KEYNAME "Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\MailSettings"
          VALUENAME "NewStationery"
          VALUEON ""
          VALUEOFF NUMERIC 1
        END POLICY
      END CATEGORY
    END CATEGORY
    [strings]
    CustomUserSettings="Custom User Settings"
    OutlookVersion="Outlook 2003"
    DisableNewStationery="Disable Modify Default Stationery"
    DisableNewStationery_Explain="Enabled - Any Changes made to the user's Stationery will be ignored by Outlook.  Disabled - No effect. Not Configured - Removes policy."
• Open the policy you created for the Font Preferences
• Go to User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates
• Right-click Administrative Templates > Add/Remove Templates…
• Click on Add and browse to the OfficeTweaks.adm file
• If there are no errors in the text file it will appear under the Classic Administrative Templates node in the GPE

Creating a custom ADMX file for Outlook 2007

This method uses the wonderful ADMX Editor (aka Migrator) mmc snap-in available here. We could use this to convert the adm above to admx but it doesn’t like the blank ON value. Luckily it is very easy to create an admx from scratch using this tool

• Open FullArmor ADMX Editor
• Create a new template e.g. Company Tweaks
• Create a new category e.g. Office 2007
• Create a new Policy Setting
  • Display Name: Ignore Legacy Stationery
  • Registry Key: Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\MailSettings
  • Registry Value Name: NewStationery
  • Class: User
  • Click OK
• Any further editing is now done in the lower pane of the mmc
• We now need to set the enabled and disabled values on the “Values” tab
  • Enabled Value
  • Type: Numeric
  • Value: 1
  • Disabled Value
  • Type: Deleted
• You can also set a description on the “Explain” tab and specify what OS is required in the “Supported On” tab
• Do the same steps as above to disable Themes but change these settings, the rest is identical.
  • Display Name: Ignore Legacy Themes
  • Registry Value Name: NewTheme
• When done, right-click the Company Tweaks template node and choose “Save As”
  • This will create the admx file as well as the adml language specific file (defaults to en-us)
  • Make sure you save it in the central ADMX repository so it can be found from any server e.g. \\ServerName\SYSVOL\Domain\Policies\PolicyDefinitions
• I have included the XML code below in case you have have any  problems
  • CompanyTweaks.admx
    <policyDefinitions revision="1.0" schemaVersion="1.0">
      <policyNamespaces>
        <target prefix="fullarmor" namespace="FullArmor.Policies.D6794E04_F392_4F19_A15B_F62B0DDFA6AB" />
        <using prefix="windows" namespace="Microsoft.Policies.Windows" />
      </policyNamespaces>
      <supersededAdm fileName="" />
      <resources minRequiredRevision="1.0" />
      <categories>
        <category name="CAT_EC276371_D237_4D8F_A003_B71664197891" displayName="$(string.CAT_EC276371_D237_4D8F_A003_B71664197891)" />
        <category name="CAT_6069CE00_5694_4EA3_ABC5_5EDCDE8BF407" displayName="$(string.CAT_6069CE00_5694_4EA3_ABC5_5EDCDE8BF407)">
          <parentCategory ref="CAT_EC276371_D237_4D8F_A003_B71664197891" />
        </category>
      </categories>
      <policies>
        <policy name="POL_8DB73A25_F07B_4516_A12B_DCF325E947C1" class="User" displayName="$(string.POL_8DB73A25_F07B_4516_A12B_DCF325E947C1)" explainText="$(string.POL_8DB73A25_F07B_4516_A12B_DCF325E947C1_Help)" key="Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\MailSettings" valueName="NewStationery">
          <parentCategory ref="CAT_6069CE00_5694_4EA3_ABC5_5EDCDE8BF407" />
          <supportedOn ref="windows:SUPPORTED_WindowsVista" />
        </policy>
        <policy name="POL_05A1EF63_973E_4211_A3E3_A94BDE041FD5" class="User" displayName="$(string.POL_05A1EF63_973E_4211_A3E3_A94BDE041FD5)" explainText="$(string.POL_05A1EF63_973E_4211_A3E3_A94BDE041FD5_Help)" key="Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\MailSettings" valueName="NewTheme">
          <parentCategory ref="CAT_6069CE00_5694_4EA3_ABC5_5EDCDE8BF407" />
          <supportedOn ref="windows:SUPPORTED_WindowsVista" />
        </policy>
      </policies>
    </policyDefinitions>
  • CompanyTweaks.adml

    <policyDefinitionResources revision="1.0" schemaVersion="1.0">
      <displayName>
      </displayName>
      <description>
      </description>
      <resources>
        <stringTable>
          <string id="DisableNewStationery">Restrict Legacy Stationery</string>
          <string id="DisableNewStationery_Explain">This policy settings allows you to manage if legacy Stationery is allowed in Outlook 2007 emails.
    If you enable this policy setting, any changes a user makes to their Stationery will be ignored by Outlook.
    If you disable this policy setting, it has no effect
    If you do not configure this policy setting, the restriction will be removed

    See also "Restrict Message Themes" policy</string>
          <string id="DisableNewTheme">Restrict Message Themes</string>
          <string id="DisableNewTheme_Explain">Prevents users from changing the default theme. NOTE: To disable, set to 'Not Configured' or move GPO out of scope.</string>
          <string id="EnteracommandbarIDtodisable">Enter a command ID to disable:</string>
          <string id="Outlook2007">Outlook 2007</string>
          <string id="CustomUserSettings">Custom User Settings</string>
          <string id="ADMXMigrator_UnresolvedString">ADMX Migrator encountered a string that is not present in the source ADM string table.</string>
          <string id="ADMXMigrator_NoSupportedOn">ADMX Migrator encountered a policy that does not have a supportedOn value.</string>
          <string id="SUPPORTED_WindowsVista">At least Microsoft Windows Vista</string>
        </stringTable>
        <presentationTable>
          <presentation id="DisableNewStationery" />
          <presentation id="DisableNewTheme" />
        </presentationTable>
      </resources>
    </policyDefinitionResources>

Conclusion

After all of this we can deliver some sort of control over how outlook handles fonts. It may be more complicated than running a registry import within a login script but it is a much more visible and controllable way to manage these settings. Hopefully, one day, Microsoft will include a handy font dropdown box in the admx files and we won’t need to bother with all this kerfuffle.

Sources

I got many useful tips from the following sites

• How to deploy specific fonts in Office 2007. This applies to Word Outlook Excel PowerPoint and Access.
• Disabling Stationery in Outlook 2007 Using Active Directory Group Policy
• The Lazy Admin: Creating Custom ADM Templates