Walker News

How To Check Exchange Server Version From Outlook 2007?

Walker — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:00:05 +0000

If you’re using Microsoft Outlook to access office email, most likely the corporate email system is powered by Microsoft Exchange Server.

Since the public release of Exchange Server 4.0, development of this messaging and collaborative software product never stop, almost in line with other Microsoft major products life cycle, in order to expand system functionality for ensuring well integration in Microsoft infrastructure as well as meeting market expectation.

The latest Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 just has been officially launched on November 9, about 2 weeks after the official launch of Windows 7.

If you would like to confirm the corporate email system supports some features that only available in certain version of Exchange Server, you’ll have to find that out.

For those who are using Microsoft Outlook 2007, forget about consulting Exchange Server administrator, as this email client is capable to check the version of Exchange Server after you log in to the email account:

1) Press and hold the CTRL key while right click the Microsoft Office Outlook icon in Notification Area (previously known as System Tray).

Some of these context menu options are not available if you just right click the Outlook icon in System Tray without holding down CTRL key.

2) From the “hidden” context menu, select “Connection Status…” to bring up Microsoft Exchange Connection Status dialog box. There you will see a Version column as you scroll the horizontal bar to the right end:

With reference to Build numbers and release dates for Exchange Server, filed under article ID 158530, the version 6.5.7654.2.12 is better known as Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 post-SP2.

Fix Windows Photo Viewer Display Problem: Tinted Yellow-to-Pink Colour Glitch

Walker — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:18:22 +0000

The yellow tinted background glitch happened in Windows Photo Gallery and Adobe Photoshop while I was using Windows Vista, and there is no luck for Windows 7 Ultimate installation as well :-(

As you can see in this animation, Windows Photo Viewer shows different colour at before and after applying the fix:

I haven’t installed Adobe Photoshop CS3 as well as Windows Photo Gallery, but guess I will see the same weird colour problem in these two graphic applications.

Windows Photo Gallery is not in my Windows 7 Ultimate, only the Photo Viewer program. Anyway, it can be downloaded from Windows Live.

How to fix the tinted yellow-to-pink color problem in Windows 7 graphic applications?

The good old trick applied and it works well in Windows 7 to fix display color glitch as seen in Windows Photo Viewer. It should be applicable to Adobe Photoshop, Windows Photo Gallery, etc (since the Color Management is a system setting, not limited to individual or selected applications).

1) Click Windows Start button, type colorcpl.exe in the Search programs and files text-box, and click the program shortcut appears atop to open Windows Color Management dialog box:

2) Select the display device (your monitor), tick “use my settings for this device” check-box, highlight the ICC profile and click Remove button.

Once that is done, the Windows Photo Viewer is showing right colour as I wish :-)

Windows 7: Copy And Paste In Command Prompt

Walker — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:31:45 +0000

Although Windows command line processor (cmd.exe) allows copy and paste function, it is not user-friendly, be it in Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, etc.

With the cmd.exe default setting, the copy and paste in Command Prompt window are as follow:

1) To paste text into Command Prompt window, right click and select “paste” option.

2) To select and copy text from Command Prompt window:

Right click and select “mark” option,
Uses mouse pointer to highlight / select the text in Command Prompt,
Press ENTER key to copy the selected text (to Windows Clipboard?).
To paste the copied text from Command Prompt (to Notepad, for example), just press CTRL+V or paste option from context menu.

As you can see, there are “too much” mouse clicks to get thing done. So, you should change the Command Prompt default setting to speed up copy and paste function.

Fine tune Command Prompt Copy and Paste functions in two steps:

1) Open Command Prompt window and right click the window title bar to select Properties.

2) In the Properties dialog box, tick the “Quick Edit Mode” check-box, and click OK button to exit.

That’s it. With my recent test in Windows 7 Ultimate, the tweaked cmd.exe setting is persistent, even after Windows restart.

If it’s not persistent in your case, then create a shortcut to cmd.exe first before applying the 2-step above. Thereafter, use that shortcut to open Command Prompt window.

Using Command Prompt copy and paste function after tweaking the default cmd.exe setting:

To copy text from cmd.exe, use mouse pointer to select and press ENTER key to copy to Windows Clipboard.
To paste copied text into cmd.exe, just right click on it!

As compare the before and after tweaking cmd.exe setting, isn’t it simple to do copy and paste in Command Prompt window after enabling the “Quick Edit Mode”?

Uses WMI To Check Windows 7 Last Boot Time In WMIC

Walker — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:55:05 +0000

You might have read my previous post on how to use WMIC to check memory related information in Windows system.

Without installing 3rd-party utility or open up chassis, WMIC can tell you how many RAM slots already in used and how many memory slots are available for RAM upgrade.

Here is another useful WMIC command example, using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to check the last boot up time of Windows 7.

Open Command Prompt window and execute this (case insensitive):

wmic OS get LastBootUpTime

Of course, this trick is applicable to other Windows OS, as long as the WMIC is installed. If I recall correctly, WMIC is available in these “obsolete” Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2003.

Enable Full Screen Command Prompt Window Persistently In Windows 7

Walker — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:11:27 +0000

Please take note of the difference between “full screen command prompt” and “full screen command prompt window”. Yes, the “window” is the keyword!

Unless you give up Aero desktop experience and change the WDDM driver (Windows Vista Display Driver Model) to Windows XP compatible display driver, there is no easy way to enable a real, windowless full screen command prompt in Windows 7 (or Windows Vista that obsolete).

This trick, however, can easily set Windows 7 to persistently open Command Prompt window in full screen (maximized) mode.

(This video playback is default to high definition (HD), and best watch in full screen mode. Yet another lousy, “silent” screencast in WalkerNews Channel @ YouTube.)

1) Create a shortcut to cmd.exe and double click to open it.

2) Type wmic and press ENTER to get Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line utility running into an interactive mode.

3) Click the maximize button to get a real full screen window of Command Prompt. With Windows 7 default installation setting, you can also click the Command Prompt window title bar and drag it up to the edge of Desktop to get the same maximized window.

You won’t get this “full screen” window mode if you click the maximize button before executing WMIC. Am I right?

4) Right click the maximized Command Prompt window title bar and select “Properties”. In the Properties dialog box, tick the “Quick edit mode” check-box followed by clicking OK button.

This step makes Windows 7 “remember” to maximize Command Prompt to this particular full screen window mode, each time you double click the cmd.exe shortcut created in step 1!

5) Close the Command Prompt window (by click the X button or execute exit command twice to exit from WMIC as well as cmd.exe).

Now, double click the same cmd.exe shortcut again, you should see Windows 7 open Command Prompt in the same maximized, full screen window mode again :-)

Use WMI To Find Out RAM Slot In Used And Memory Size Of Each Slot

Walker — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:31:45 +0000

How could I easily find out total number of memory slot in used and the memory size of each RAM module in the RAM slot, without open up computer casing?

The answer is to command the power of WMI in Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) utility!

WMIC is bundled with Windows XP and above (including the latest Windows 7). For those who are not using Windows XP and above, try to look for motherboard / memory utilities. Please share if you know of any.

I know there are 4GB RAM in my Core 2 Duo Desktop at home, but I can’t remember how many memory module or the size of each RAM installed to the memory slots.

I try to download the latest ASUS PC Probe II V1.04 (for P5B-Plus Vista Edition motherboard) but it does not work with Windows 7 64-bit, as ASUS driver download site said it works up to Windows Vista 64-bit :-(

Of course open the casing and take a look is not much effort, but why I have to do “dirty work” if there is an easier way to find out in no time?

So, here is this WMIC command I used to find out the number of RAM slot in used and the size of each RAM module in the memory slots.

1) Open the Command Prompt window and execute the following sample. I have tested this sample in both Windows 7 and Windows Vista and confirm there is no need of using Command Prompt with elevated privilege.

2) Run this WMIC command

wmic MEMORYCHIP get banklabel, devicelocator, caption, capacity

The easiest way of remember this WMIC command is simply type wmic /? to find out more information. For this particular case, you can shorten the WMIC command for a lengthy output, e.g. wmic memorychip output all information related to memory detected by WMI.

As you can see, there is no need to install additional program, writing a Windows Shell Script or PowerShell script, etc. If you’re using Windows XP and above, the bundled WMIC does the job well.

How To Find Top YouTube Video By View Count And Rating At Wish?

Walker — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:46:15 +0000

Do you know how to find YouTube Top 10 video of the year in term of view count or rating, at your wish at anytime, without referring to other sources except at YouTube.com?

For those regular YouTube visitors or YouTube fans, you might already know the trick of locating the most viewed video or top rated video of the time in YouTube sphere.

So, here we go. For those who don’t know, I show you how could I find the:

YouTube Top 10 video of the time, in term of view count:

1) Using the YouTube site-search function (powered by Google?), type * (asterisk) and press ENTER.

2) After the search for * result appears, move your mouse to “Relevance” of Sort by: option and click “View Count” from the list.

Voila, the most reliable source of telling you the Top 10 video of the time in YouTube.com!

If can’t get it, just click this link to get the search result and bookmark it to your favourite web browser :-)

YouTube Top 10 video of the time, in term of rating count:

Redo the same trick: Using * (asterisk) as keyword to search in YouTube. When the result is out, move mouse pointer to Sort by: option. Instead of selecting “view count”, now click the “rating” from the drop-down list to search for most rated video of the time.

Now, I appreciated you could share with me and others, the most valuable video clips in the Net you’ve seen, but are yet in the top list of its video hosting site.