ralphje.net Blog

Nowadays it isn’t uncommon for me to hear about the ‘amazing’ Microsoft Windows. Everybody has learned to work with Windows, and therefore doesn’t understand better methods. Microsoft has a monopoly and because everyone uses it, everyone uses it.
And that’s the reason Hyves is that big; just because ‘everyone’ is on it. Hyves is the most [...]

I noticed that the CPU usage of Explorer, and to be more specific: the thread shlwapi.dll, could slow your system down quite a bit, especially if you’re computer isn’t quite state-of-the-art. That’s why I began my investigation.
It appears that shlwapi.dll is (among other things) the search engine for the Start-menu search bar. I personally use [...]

A common error with Windows Vista is the error that Windows Calendar has stopped working. In fact, this is quite easy to solve. There are people who say that the problem can be solved by enabling and disabling User Account Protection. In fact, there’s a much easier method: go to Windows Calendar, create a new [...]

Today, Vista has been released internationally. Everybody can use Vista, and you can notice that too. Next to updates 929735, 931573, 930857, 928089, 931575, 929735 and 929427, Microsoft also released BitLocker and EFC improvements. However, this post isn’t about that (well, Bitlocker is one of the Ultimate Extras).
The Dutch Language Pack, with fourteen other languages, [...]

Last weekend my Vista wasn’t Genuine anymore. KB929391 killed it. So here is a fix. You need to have a Vista that was genuine before.

Get a new Vista key from the Customer Preview Program at above url. The old one doesn’t work anymore.
Reboot the computer in Safe Mode
Log in to an administrative account and enable [...]