Time to turn to the trusty CCCP. I installed The Combined Community Codec Pack using all the defaults for the install and the configuration afterwards. Fired up Picasa, tried an export and it immediately started working.

I acquire my music from several sources such as CD rips, directly downloaded music, iTunes Store, or the Amazon MP3 store. I have a large music library and like having everything centrally located so any new directly downloaded music gets moved into a central library. None of these direct download files are found by iTunes unless I am willing to completely remove my library and re-index all the information. It would be ideal if iTunes could notice new audio files added to the folders that I have iTunes managing.

I was using a great 3rd party application called iTunes Library Updater with the 7.x versions of the software which would do exactly that. It would scan the folders I had setup in iTunes and add any new files as well as remove deleted files from the iTunes database. Unfortunately with the newest 8.x version this software no longer works and it looks like development has been abandoned. I may attempt to revert back to a 7.x version of iTunes but have worries that I may lose access to the DRM encrypted music I’ve recently purchased through the iTunes store. Hopefully Apple will address this in future versions of the software but I don’t see it being much of a priority for them as they continue to push the iTunes Store and don’t seem to care about music acquired from other sources.

UPDATE: The evaluation period for Service Pack 2 has ended. Microsoft has a new page dedicated to SP2 which will be updated with download links to the update when it is officially released here.

If you’re a poor sap stuck on Windows Vista and would like first hand experience with the changes coming in Service Pack 2 it’s now available for public download.  Microsoft has an open public preview available for the shared platform SP2 for Vista and Server 2008 and offer a few download options.

You can get it through Windows Update here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=18045534-BF27-4953-B907-764C4682714C&displaylang=en

Standalone downloads are also available.

ISO for Server 2008 x86/x64/ia64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0A3D7A63-46AF-4E04-AC8C-91B8BC476450

Self extracting EXEs:

x86 for Vista and Server 2008: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DCA54ECC-362A-4B4D-B62B-22780E839A7E&displaylang=en

x64 for Vista and Server 2008: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=361D0CA3-4B2C-4F1C-8B3E-DE376FDB1DE8

IA64 for Server 2008:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9E77AE84-BB5A-4A3F-A481-68826B34C893

Microsoft warns that with these preview releases you may see “Evaluation Copy” on your desktop and at boot but this does not mean that your copy of Windows is no longer valid.  You must also be running SP1 before installing this update.


@echo off
ECHO Deleting Outlook 2003 temporary files
cd %userprofile%/local settings/temporary internet files/olk*
if errorlevel 1 goto end
del *.* /s /f /q
:end
exit


Batch file available here. (right-click, save as)

This batch file will simply navigate to the current user’s temporary Outlook folder and delete all the files in the root and sub-folders. Just be careful you don’t miss the %userprofile% variable, otherwise that command will delete all the files that happen to be in the current folder which is probably just the root of the user profile.

Original post found here.

Update 1/6/2009:  Big thanks to Mark suggesting some error handling to make sure you don’t accidentally wipe the current directory if the change directory command doesn’t take place.  I’ve updated the code snippet and example batch file with his suggestions.

Here is another vague Outlook message but at least with this one most people would try closing Outlook and opening it again and the move will then work. Or you can simply close your search results in Outlook and perform the move without error.

This cryptic message is Window’s way of telling you it needs the installation source media. This happens if you choose to remove the installation temp files at the end of the Office 2003 installer. Just put the CD or DVD in your drive and run the updates again. They will now properly apply and you can get rid of that annoying yellow update notification in your task bar.

Once the program ran to my liking I wrote a simple CL program that would call the program every 5 min and added the CL as an auto start job entry to our ITDEPT subsystem. I’ve had this configuration running for the past 6 months and it’s a great way to stay on top of any jobs that may be holding up QBATCH. Critical system jobs are usually fixed before end users even know something was broken.

Download the code here. The two variables for email are ‘emailaddress’ and ‘emailaddress1′. Simply change the variables to the email addresses you would like the messages sent to and compile.

I exported the bookmarks from each of my machines and even found a few old backups I had. This can be done from the Bookmarks Manager, File, Export. I had a total of 5 bookmark.html files. Now I proceeded to delete every bookmark on my laptop through Bookmarks Manager and forcing a Full Refresh from the Browser Sync settings.

I then did the same to the other two machines I had browser sync running on. It took a good few minutes for each of the browsers to fully sync. Now closing the browser on the other two machines I returned to the laptop and imported each of the 5 bookmark backup files and spent another hour cleaning them up. Once I had the bookmarks to my liking I immediately backed them up yet again before forcing another full sync. This sync took about 7-10 minutes to update. Once the update was done I forced full syncs on the other two computers and everything looked normal. It’s been a full day now and so far so good.

What caused the problem is the way Outlook saves temporary files when opened. It saves a copy of the attachment into the hidden Outlook sub-folder of Temporary Internet Files and appends that file name with a number sequence. The problem comes up when you try to open an attachment with the same name more than 99 times as Outlook will not increment the filename any further. That’s what trips this error.

To fix the problem you first need to figure out the name of Outlook’s hidden temp folder. Outlook creates a temp folder named OLK*** where *** is a random number. Windows Explorer hides this folder even if you have “show hidden folders” turned on. To find the folder open the command line from the start menu or by typing CMD from the Run box. You will start at the local user profile path. From here type the following and press enter:

cd “Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files”

Now that you are in the temporary Internet Files it’s time to find the hidden folder.

dir *.

This will list all folders and files without attachments. In my example you can see my folder is named OLK18. You can now either open Windows Explorer and navigate to the Temp Internet Files folder and add \OLK18 (substitue with the name of your folder) and remove all the duplicate files here or stay in the command line and just change directory with the cd command to the outlook folder and run del *.* to delete all the files within the folder.

Ideally Outlook should be doing some housekeeping and keep these files cleaned up.

UPDATE 10/22/08: Using a batch file to automatically clear this folder on computer startup.