ISO Recorder v2 & v3

I wrote a post on Alex Feinman's ISO Recorder a few months ago, but I haven't payed much attention on the ability to create ISO images from CDs/DVDs or even hard drive folders. I found this now quite useful say when you want to pack your application as an .iso image and test it on a Virtual PC without having to write it on a CD/DVD medium every time you make some changes.

Carefully read the release log and known issues before installing the correct version. Also you might want to give a quick glance over the ISO Recorder tutorial.

30 August 2008: If you get an error 80004005 then it's likely that you have spaces in the ISO target path / filename.

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ISO Recorder V1 - for Windows XP Gold (no service pack) and Windows XP SP1

ISORecorder V2 - for Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2003 (including 64-bit OS)

ISO Recorder V3 - for Windows Vista

CreateCD - command-line CD burning tool for Windows XP (all versions), Windows 2003 and Windows Vista

New ASUS R2H Wireless Vista driver v2.0.2.12

As some of you R2H owners noticed, there is a new R2H wireless driver on Windows Update - version 2.0.2.12, 05/07/2007 where the previous one I had was 2.0.2.2. It's too early to tell any difference, it just works and hopefully it fixes some issues, as it came out through the Windows driver treadmill.

30 August 2008: This driver seems to add the device in the Safely Remove Hardwar area, which makes sense for external USB devices but less for embedded ones. I don't know whether this is controllered by a setting in the .inf file or a property compiled in the device driver.

IE7 slow to open - fix?

I was so annoyed at IE7 opening so slow as application as well as when creating new tabs for quite some time, things were more obvious on ASUS R2H due to lack of power - it was taking a couple of seconds to open a new tab. Then it struck me, why not have a look at the installed browser add-ons, maybe one of them was slowing it down... And I was right, once I disabled SSVHelper Class BHO (ssv.dll) IE7 starts and opens new tabs much quicker!!! I feel bad for blaming IE guys a few posts back...

I couldn't find much information about SSVHelper, other than being part of the Sun JRE (1.5 and greater), but nothing specific about it. I'm not running Java applets very often and if I'll find they don't work, I'll just keep it in mind and enable it back when needed.

Update 18 November 2008

There is an easier way to check whether the add-ons are slowing the IE7 startup; go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and run Internet Explorer (No Add-ons) - if that's starting quickly then you need to review the addons and disable anything that you don't need.

How to disable Windows XP Search Assistant

If disabling Windows Deskop Search intergration with Explorer proved to be somewhat of a success, then some of you might also like disabling the Windows XP Search Assistant. While the puppy can be funny and why not, useful to some people, if you know what you are doing you are way better with the old Windows 2000 search dialog.

For that you can simply use Tweak UI from Microsoft Powertoys for Windows XP:

or you can use REGEDIT to change the registry entry below:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState\Use Search Asst = no

or download and open this Use Search Asst.reg registry file.