Recently I did a uninstall of Nero 7 from my Windows 7 computer and installed Nero 9. After I had completed this I found that there were many orphaned Nero 7 AutoPlay handlers left in the options list. I had to manually remove the options from the list using the Windows Registry Editor (regedit.exe).

To do this, execute regedit.exe, then navigate to the following location in the registry editor.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ AutoplayHandlers

At this location of the registry you are concerned with two different folders, the Handlers and EventHandlers folders. The Handler folders holds the reference to the software that is executed. The EventHandlers folder contains the different AutoPlay option lists.

First you will need to go through the Handlers folder and delete all folders associated with the software that is showing up. After you have done that then go through the EventHandlers folders and remove all of the references to the Handlers in each event. I had to go through each individual EventHandlers subfolder.

I have my Windows 7 computer setup with a account profile where I have to provide a password to log into the computer, or resume the session after the computer goes to sleep. Since I am the only user on the computer, I hate having to do the “CTRL-ALT-DEL” keystroke to get to the login prompt.

This is a easy fix though. You just have to press the windows key and type in “Local Security Policy”. Then expand “Local Policies” and click on the “Security Options”. You will now see a list of local security options. Go to “Interactive logon: Do not require CTRL+ALT+DEL” and set it to enabled. After you have done this, you will need to restart your computer so the setting will be in effect.

I have found that after some windows updates, or for a reason I still can’t figure out, the setting gets reverted. You might have repeat these steps again and again, as mine keep on getting reset.

On December 31st of 2009 I got a Motorola Droid smart phone. I got the phone because I had a old Alltel phone and Verizon suggested that I get on there network so that I would get better service. Now getting the new phone did not give me better service at all at my house, but everything else about the phone is simply amazing.

At first I was a little uneasy with the phone. I have a Iphone 3g for work and it is really a nice phone. The things that I recognized right off the bat that were better was my feelings that the GPS on the Droid seemed to be much better and the wireless internet device was much more sensitive along with the better 3G coverage. After using the phone for a while I found the following things that I do love about the phone.

• The Google Navigation is Amazing
• The fact I can make it a alarm clock
• The use of Widgets with Apps
• The Fact I can get different Browsers
• The super integration with Google apps

I would suggest this phone to anyone. It really is a nice phone and has a great developers interface for it. I am excited about the opportunity to start developing Android Apps. The SDK for the OS is all in java and is very API based.

One thing that I would suggest to anyone who gets the droid is to go to BestBuy and get a ZAGG invisibleSHIELD body wrap for your phone. It makes the phone so you can’t scratch it. I love not having a stupid case on the phone and just being able to throw it in my pocket without worry. One thing to do is pay the extra $13 to get them to do the installation. It is a pain to get the wrap put on your phone and well worth the money for them to do it for you.

I was recently asked to get a Shibboleth SP setup to work with a Local version of IIS like one that is included in Windows XP Professional. The users were doing Microsoft .Net programming and wanted to do some Shibboleth SP Testing.

I followed the installation instruction for Installing Shibboleth SP on IIS6 . The installation went as described here with a few modifications.

When setting up your shibboleth2.xml file, leave the hostname to sp.example.org. It appears that the Shibboleth NSAPI filter does not recognize the local computer name, but says that all requests are being handled by sp.example.org. To trick this out go to the host file on your computer, usually located at c:\windows\system32\etc\hosts and add the following line.

127.0.0.1        sp.example.org

This will make all url calls made on your local computer to sp.example.org work.