Chris Tate-Davies » microsoft

CSV file of Windows Process list

admin — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:09:17 +0000

If you need a CSV file of the currently running processes in Windows you can use the task manager command line tool.

C:> TASKLIST.EXE

This will dump the task list to the screen. But there are several options you can use:

C:> TASKLIST.EXE /V /FO CSV > filename.csv

The above will produce a nicely formatted CSV file with information about the process, such as CPU Time and memory used.

The full list of other options can be found at the Microsoft Technet library, well, until they move the location of it… http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb491010.aspx

Stupid Microsoft error messages

admin — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:36:02 +0000

Why is it that the Microsoft developers have an inability to get their systems and processes to output a meaningful error message now and again? I mean, is it really that hard?

I try to stay away from company slagging, but Microsoft, really…?

I have recently bought an XBox 360 and I think its great. Had no crashes, and no problems with it, until I joined XBox Live. I was offered a month free – great. I used that, and then on the XBox dashboard, I noticed an advert for another free month. Double great. However, when I tried to activate this, I received a cryptic error message on the screen. Something like, “This operation failed. Error 8005342″ – nothing else.

Great. I searched on Google, and found that many people had this error, and someone seemed to think that registering my credit card details, on www.xbox.com might be a good idea to try. I did this and re-attempted the procedure with success this time. So, why if the error is “no credit card details entered” – why the bloody hell doesn’t the error message say that??!?!

And just now, I was trying to install .Net framework 4 on a test PC. I receieved another message, “The install failed due to a fatal error”… Helpful. What if someone you know dies and all the doctor said was, “he died”. “Why?”, “He’s dead”

Helpful.

Turned out, I needed to install something called the Microsoft Windows Imaging Component. Again. Why not tell me this instead of “a fatal error”

Its no wonder people have so much trouble getting used to using a computer!!!

Sorry for the rant. Just pisses me off!

Installing Tahoma font in Ubuntu

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:52:32 +0000

The stylesheet of our intranet is primarily Tahoma, and Firefox on Ubuntu doesn’t look good.

To install the Microsoft Core Fonts package in Ubuntu, run the following in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

And then this should go away and get them. Lovely.

NB, if this doesn’t take immediate effect, you can rebuild the font cache by running

sudo fc-cache -fv

Now, the Tahoma font is excluded these days from this package, so you’ll need to install that one manually, by following the instructions found here