Sometimes you want to get things done right and sometimes you just want to get them done. When you're installing a PHP 5 and Apache 2.2 development setup on Windows Vista using the automatic installers, it may seem like neither one of these is an option. This quick tip is going to save you a lot of time and trouble.

Yesterday, I had a service call, one of the "standards" as I like to call them. A slow PC.  I got on-site, and looked at the usual suspects.  There were no viruses or spyware, but there were a dozen little icons in the system tray.  NO WONDER! All this junk loading, XP was choking!

This article refers to Excel 2003, but should apply to most other versions as well. I work for a large company that uses a vast mainframe system to track data. We've got programmers who've written fabulous scripts, so that we can just go click a button, make a couple of choices, and BAM - there's a CSV file with the data we need to analyze. Problem is, the data is often not in a very useful format. The names are all upper case, first name and last name are in the same cell, phone numbers are regarded as generic numbers and are dropping zeros, etc. What a lot of people at my company don't know, and that I try to help them learn, is that Excel has functionality specifically to help you work around these problems.

Windows Automatic Updates broke my computer. Well, not really. What it did do was cause my machine to hang and prompt a system error that garbled all of the text on my screen. I called my friendly tech support team and they came to the rescue, but I decided to delve a bit deeper into the problem to see what others people's experiences were. It turns out that 5 other people at my company had that exact problem, and that was just at my company alone. Think of all of the hundreds of thousands of users out there having the exact same problem. If you are like me, when the Microsoft pop-up prompts me to "run automatic updates," I just comply, fearing that if I don't my computer will be vulnerable to all of the nastiness that can affect one's machine.

When trying to install a new device (like a USB mouse, printer, video card, etc.), Windows Vista might report that there is "no driver found for you device [sic]" and/or will not display the pre-installed Vista OEM drivers. Even by manually selecting the driver, you will still get the "no driver found..." error. This also tends to happen with HP printers (as we know their drivers are bulky and complex). You will get a red X at the end or it won't find the drivers - again.

This is caused by a corrupted INFCACHE.1 file. This file is hidden, has restricted access, and can be found in "c:\windows\inf". This file stores the location of drivers and their INF files.

When you open Microsoft Word, do you find yourself repeating the same ritual? Changing margin sizes, changing to Print view, adding tab settings, setting a default font, etc.? Isn't it annoying? Well, you can set it so don't have to do this every time - just change your normal.dot file. What the heck is that? It’s the default document that Word uses when you start it up. You can customize it any way you want. Here’s what you do:

Microsoft is aware of a problem printing spreadsheets and databases in Microsoft Works 8 on a computer running Windows Vista. Until the problem is fixed, here is a workaround:

Ok, so I have pinpointed the cause of an issue I was having at my job with 12 computers. Some were restores, some were new hard drives which were then restored... but they all ended up having an identical problem. After doing the last batch of updates on Windows Update, they ALL BSOD'ed. Two HPs. 3 Dells, a Gateway and three E-Machines. The only commonality was the repartition/reinstalls, so I did some research.

Editor's note: Liz is a tech support person and all-around electro-guru. She's got all kinds of random fix-it tips running around in her brain, some of which occasionally make it to paper (or pixels in this case). Below is the first installment of Liz's Random Tech Tips. Windows Vista and the 1950 Pro Installing 7.3 drivers for the Radeon 1950 Pro can sometimes cause a BSOD ("blue screen of death" for the uninitiated), or corrupt the original drivers. To fix this, install the "drivers only" version of 7.3 to get it to stop, and don't install the CCCC (Catalyst Control Center Crap). Network Problems (Windows XP) The god of networking fixes is here: WinSockXPFix. Run the tool. It modifies some registry keys, resets some settings, and generally makes sure it all works fine. Unless your settings are different, make sure the connection settings are set to automatically configure settings under Tools > Internet Options > Connections > Lan Settings. Check "Automatically Detect Settings," and make sure there is no proxy server set.

I’m not a clueless computer user; actually, I’m a technology trainer, mostly with Microsoft Office software. But I’m also not a tech geek. My husband would laugh till he cried if I tried to claim I was. So you can guess that I haven’t yet explored all the ins and outs of Windows Vista, which is installed on my work-provided Dell Latitude D620 notebook computer. But lately I have been using it just enough to be finding reasons I dislike it. This article isn't written from a OS geek or tech support person's point of view – I’m sure there are lots of great reasons they have for liking or disliking Vista. These are reasons from a reasonably savvy but typical end-user’s viewpoint.