Thursday, November 22, 2018

Image Composer Undo

Hack to have multiple Undo Levels in Image Composer:

Set a registry entry thus:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Image Composer\Settings]
"MaxUndoLevels"=dword:00000010

I had to actually create the entry, but YMMV.

I was amazed that this worked. Why this is not a default or at least a configuration option is beyond me.

Update: Another annoying issue: When you have windows Display Settings Scaling set to a size other than 100% you will find that the color picker does not work correctly. Mine was set to 150% and this drove me nuts for a while. The fix is to move the window to a display with scaling set to 100%. 

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Fix for Visio attempting install/configure every time it starts


There is an issue with MS Office Visio 2007 (and other versions it seems) where it has not been set up properly in the registry and it keeps attempting and failing to fix this every time it starts. It will work, but it is slow to start and as annoying as hell.

Running as Admin, reinstalling, attempting repair, etc, etc. will not correct this. There are any number of cheerful suggestions such as removing and re-installing, editing registry keys, etc. None of them worked until I found an incomplete list of registry keys requiring a fix and completed it. Fixing the keys below finally fixed it for me and it loads instantly now, finally.

It would appear that a default setting pointing to Visio Viewer rather than the Visio application proper is the issue.

The defective keys have this pattern:

.v??   (default) VisioViewer.Viewer
          application/vnd.ms-visio.viewer

They are found under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and the ones that needed alteration on my machine were as follows. Note that you should look for the VisioViewer value to make sure you have fixed them all. Don't forget to set a restore point prior to editing the registry. 

.vdx - (default) Visio.Drawing.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio
.vsd - (default) Visio.Drawing.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio
.vsl - (default) Visio.AddOn.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio
.vss - (default) Visio.Stencil.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio
.vst - (default) Visio.Template.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio
.vsu - (default) Visio.CustomUI.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio
.vsw - (default) Visio.Workspace.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio
.vsx - (default) Visio.Stencil.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio
.vtx - (default) Visio.Template.11
        Content Type  application/vnd.visio


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