Archive for May, 2009
Disable ctfmon.exe in Windows
May 14th, 2009. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
Just unchecking the selection for ctfmon.exe in a program like Windows Startup Inspector or Autoruns doesn’t stop it from starting itself up again. Sure, you can block it with Group Policy, but that is a little heavy-handed.
You can disable it in XP by going into the Regional and Language Options in the Control Panel, choose the Languages tab, and click the Details button in the “Text services and input languages section”. In the dialog that pops up, make sure in the “Installed services” section you have only your default keyboard layout. If there are speech services installed, select them and click Remove. Then click the Advanced tab and check the box for “Turn off advanced text services”.
In Vista, go to the Control Panel, and choose “Change keyboard or other input methods” in the “Regional and Language Options” section. On the “Keyboards and Languages” tab, click the “Change keyboards” button. On the “Text Services and Input Languages” dialog, General tab, make sure in the “Installed services” section you have only your default keyboard layout. If there are speech services installed, select them and click Remove. If you find it still running after restarting Vista, you may have to run msconfig and uncheck the ctfmon.exe selection on the Startup tab.
Resetting the Gnome panel
May 1st, 2009. Published under Uncategorized. No Comments.
Had a heck of a time fighting with xorg.conf on Ubuntu 9.04 this week. When I finally got the resolution set correctly, the Gnome panels were messed up. The trash icon was in the middle of the bottom panel and the user/power section was in the middle of the top panel. After Googling for the answer, I came across this post that explained how to reset the Gnome panel. Here are the basic steps:
- Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get a console
- Log in from the console
- Type “rm -rf .gnome”
- Type “rm -rf .gconf”
I restarted after this and my panels were indeed reset when I logged in (including the theme, fonts, etc), and the panels were behaving normally again.