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Petja's technical blog

For you Vista users out there, if you’re seeing strange issues with Adobe Flash, where the plugin is installed but not recognized on certain sites, I have a solution for you. The “installation successful” page tells me that I have Flash installed. I can see the Flash banners just fine. Yet when try to watch a video on a page that uses Flash, it tells me that I need to have the latest Flash player installed. I’ve confirmed that “Shockwave Flash Object” is installed (Tools > Manage Add-Ons), and Flash10a.ocx is the file name. If you’re having the same problem, keep reading.

Even though Adobe’s online tool said I was running the latest version of Flash (10.0.12.36), it still wasn’t working properly. I ran across a forum post that suggested trying several things, so I found the install folder for Flash:

C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash

Inside that folder, there are two files: Flash10a.ocx, the ActiveX control that IE7 uses, and FlashUtil10a.exe. I shut down IE7 then ran FlashUtil10a.exe and it said that there was an update for my version of Flash – downloaded the new version, rebooted the PC as suggested, and now I can view all Flash content as I should. What’s interesting is that the version number of Flash didn’t change. I suspect the issue is more one of registering Flash with the system properly, and Adobe has a bug in the installer. This worked for me, so I hope it will work for you!

Windows Vista comes equiped with two-way firewall, but by default only inbound protection is enabled not to bother inexperienced users with confusing firewall warnings.
Here I will show you how to enable outbound protection to further increase Windows Vista security.
Navigate to start button in left bottom corner and type in“windows firewall with advanced security”. In “Windows Firewall properties” set outbound connection to “block”, according to your firewall policy (home or public). Now when outbound protection is enabled, go to “outbound rules” and add which program you want to be able to access the internet.

By default not even Internet Explorer is able to access Internet with outbound rules set to block.

Internet Explorer used to permit you to install web server certificates by examining the SSL certificate and importing it into your key store. Version 7 of the browser took that away and made it more difficult to import them into the key store.

In Windows Vista you can add a self-signed SSL certificate this way:

 1. Run MMC (Microsoft Management Console) -> Windows key + R -> Than type MMC and press Enter

2. Go to File -> Add/Remove snap-in

3. Add the Certificates snap-in and hit OK

4. Once the snap-in is installed expand the tree on the left column to get to Console Root -> Certificates (Local Computer) -> Trusted Root Certification Authorities -> Certificates.

5. Select the menu Action -> All Tasks -> Import… to start the “Welcome to the Certificate Import Wizard”.

Than just select your .cer SSL certificate and import it!

I had this problem a while back and did a bit of research on it. Seems Vista sometimes “loses” it’s way installing standard type USB drivers. I didn’t find the answer to permanently fix the problem but I did find a work around.

When the system requests the driver/drivers, choose to manually install the drivers (or whatever . . . the same as the old XP “Have disk” option) and set the path to “c:\windows\system32″. Vista will pick up the driver/drivers and install the device.

You must do this on each USB port.

Please follow these steps:

From the Start button, type REGEDIT into the Search box, then press Enter to launch the Registry Editor (regedit.exe).

Note: If you did not disable UAC (read my “Disable User Account Control in Windows Vista ” article) then you will be prompted to consent to the action you’re about to perform. Click Continue.

Locate the following key in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

Modify the following value (REG_DWORD):
Composition
Change the existing value to 1.
Modify the following value (REG_DWORD):
CompositionPolicy
Change the existing value to 2.

Close Registry Editor.

Open an elevated Command Prompt window. To open an elevated Command Prompt, click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator. You can also type CMD in the search box of the Start menu, and when you see the Command Prompt icon click on it to select it, hold CTRL+SHIFT and press ENTER.

In the Command Prompt window, type

net stop uxsms

press Enter.

Wait for the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager service to stop, then type in

net start uxsms

press Enter.

Wait for the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager service to start.
You *might* need to restart your computer.