Technology Insights

Mac OSX – Make Specific App Default File Opener

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I have been meaning for a long time to set some configuration parameters for specific file types including which applications open them by default. I deal with a lot of different file types and I am typically having to scroll through a long list of Mac applications to select the one that I want to open the file. Since its not easy to do this in one spot on Mac OSX Mountain Lion without adding a third party application I started looking around to see what was available and ended up with Default Apps by Rubicode. Below I describe installing Default Apps and how it works.

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Internet Explorer Won’t Launch, Need To Update Windows With Windows Update Service

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Earlier this I had an interesting problem where Internet Explorer would not launch all the way on a friends computer. When the IE application was clicked on it would flash on the screen and then close immediately. I believe there was either some form of virus left on the computer that was closing Internet Explorer or that the upgrade I had just performed of IE6 to IE7 was causing a different issue. My initial plan was to continue upgrading Windows XP on this friends computer but I could not do this on the Windows Update site without Internet Explorer. Below is a work around if your Internet Explorer is not functioning properly and you would like to try to apply Windows patches from the Windows Update site anyway.

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How to Turn Off Email Attachments Being DEFANGED in Microsoft Outlook

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If attachments are showing up in your Microsoft Outlook inbox with a modified ending such as .doc being changed to .1324DEFANGED-doc then the issue is more than likely with your mail server instead of your email client. There is an application called MailScanner that modifies the file ending as a security measure to stop any files from being executed automatically. Below I briefly discuss modifying this setting on a Linux server using ISPConfig.

The easiest way to resolve this issue on a per user basis with an ISPConfig Linux server is to disable MailScanner for that user. MailScanner does provide numerous other security checks though so it is not recommended to disable it but if you must disable the file ending modification then modify the below files.

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Cannot See AppData Folder In Vista, Unhide All Files and Folders in Vista

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By default in Windows Vista all system files and folders are hidden as in previous versions of Windows. The difference is the typical menu is not at the top of Windows Explorer so how you might be used to turning on hidden files and folders might seem harder than it was before. Actually its exactly the same and if you follow the instructions below you will see all files and folders in no time.

  1. Open My Computer: Click the Windows icon in the lower left hand corner of Vista, scroll up to the right, and click Computer.