Pressing the Red Button » Microsoft

Element Not Found Javascript Error When Installing IE Search Providers

jim.richmond — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:10:07 +0000

Here is a solution if your are getting a javascript error when trying to change the default Search Provider (Bing) in Internet Explorer.

The Error Message Is:
Element Not Found.

This is the fix that worked for me:

You can use regedit (Start Menu->Run->Type “regedit”) to modify the following key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{EAB22AC0-30C1-11CF-A7EB-0000C05BAE0B}\1.1\0\win32
and change the current value:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\shdocvw.dll
to this:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ieframe.dll

More Details About this Fix
I was not able to find much details on when or why this registry entry was overwritten. The safe approach would be to make this fix, install your search provider, then restore to the original setting.

Miscellaneous
Being stuck with Bing as a search provider was annoying to say the least. However I did find that the results of the two search engines (Microsoft vs Goolge) were more similar than I have ever seen in the past. In other words, Microsoft’s result were actually useful.

How to Manually Uninstall a Broken Silverlight

jim.richmond — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:31:33 +0000

I couldn’t run the latest Silverlight because an older beta version was installed. I kept getting an error during the install process that vaguely suggested removing the old version. So I went to Add/Remove Programs and I got an error when trying to remove it. After some research I found some instructions on how to manually remove it and reinstall. This worked for me. Below is a summary of the steps:

1) Download and install the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. Find Microsoft Silverlight in the list and Remove it.

2) Use Regedit to remove the following Silverlight registry key:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Silverlight

3) Remove the Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight directory (be sure to close all your browsers first or your directory will be locked.)

That should do it now you can go back to the SilverLight web site and redo the install.

Resetting Your Password in Vista

jim.richmond — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:58:25 +0000

Sometimes you need to reset your password. Sometimes you’re lazy and forget to make a windows password recovery disk (yes I’m guilty). So here is the easiest way I found to get back into your system:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

You need to be able burn a CD image or copy the contents on to a USB and make it bootable (instructions provided). I thought the easiest was to burn a cd. Once you have a bootable cd/usb, boot your computer and follow the instructions. The instructions pretty much consist of hitting enter (accepting the defaults) until you get to the part to choose the username password you want to clear. Once done, you reboot again and enter the new username and password, then you are in.

So easy, my dad could do it! Ok, I did have to talk him through it via a phone call but it went off with out a hitch.