I found a quick and easy little hack on how to fix this problem thanks to a commenter on this blog post.

First, boot into your Boot Camp partition. Open up Notepad and copy and paste the following:

@echo off
net time /setsntp:tick.usno.navy.mil
net stop w32time
net start w32time

Save this as a .bat (batch) file. Now find your saved batch file and drag it into your “Startup” folder in your Start menu. Now every time you start up Windows, it will fix the time offset automatically.

On a side note, sorry for the very long delay in posts lately.

This is what I am greeted with every time I launch iTunes. I have to resize the window to get the interface to show up correctly.

Then after I have been listening to music for around half an hour and I go back to the iTunes window to change the song the interface goes completely whack and is sometimes even unresponsive to me clicking the close button.

Now I know it’s a bad idea to even be using Vista. But I got the Vista Business Edition for free from a campaign Microsoft ran. I’m getting really fed up with the crappy Vista support in iTunes and hope my experience is better on my Macbook once I purchase it.

So Apple, when are you going to fix iTunes for Vista? It’s been out for half a year already. It takes that long to fix a few bugs?

Firstly, open your start menu, type msconfig into the search box, and press enter. In the window that pops up, go to the “Boot” tab. Check the box next to No GUI boot and Make all boot settings permanent. If you do not check “Make all boot settings permanent”, Windows Defender will bother you each and every time you boot into Windows.

You’re done! Just restart your computer and you should see a much better-looking boot screen.

<style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input>

Luckily this bug has been fixed in IE7. Firefox, Safari, and Opera are also all immune to this line of code. Please use this code for good and not evil!

First of all, you will need to find your hosts file. This can be found in the folder %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc. Just copy and paste that into your address bar in Windows Explorer and you’ll automatically be taken to the correct directory.

Once you’ve found your hosts file, right-click on it and select “Properties”. Now uncheck the box next to “Read-only” and click OK. Open this file in WordPad or Notepad. Whichever you prefer.

Add the following to a new line at the end of the file: 0.0.0.0 rad.msn.com

Save the file and restart Windows Live Messenger. There should be no advertisements in either the main window or message windows.

Sorry for the long delay in posts. I was busier than a bee this week.

Firstly, open up the iTunes Preferences under the “Edit” menu. In the preferences window that appears go to the “Advanced” tab. Find the option Minimize iTunes window to system tray and make sure it is unchecked.

Make your way down to the Windows taskbar. Right-click the taskbar, go to “Toolbars” and click on iTunes. Now whenever you minimize iTunes the taskbar player will appear, giving you limited control of your music without having to maximize iTunes.

NOTE: Using the iTunes taskbar player in Windows Vista will disable the taskbar transparency.

I recently found a great freeware defragmenter called JkDefrag which does a very good job at defragmenting. The application is very quick and extremely lightweight, so it has minimal impact on resources. If you’ve downloaded the program, you will notice that there is more than one “version” of JkDefrag. These versions include the GUI version (most people will use this), command line version, and two screensaver programs.

The GUI version is what most people will use. You can also schedule it to defragment by using the Windows Task Scheduler. The command line version is pretty obvious. It allows you to defragment using command line. The screensaver programs allow you to set your Windows screensaver to the JkDefrag screensaver program so your computer will be defragmented every time your screensaver initiates.

Let me know if you know of any other good freeware defragmenters.

After you’ve downloaded and installed FxVisor, launch it and you will immediately be given the choice of removing any arrow overlay from shortcuts or replacing the overlay with a different style which isn’t as much of an eye sore.

If you have removed the arrow overlay, FxVisor will also allow you to re-enable the default overlay. All in all, FxVisor is a great little application which will be of much help to any users who use desktop shortcuts to launch their applications, though I still recommend using differents methods for application launching.

Update
Apparently this will only work on Windows Vista. For those of you using Windows XP, the TweakXP Tweaking Utility will allow you to remove the arrow overlays, supposedly.

If you haven’t already, plug in your USB stick. Open your Start menu and click “Computer”. From here you should be able to see your USB stick.

Next right-click on your USB stick and select “Properties”. Go to the “ReadyBoost” tab and make sure “Stop testing this device” is checked. If there is no checkbox, your USB stick already works with ReadyBoost and you shouldn’t even be reading this tutorial. Click “OK” and unplug your USB stick.

Now comes the fun part where you have to dig around in the Windows registry. Open your Start menu, type regedit in the search field, and press enter. After accepting the UAC dialog, the Registry Editor should open up.

Using the left folder pane, navigate your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > EMDMgmt. In the left pane you should now see a list of USB devices that Vista has tested. Find the one for the USB stick you’re using and click on it. A list of values concerning your USB stick will be displayed.

Double-click the DeviceStatus entry, change the value to 2, and click OK. Use the same method for the entries ReadSpeedKBs and WriteSpeedKBs, but change their values to 1000. Go ahead and close the Registry Editor. Phew! You’ve made it through the toughest part!

Pop in your USB stick, go to the Start menu, and click Computer. Open up the Properties for your USB stick once again and click the ReadyBoost tab. Select “Use this device” and adjust the amount of reserved space for ReadyBoost to whatever you want. Click OK to save the changes.

That’s it! You’re done! Now Windows Vista will use your USB stick to run system tasks in the background.

Thanks to Binary Fortress Software, syncing your MP3 player with iTunes is now possible with iTunes Sync. This application is only available for Windows. If you’re a Mac OS X user, check out SyncTunes.

To date, iTunes Sync will work with most players by Cowon, Creative Labs, Dell, iRiver, JVC, Samsung, and Sandisk. A full list of known working MP3 players can be found here. Sorry Zune owners. The developer says it will be next to impossible to add support for the Zune.