Category: Useful

This useful little program called the
MSN 7 Universal Patcher++ v0.8 is invaluable if, like me, you get really annoyed with the crap that Microsoft ads to every new version of MSN messenger. Since there’s no option to remove the search bar, or the little banner, this piece of software does it for you by hacking the code. Simply close messenger, download the file, run it, and then select what you’d like to disable. I disabled the lot.

MSN 7 Universal Patcher++ v0.8

I was recently given a Region 1 Godzilla DVD of Destroy all monsters. (Amazon claimed it was Region 0 but it turned up as region 1.) A spot of googling revealed how to get the DVD to play in our Panasonic DVP520

1. Make sure there’s no DVD disc in the drive
2. Press system menu on remote control
3. Go to preference settings
4. Press 1,3,5,5,6,6
5. Press 0
6. Press system menu on remote to exit

Panasonic DVP520 DVD player

Destroy all monsters

I recently downloaded and installed QuickTime. I couldn’t do much about it, but it installed QuickTime at the same time. I have no desire for keeping iTunes on my system, and certainly no reason to have an iPodHelper.exe process running all the time (since I don’t own an iPod). There were no options to uninstall iTunes – it was just not on the uninstall radar at all.

The solution was to download iTunes again, install it, and then uninstall it. This also installed QuickTime again, but uninstalling it only removed iTunes.

The last step was to go into the registry editor (run: regedit.exe), drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/
Windows/CurrentVersion/Run and remove Qttask from starting up each time windows loaded. So now my system is not owned by Apple and I can watch quicktime movies on the rare occassions taht something entertaining comes along.

Quicktime installs a very annoying process when you install it on Windows XP called qttask.exe that you may often see running in your taskbar and processlist. There is no way to stop it running from within quicktime’s preferences. Instead, you must:

• Go to ‘Start’ -> ‘Run’
• Type ‘regedit’ and click ‘OK’
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Apple Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\ActiveX
• Find the value QTTaskRunFlags, right click on it and change the value to 0
• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
  Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
• Delete the value pointing to qttask.exe

That should stop it running automatically when you start windows or when you open Quicktime.

If you are also stuck with iTunes then see this post about removing it after you’ve installed Quicktime