I was a little surprised this morning to see Windows Vista offer me this optional driver update via Windows Update:

I don’t have a touch screen on this particular machine, so I was immediately suspicious. Sure enough, a bit of searching turns up plenty of reports (like this one at DSL Reports) from people who installed the driver without thinking, to then discover that their existing PS/2 mouse or notebook touchpad stopped functioning. The phantom update appears to be afflicting both XP and Vista systems.

If you install this inadvertently and find yourself with a nonfunctional mouse, the obvious solution is to use System Restore to roll back to the point before the driver was installed. However, at least one report I read online says this option doesn’t work. I haven’t tested so can’t say for sure whether this is true. Another option, which reportedly does work on Vista, is the Roll Back Driver option. From Device Manager, select the defective device (probably under the Human Interface Devices category), right-click and choose Properties, click the Driver tab, and then click Roll Back Driver.

As an alternative, you can uninstall the driver from Device Manager. If you have a USB mouse, plug it in and use it to navigate through Device Manager. If you don’t have a USB mouse to use, you’ll have to do all this with the keyboard, as follows:

1. Press the Windows logo key to open the Start menu and then type device.
2. Use the Down arrow key if necessary to select Device Manager from the search results list and press Enter.
3. If you see a UAC prompt, press the Left arrow key to move the focus to the Continue button, and then press Enter.
4. Press Tab to move the focus into the device list. Use the Down arrow key to move to the Human Interface Devices category, press the Right arrow key to expand that category, and then use the Down arrow key to select the IdeaCom device.
5. Press Enter to open the shortcut menu for this device (or use Shift+F10, is the universal keyboard shortcut that simulates a right-click, and then use the arrow keys to select Properties from the menu and press Enter).
6. From the Device dialog box, press Ctrl+Tab to move through the tabs until the Driver tab is visible.
7. Note that the R is underlined on the Roll Back Driver button text, indicating that it is an accelerator key. Press Alt+R to begin the driver rollback.

If you actually have an IdeaCom touch screen, of course, this advice doesn’t apply.

… I was on vacation. It was mostly like this, except I didn’t have a ukulele…

All in all, I think it worked out pretty well. I’ll be back in the office on Wednesday and back to writing about Windows and Office and Microsoft.

Anything happen while I was away?

Holiday (that’s vacation for you unrepentant Americans) continues. Here’s the most recent sunset panorama. I especially like the way this one turned out.

I’m trying to upload larger versions of some of these photos to Flickr, but the crappy wireless connection here doesn’t want to cooperate. So I’ll do that when I get home next week.

Ah, new hotel, better network connection. Get the larger version here.

Donavon West is building a custom Windows Home Server box and giving it away to one lucky person:

Just in case some of you didn’t get the memo, I wanted you all to have the opportunity to enter the win a free VIA Pico Home Server contest that I am conducting. Just go to my blog, Home Server Hacks, read my article Pico Home Server: the World’s smallest Windows Home Server, make a comment on what you would do with it and you will automatically be entered to win!
There are cool second and third place prizes as well, like a Windows Home Server branded backpack and copies of the WHS system builders DVD.

Donavon is a Windows Home Server MVP and a great source of information on all things WHS. Go enter!

[Back from the beach, link fixed.]

Good lord, that was the worst CES keynote ever. I watched it over the Internet from a hotel room in Hawaii and finally gave up about two-thirds of the way through.

To help wash out the bad taste, here’s tonight’s sunset panorama, again courtesy of Windows Live Photo Gallery:

Also, feel free to head over to ZDNet and check out my new post, Six Vista annoyances fixed in Windows 7.

Here’s a panoramic view of last night’s sunset on Kauai’s Poipu Beach, courtesy of Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Writer.

For the next two weeks, I’ve deliberately gone as far as I can from CES. I’m currently staring at a swaying palm tree and sipping a drink with a little paper umbrella in it. Life is good.

I’ll still be checking in here from time to time, if only to approve comments stuck in the moderation queue.

Have fun, everyone, especially those of you going to CES.

Over at ZDNet, Jason Perlow and I are having a debate over the Windows 7 interface. He hates it, I say he’s just too stubborn to ditch his old habits.

You can read both articles and participate in the discussion yourself.

Jason’s post: Windows 7: Mojave My Ass

My response: If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7

During the course of writing my reply, I stumbled across a shortcut I had never noticed before, one that works in both Vista and in Windows 7.

One of Jason’s complaints is that Microsoft removed the Run shortcut from the Start menu when it released Windows Vista, and the Run box is still MIA from Windows 7.

If you mastered the Run box in Windows XP, you probably missed it, at least for a while, when Vista came out. But as I explain in my ZDNet piece, it’s not gone,  just hidden. And I explain several alternatives and workarounds for it:

First of all, the Search box at the bottom of the Start menu does nearly everything the Run box did, and much more. If you begin typing a command, it appears in the Start menu, where you can click or press Enter to run it. With the Run box, I have to type a command in full and possibly even include its path. If I mistype the name, I get an error message.

[…]

Still not convinced? You want the old- school Run box? So just press Windows key+R. That shortcut has been around since the mid-1990s and still works in Windows Vista and Win7.

Not good enough? Fine. Customize the Vista/Win7 Start menu to add the Run command and you can party like it’s 1998. Right-click Start, choose Properties, click Customize, and select this check box.

And that’s when it dawned on me. In both Vista and Windows 7, the Run command is actually a system-managed shortcut in the Start Menu folder of your user profile. So, if you want to open the Run dialog box, just click Start, type run, and press Enter.

Hilarious, and yet … for those who have occasional uses for the Run menu, a nifty productivity tip.

I’m interested in your feedback on the transition from XP to Vista and Windows 7. Leave it here or over at ZDNet.

Do you use Outlook 2007 (or Outlook 2003)? Do you have an e-mail account at Windows Live (live.com) or Hotmail? If so, you need the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector.

This free add-in allows you to sync your Hotmail and Live accounts with Outlook and also access your calendars and contacts from the corresponding Windows Live services. Installing the connector software adds a new top-level menu option, which you can use to add a Hotmail/Live account to Outlook, as shown here:

You can adjust the way that Outlook retrieves messages as well. Each Hotmail/Live account you add gets its own set of folders in the Outlook navigation pane, and the software takes care of keeping things in sync. The effect is the same as using an IMAP or Exchange account, with messages available on the server and in a local copy unless you delete them.

The connector software also adds a small toolbar at the bottom of the Outlook menu that displays server status for each account.

The most recent update of the Connector software is version 12.1, released on December 15, 2008. I’ve got it running on a multitude of systems here, and it works great. Stable, fast, does what it is supposed to do. Highly recommended for anyone with Microsoft-powered web e-mail accounts.

The New Year’s Eve bug that bricked all Zune 30 devices beginning at midnight has apparently been identified. The problem is a bug in the driver that controls the internal clock on the Zune 30 and first appeared when the clock flipped over to Day 366. The problem is time, and so, apparently, is the cure: Let the battery die, wait till after the turn of the New Year, and then turn it back on.

Here’s the official word from Zune support:

Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used).  The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year.  The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009.   We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on.  If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device. 

Customers can continue to stay informed via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).

We know this has been a big inconvenience to our customers and we are sorry for that, and want to thank them for their patience. 

Q:  Why is this issue isolated to the Zune 30 device?

It is a bug in a driver for a part that is only used in the Zune 30 device.

Q:  What fixes or patches are you putting in place to resolve this situation? 

This situation should remedy itself over the next 24 hours as the time flips to January 1st.

Q:  What’s the timeline on a fix?

The issue Zune 30GB customers are experiencing today will self resolve as time changes to January 1.

Q:  Why did this occur at precisely 12:01 a.m. on December 31, 2008? 

There is a bug in the internal clock driver causing the 30GB device to improperly handle the last day of a leap year.

Q:  What is Zune doing to fix this issue? 

The issue should resolve itself.

Q:  Are you sure that this won’t happen to all 80, 120 or other flash devices? 

This issue is related to a part that is only used in Zune 30 devices.

Q:  How many 30GB Zune devices are affected? How many Zune 30GB devices were sold? 

All 30GB devices are potentially affected.