Convert IMG ↔ ISO and other disk image types

To not make our lives too easy, Microsoft decided to distribute offline installers for Windows 11 in well known .iso format while shipping Office 365 offline installation images as .img.

I don’t like the other format and I don’t have any software to work with it, so I needed to find a way for converting .img disk image format into .iso image.

Various methods and issues around this are discussed in this article.

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Dark theme in Slack 4

Slack 4 is here! Fresh, new, nice and… awfuly white again!

Found two different solutions for bringing darkness to my Slack (this one and this one). As usually, the truth lies in between, so the best option for me was to mix these two solutions in own one (or to be honest, to add a crucial note from second solution to the first one).

Folks at Slack read different books about usability. Not only they haven’t given us their own dark theme, but starting with Slack 4 they’re making application of custom-made dark themes more and more problematic.

Here is an enhanced version of (this guide to turn the light off in your Slack (Windows 10 only, sorry).

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One-line UTF-8 encoded text files in Total Commander…

…are not correctly detected by it’s internal Lister viewer.

They’re detected as binary files in this case and if they contain any character from outside Latin range, Lister will most likely display such characters incorrectly (Total Commander does not do automatic UTF-8 detection in binary mode). According to TC’s author this is a correct and expected behavior.

Lister needs at list one line brake to correctly detect text file as UTF-8 encoded.

Save search results to file

When you press Alt+F7 in Total Commander, you have access to really powerful search functionality. Unfortunately, the Load/Save tab allows loading and saving of search parameters, not the search results.

However, there’s a hidden gem that allows you to copy search results to clipboard and then you can paste them to Notepad and save them to file. Just press Ctrl+C when list of search results is focused. A single “blink” of window will tell you that contents are copied to clipboard.

Remove default search engines in Opera

This is a revised and updated version of this Super User answer on how to easily remove default search engines in Opera browser. By default they’re not editable or removable at all. Official statement is, that this feature was “forgotten”. But, we all know the facts, that Opera is being paid for keeping these default search available and making removal of them as hard as possible to the end user.

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Hide right sidebar in Adobe Acrobat Reader

If you’re annoyed with Tools / Fill & Sign / Comment right sidebar in Adobe Acrobat Reader (it is pretty useless, but still occupies a lot of space), then you can hide it with a simple trick.

Press Ctrl+H or select View > Reader Mode to enable Reader Mode.

This will hide all extra stuff (all toolbars and sidebars) except actual document area. If you would like to bring left sidebar (with navigation panel etc.) back, then simply press that keyboard shortcut or select that menu option again, to disable Reader Mode. Left sidebar should return, while right sidebar should remain hidden.

Shortcuts for direct TeamViewer session on Windows desktop

To quickly access some partner or remote computer in TeamViewer 10, you can login to your account, check to be always logged it, and add particular machine to the list there. Each time you start TeamViewer, you’ll have list of your computer ready in a window to the right. All you have to do, is to double click any item in that list. Can it be even faster? Can we initiate TeamViever session to particular machine or customer by double clicking icon on Windows desktop? Sure thing, we can!

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Legal user right to resell software purchased in EU

Software licensed under COA, OEM and similar licenses can be legally sold on European Union area, according to Court of Justice of the European Union’s verdict dated July 3, 2012. It judged that both private persons and companies can sold original software and licensees purchased from companies like Microsoft.

This judgement is a direct interpretation of the law of European Union directive 2001/29/WE, which says that producer’s law for an exclusive distribution ceases with the moment of software selling for the first time and producer or IT company cannot legally block any attempt of re-selling such software attempted by the person or company, who initially purchased it.

Remove “Edit with Notepad++” option from context menu

One of the newest updates of Notepad++ has introduced new, quite annoying Edit with Notepad++, item added to many context menus. Since, there isn’t an option in Notepad++ itself, to remove it, you have to solve the problem yourself, by unregistering one of Notepad++ services.

There’s a solution that:

  • doesn’t require you to tweak with the registry or
  • download and install or run any program.

All you need is to use a command line in administrator mode and follow five quite simple steps.

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Migrate PuTTY sessions between computers

PuTTY is one of the first programs, that I install on every computer. Since, it stores sessions in registry, it is a bit difficult to migrate sessions between computers. So far, I manage to do this with a little bit help of regedit.exe program and guides like this one. Today, unfortunately, I hit the wall, when my brand new installed Windows 7 told me, that it can’t merge entries from my putty.reg file, because it can’t access Windows Registry.

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Setup local FTP server on Windows as quickly as possible

If you ever need to setup a FTP server on your Windows machine, with minimum effort, settings, switches and work, consider using Baby FTP Server. It is really the quickest solution, that I found, for setting up local, one-time use, FTP server.

The only scratch is, that it does not support user accounts and operates on anonymous access only. But, hey! You were asking about quickest solution, right?

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Automate compare in folder sync tool in Total Commander

To automate compare phase (first step) in folder sync tool you should:

  1. Set the parameters as you need them.
  2. Click on the folder button in the top left of the sync dialog to save these settings.
  3. Create a button with the c:\totalcmd\totalcmd.exe /S=S:=backup command.

The := instead of just /S=S:backup causes an automatic start of the comparison.

Of course you must adjust path to reflect your location of Total Commander.

Currently you can automate the compare step, not the copy step. It is considered to risky to be automated.

Fix for multi-rename tool bug in Total Commander

If you use Multi-Rename Tool in Total Commander to batch-rename only folders and if all folders are numbered with dot after number (example attached and below) then multi-rename tool will treat all folders as filenames — i.e. it will “see” everything before dot (two characters in above example) as actual filename and all the rest, after dot, as file’s extension. Here is a quick fix for this situation (it actually may not be considered as bug).

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Disable refreshing of removable drive contents in Total Commander

When CD or DVD is ejected from drive, Total Commander “resets” contents of the pane to nearest available drive (usually C:). It is normal and obvious because contents of CD or DVD are no longer available. But, the same thing happens even if Total Commander is in background. This might be seen as an annoying feature, because each time you change CD or DVD in drive, you have to manually again select that drive in Total Commander. Fortunately, there is an easy solution for this.

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Synchronize directories in Total Commander ignoring certain files

The Synchronize directories tool in Total Commander is magnificent and I’m using it very often for all my backup-like and sync-like works. The only thing, that I was missing is an ability to ignore hidden system files or files stored in .svn or .git folders, i.e. hidden version control files. So, I wrote to Total Commander’s author and received immediate response, that this is possible.

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