registry – View from the Potting Shed

Windows 10 timeline fixed

Windows 10 timeline lets you see what applications and documents you've been using recently, Well, some of them. — Windows 10 timeline lets you see what applications and documents you’ve been using recently, Well, some of them.

One of the features of the latest Windows 10 April 2018 update that I’ve been most looking forward to is Timeline.

Unfortunately, Timeline hasn’t worked for me since the upgrade. But today I fixed it.

What is Timeline?

Timeline lets you see a list of all the documents and applications (that support Timeline) going back about a month. The idea is that this feature should make it easier to find documents you’ve been working on.

The problem I had was that after the upgrade (which only took about 30 minutes) it didn’t work. All I saw was a list of the virtual desktops I had (which is usually two), the currently open applications, and then a message saying that I needed to use my PC more before timeline would start showing me results.

How I fixed it

This is the combination of things that I did to fix it.

Note that my user account is a Microsoft account, not a local PC account.

Settings > Activity history

The first thing was to make sure Windows was collecting my activities.

Open Settings
Go to Activity history
Make sure Let Windows collect my activities from this PC is checked.
Make sure Let Windows synchronise my activities from this PC to the cloud is checked.
Make sure the Microsoft accounts you want synchronised are set to On.

Registry settings

I next checked that the following Windows Registry settings were present in the following registry location:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System

EnableActivityFeed
PublishUserActivities
UploadUserActivities

Make sure these are all DWORD 32-bit Value entries set to 1.

To start RegEdit press Win + R and type regedit and click OK.

Restart the PC

Some people have recommended that at this point you should restart your PC to let these settings take effect. Note, not just restart but switch off, wait a few seconds and then switch it back on.

That didn’t work for me.

Create a local user account

It wasn’t until I did the following that Windows suddenly started the Timeline feature. I’m not sure why but this, in combination with the steps above, got it started.

Open Settings.
Go to Accounts.
Select Family & other people from the options on the left.
Under Other people click Add someone else to this PC.
In the pop-up window select I don’t have this person’s sign-in information.
Click on the link Add a user without a Microsoft account.
Enter a new username and password. Then select three security questions and answers. Finally click Next.
Once your account has been set up. Switch off the PC.
Switch the PC back on and now log in with your new local username.
Wait for Windows to set up your account for first use, then check the Timeline (Win + Tab). It should be working. Browse a few pages in Microsoft Edge just to make sure.
Log off and now log on with your standard Microsoft account.
Once the account has loaded, Timeline should now be working.

I offer this in the hope that it may help someone in a similar situation to mine. Good luck!

My mouse pointer kept getting stuck between monitors in Windows 8.1

My mouse pointer kept getting stuck at the edge between monitors

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a strange behaviour with Windows 8.1. I have two monitors and whenever I tried to move the mouse between them my mouse pointer got stuck in the middle.

I would have to back up the mouse pointer then move it really quickly to get over the ‘hump’, and reach the next monitor.

Not the charms bar

At first I thought it may be caused by the Windows 8 charms bar. So I switched off the top-right corner navigation under Charms bar > Settings > Change PC settings > PC and devices > Corners and edges.

But it turned out not to be that. The mouse pointer blocking behaviour continued.

Not ModernMix

My attention then turned to ModernMix™, a Windows 8 application from Stardock that allows Modern (Metro) apps to run in a standard window on your desktop.

I had noticed this behaviour only after I had installed ModernMix, so I reasoned that it must have caused it. And sure enough uninstalling ModernMix seemed to stop the behaviour… until I rebooted the PC.

But I didn’t discover this until after I had emailed Stardock support.

Registry hack fixes it

Stardock support were incredibly helpful. The following day I received this reply:

While I can reproduce what you are seeing, I can do so without MM installed. It seems it is a thing with 8.1:

http://winaero.com/blog/fix-mouse-pointer-sticks-on-the-edge-when-moving-between-multiple-monitors/

Please let us know if you should have any further questions/concerns.

And sure enough, the Winaero blog had the solution:

Open Registry Editor (Ctrl + R, then type: regedit)
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop
If there is not a DWORD (32-bit) Value called MouseMonitorEscapeSpeed then create one and assign it a value of 1.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftware \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ ImmersiveShell \ EdgeUI.
If there is not a DWORD (32-bit) Value called MouseMonitorEscapeSpeed then create one and assign it a value of 1.
Reboot Windows, or restart the Explorer shell.

Mobile phone forgiveness–how I reinstall my PDA

What better way to begin Lent than by offering your mobile phone complete forgiveness? It was getting slower and slower, and last week I was needing to soft-reset it every day or two.

So, last night I performed what is now becoming a six-monthly hard-reset and reinstallation of Windows Mobile 6.1 on my O₂ Xda Zest.

Installation order

I’ve pretty much got it down to a fine art now, and simply need to follow the instructions on my custom-made Excel spreadsheet which tells me what to do and in what order.

I have 5 main categories of actions:

Hard reset which includes setting the date/time, the O₂ Auto Installer, selecting the correct O₂ network package (pay monthly), uninstalling the default (and outdated) Spb Mobile Shell and Opera.
Connect to PC which includes connecting to my PC using Windows Mobile Device Center, and setting up Exchange.
Basic Setup which includes setting up the owner (which is used by some software when registering applications), regional settings, calendar settings (week starts on Sunday, show 7-days, show half-hour slots, show week numbers, do not set reminders for new items), connect to WiFi, backlight and power settings (battery: 5 mins; external power: always on), change my ring tones, and schedule ActiveSync (set to manual and no email push service).
Essential software which is now Spb Mobile Shell, Spb Wallet, SK Tools (for the registry editor), Opera Mobile, Microsoft MyPhone (to backup online my files, texts, photos, etc.), Agenda One (for improved handling of Outlook Tasks), CoPilot Live, moTweets (although I haven’t installed it this time and MyMobiler (so that I can view my mobile phone screen on my PC).
Optional software which includes Pocket e-Sword bible, MobiPocket (eBook reader), DivX Mobile Player (for movies), FourWinds mahjong, Spb Keyboard, A-Z (Edinburgh, Glasgow and London).

This time I have purposely not reinstalled any of the optional software. Most of it I don’t use on a day-to-day basis so I just want to see how I get on without it.

Regional settings hack

By default in the UK regional settings the long date format is either

dd MMMM yyyy (e.g. 01 March 2011)
d MMMM yyyy (e.g. 1 March 2011)

but there is no option for including the day of the week. However, I discovered that if I did the following I could trick Windows Mobile 6.1 (and I’ve used this hack with earlier versions of Windows Mobile too) into using the format that I wanted:

Start > Settings > System tab > Regional Settings.
Set Region to English (United States).
On the Date tab select dddd, dd MMMM yyyy from the drop-down.
Click OK.
Reboot Windows Mobile.
Start > Settings > System tab > Regional Settings.
Set Region to English (United Kingdom).
Click OK.
Reboot Windows Mobile.

If you now visit Start > Settings > System tab > Regional Settings you’ll see on the Region summary tab that the long date has remained in the format dddd, dd MMMM yyyy (e.g. Friday, 11 March 2011):

Custom ring tones

The other thing that I have to remind myself every time I reinstall is where to store custom ringtones. I have two that I use an old phone ringtone for my calls, and the ‘24’ CTU phone ringtone for my text messages.

Once the files are in place I go to Start > Settings > Sounds & Notifications > Notifications tab to set the ringtones.

Phone ringtone

I have a .wma file that I drop into \Windows\Rings\ on my phone’s internal memory.

SMS ring tone

I have a .mp3 file that I drop into \Windows\ on my phone’s internal memory.

Conclusion

And that is pretty much it. It took me about two and a half hours to do, including backing up old files and photos from my Micro SD card.