Fix for issue with Vista which prevents machines from going to sleep - related to Multimedia Sharing

It must have been a patch or hotfix that Windows Update installed recently (or the fact that it detected my Windows 7 Ultimate install's multimedia sharing capabilities), but my wife's laptop with Vista Home would never go to "Sleep" (aka suspend mode) when the lid was closed or the "Sleep" option was chosen from the Shutdown prompt.  If you choose the sleep option, it would just wait a couple of seconds, jump to a login prompt but never actually get to the Shutdown/Sleep sequence. The fix was as per:
http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-support/windows-vista-windows-7-support/143828-vista-will-not-sleep.html

It was something to do with the "Multimedia Sharing Options" which stop the machine from going to sleep:

To fix the issue, do this:


Control Panel -> Power Options -> If "High Performance" is selected, choose something else, like "Balanced" -> Change plan settings (for the chosen power plan) -> Change advanced power settings -> Scroll down to Multimedia settings -> When Sharing Media -> Set all options to "Allow the computer to sleep".

The machine now sleeps when the lid is closed and boots up when opened (as before). A suggestion to MS would be to show a message in the Windows messagebar explaining why the machine was prevented from going to sleep rather than just flat out refusing to respond to "Sleep" requests.

How to Get "Run As" Context Menu in Vista/Windows 2008 for running SharePoint 2007 stsadm.exe

To run the SharePoint Administration tool Stsadm.exe on a SharePoint 2007 server, you must run as a SharePoint Server Farm Administrator - otherwise you will just get a blunt "Access Denied." error message. Trying to run any stsadm command whatsoever will be met with the same terse response. This is because the local administrator (when the database is on a separate server to MOSS) will not have sufficient privileges on your MOSS Content database.

Today, I needed to run stsadm.exe on a Windows 2K8 server. However, I didn't want to log off and log back on as another user every time I wanted to do this. Unfortunately, now Vista and Windows 2K8 "Run As" functionality only supports running as a local administrator - not a specific user anymore (e.g. like the SharePoint farm administrator account defined on another server - in Active Directory). Others have also complained about this issue on Microsoft Connect - https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServerFeedback/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=329528

There are 2 options to get around this issue without logging off and on as another user:

1) Use the commandline RunAs tool (if you like a lot of typing or prefer batch files - see my previous entry at http://ddkonline.blogspot.com/2008/06/using-impersonation-batch-files-and.html)
2) Use ShellRunAs. Thankfully, the hardworking guys at Sysinternals have the following tool which allows you to add the Context menu for Run As back where it should be:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc300361.aspx

To install this command in the context menu, you can simply use the following:

ShellRunas.exe /reg

Et Voilà! - instant RunAs goodness shall return to your context menu.

Vista does not support .hlp files

Turns out that Vista does not support .hlp files. Unfortunately, the Australian Tax Office eTax software uses hlp files not chm files (which MS supports)

However, it looks like MS decided to support them AFTER the release of Vista. You can download winhelp.exe for Vista from the following link
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=6ebcfad9-d3f5-4365-8070-334cd175d4bb