I’ve just finished paving my main machine with Windows 7 64 bit, and was working on tidying up some of the finer points of my installation.

One minor item I use is a batch file with a reference to the excellent Poweroff utility. The batch file basically powers down the monitor, locks the machine, then goes into standby/hibernate mode. I attach it to a Ctrl-f11 hotkey to make it a quick keystroke to powerdown my machine.

Anyway, I have that bat on my path, and I happen to keep it out on a network drive (a NAS array), not on my local machine. I generally keep data off my local machine, preferring to only have program installs and temp files locally.

But when I pointed my shortcut to the network path and hit Ctrl-F11, I’d get that annoying “The publisher could not be verified” prompt. Every time!

Well, a few googles later and I came across this tip on annoyances.com.

It’s for Vista, but it also works in Win 7 (even the 64bit version).

Run gpedit.msc 

Go to User Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Attachment 
Manager

Add "*.exe; *.bat" to the "Inclusion list for moderate risk file types" setting.

I added *.bat to the list, as well as *.exe because, in my case, I keep a number of handy BAT files in folders out on my network drives and then include those folders in my path.

Works a treat. Be sure to read up on why to include this in the Moderate risk element and not the High Risk, though. Generally, if you have a reasonably good firewall/router, making this change should be safe.

Working with Vista, I've noticed that it tries to be a tad too helpful sometimes. I've already posted about it's proclivity for attempting to AutoTune my network card and in the process, detuning it.

There's a reason Bob failed, and a reason those annoying "Office assistants" got dumped first thing after installing Office. I suppose I should be thankful there's no 3D animated wizard bouncing out of the sidebar from time to time to "wave it's wand" on a window of mine to move it to the monitor that would be "more appropriate", or whatever.

One annoyance I've run into is that Vista tends to just "decide" that I want a particular folder to show in grouped view, or in thumbnail view, even though I've gone through the process of turning all that crap off and setting ALL FOLDERS to view in Details mode.

Grrr.

Well, I was just browsing for something completely unrelated and happened upon this posting by MVP Keith Miller about turning off the autodetect view in Explorer.

In it, he describes a reg hack that'll do just that, turn that feature off.

Here's the script (you'll need to save it to a REG file and Right click and select MERGE)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\All Folders\Shell]
"FolderType"="NotSpecified"

Before you run it though. Load up RegEdit and check out that Bags key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags

If your system is anything like mine, there will be literally HUNDREDS of entries in there.

Make sure you turn off "Remember Each folders settings", and then Delete the whole Bags key to remove all those "memorized" folder settings you didn't want to memorize in the first place. No wonder the damn registry balloons faster than Steve Fossett in a hurricane.