I ran into an issue today that I’ve hit before but never been able to solve – but since I really didn’t want to reformat the hard drive to fix it, I did a bit more research.

The basic issue was that I ran into a situation where a zero byte file has been created on a users Desktop (Running Windows 7) and when they tried to delete the file, it refused to comply, basically saying that the file didn’t exist.

I ran around a few ways, logging in as an administrator, trying to rename the file (same message) trying to cut and paste the file (same Message), trying to create a folder with the same name as the file then delete the folder (SAME MESSAGE)

I finally stumbled across this which, upon thinking about it some, made sense – I think the file was named with invalid characters and Windows Explorer couldn’t remove it.

This was the fix (from netfresco.com – http://netfresco.com/tech/item-not-found/default.aspx):

Solution for Vista's "Item not found" error when deleting or renaming files/folders
 

When you try to delete or rename a file/folder, you may receive a window that says:
"Item not found. Could not find this item. This is no longer located in [folder]. Verify the item's location and try again."
 

To solve, follow these steps:
1. Open up a command prompt (run cmd.exe from the Start Menu).
2. Navigate to the folder that the object resides in.
3. Run "dir /a /x /p" to display the contents of the folder, including hidden files (/a) and 8.3 filenames (/x).
4. Find the 8.3 filename of the object to the left of the regular, long filename.
5. Run "ren <8.3 name>" to rename the object, "del <8.3 name>" to delete it if it's a file and "rd /s <8.3 name>" to delete it if it's a folder.
Note: If renaming to a long filename, make sure to enclose the long filename in quotations. If that fails, temporarily rename it to an 8.3 name and then rename it to what you want outside of the command prompt.

Quick, simple and most importantly, Fixed.

I’m putting this here as a reminder to myself, but also in case somebody I know runs into this as well.

This happened to me when I was testing the Beta for Windows 7 – and I was fairly surprised when it happened again recently on my fairly fresh re-install of the release version of Windows 7.  I would go to my Start menu, attempt to Search Programs and Files and all I would get in the list is one item: “Programs”.

I finally had the time to do some searching and try to figure out what actually was causing this – found a blog entry by ‘The Powershell Guy' - http://www.skyeagle.net/blog/post/Windows-7-Search-programs-and-files-from-Start-menu-broken.aspx who was having the same exact issue…

There was a comment in that post by Matthew Evans that resolved the issue for me:

I ran into the same problem over the past couple days with Windows 7 RC and finally dug into it some more.

1. End Task on EXPLORER.EXE from Task Manager. 

2. Start the Registry Editor [ED. Note – Run REGEDIT.EXE from Task Manager | New Task]

3. Look for the following key: 
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\ –>
  {EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 

4. Rename the key so it looks like the following: 
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\ –>
  {EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}\TopViews\{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}.BACKUP 

5. From Task Manager click on File | New Task (Run) and type EXPLORER.EXE and hit return. 

6. Now try your search from the Start Menu again. 

If the above process doesn't work for you, you can always put it back the way it was by reversing the process above.
I don't understand exactly what this key is controlling, but hopefully someone else can shed some light on why this works.

I found in a later comment there is a better explanation of what is actually happening and an alternate way of fixing the issue here:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7files/thread/cc378149-8765-498a-9480-b1b494e1a1a9

Using any excuse I can to practice taking pictures and not having a good place to setup at home, I used Karen and Randy’s Awesome 12th Night party as the perfect place to get a few practice pictures…

Karen was nice enough to let me use her “Heated attic / Junk Room / Sewing Room” as a studio space at the last minute.  I pulled out all my equipment, put it together and set to taking a few pictures… well, what I thought was going to be a few pictures… After a while I noticed there was a line 0ut the door and down the hall! Talk about pressure! And the fact that I enjoyed myself, maybe a little too much!

I hope everybody likes the results – and the humor that’s in there too.  It was a blast and I want to do it again sometime soon!

I learned a few things too

• Black backgrounds are interesting to shoot against – a backlight helps A LOT! But dark hair and clothes make it a challenge sometimes… but you can have fun with it.
• Make sure the diopter adjustment on your viewfinder is set correctly – especially when you are using manual focus - otherwise you are going to end up with a lot of slightly out of focus photos (DOH!)
• It is amazing how much space you really need when you are shooting with a backdrop, multiple flashes, soft-boxes, etc.
• Drink Water

That’s just a few – I need to start keeping a better notebook.

I use the Facebook feature that lets you bring your blog posts (or any RSS feed for that matter) into Facebook as Notes.  I’ll not go into how to do that – you can go to Here and see how it’s done… I also use Drupal to run my website.

What I wanted to do was only have a sub-set of my posts go to Facebook – now, this is probably common knowledge – but I just figured it out tonight and thought that if nothing else – I’d write it down so when I forget it later, I can look it up.

Originally I was just using the Syndicate link on the blogs page to get the RSS feed and off I go – but that, of course, gets everything and some of my posts are technical and frankly leave a lot of my friends scratching their heads and wondering what I’m talking about… But I also post stuff that I would like for everyone to see – and I’m probably the only person that actually visits my blog. :)

Back on task - in my case, I just want posts that have been tagged with a special “toFacebook” tag to be delivered as notes to the Facebook Notes app.

The solution is this:

First, click the tag you want to filter by on any of the blog posts that has that tag assigned. Your URL should change to something like http:// yoursite.net/taxonomy/term/12

Next, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you should see a little orange RSS icon there.  Click on it and your URL should now be something like http:// yoursite.net/taxonomy/term/12/0/feed

This URL will be the blog RSS feed, filtered to only contain your selected tag… easy as that… copy this URL and you can now update Facebook.

The hardest part for me was finding how to change the stupid URL on the Facebook Notes application… go figure… a whole ‘nother blog post, I think.