The fix is the following two commands to re-start the service:

Net Stop uxsms
Net Start uxsms

Fortunately there is a way to remove such files and directories, as long as you have 8.3 name creation enabled (it is by default). Use “dir /X” to find the short name of each item you can’t access and use “rename <short name> a” to change its name to “a”. If it is a directory you may have to enter it and do the same for any paths below it. Windows can’t even open a directory that contains other files or directories with long names so often the problem is two or three levels deep.

chdir /D update
c:\portable\gnu\wget.exe http://code.google.com/p/miranda/downloads/list -O data.txt
type data.txt|findstr /i unicode.7z 1> data1.txt
del data.txt
ren data1.txt data.txt
c:\portable\gnu\wget.exe --force-html -c -i data.txt
for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=." %%a in ('dir *unicode.7z /b') do set ver=%%a_%%b_%%c
echo S|"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" x *unicode.7z -o%TEMP%\%ver%
del *unicode.7z
del data.txt
cd ..
%windir%\system32\taskkill.exe /IM miranda32.exe
ping localhost -n 5 > nul
%windir%\system32\taskkill.exe /F /IM miranda32.exe
for /f %%f in ('dir *.* /b/a:-d') do copy %TEMP%\%ver%\%%f %%f
cd Plugins
for /f %%f in ('dir *.* /b/a:-d') do copy %TEMP%\%ver%\Plugins\%%f %%f
cd ..
start miranda32.exe

The Start Menu has some nice features but I really don’t like the way the All Programs section works now. Fortunately you can bring back the old cascaded menu and keep all the good new stuff with Classic Shell.

The Game Controllers applet in the Control Panel has gone, and I had a shortcut to it on my Start Menu anyway because I use it for development. It is possible to do in 7: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/57153-game-controllers-shortcut-create.html

I use MaxTo for window positioning so I turned off Aero Snap: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/disable-the-mouse-drag-window-arranging-feature-in-windows-7/

To replace notepad.exe with notepad++ copy NppLauncher over notepad.exe after taking ownership/permissions in these locations:

• c:\Windows\notepad.exe
• c:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe
• c:\Windows\SysWOW64\notepad.exe

Disable driver signing: Use DSEO to enable test mode and then sign the offending driver files. Unfortunately a security update makes it impossible to disable driver signing completely. Remove the test mode watermark with (surprise surprise) Remove Watermark.

Outstanding irritations:

• Can’t put the Recycle Bin or My Computer on the new start, but you can make shortcuts in “All Programs.”
• Clock on compact Task Bar takes up enough room for the date, even though it only shows the time. Can be “fixed” by changing the date format but the setting is system-wide.

Something about the combined installer for the software and drivers was preventing it from working.

The solution was to install the software on a Windows XP machine and then copy the files manually from the XP system to the Windows 7 one. I then pointed Windows 7 to the copied files when it requested drivers for the scanner. The application program was copied in the same way and I simply set up a shortcut on the start menu pointing to the program file.

Aside from the main program directory the drivers were spread out in various system directories. It took a while to find them all.

It took me a long time to sort all that out. There are a  lot of posts on the internet written by people with the same or similar scanners who are unable to make them work on Vista or Windows 7. As far as I know we are the only people who have ever managed to make it work with Windows 7.

I found a way to make something similar. I use a temporary folder on a hard drive. It’s not as fast as RAM but it is cleared on reboot by having the following script run at shutdown:

rmdir /S /Q g:\temp
mkdir g:\temp

Basically delete the directory recursively and re-create it. Simple but effective. You can assign a drive letter to the directory too.

The key is to understand that in order for the device to be detected it has to be connected while the guest OS is running. If it is connected before it is started then it won’t attach. It will say it is, but it won’t be seen by the guest OS.

This small but vital fact is not made clear in the documentation.

Foxit Reader 3.1		Sumatra 0.9.4		PDF-XChange 2.0

All screenshots are with the document at 100%. Small font rendering quality is important, even on a large monitor. I often have one window with code I am editing and next to it another window with a datasheet PDF. Foxit looks pretty bad at any zoom level.

Foxit Reader 3.1		Sumatra 0.9.4		PDF-XChange 2.0

You can click the above images for the an expanded view of the whole program window. Again, Foxit is by far the worst, with Sumatra and PDF-XChange about equal.

Overall, I’d have to say that Sumatra is the best. Zooming can be a bit strange in it, but the quality and very small program size make up for all that. I’d like a few more features, such as bookmarks and web browser style back/forward navigation, all things which PDF-XChange does. I’ll probably keep both of them around for now until I can pick between them.

One thing is for sure though, after the bloatfest that is Adobe Reader, Foxit Reader is actually the worst option. Sumatra PDF, which is fully open source, is quite simply much, much better at displaying documents – the primary purpose of any PDF viewer.