The Bloog

What do you do when, all of a sudden, your computer’s monitor goes black and doesn’t turn back on? You can hear the computer still running as normal but you no longer see anything on screen… what then?

Well, let’s start at the beginning. For a while, the X-Fi Platinum sound card has been acting up, allowing me to use the headphones jack of the front panel just fine but not do the same via the digital out port that is connected to a sound system. From time to time I have to reinstall the sound card driver to restore the sound through the speakers. This time, I thought, I should also try reinstalling maybe the chipset drivers… maybe there is a conflict at that level. So I did. That’s when the screen went black and it remained so.

Intel’s chipset drivers setup must have caused some serious damage at the driver level, which caused something to interfere with the graphics drivers. It was late at night and I was just getting ready to watch a movie. This was definitely not the right time for trouble.

(continue reading…)

I used to use Outlook 2007 to read feeds that required authentication. Everything went fine for a while, until it completely stopped working. The feeds would no longer update and it seemed to me that the RSS functionality in Outlook had simply broken.

Indeed it had. The RSS folder icon in Outlook 2007 was no longer an RSS icon. It was simply a folder icon, just like the rest of the folders. Additionally, right clicking on the RSS folder would no longer give me the option to add an RSS feed. I only the same options as for regular folders: copying, moving, deleting… 

So I just gave up on it for a while. Until today.

Committed to find a solution to this problem, I did. It seems that some files Outlook 2007 uses for RSS purposes and for establishing a connection to the Common Feed List in Vista had become corrupted. The solution was to simply delete these files, restart Outlook 2007 and let it rebuild these files with “fresh” ones.

See this article for more information: Outlook 2007 RSS Feeds not Updating — a Solution… - Realtime Windows Server.

So I did. But that fix didn’t do anything at first. 

It occured to me that upon restarting Outlook, it was launching just too fast. And the files I had removed were not being rebuilt. I closed it again and brought up Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Escape) to check the Processes tab and make sure that Outlook was not running anymore. But it was still running although I had exited the program! I right clicked and selected End Process and launched it again. Outlook started normally, the files were recreated, the RSS folder icon was back to normal and Add a New RSS feed was again available as an option in the right click menu.

Oh joy!

There is one trick however to getting authenticated feeds to work in Outlook 2007. Make sure that Outlook 2007 is not set to synchronize with the Common Feed List.

When you first start it, or when deleting the files mentioned above, Outlook 2007 will prompt you with a window asking whether you want it to synchronize with the Common Feed List. You should answer No. If answered Yes or if you no longer remember what the setting is, go to Tools/Options click on Other tab and then Advanced Options: Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Feeds List should be unchecked.

Then, you can add rss feeds by right clicking the RSS Feeds folder and selecting Add New RSS Feed. Paste the link to the feed and then you will be prompted to enter the username and password for the feed.

Enjoy your (restored) Outlook 2007 RSS Feed functionality.