John M. WargoBack to Categories
Microsoft Windows
Articles covering topics related Microsoft Windows or the Windows applications I created. This page lists all posts in the category, in reverse chronological order.
Note: An AI Generated pill displayed in the list below indicates that the post description displayed on the page was generated from the post content using Generative AI (GenAI). The post content itself was written by a human (me).
Delphi Single Instance App With Runtime Parameters
Posted Sunday, June 15, 2025 at 03:58 PM in Delphi, Microsoft WindowsAI Generated In the article, I learned how to prevent multiple instances of a Delphi application from running simultaneously and published a complete sample application demonstrating it. By assigning a unique name to the application and implementing code to check for existing instances, I can ensure only one instance runs at a time. The article also covered passing command-line parameters between instances and activating the initial instance when a second one is launched.
Published Subdirectory Copy v1.1
Posted Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 12:45 PM in Delphi, Microsoft WindowsWhen I created my Subdirectory Copy application, my use case was copying a single set of files to a flash drive. As I got closer to releasing the product, I started thinking more about how users would use it and I realized that the application had to be able to manage multiple filesets for copying.
TechSmith Windows Snagit Stops Loading or Capturing
Posted Friday, June 13, 2025 at 07:45 PM in Microsoft WindowsA few weeks ago, Snagit stopped launching its capture window on startup (yes, I had automatic launch at startup configured) and stopped being able to capture accurately 90% of the time.
Simplifying Coping Music Files to a Flash Drive
Posted Friday, June 6, 2025 at 02:56 PM in Microsoft Windows, AutomobilesAI Generated I created a Windows application called Subdirectory Copy (SubCopy) to automate the process of copying music files from my computer to an external drive for my car's music player. By populating the root directory with my music files and selecting the artist folders to copy, I can easily update my music collection on the external drive.
TeraCopy Disable Check Free Space Check
Posted Saturday, May 24, 2025 at 11:49 AM in Microsoft Windows, MiscellaneousI purchased a new car recently, and I'm trying to setup a Flash drive with a lot of (but not all) of my music so I can listen to my favorite artists while driving and not need Pandora or Youtube Music. I'm building a simple utility I can use to refresh the files on the flash drive when I pick up something new for a particular artist or when I want to add a new artist's music to the drive.
Windows Path Backup Utility
Posted Saturday, May 25, 2024 at 02:49 PM in Microsoft WindowsAt the beginning of the year, I had a problem with my Windows Path and a bunch of my apps stopped working correctly or stopped working altogether. I poked around a bit and figured out what went wrong: my system path somehow got corrupted and, you know, broke my apps.
Delphi Passing Data Between Forms
Posted January 22, 2024 in Delphi, Microsoft WindowsI'm building a Windows application using Delphi and I needed the ability to access data on the main form from another form (a form invoked by the main form). I poked around on the Internet and found different ways to do it.
Windows Path Viewer App
Posted January 21, 2024 in Delphi, Microsoft WindowsA while back I had a problem with my Windows Path that I wrote about in Windows Path Items Not Available in Visual Studio Code. I was thinking about that problem recently and decided to build my own tooling for managing my system path. I didn't do this because I needed to, but I wanted to write some Windows code (Using Delphi) and this topic is interesting.
Launching a Windows Terminal to a Specific Folder
Posted January 1, 2024 in Microsoft WindowsDescribes two options for opening a Windows terminal window to a specific folder. Years ago I learned an interesting trick for opening a Windows terminal window to a specific folder; there are two ways, but I don't think many people know about the second one.
Pumpkin Controller Native Apps for Windows
Posted November 19, 2023 in Delphi, Flutter, Microsoft WindowsIn the post I published earlier today I mentioned that someday I might make a native windows version of my Pumpkin Controller app (See Glowing Pumpkin). Well apparently today's the day.
Outlook Windows Delete Empty Inbox Folders
Posted November 18, 2023 in Delphi, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft OutlookDescribes a free utility I published to automatically delete empty Inbox folders in Outlook on Microsoft Windows
Windows 11 Annoying Save As Dialog Categories
Posted October 23, 2023 in Microsoft WindowsIn the Windows 11 browser download dialog, Microsoft categorizes the target folder contents based on which folders you accessed most recently. They did this, I think, in the mistaken belief that this is helpful for the user. I hate it, absolutely hate it, and I finally found a way to disable this.
First Windows Copilot Experience
Posted October 21, 2023 in Microsoft WindowsI've been a GitHub Copilot user since the public beta; using GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code dramatically improves my efficiency writing code, especially for NodeJS or React Apps. This post explains my first experience using Windows Copilot
Outlook Populating Country Only in Contact
Posted October 7, 2015 in Delphi, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft WindowsI'm frustrated that Outlook adds a country to contacts when I didn't ask it to. So I created a utility to delete them en masse.
Accessing Outlook Categories Using Delphi
Posted September 27, 2015 in Delphi, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft WindowsDescribes a utility I wrote that automates pulling a list of catagories from Microsoft Outlook on Windows.
Deleting Empty Outlook Appointments
Posted September 26, 2015 in Delphi, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft WindowsOutlook suddenly generated thousands of empty appointments in my calendar, so I built a utility in Delphi that cleans them up.
Sizing Windows in Windows
Posted December 17, 2010 in Microsoft WindowsIn all of the different things I do, I often spend a lot of time writing about computer-related topics. With my book, magazine articles, conference presentations and in my regular day to day job activities, I find myself needing screen shots of Windows computer screens. While it's really easy to grab screen shots in Widows (I'm a huge fan of Snagit From TechSmith Corporation) it's not always easy to set the size of the window you're taking a snapshot of. When working with a full screen window, it's not that big of a deal, but I've got a huge monitor (at least it was huge 5 years ago when I bought it) so full size screen shots won't fit in most mediums I publish in.
Change in Status
Posted September 29, 2009 in Delphi, Microsoft WindowsI recently had a change of employment status and I thought I'd write about it here just in case anyone out there knew of someone who had a need for my skills either as a contract worker or full time employee.