windows

CapsLock keyboard layouts switching in Parallels Desktop

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I like Mac OS X very much. But I also have to use MS Windows for some tasks that Mac OS X cannot do, such as full-featured MS Office, MS Project, MS Visio, MindJet/MindManager, stock trading terminals, most games, etc.

And I also like to switch my keyboard layouts with CapsLock instead of default Cmd+Space or Alt+Shift.  You would never believe how convenient it is until you try it for yourself.

But when I use both Parallels Desktop with MS Windows as a guest OS and PCKeyboardHack for CapsLock keyboard layout switching, I find myself limited to only one of these scenarios:

  • Use CapsLock to switch keyboard layouts in Windows as in Mac OS X, but Cmd+Tab goes to Windows and switches between Windows applications instead of Mac OS X applications.
  • Use Cmd+Tab to switch between Mac OS X applications, but Windows keyboard layouts should be switched with native Alt+Shift or Ctrl+Shift, not with CapsLock as in Mac OS X.

Actually, this limitation affects all Mac OS X system shortcuts, not only Cmd+Tab. For example, Cmd+Shift+4 does not work for screenshots, Cmd+Ctrl+N does not work for Evernote, etc.

The perfect scenario — Cmd+Tab for Mac OS X applications and CapsLock for keyboard layouts both in Mac OS X and Windows — is impossible with these tools. Here is a solution how to implement this perfect scenario.

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COM Surrogate has stopped working in Windows Photo Viewer

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Suddenly my Microsoft Windows 7 started to throw “COM Surrogate” error when I try to view any picture with its built-in Windows Photo Viewer. The advices which you can find in the internet says to reinstall Nero or codec packs. I have neither of them, but only more or less clean Windows installation and all its usual updates.

In a nutshell, “COM Surrogate” is DllHost.exe process created by any other process, which wants to execute some code from any DLL (code library), but it doesn’t want to execute the code in its own space since it does not trust the code in terms of stability. So it creates a “surrogate” to execute the code. If that DLL code dies during execution, only DllHost.exe surrogate process dies (giving us this “COM Surrogate has stopped working” error) and the initial process stills alive. If this killing code were executed in the initial process directly, then the initial process dies instead of surrogate.

Though actually we have no need to care what it is and what all this means and how things work. We want our photos being shown.

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