How to delete a stuck Thumbs.db file

From time to time Windows users complain that they can't delete folders. The 1st level support people usually think it is some file system permission problem and escalate it to the sysadmin team.

The error message is, that the file is in use. This is almost certainly not the case here.

File in use?

However, it is amazingly easy to fix:
Change the view to "large icons" and back to "details". This apparently rewrites the thumbs.db file.

The thumbs.db file can simply be deleted then.

Trend Micro OfficeScan WebReputation filter gone paranoid

Trend Micro OfficeScan web reputation problems

Safe or sorry

Yesterday users started reporting problems with blocked elements on websites. This also completely blocked sites with Anti-Adblock-features.
Although this banner has now disappeared from TrendMicro's OfficeScan support pages, the problem did not disappear completely.

TrendMicro's info about the problem

Options...

There are two three ways to go:

1. wait it out till TM has fixed it.
   (not an option)
2. add exceptions for blocked servers manually
   (more secure - more work)
3. disable web reputation service
   (less work - less secure)

To add exceptions to the filter, navigate to http://YOURTRENDMICROSERVER.YOURDOMAIN:8080/officescan and go to the Web reputation settings:

Agent settings

Here you can manually add exceptions:

By default, the exception list is not avtive. Do don't forget to enable it.

That should fix it for a limited number of sites. You can get a list of blocked sites from the client's web reputation protocol and copy/paste from there.

The other option is to temporarily disable Web Reputation filtering altogether:

Uncheck the activation box for the web reputation service on to disable it globally.

Microsoft Office Click-to-run component prevents Visio 2016 installation

Click-to-run

On the Surface Pro 3 I use at work, I need Microsoft Visio 2016 for a project documentation. We still use Office 2007 (32 bit), so I also have to run with the 32bit version of Viso. (Not an issue.)
But when trying to install Visio from the CD-Image, the installer complained about an

Office 2016 click-to-run

installation, that prevents Visio from installing.
I followerd quite a few hints about removing that click-to-run component, but couldn't find it on my system as described.

Greek gift

It turned out to be a greek gift from microsoft:
The Surface Pro 3 came with "Office 2016 Home&Student" as "click-to-run" package. In the list of installed programs it was listed as "Office".

MSI-installer

I removed that and Visio 2016 (32bit) installed without a problem. It also did not harm the OneNote App I frequently use with the SurcafePro3.