Cannot download Flight Plan in vroute? [Solution]

Hi all,

Not sure if any of you out there are flight sim enthusiasts; probably some of you are!

If like me you've recently had problems whereby you've chosen a flight; selected export, chosen your flight time and aircraft, date etc ... then clicked on the button which creates the FP ... only to have internet explorer open and suddenly close ... there is another way to download the flight plan :)

Simply right click on the link within vroute and select 'Save target as ...'; then save the flight plan to your flight plan folder and away you go as normal.

hope this helps someone because it irritated me for hours today.

Cannot send emails using Thunderbird (with a Yahoo email address) FIX !

Well, if like me you are using Thunderbird and Yahoo mail; you may well be having some issues sending emails out and getting the following two email errors:

1) An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded: Transaction failed: Cannot send message due to possible abuse; please visit http://postmaster.yahoo.com/abuse_smtp.html for more information. Please check the message and try again.

Followed by another error message ...

2) Sending of message failed. The message could not be sent because the connection to the SMTP server smtp.mail.yahoo.com was lost in the middle of the transaction. Try again or contact your administrator.

Cause: Unknown ! Something to do with Yahoo mail servers / Thunderbird itself? There is a lot of controversy around on the web about who is to actually blame for this.

Temporary fixes: until this is solved by either Thunderbird or Yahoo:

Go with which ever solution you feel most comfortable with.


1) The first change you can do is within Thunderbird go to Preferences > Advanced > General > and click on 'Config Editor'.

2) Find/Search for the setting "msgcompose.background_color". Set the value by double clicking on the value box from #FFFFF (white) ... to ... #FFFFFE (tiny bit darker than white).

Now I found that this worked; however if you still find yourself having problems there is one more setting you can change to send the mail successfully:

3) You can send the composed email as a Rich Text (HTML only) or a Plain Text only email. During the composition of a message (or forwarding of a message), select the 'Options > Format ... ' and then select either Plain or Rich Text. Try sending as HTML first to see if it sends. If not then you will need to send it as a plain text only email.

NOTE: If you are finding you have to send all your emails as 'Plain Text Only'; you can set Thunderbird up to send all emails (including those that you forward) as plain text.

To set this in Thunderbird open 'Tools > Options > Composition > General > Send Options > Set the drop down menu to 'Convert the message to plain text'. Click 'OK' on both windows and then restart Thunderbird to make sure the changes take effect straight away.

Any problems please comment. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Also ... a lot of people I found whilst researching this switched to a GMAIL account.

Resources used:

Yahoo Answers

and ...

MozillaZine Forums

Cannot view old help files (.chm) on Windows 7 [solution]

Have you ever tried to view a .chm (old windows help file) to be told you cannot view it?

If so, Microsoft have developed updates for Windows 7 to solve this so that you can view these files. Follow the instructions found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607

Windows XP Error Deleting / Moving File or Folder: Access is Denied = SOLUTION !

All images in this post can be enlarged by clicking on them!

Have you ever had windows provide an error to you saying you cannot move or delete a file or entire folder because you do not have access to it? Well I spent a good few minutes troubleshooting this the other night. After about an hour I finally worked out why my Windows XP Professional was not allowing me to delete 5GB of data files off my external hard disk drive. This is the error message in question:
"Error Deleting File or Folder

Cannot delete f0045528: Access is denied.

Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use."



To solve this issue so you can delete the folder you do have to do two actions:

1) Disable simple file sharing if it is enabled - Depends on your OS - (Windows XP Pro)

2) Take ownership of the folder (or files within the folder) in order to be able to have permissions to delete them or move them.
Step 1 (Windows XP Home users)


Windows XP Home users will need to start windows in safe mode (press your F8 key continuously at start up until you are provided with a black screen and a load of white text options. Select 'Start Windows in Safe Mode'. Then navigate to the folder / files you wish to delete or move.

Step 1 (Windows XP Pro users)

Visit the following link on how to do this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307874/
Then navigate to the folder / files you wish to delete or move.

Step 2 Take Ownership and set permissions
In my example I had a folder which I wanted to delete. Yet it was the actual files inside the folder which needed the permissions and ownership changing.

Instead of spending ages changing the ownership and permissions for one single file at a time I selected all files in the folder I wanted to delete (using Crtl + A); then gave each file within the folder the same ownership and permissions enabling me to delete the entire folder.

First though before you continue to delete (or move) your files / an entire folder. Make sure you are logged in as an administrator otherwise you won't be able to change the files ownership or permissions.

1) After selecting all the files in this example, you need to right click and select properties as shown:

2) On the 'Security' Tab of the properties window; click on 'Advanced' (1)

3) On the 'Advanced Security Settings' window, select the 'Owner' tab (2). Notice in my example that the owner is completely different to the currently logged on user (PeterLT). So in order to set permissions (you may have noticed they were greyed out on the main security tab); we need to confirm who owns the files.

4) In my example I select 'Administrators' (3) and then click 'Apply' (4) in order to make the files owned by all administrators; so all admin accounts will be classed as the owner of the files.

5) Now click on 'OK' and you'll find that the permissions are still greyed out, even though we have changed the owner of the files:

6) So click on 'OK' on the properties window to close it and save the ownership changes. Then select all files again and right click, selecting properties (short cut way is to simply press 'r' when the right click menu appears on screen). Now we can change the permissions:

7) On the 'Security' tab, select 'Everyone' so that it is highlighted grey. Then in the permissions window below tick the checkbox 'Allow' to the right of 'Full Control' - all boxes below will become ticked also. Then click on 'Apply' to confirm the change in permissions:

8) Now you can delete (in this case) the entire folder as all files have been successfully changed to allow such an action on the account you are logged in with:

That's it. All you need to do. Same goes for moving files as well. It is more than likely either (a) a file / folder permission problem or (b) an ownership problem.

Hope you found this helpful. Resources used as help for myself:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421