Recently I got a new computer at work. It’s pretty sweet, x64 os, 6gb ram, 250 sata hd. It works better then the last one, that’s for sure. In sort of the same timeline, I was also forced to switch back to windows for a few reasons. Dual monitor (monitor 2 in vertical code view) was giving me a lot of issues on linux, and I’m also on a new Java project that uses liferay software.

So given these reasons, I’ve migrated back to windows, but had a very hard time giving up the environment. I have been using cygwin for a long time, then started using puttycyg, but I still wasn’t happy, because I wanted a tabbed UI. I went searching around and found a few options, but the one that I decided on was ponderosa. It’s a pretty slick tool that lets you split your console sessions vertically, horizontally etc. Think of it as a window manager for cygwin.

I installed it at home, and it worked great. When I came to work the next day and tried installing it, it couldn’t find the cygwin registry key. I started comparing registry’s and I found that on my home computer the key was installed in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and on my work machine it was only installed to HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Obviously, as the error indicated, I needed to have this key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

I haven’t had a lot of experience editing the registry, so I was a little nervous but it turned out to be very simple.

1. Export HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Cygnus Solutions to a .reg file on my desktop
2. Open with note pad
3. Replace all instances of HKEY_CURRENT_USER with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
4. Re-import into registry
5. Restart Ponderosa

Amazingly, it worked. I don’t think I should suggest you edit your registry at work. But just remember. The biggest difference between windows and linux is the ideology that you need to accept faulty software in windows. I think more often you find that Linux users are accustomed to modifying their OS to meet their needs, while windows users are happy to just accept the issue. Well, this is me saying, don’t accept the issue. Hell, if the software doesn’t work, then maybe accept that it’s crappy software, but if that is the case you should write better software or patch the software to fill the gap. If everyone did this, the windows software world would not be such a gong show.