Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 08-08-2008 16:17
08 august 2008:
Add Copy To / Move To to the Windows Explorer Right Click Menu
A hidden functionality in Windows allows you to right click on a file, select Copy To Folder or Move To Folder, and the move to box will pop up and let you choose a location to either copy or move the file or folder to.
Here's the quick registry hack to get this working. As usual, back up your registry just in case. You will want to browse down to this key:
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 09-08-2008 17:46
09 August 2008:
Add the Command Prompt to the Windows Explorer Right-Click Menu
A hidden functionality in Windows allows you to right click on a directory, and select "Command Prompt Here" from the menu.
Here's the registry hack to get this working. Make sure you back up your registry just in case. I'll show you the step-by-step method, but you can skip down to the bottom for the alternate reg file.
Step-By-Step Method:
Type regedit.exe into the Start\Run dialog, and then navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell
Once you are at that key, right click and choose the New Key option:
Name the key "CommandPrompt" without the quotes and then double-click on the default value. Change the text to "Command Prompt Here" as seen here:
Right click on the new Command key and select New key, as you did before. Name the new key Command as well, and then double-click the default value of that key. Set the text of that key to this:
cmd.exe /k cd %1
You can see what it should look like here:
Now when you right click on the folder, you should see this dialog:
That will open up a prompt like this:
Alternate method:
You can create a text file named anything.reg, and insert this text into it:
[b]Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt]
@="Command Prompt:"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt\Command]
@="cmd.exe /k cd %1r43;
Double click on that file, and the text will be entered into the registry, and you'll have the same right click command prompt.[/b]
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 10-08-2008 14:15
10 August 2008:
What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running?
You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can't kill them, and you don't remember starting them… so what are they?
So What Is It?
According to Microsoft: "svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries". Could we have that in english please?
Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can't launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born.
Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?
If you've ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.
Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.
So What Can I Do About It?
You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don't absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.
The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we'll cover that below.
If you are curious what we're talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the "Show processes from all users" box:
Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP)
If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.
tasklist /SVC
The problem with using the command line method is that you don't necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.
Checking in Task Manager in Vista
You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the "Go to Service" option.
This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:
The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don't want it running.
Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP
You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.
Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:
Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.
Disabling Services
Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box.
Find the service in the list that you'd like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.
Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.
You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command "trkwks" is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you'll notice you can find it there as well.
sc config trkwks start= disabled
Hopefully this helps somebody!
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 11-08-2008 15:54
11 August 2008:
What is jusched.exe And Why Is It Running?
If you've looked in Task Manager and wondered what on earth the jusched.exe process is and if you can turn it off, then you are in luck. This process is the Java Update scheduler, which is a process that wastes memory all the time just to check once a month whether there are new updates to Java.
There's a scheduled tasks feature built into Windows for this type of thing… the java update scheduler is obviously not being used for critical updates since it's only scheduled to check once each month. Since I simply can't understand why the process needs to waste my memory, it has to go.
What you'll need to do is open up Control Panel, and then if you are in XP you can click on the Java icon, or in Vista you can click on Additional Options, and then click on Java.
Once you have the Java Control Panel open, select the Update tab, and then uncheck the box for "Check for Updates Automatically"
You'll receive a warning message stating that if somebody finds a security hole in Java that it will take up to a month before you are protected from it:
Does anybody else think that the sentence should read "the fastest and most secure Java" instead of the way it's worded?
After you click the Never Check button above, you'll probably receive this error message if you are in Windows Vista, stating that it also hasn't been properly certified to work with Vista in the first place. Just click that it works correctly.
That does make me wonder… I guess we'll miss the update that fixes the problem with the control panel… or will we? What you can do instead is schedule a task to run monthly using the built-in Task scheduler. If you don't care about updates to Java, then disregard the next part.
Schedule Java Update Check (Optional)
Just type in Task Scheduler into the start menu search box to open the task scheduler, and then click on Create Basic Task.
[center]
[/center]
Follow the wizard along to pick a month and date, and then when you get to the "Start a Program" screen, use this as the path, adjusting if you are running a different version of Java. The key thing is that you run the jucheck.exe in your Java directory.
Now when the scheduled task runs once a month, or whenever you schedule it, you'll get this dialog if there is a new version, or another dialog stating there are no updates to Java.
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 12-08-2008 18:42
12 August 2008:
What is ctfmon.exe And Why Is It Running?
You are no doubt reading this article because you are frustrated with the ctfmon.exe process that just won't stop opening no matter what you do. You remove it from the startup items and it just magically reappears. So what is it?
Ctfmon is the Microsoft process that controls Alternative User Input and the Office Language bar. It's how you can control the computer via speech or a pen tablet, or using the onscreen keyboard inputs for asian languages.
If you are using any of the above, you should leave it enabled. For everybody else, we'll get to the job of disabling this annoying service.
Depending on your system configuration, there are a number of different steps to disable it. I've tried to list all the methods below.
Step 1: Disabling in Microsoft Office 2003
We can remove the alternative text input from Microsoft Office 2003 by just removing that feature in the setup.
Note: I haven't figured out where the equivalent setting is for Office 2007 (if there is one), but we can also disable it a different way below.
Go to Add/Remove programs, choose to Change your installation of Microsoft Office and make sure you check the box for "Choose advanced customization of applications" before you hit next.
Find "Alternative User Input" in the list and change the dropdown to "Not available" so it looks like this:
Step 2a: Disabling in Windows XP
There's an additional step we can take to make sure it gets turned off in Windows XP, which really seems to be the best answer for XP users.
Open up Control Panel and choose Regional and Language Options.
Choose the Languages tab and then click on Details in the top section.
Now on the Advanced tab you can choose to "Turn off advanced text services", which should immediately close ctfmon.
You'll also want to take a look at the first Settings tab, and make sure that your "Installed Services" box looks similar to this one:
If you have more than one Installed service then ctfmon might come back… For instance on my system there was an input for my drawing tablet so I could use it as a text input… which I don't care about, so I clicked Remove on it.
Step 2b: Disabling in Windows Vista
The setting above for completely disabling text services doesn't seem to exist in Windows Vista as far as I can tell, but we can remove the additional input services using a similar method.
Open Control Panel, choose Regional and Language Options and then find "Change keyboards or other input methods".
On the Keyboards and Languages tab, you can select Change keyboards.
Now you'll finally be at the same screen as in Windows XP. You'll again want to remove the extra installed services in the list other than your default keyboard language.
Step 3: Remove From Startup
You won't want to perform this step before doing the others, because it will just be overwritten again. Open up msconfig.exe through the start menu run or search box, and then find the Startup tab.
Find ctfmon in the list and disable it by unchecking the box. Just remember that if you haven't disabled ctfmon through one of the other settings this won't help you a lot.
Step 4: If all else fails
You can just completely unregister the dlls that run the alternative input services by running these two commands from the run box (one at a time)
Regsvr32.exe /u msimtf.dll
Regsvr32.exe /u msctf.dll
If you perform this step, you should also use Step 3 to get rid of the startup entries.
Step 5: Reboot
Reboot your computer and then open a Microsoft Office application if you do have that installed. Verify that ctfmon.exe is not running.
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 13-08-2008 17:28
13 August 2008:
Install Windows XP on Your Pre-Installed Windows Vista Computer
The question I am asked most often is "How do I install a dual-boot with Windows XP on my new Windows Vista computer?" The answer is that it's not that difficult, it's just very time consuming, and you need to own a copy of Windows XP.
Note that you should not attempt this if you aren't ready to troubleshoot any problems that might occur.
The first issue we encounter is that computers with pre-installed operating systems take up the entire drive. Luckily Microsoft included the Shrink volume feature in Vista, so we can easily shrink the Vista partition down to make room for XP.
Open the Computer Management panel, which you can find under Administrative tools or by right-clicking the Computer item in the start menu and choosing Manage. Find the Disk Management item in the list and select that.
Now we'll shrink our volume down by right-clicking on the main hard drive and choosing Shrink Volume.
Now you can choose the size that you want to shrink, which really means you are choosing the size that you want your XP partition to be. Whatever you do, don't just use the default. I chose roughly 10gb by entering 10000 into the amount.
The next step might be confusing, because we need to change the cd-rom drive that's invariably taking up D: at the moment, because we want to use D: for the Windows XP partition, but it's already taken by the cd-rom drive. If you skip this step than XP will install onto the E: drive, which isn't the end of the world, but it's not quite as tidy.
Right-click on the cd-rom drive in the list and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths from the menu.
Now we'll change the CD drive to use E: by selecting that in the drop-down.
Now we can create a new partition for XP to live on and make sure that the drive letter is set the way we want. If you do not create a partition now the XP install will do so automatically, but it's easier and cleaner to do it this way.
Right-click on the Unallocated free space area and then select New Simple Volume from the menu.
Follow through the wizard and select whatever options you'd like, making sure to use D: as the drive letter.
Now you will need to close out of disk management and reboot your computer. This is because we can't do the next step until we reboot. (you can try, but it won't work)
So we've come back from rebooting… open up Computer from the start menu and then right-click on the D: drive and select properties. Give your partition a meaningful name like "XP". It would be wise to name the C: drive to "Vista" at this point as well.
Now you'll want to pop your XP cd into the drive and boot off it. You may have to configure your BIOS to enable booting off the CD drive, or if your computer says something like "Hit Esc for boot menu" you might want to use that.
Once you come to the screen where you can choose the partition to install on, then choose either the unpartitioned space or the new partition you created. Whatever you do, don't try and install onto your Vista partition! See how much cleaner it is now that we've labeled each partition distinctly?
We'll assume XP is completely installed at this point, and you will have lost your ability to boot into Windows Vista, so we'll need to use the VistaBootPro utility to restore the Vista boot loader.
Download and install VistaBootPro from vistabootpro.org
During the install you'll be forced to install the .NET 2.0 framework. Open up VistaBootPRO and then click on the System Bootloader tab. Check the "Windows Vista Bootloader" and then "All Drives" radio buttons, and then click on the Install Bootloader button.
At this point, the Windows Vista bootloader is installed and you'll only be able to boot into Vista, but we'll fix that. Instead of manually doing the work, we'll just click the Diagnostics menu item and then choose Run Diagnostics from the menu.
This will scan your computer and then automatically fill in the XP version.. click on the "Manage OS Entries" tab and then click in the textbox for Rename OS Entry, and name it something useful like "Windows XP" or "The Windows That Works"
Click the Apply Updates button and then reboot your computer… you should see your shiny new boot manager with both operating systems in the list!
If you get an error saying "unable to find ntldr" when trying to boot XP, you'll need to do the following:
Find the hidden files ntldr and ntdetect.com in the root of your Vista drive and copy them to the root of your XP drive.
If you can't find the files there, you can find them in the \i386\ folder on your XP install cd
This is a critical piece of information: Windows XP will be installed on the D: drive, even in Windows XP… so you'll need to keep that in mind when tweaking your system.
You can share information between the drives, but I wouldn't recommend messing with the other operating system's partition too much… it might get angry and bite you. Or screw up your files. What I do recommend is that you store most of your files on a third drive shared between the operating systems… you could call that partition "Data".
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 14-08-2008 13:06
14 August 2008:
Fix for COM Surrogate Has Stopped Working Error in Vista
If you've been getting the error COM Surrogate has stopped working whenever you browse folders containing video or media files, you have come to a good place for some possible solutions. This problem is caused because of codecs and other COM components installed by various softwares that aren't fully Vista-compatible, like some versions of DivX or Nero.
Here's the error message:
Right click on Computer, and choose Properties
Click on Advanced System Settings, and then under Advanced, click Settings
Select the "Data Execution Protection" tab, and then click “Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select�
Click on the Add button, and then browse to C:\Windows\System32\dllhost.exe as shown
Click Open, and then OK.
Here's what you should see…
Now you can browse video folders without problems!
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 15-08-2008 16:09
15 August 2008:
Enable Hidden BootScreen in Windows Vista
The Windows Vista BootScreen is pointless, but Microsoft decided to hide a more visually appealing boot screen that can easily be enabled with very little trouble. I'm not sure why they didn't make the boot screen better.
If you really want a better boot screen, you can check out my article on creating a custom boot logo.
Here's the default boot screen:
And here's the hidden one, called "Aurora"
All you have to do is type msconfig into the start menu search box, and hit enter.
Click the Boot tab, and then check the "No GUI boot" checkbox.
Hit OK and reboot the computer. You should see the new boot screen immediately.
Note: You may get a Windows Defender error on the next startup. You can enable the system config utility using the tray icon and this error will go away.
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 16-08-2008 16:52
16 August 2008:
Add "My Computer" to Your Vista Taskbar
I like to have the quickest access possible to folders on my desktop, which usually means putting something onto the taskbar if possible. You can add the Computer menu as a folder on the taskbar for the easiest access to your drives. You could also use this tip for any folder you want.
To add a folder to the taskbar, just right-click on the taskbar and choose the Toolbars menu, and then click on New Toolbar.
Just find the folder that you want… in this instance we'll select the Computer icon and then click on Select Folder.
Now you can see the Computer folder right there on the taskbar. If you click the little arrows it will pop up and let you browse through all your drives.
I always add the Desktop to the toolbar as well.
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 17-08-2008 15:47
17 August 2008:
Make User Account Control (UAC) Stop Blacking Out the Screen in Windows Vista
In Windows Vista, the screen goes dark when the User Account Control window comes up, which is extremely annoying. They call it the "Secure Desktop", but I think it's obnoxious.
Note that this will make your system less secure before proceeding.
Update: Windows Vista Home users should use the registry patch at the bottom of the article instead.
Windows Vista Business/Ultimate Users
To get to the configuration screen for this, type in security to the start menu search box. You should see the Local Security Policy as the top search item.
In the Local Security Policy window, browse down to Local Policies \ Security Options
Over in the right hand part of the window, scroll down near the bottom and find the item titled "User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation". Double-click on it to open it up, then change it to disabled:
At this point Secure Desktop should be disabled.
Windows Vista Home Users
For Windows Home users, you will need to open up regedit via the start menu search box. Browse down to this registry key:
Right-click in the right-hand pane and create a new 32-bit DWORD value called PromptOnSecureDesktop, setting the value to 0.
Downloadable Registry Tweak
Just download, extract, and double-click on the DisableSecureDesktop.reg file to enter the information into the registry. There's also an included EnableSecureDesktop.reg file to put things back to the way they were.
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 18-08-2008 16:14
18 August 2008:
Dual Monitors: Use a Different Wallpaper on Each Desktop
Multi-monitor displays are becoming more and more common. Let's face it, computers are so powerful these days that we can run more applications at a time than we have monitor space for… so if you haven't tried it, it's time to upgrade to a dual-monitor display.
The immediate issue that you will notice is that the wallpaper displays the same image on both screens. This is especially annoying when you have a laptop and a second monitor, each running at different resolutions, because the second screen will have a "squashed" version of the picture.
Enter Desktop Items…. you can create a web item and put a picture on it to cover the second monitor. Here's how to do it.
First, you'll want to go to Display Properties, click Customize Desktop, and then the Web tab, like so:
Now you will want to click the New button, and you'll be presented with a dialog prompting you to select either a webpage or wallpaper. While it might be cool to use a wallpaper of a website, we're worried about background images today, so browse to a wallpaper file. We're going to choose Heart Broken by Pincel3d, but he's got some other wonderful wallpapers over there.
Now this next part is slightly tricky if you aren't familiar. You will see an item on your desktop similar to this… depending on the wallpaper you already have, it might be difficult to notice. Move your mouse near the top of the new image that is sitting on your screen, and you will see something similar to this. Note: resized the image down so you can easily see it.
Drag the titlebar of the image over to the monitor you want to cover with the wallpaper, and then click that Maximize button. The wallpaper will magically cover that window. We're almost done..
Next, you will want to right-click on the desktop, and choose Lock Web Items on Desktop… because we don't want the image accidentally moving around on us, afterall.
And that's all there is to it. You now have two seperate wallpapers! (or even three)
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 19-08-2008 13:04
19 August 2008:
Adding a TCP/IP Route to the Windows Routing Table
The Routing table dictates where all packets go when they leave your system. On most environments, all packets that leave your system will be forwarded over to your router or hub, and from there out to the internet.
In some circumstances, you may have a testing network configured to duplicate another environment, or you may be configuring a more complex network topology that requires the use of additional routes. Adding routes to your machine is a useful testing tool for some of these situations.
For example, if you were on the 192.168.1.0 network, and you had a gateway on 192.168.1.12 configured to access the 10.10.10.0/24 network, you would use a route add statement like this:
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 20-08-2008 18:08
20 August 2008:
Remove Optional and Probably Unnecessary Windows Vista Components
In the never-ending quest to rid your computer of unnecessary bloat, Windows Vista has a lot less options than prior versions, but you can still get rid of some of the extra Windows components that you don't need.
Open up Control Panel and go to the Programs and Features section. Find the link for "Turn Windows features on or off" (or you could just search for it)
This dialog is quite self-explanatory… uncheck the things you don't want, and hit the OK button. Depending on the version of Vista you are running you might not see everything in the list.
Guidelines, Not Set In Stone
Just to get you started, here's a few tips on what an average user might want to enable or disable. The rules will be different for everybody, depending on your applications and needs, so don't take these as absolute.
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 26-08-2008 23:16
26August 2008:
Assign Keyboard Media Keys to Work in Winamp
Have you ever wondered how to make the media keys on your keyboard actually work for Winamp? Reader Shawn was asking me this question a while back, but then he figured it out on his own and sent me the instructions.
Turns out it's incredibly simple, and on most installations will be already set by default, but might not be enabled. If yours are not working, then you need to follow these instructions.
Open up the Winamp Preferences and the browse down to General Preferences \ Global Hotkeys.
The first thing you should check is whether the "Enabled" hotkey is checked. If it's not, then select that and most likely that will fix your issue.
If you need to manually change the settings instead, select the Action in the list, and then click inside the Hotkey textbox. Press the media key on your keyboard representing the function you are trying to do. For instance, I selected the Playback: Play/pause action in the list, so I pressed the Play button on my keyboard, which shows up as Play/Pause in the hotkey box.
Make sure you click the Set button when you make the change.
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 27-08-2008 22:57
27 August 2008:
Bring Misplaced Off-Screen Windows Back to Your Desktop (Keyboard Trick)
If you've ever hooked up your laptop to a secondary monitor and then disconnected without remembering to move the windows back to the primary desktop, you've probably encounter this problem:
The application is running. You can see it in the taskbar, but you can't see it on the screen, because it still thinks it's running on the secondary monitor. You try and use right-click, Move, but that doesn't do anything, and the window doesn't move anywhere. You end up rebooting and cursing Microsoft.
There's a simple trick to get around this. First make sure you've alt-tabbed to the window, or clicked on it once to bring it into focus. Then right-click on the taskbar and choose Move
At this point, you should notice that your cursor changes to the "Move" cursor, but you still can't move anything.
Just hit any one of the arrow keys (Left, Right, Down, Up), move your mouse, and the window should magically "pop" back onto the screen.
Note: For keyboard savvy people, you can just alt-tab to the window, use Alt+Space, then M, then Arrow key, and then move your mouse.
This should work on any version of Windows. It's really amazing how many people are not aware of this little trick.
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 28-08-2008 23:06
28 August 2008:
Change Default Wallpaper Folder to My Pictures on Windows XP
Have you ever wondered why Windows XP had such terribly ugly wallpapers to choose from? On top of that, there's no way to easily change the list of backgrounds to a folder you might actually use… like your My Pictures folder.
There's a fairly simple registry hack you can do to make Windows look in a different folder, but if you want to get rid of Blue Lace 16 you'll also have to delete it manually. (The standard warnings about registry editing apply here)
With a name like "Bliss" you would think I would be less tired of seeing this:
Change Wallpaper Folder
Open up regedit.exe using the start menu Run box, and then navigate down to the following key:
On the right-hand side you should see a value called WallPaperDir, which defines the folder Windows uses to populate the list. If the key does not exist, then you can create a new string value with the same name.
Double-click to change the value, and then paste in the full path to your My Pictures folder. (Note that you could specify any path here if you wanted to.)
The change should be immediate, the next time you open the Desktop panel… but you'll notice a number of default images still in the list. Turns out that Windows also queries the Windows folder for images…
To get rid of those, browse to C:\Windows and then look for a set of horribly ugly Bitmap files:
You can delete these images to make them stop appearing in the wallpaper selection list, just be careful not to delete anything else in your Windows folder or you likely won't be able to boot anymore.[/b]
"To catch me, you gotta be fast...
To beat me, you gotta be strong...
But to be me? Damn, you gotta be kiddin!!!"
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 29-08-2008 22:38
29 August 2008
Change XP Desktop Icons Into Smaller List View
Has it ever bothered you that you can't change the size of the icons on your XP desktop? Thankfully they added this ability into Windows Vista, but what are your options in the meantime?
There's a small utility called Deskview that lets you change the icons from regular mode into the smaller "list" mode with a double-click. It's as simple as that.
Download and extract the zipfile, and then double-click on deskview.exe, and your icons will turn from this:
Into this:
To bring them back to regular mode, just double-click on deskview.exe again.
Posts: 3552 Location: India Joined: 29.10.07 Thanks: 9 Thanked 158 times in 107 posts
Posted on 30-08-2008 23:22
30 August 2008:
Clear IE7 Browsing History From the Command Line
If you like to build batch files to automate cleanup on your computer, you'll probably want to include at least one of these commands in your batch script. You can automate any one of the functions on the Internet Explorer 7 Delete Browsing History dialog.
Here's the dialog that you are probably used to seeing:
And here's the commands that correspond to the different buttons. The most important one from a cleanup perspective is the first, which will delete just the temporary internet files that are cluttering up your computer.
To use these commands, just run them from the command line, the start menu search box in vista, or a batch file.
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