Create a Personal Screensaver in Win XP

This isnt a tweak, but a great little feature! For a great way to put your digital photos to work, try creating a slide show presentation for use as a screen saver. Here's how:

1. Right-click an empty spot on your desktop and then click Properties.
2. Click the Screen Saver tab.
3. In the Screen saver list, click My Pictures Slideshow.
4. Click Settings to make any adjustments, such as how often the pictures should change, what size they should be, and whether you'll use transition effects between pictures, and then click OK.

Now your screen saver is a random display of the pictures taken from your My Pictures folder.

How To Access Your Folders From Your Taskbar

This is an easy way to get to the folders on your system without having to open a Windows Explorer Window every time you want to access files. I find it very useful to have this feature as it allows me to access my Folders and Drives immediately and saves me a lot of time.

This works in Windows XP:

1. Right Click an empty spot on your Taskbar (Between your Start Button and your System Tray).

2. Click Toolbars.

3. Click New Toolbar.

4. A Small Window will Open that allows you to pick the folder you wish to make a Toolbar. If you want to access your Desktop Without having to minimize all your windows. Just Pick Desktop. If you want to access ONLY your My Documents Folder, Select that. Any folder will work for this.

5. Click OK.

The New Tool bar will appear at the bottom of your screen next to your System Tray.

If you find this to be not useful, Repeat Steps 1 and 2 and then check click the Toolbar you created that has a check mark next to it. And it will disappear.

Facebook Important Info.

   

PLEASE READ:
This is very important to everyone who uses Facebook for Business or Personal reasons.
And wishes to stay in touch with their contacts..

Have you noticed that you are only seeing updates in your newsfeed from the same people lately? Have you also noticed that when you post things like status messages, photos and links, the same circle of people are commenting and you are not hearing from anyone else?

...The problem is that a large chunk of your contact list can't see anything you post and here's why:

The "New Facebook" has a newsfeed setting that by default is automatically set to show ONLY posts from people you've recently interacted with or have interacted the most with (which would be limited to the couple of weeks just before people started switching to the "new profile"). So, in other words, for both business and personal pages, unless you or your friends/fans commented on one anothers posts within those couple of weeks - you are now invisible to them and they are invisible to you!!

HERE'S THE FIX:

On your homepage click the "Most Recent"

Yahoo Chat Commands

Yahoo Chat Commands:

/join [room] go to what ever room you wish
/invite [buddys name] sends invitation request
/tell [user] [message] private messages a friend
/follow [user] follows a friend
/stopfollow [user] stop following someone
/stopfollow [yourname] to stop them from following you
/goto [user] enters the room the user is in
/away [off] turn your private messages back on
/think [message] (type this to think what you want
/ignore [list] list everyone who you are ignoring
/ignore add [user] add someone to your ignoring list
/ignore [add all] ignores everything going on

Easy SHUT DOWN for your computer!

 Try to open:

Run -> cmd -> shutdown -a

This prevent the shutdown.

 -create a new shortcut.. then write;
shutdown -s -t 0 = this is for shut down in 0 seconds (t = time s=shutdown)
shutdown -r -t 0 = same but this is for restart comp. in 0 seconds..
-(only for windows xp)
in win.98 this is different; we were wrote rundll32.exe -s or something like this..i couldnt remember right now..

ANTI -VIRUS

User's guide to avoiding virus infections
Keeping an eye out for viruses

Computer viruses are everywhere! This guide will show you how to stay alert and how to avoid getting infections on your computer. Having an updated virus scanner is only a small part of this, there are many ways that you can prevent having viruses other than a virus scanner, as it will not always save you.

Types of viruses
There are many type of viruses. Typical viruses are simply programs or scripts that will do various damage to your computer, such as corrupting files, copying itself into files, slowly deleting all your hard drive etc. This depends on the virus. Most viruses also mail themselves to other people in the address book. This way they spread really fast and appear at others' inboxes as too many people still fall for these. Most viruses will try to convince you to open the attachment, but I have never got one that tricked me. In fact, I found myself emailing people just to make sure they really did send me something. It does not hurt to be safe.

*Worms
Worms are different type of viruses, but the same idea, but they are usually designed to copy themselves a lot over a network and usually try to eat up as much bandwidth as possible by sending commands to servers to try to get in. The code red worm is a good example of this.

XP Auto Install

Wazzup TRICKZERS!

May be this might be useful. I install 98 with backup/restore utility.

My way of auto installation of XP.
Then on second partition or the same partition XP without pagefile.sys.

 

Then i get a dual boot. So after booting into XP, Install all ur fav progies
n games. Test each of them, to make sure they work... etc etc... all
ur drivers also. Tweak ur xp.

make sure u unhide all files relates to win xp dir and progra files.

Then boot into 98 > goto backup utility of 98.

Windows XP Tricks

How do I get the "Administrator" name on Welcome Screen?
=========================================

To get Admin account on the "Welcome Screen" as well as the other usernames, make sure that there are no accounts logged in.
Press "ctrl-alt-del" twice and you should be able to login as administrator!
finally worked for me after i found out that all accounts have to be logged out first


Fix Movie Inteferance in AVI files
=======================

If you have any AVI files that you saved in Windows 9x, which have interference when opened in Windows XP, there is an easy fix to get rid of the interference:

Open Windows Movie Maker.
Click View and then click Options.
Click in the box to remove the check mark beside Automatically create clips.

Now, import the movie file that has interference and drag it onto the timeline. Then save the movie, and during the rerendering, the interference will be removed.

 Create a Password Reset Disk

=====================

If you’re running Windows XP Professional as a local user in a workgroup environment, you can create a password reset disk to log onto your computer when you forget your password. To create the disk:

Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click User Accounts.
Click your account name.
Under Related Tasks, click Prevent a forgotten password.

Follow the directions in the Forgotten Password Wizard to create a password reset disk.

Store the disk in a secure location, because anyone using it can access your local user account

Hide Drives and Partitions

Do you have data on a partition or hard drive that you don't want tampered with or easily accessible to other users? Well, you can hide any drive/partition in Windows XP, NT, and 2000. That means that they won't show up in Explorer or My Computer.

If you want access to that drive from your user account you should create a desktop shortcut before proceeding. Once hidden, you can still access by typing the drive letter and a colon in Start/Run—for example, "D:" will bring up a folder of the contents on your D drive.

The easiest way with Win XP is to use the TweakUI power toy from Mcft. Go to Start/Run and type in "tweakui" (without the quotes).

Go to My Computer/Drives and uncheck the drive/partition(s) you want hidden. Click "Apply" or "OK" when finished.

If you have XP but not Tweak UI you can download it here...
http://www.Mcft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

For Win NT, 2000, and XP you can use the following Registry edit:

Change Your Ip In Less Then 1 Minute

How To:
1. Click on "Start" in the bottom left hand corner of screen
2. Click on "Run"
3. Type in "command" and hit ok

(You should now be at an MSDOS prompt screen.)

4. Type "ipconfig /release" just like that, and hit "enter"
5. Type "exit" and leave the prompt
6. Right-click on "Network Places" or "My Network Places" on your desktop.
7. Click on "properties"

(You should now be on a screen with something titled "Local Area Connection", or something close to that, and, if you have a network hooked up, all of your other networks.)

Firefox Speed Tweaks

Yes, firefox is already pretty damn fast but did you know that you can tweak it and improve the speed even more?

That's the beauty of this program being open source.

Here's what you do:
In the URL bar, type “about:config” and press enter. This will bring up the configuration “menu” where you can change the parameters of Firefox.

Note that these are what I’ve found to REALLY speed up my Firefox significantly - and these settings seem to be common among everybody else as well. But these settings are optimized for broadband connections - I mean with as much concurrent requests we’re going to open up with pipelining… lol… you’d better have a big connection.

Double Click on the following settings and put in the numbers below - for the true / false Boolean - they’ll change when you double click.

Code:
browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs – true
network.http.max-connections – 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server – 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy – 8
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server – 4
network.http.pipelining – true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – 100
network.http.proxy.pipelining – true
network.http.request.timeout – 300


One more thing… Right-click somewhere on that screen and add a NEW -> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0”. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. Since you’re broadband - it shouldn’t have to wait.

Now you should notice you’re loading pages MUCH faster now!

Basic Find Stuff

Has this ever happened to you?

You're looking for something on a long web page with Internet Explorer or Netscape. You think it's there, but you're faced with seemingly insurmountable number of paragraphs, sentences, and words to hunt though.

Well, next time this happens to you, hit the Edit menu, Find (or CTRL-F for you shortcut lovers). You'll get a handy little "find" box that lets you type in a specific word. After you type in your search term, hit the Find Next button and Explorer will look for that word on the page. If it's successful, you'll be zapped right to it.

As if that wasn't cool enough, you can also use a variation of this tip in Windows Explorer. Next time you're looking for a file in Explorer, hit CRTL-F and you'll get a Find or Search box (depending on what flavor of Windows you're using).

If you are already in the area of your hard drive where you think the file is (say, My Documents), hit CTRL-F and your search will be set to look in the My Documents folder.

Enable Folder and Icon Refresh

This reg file Enables Folder and Icon Refresh.


1. Copy the following (everything in the box) into notepad.

QUOTE
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"NoNetCrawling"=dword:00000000

2. Save the file as disablerefreshundo.reg
3. Double click the file to import into your registry.

NOTE:
If your anti-virus software warns you of a "malicious" script, this is normal if you have "Script Safe" or similar technology enabled.

Converting to NTFS

Your hard drive must be formatted with a file system such as FAT, FAT32 or NTFS so that Windows can be installed on to it. This system determines how files are named, organised and stored on the drive. If you’re not using it already, NTFS (New Technology File System) is recommended for Windows XP because of the additional functionality it offers. If your PC came with Windows XP pre-installed then there’s a chance that you’re already using NTFS. If you’ve upgraded from Windows 98 or Windows Me you may still be using FAT or FAT 32. The option to change over to NTFS would have been available during the upgrade process. Don’t worry if you skipped this as it’s possible to convert at any time from within Windows XP without losing any data.

Discover Music You'll Probably Love!

First off, I've been doing this for a long time now. I still listen to a lot of the bands I've found by doing this. It's really simple, but it works like a charm. I ALWAYS find cool new stuff -- sometimes even bands that have been around 10 years that I never heard of.

The things you need:
- (Optional) A file sharing program (I use Limewire)
- A browser. :]

1.) Pick one of your favorite bands.
2.) Go to amazon.com or cdnow.com (same thing)
3.) Look up that band's name
4.) Scroll down until you see "Customers who bought this title also bought:"
5.) Browse through the artists you've never heard of in that list.
6.) Check out one of their albums, preferably the one with highest rating (in stars)
7.) Either listen to the samples on amazon or download a song by them with your filesharing app.

If you like what you hear, repeat steps 3-7 using the new band's name.

You'll find TONS of new music you never thought existed.

It's a really simple way to find stuff, and I'm sure lots of you probably already do this. But for those who don't -- you'll thank me later. It works wonders. :)

Change the Default Location for Installing Apps

As the size of hard drives increase, more people are using partitions to separate and store groups of files.

XP uses the C:\Program Files directory as the default base directory into which new programs are installed. However, you can change the default installation drive and/ or directory by using a Registry hack.

Run the Registry Editor (regedit) and go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

Look for the value named ProgramFilesDir. by default,this value will be C:\Program Files. Edit the value to any valid drive or folder and XP will use that new location as the default installation directory for new programs.

XP Start Button (how to change)

                                                    Step 1 - Modify Explorer.exe File

XP (before)

In order to make the changes, the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows needs to be edited. Since explorer.exe is a binary file it requires a special editor. For purposes of this article I have used Resource Hacker. Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems.

XP (after)

get this from h**p://delphi.icm.edu.pl/ftp/tools/ResHack.zip

The first step is to make a backup copy of the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer. Place it in a folder somewhere on your hard drive where it will be safe. Start Resource Hacker and open explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer.exe.

The category we are going to be using is "String Table". Expand it by clicking the plus sign then navigate down to and expand string 37 followed by highlighting 1033. If you are using the Classic Layout rather than the XP Layout, use number 38. The right hand pane will display the stringtable. We’re going to modify item 578, currently showing the word “start” just as it displays on the current Start button.

There is no magic here. Just double click on the word “start” so that it’s highlighted, making sure the quotation marks are not part of the highlight. They need to remain in place, surrounding the new text that you’ll type. Go ahead and type your new entry. In my case I used Click Me!

Boot WinXp Fast

Follow the following steps:

(Note:  Before doing it create a restore point for emergency use, so if anything goes wrong you can restore the previous performance of your computer)

1. Open notepad.exe, type "del c:\windows\prefetch\ntosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) & save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:\
2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc".
3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window.
4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open".
5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit.
6. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "devmgmt.msc".
7. Double click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
8. Right click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties".
9. Select the "Advanced Settings" tab then on the device or 1 that doesn't have 'device type' greyed out select 'none' instead of 'autodetect' & click "OK".
10. Right click on "Secondary IDE channel", select "Properties" and repeat step 9.
11. Reboot your computer.

Best Keyboard Shortcuts

Getting used to using your keyboard exclusively and leaving your mouse behind will make you much more efficient at performing any task on any Windows system. I use the following keyboard shortcuts every day:

Windows key + R = Run menu

This is usually followed by:
cmd = Command Prompt
iexplore + "web address" = Internet Explorer
compmgmt.msc = Computer Management
dhcpmgmt.msc = DHCP Management
dnsmgmt.msc = DNS Management
services.msc = Services
eventvwr = Event Viewer
dsa.msc = Active Directory Users and Computers
dssite.msc = Active Directory Sites and Services
Windows key + E = Explorer

ALT + Tab = Switch between windows
ALT, Space, X = Maximize window
CTRL + Shift + Esc = Task Manager
Windows key + Break = System properties
Windows key + F = Search
Windows key + D = Hide/Display all windows
CTRL + C = copy
CTRL + X = cut
CTRL + V = paste

Also don't forget about the "Right-click" key next to the right Windows key on your keyboard. Using the arrows and that key can get just about anything done once you've opened up any program.

Keyboard Shortcuts

[Alt] and [Esc] Switch between running applications
[Alt] and letter Select menu item by underlined letter
[Ctrl] and [Esc] Open Program Menu
[Ctrl] and [F4] Close active document or group windows (does not work with some applications)
[Alt] and [F4] Quit active application or close current window
[Alt] and [-] Open Control menu for active document
Ctrl] Lft., Rt. arrow Move cursor forward or back one word
Ctrl] Up, Down arrow Move cursor forward or back one paragraph
[F1] Open Help for active application
Windows+M Minimize all open windows
Shift+Windows+M Undo minimize all open windows
Windows+F1 Open Windows Help
Windows+Tab Cycle through the Taskbar buttons
Windows+Break Open the System Properties dialog box