Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Increase Your Cable Modem or DSL Speed in XP

This tweak is for broad band cable connections on stand alone machines with WinXP
professional version - might work on Home version also. It may also work with networked machines as well.

This tweak assumes that you have let WinXP create a connection on install for your
cable modem/NIC combination and that your connection has tcp/ip - QoS - file and print sharing - and client for Microsoft networks , only, installed. It also assumes that WinXP will detect your NIC and has in-box drivers for it. If it doesn't do not try this.
•In the "My Network Places" properties (right-click on the desktop icon and choose
properties), highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the
bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK.
•From the Windows XP CD in the support directory from the support cab, extract the
file netcap.exe and place it in a directory on your hard drive or even in the root of your C:\ drive.
•Next, open up a command prompt window and change directories to where you put
netcap.exe. then type "netcap/?".
It will list some commands that are available for netcap and a netmon driver will be
installed. At the bottom you will see your adapters. You should see two of them if using a 3Com card. One will be for LAN and the other will be for WAN something or other.
•Next type "netcap/Remove". This will remove the netmon driver.
•Open up Control Panel->System->Dev Man and look at your network adapters. You
should now see two of them and one will have a yellow ! on it. Right-click on the one
without the yellow ! and choose uninstall. YES! You are uninstalling your network
adapter, continue with the uninstall. Do not restart yet.
•Check your connection properties to make sure that no connection exists. If you get
a wizard just cancel out of it.
Now re-start the machine.
•After re-start go to your connection properties again and you should have a new
connection called "Local area connection 2". Highlight the connection, then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK.
•Choose connection properties and uncheck the "QOS" box.
•Re-start the machine.
After restart enjoy the increased responsiveness of IE, faster page loading, and a
connection speed boost.
Why it works, it seems that windows XP, in its zeal to make sure every base is covered installs two separate versions of the NIC card. One you do not normally see in any properties. Remember the "netcap/?" command above showing two different adapters? The LAN one is the one you see. The invisible one loads everything down and its like your running two separate cards together, sharing a connection among two cards, this method breaks this "bond" and allows the NIC to run un-hindered.

Increase BROADBAND

This is for broad band connections, though it might work for dial up.
•Make sure your logged on as actually "Administrator".
•Start->Run->type gpedit.msc
•Expand the "Local Computer Policy" branch.

•Expand the "Administrative Templates" branch.
•Expand the "Network Branch".
•Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left window.
•In right window double-click the "Limit Reservable Bandwidth" setting.
•On setting tab check the "Enabled" item.
•Where it says "Bandwidth limit %" change it to read 0.
Effect is immediate on some systems, some need to re-boot. This is more of a "counter
what XP does" thing. In other words, programs can request up to 20% of the bandwidth be
reserved for them, even with QoS disabled.

Win XP Won't Completely Shutdown

Go to Control Panel, then go to Power Options.
•Click on the APM tab, then check the "Enable Advanced Power Management support."
•Shut down your PC.
It should now successfully complete the Shut Down process.

Performance Increase Through My Computer

Easy enough tweak to usually find out about it on your own, but still, some of us
still don't find it right away. So here it is:
•Start > right-click on My Computer and select Properties.
•Click on the "Advanced" tab.
•See the "Performance" section? Click "Settings".
•Disable the following:

Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show Shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type
Use common tasks in folders
There, now Windows will still look nice and perform faster.

Deal with System Hang at Startup

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start
button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent
Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't
work for me.
Here's what you do:
•Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
•Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service.
•Disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

Turn Off System Restore to Save Space

Turn Off System Restore to Save Space when you are out of space on your operating system drive.

By default, Windows XP keeps a backup of system files in the System Volume Information
folder. This can eat up valuable space on your hard drive. If you don't want Windows to
back up your system files:
•Open the Control Panel.
•Double-click on System.
•Click the System Restore tab.
•Check "Turn off System Restore on all drives".
•Hit Apply.
•You may now delete the System Volume Information folder.
Warning! If you turn this off you will not be able to use Windows System Restore to
restore your system in case of failure.

Speeding Up Your Pentium 2 by 50%

We all know that you really shouldn't try to run Windows XP on anything less that
about a Pentium 3 of some sort if you are out for speedy operations and amazing reaction times, but for those of us with the good old Pentium 2's who want to see just how well we can run XP, we have to tweak as much as we can where-ever we can.

A real killer to the system's performance is Windows Media Player. Although it may look desirable and fancy with it's rounded off edges and 3rd-Dimensional appearance, the truth is, it takes up a large amount of that precious processing power.
All of these troubles however, lead to one thing in particular with this 'new-look' over-rated music and video player...the Visualizations.
The look-great I'll admit but like a lot of software these days, it has no purpose. If you run the task manager, and click the Performance tab along the top, you'll see that when Windows Media Player is running and nothing else is active, it takes up around 50% of the processors power.
Once these visualizations are turned off, it barely takes up 2-3% of the processors power, which leaves much more room for other applications to work efficiently.


Here's how to disable the feature:
•Open Media Player.
•Make sure the Now Playing tab on the left is selected.
•Click the View menu along the top.
•Go down to Now Playing Tools.
•In the sub-menu that has just 'popped-out', uncheck Show Visualization

How to Shutdown XP Faster??

Like previous versions of windows, it takes long time to restart or shutdown windows
XP when the "Exit Windows" sound is enabled.
To solve this problem you must disable this useless sound.

•Click Start button.

•Go to settings > Control Panel > Sound, Speech and Audio devices > Sounds and Audio
Devices > Sounds.

•Then under program events and windows menu click on "Exit Windows" sub-menu and
highlight it. Now from sounds you can select, choose "none" and then click Apply and
OK.

Now you should see some improvements when shutting down your system.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Disable CD Autorun, simple computer tweak

This trick involves only three simple steps:

1) Click Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC

2) Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System.

3) Locate the entry for Turn autoplay off and modify it as you desire.

Rename Windows Xp Start button to any desired Name

I’ve read a number of articles on the internet about changing the text on the Start button in XP. On more than one occasion I’ve seen references to a five (5) letter limitation when the button is renamed. I always wondered if this was true or just an assumption someone made because the default ‘start’ just happened to fit the button size. So, I decided to run a test and see if there really was a five character limit.

First of all just u need to do is download 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 Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating systems.

ll its just 541Kb in the size.. Click here to go to the Download Page




Download Resource Hacker

First Step 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 In Resource Hacker. 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 as shown in Fig. 02. 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

Second Step – Modify the Registry Now that the modified explorer.exe has been created it’s necessary to modify the registry so the file will be recognized when the user logs on to the system. If you don’t know how to access the registry I’m not sure this article is for you, but just in case it’s a temporary memory lapse, go to Start (soon to be something else) Run and type regedit in the Open: field. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon

the Right pane , double click the Shell entry to open the Edit String dialog box as shown in . In Value data: line, enter the name that was used to save the modified explorer.exe file. Click OK.

Close Registry Editor and either log off the system and log back in, or reboot the entire system if that’s your preference. If all went as planned you should see your new Start button with the revised text.

Make A Autorun File For any Cd

Did You Notice, whenever You Insert any game 0r software cd, or simply consider Windows Xp Operating system cd. As soon as You Insert the disk in CD-ROM, It automatically runs the cd.

If you want to make a autorun file for that CD you are ready to burn just read this...

1) You open notepad
2) now you writ: [autorun]
OPEN=INSTALL\Setup_filename.EXE
ICON=INSTALL\Setup_filename.EXE

Now save it but not as a .txt file but as a .inf file.

But remember! The "Setup_filename.EXE" MUST be replaced with the name of the setup file. And you also need to rember that it is not all of the setup files there are called '.exe but some are called '.msi

3) Now burn your CD with the autorun .inf file included.

4) Now set the CD in you CD drive and wait for the autorun to begin or if nothing happens just double-click on the CD drive in "This Computer"

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Change Drive Icon. Looks cool



First of all copy a icon file to the root of the drive.
example: c:\icon.ico

Then create a file called: autorun.inf in c:\autorun.inf
then open that file and type the following:

[autorun]
icon=icon.ico

save and close the file.

Now open my computer and refresh.. and woh! icon changed....
you can apply to other drives too.

be careful:
"autorun.inf" and "ico.ico" must be in the root of the drive.
example: c:\autorun.inf and c:\icon.ico.
same on the root.


Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Microsoft PowerToys to Customize Windows XP

PowerToys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. What are they? PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.

Alt-Tab Replacement
With this PowerToy, in addition to seeing the icon of the application window you are switching to, you will also see a preview of the page. This helps particularly when multiple sessions of an application are open.
Download

Virtual Desktop Manager

Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.
Download

Webcam Timershot

This PowerToy lets you take pictures at specified time intervals from a Webcam connected to your computer and save them to a location that you designate.
Download

Tweak UI
This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.
Download

For more Info, Visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Use Multiple Google Talk


Now it's turn to use multiple google talk. Previously we covered that how to run multiple Yahoo messenger trick,

Well for google talk, you don't have to download any software. Just follow the following simple steps.

1) Create a Shortcut on ur Desktop.

2) In the field 'type the location of the item' paste the following source...

c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe" /nomutex

3)If this loction doesn't work, then locate manually by clicking on browse option. Then go to c: -> program file -> google-> google talk->googletalk.exe

and then paste /nomutex in the end of manually located source.

Finished. Now you can run multiple Google Talk.

Create a temporary Email

Many websites asks you for e-mail address to download software or to register. But you don't know what they'll be doing with your e-mail..

Your e-mail will probably be stored in a database which may be get to the hands of spammers and you will be receiving unsolicited bulk e-mail.

http://www.spambox.us/ can create a temporary e-mail address for you that will expire in the time you chose, all the mails directed to this e-mail will be transparently forwarded to your real e-mail.


For example, you need to register on a forum that requires e-mail verification, so you generate a spambox e-mail with an expiry of one hour.
The generated e-mail will expire in an hour, and this time is enough for the forum to send you verification code.

Customize google search pages with groovle

Are You bored of the regular Google Search page with the white background, then Groovle offers something that would pep up your day. Groovle enables you to select your own backgrounds for a Google Search page. You can use any of the hundreds of images in their database or upload any image of your own to use as a background for the search page.

Groovle basically uses Google Custom Search for their site and the results you get are, of course, no different but it would simply make the search page a bit visually appealing. There are different categories like Nature, Animals, Space, Celebrities etc so that you have a variety to choose from.
Visit: http://www.groovle.com/

Boost Firefox Speed


This tricks will improve the speed & load time of firefox. And you will be able to surf faster.

Type about:config in the address bar, Then look for the following entries, and make the corresponding changes.

1.network.http.max-connections-per-server =32
2.network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy =16
3.network.http.max-connections = 64
4.network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server = 10
5.network.http.pipelining = true
6.network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = 200
7.network.http.request.max-start-delay = 0
8.network.http.proxy.pipelining = true
9.network.http.proxy.version = 1.0
Lastly right-click anywhere and select 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 recieves.Enjoy!!

SpeedUp PhotoShop Startup.

Photoshop required large memory to function well (1 GB or more is preferable) because it handle image files. Here discussing how to speed up startup of Photoshop.

Each time Photoshop start, all plug-ins (necessary or unnecessary) also load with Photoshop. You can prevent unnecessary plug-ins by loading thus reduce start up time.

Navigate to C:\program files (assuming ‘C’ is your installed directory)\Adobe. Open the directory. Here you can see folder named ‘plug-ins’. Within this folder you find the plug in files, all of which loaded each time Photoshop started.

You can disable plug-ins which you scarcely use. To do this simply edits the name of the files or folders containing plug-ins and insert a tilde (~) before each name. You can always re-enable the plug-ins by deleting the symbol ‘~’.

Trick to find the Invisible person on Yahoo chat.



Sometimes some of your friends who appear offline in yahoo messenger may not be actually offline, they may in the 'Invisible' mode. This maybe if they are trying to ignore you or are too busy to talk to anyone.

There is this small trick that you can use to find out what the truth is.

Firstly open your yahoo messenger main window and double click on the name of the person whom you want to check. The chat window will open obviously.

Click IMVironment button, select See all IMVironments, select Yahoo! Tools or Interactive Fun, and click on Doodle.
After loading the Doodle imvironment there can be two possibilities

1.If the user is offline Doodle are will show this "waiting for your friend to load Doodle" continuously .See in the picture below:



. If the user is online (but in invisible mode), after few seconds (it can take up to one minute, depending on your connection speed), you should get a blank page like in the picture below. So you know that the user is online.

Making undeletable, unreadable folders

Tested on Windows 95/98

By holding down alt, then typing numbers on the number pad (right of the keyboard) you can create special characters. If you hold down alt, then press 1, then let go, you got the ascii character 1. You try some randomn numbers. This goes all the way up to 255. Open a dos prompt, and type md (alt+1+9+4)someword. md is the dos command for creating a new directoy, now try and open the directory in Windows, you can't. To open it, type ren (alt+1+9+4)someword someword (ren is the dos command to rename)

Allowing dos and regedit in a restricted Windows

Open Notepad and type the following:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrent
VersionPoliciesWinOldApp]
"Disabled"=dword:0
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrent
VersionPoliciesSystem]
"DisableRegistryTools"=dword:0

Save it as something.reg then run it. its that simple

Secure Erase Your Computer History



In this step by step guide you will learn about: Deleting cache, cookies, all history from your browser under a limited account. Manually means without the use of programs or softwares

Step by Step:

1. To begin with you have to get to search utility in windows I will mention a couple of ways you can do this because sometimes under a limited account they block it or remove the shortcut so you can't get to it.

* A. Click start - > click where it says search
* B. Open up internet explorer -> look up where it says view -> explorer bar -> search
* C. Or just simply press Ctrl + E while in you browser

2. Now that your in search click all files and documents

* at the bottom it says more advanced options click on that
* Then check the line that says Search hidden folders and files

3. Now type history, click search.

4. When you get the results it should be a couple but the one you need should say history and at the side of it the location should be something like

C:\Documents and Settings\your user name\Local Settings

5. Now right click the result and the click Open Containing Folder

6. The rest is pretty simple you just need to open up the four different folders you will find there

* Open "Apps Folder" delete everything on it
* Open "Temp Folder" delete everything on it
* Open "History Folder" delete everything on it
* Open "Temporary Internet Files Folder" delete everything on it

7. Your finish nobody will ever know you were even online

Installing Programs on a Limited Account

In this step by step guide you will learn about: how to install programs and games in a limited account meaning an account thats not an administrator.

This might not always work but it's pretty useful because your able to install programs although your administrator has blocked it.


Step by Step:

1. When your installing the program here is what you have to do.

2. When it gives you the option of choosing the directory or destination where the program will be install, before clicking next click browse to choose a different destination.

3. The destination your going to choose is

C:\Documents and Settings\"your username"\"name of program being installed"\

4. So just browse to

* The C:\ drive(this is the operating system installed drive)
* Then Documents and Settings
* Then your User Name (Limited Account)

5. The reason why you do this is because since your installing it in your account name the computer doesn't stop or check anything because its your account and your name, but if you just select the desktop and choose to install it there it going to say something like "you do not have enough administrative privileges" something like that.

Pop a banner each time Windows Boots


Well I use this trick to pop a religious message when ever I boot up my system. you can also use it as a reminder too.


To pop a banner which can contain any message you want to display just before a user is going to log on, go to the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\WinLogon

Now create a new string Value in the right pane named LegalNoticeCaption and enter the value that you want to see in the Menu Bar. Now create yet another new string value and name it: LegalNoticeText. Modify it and insert the message you want to display each time Windows boots. This can be effectively used to display the company's private policy each time the user logs on to his NT box. It's .reg file would be:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"LegalNoticeCaption"="Caption here."

Multiple login in yahoo Without Using any Software


You can login with multiple id's on the same yahoo messenger without any download or patch .
Follow these steps :


1. Go to Start ----> Run . Type regedit, then enter .

2.Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER --------> Software --->yahoo ----->pager---->Test

3.On the right page , right-click and choose new Dword value .

4.Rename it as Plural.

5.Double click and assign a decimal value of 1.

Its done!!
Now close registry and restart yahoo messenger and try Multiple Login.

Speed up your internet by 20%

Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC etc

You can get it back:

Click Start then Run and type "gpedit.msc" without quotes.This opens the group policy editor. Then go to:
Local Computer Policy
then Computer Configuration
then Administrative Templates then Network then QOS Packet Scheduler and then to Limit Reservable Bandwidth.
Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab i.e."By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default."
So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO. This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%.It works on Win 2000 as well.