No system is an island - Windows tips and tricks for all.

In my previous post,I described tweaking up My Network Places to make it run faster.

This was a GUI tool to view other networked computers,is there any way to do the same from command prompt?
Of course there is and is very cool.The in-built net utility has many versatile uses and checking out shared resources on other machines is just one of them

To use it :
1.Open command prompt - Start>Run>cmd

2.Type net view \\ to connect to it and check out the shared resources on that box.

I have a box called AVP-XP which has a logs folder that are shared across the LAN,so I type:

net view \\AVP-XP



This will display all folders and other objects that are network shared.

There are many other uses of net command,feel free to try them out.They can be a real time savers.

Hope this has been an informative post.
Peace.

While using My Network Places in Windows XP for browsing other machines on network,it is quite common to see a delay when the list of all neighbouring machines is displayed alongwith the shared stuff they have over network.




Basically,the first thing XP does is see the scheduled tasks on remote machines before listing out the shared resources they have.This can be quite intensive,often causing the local system to hang while using My Network Places.

Why not turn off the checking of scheduled tasks on remote machines and simply return a list of neighbourhood boxes?
This can be done by simply deleting a registry key so that network browsing will be a lot quicker.


Here is the method :

1.Open registry editor : Start>Run>regedt32



2.Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
Remote Computer\NameSpace

3.All we are doing is removing an entry in the remote machine namespace on the local box,delete this default key : {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}

4.Save the changes and reboot the machine.

Note : Before tinkering with Windows registry for any tweak,please backup the registry.Refer my earlier post on that.

Experience the faster browsing of remote machines via My Network Places and rejoice.

Peace.

Upgrading Windows Vista online from the existing disc is now possible because of Windows Anytime Upgrade feature that comes bundled with Vista.

To check it out :


1.Go to Control Panel>System and Maintenance>Welcome Center.



2.To upgrade to another version of Windows Vista, select Control Panel >System and Maintenance >System, and click Upgrade Windows Vista



3.Of course,the upgrade is not free :) so you will need to pay online,the online upgrade link will open when you click on Upgrade Windows Vista.



4.Choose the upgrade that is suitable,the existing system will be upgraded or you can order a seperate disc by following the online instructions for the same.

Peace.

Installing or uninstalling applications,making changes to system settings - these are all linked to the all important registry values in Windows family of operating systems and Vista is no exception.

However,one thing that Vista can do is protect itself from unwanted registry changes which might break the operating system.

The concept of User Account Control or UAC is like sudo privileges in *nix counterparts.Changing system state only when an authorized account(the almighty Administrator) in Vista is the job of UAC.

There is one more way though Vista guards itself from unwanted changes,it's called File and Registry virtualization.

Let's see the possibilities of Vista security framework :

1.When a user tries to access registry editor,UAC will jump in and ask for administrator password to allow access else it will block the attempt.

2.When a program tries to install on Vista,it has to change the registry settings to allow it to run,here again UAC asks for a valid authorization and then allows the program to install.

3.When a legacy or old program fails to launch,File and Registry virtualization comes into play.

It will make virtual %SystemRoot% and %ProgramFiles% folders, and a virtual HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Registry entry. These virtual folders and entry are stored with the user's files. So the Registry itself as well as the %SystemRoot% and %ProgramFiles% foldersare not altered in any way, thereby protecting the system files and the Registry.

It puts the legacy application in a protective bubble by doing this so that it can access the virtual File and registry within that bubble without actually touching the "real" File and registry structure in Vista.

Hope this boring but informative post gives some insight on applications security aspect of Windows Vista.

There are multiple ways to do a single thing and Firefox is no exception.

Most of us have more than one tab opened while using Firefox which is one benefit it provides for tabbed browsing.

What if we want to open a new tab without a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-T) or not even navigating to File>New Tab option in Firefox?

Yes,we can still open a new tab in a flash if there are more than one tabs opened in Firefox without using Ctrl-T or going to File>New Tab.



When there is more than one tab opened,there will be a thin gap between the tab boundaries and the extreme edge of navigation bar.
Double clicking on that tiny gap actually opens a new tab in Firefox which is very cool.

Go ahead and try it out,it will be fun.

Peace.

A standalone Windows XP professional box can be a vulnerable target for compromise because it is not regulated by group policies and it is basically controlled by a local administrator account.
Let's say if more than one user uses a single XP professional box atdifferent times and we want to make sure that folks can logon only after they give the 3 finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) on that box.

Enabling the option that requires users to press Ctrl-Alt-Del to logon is quite straight forward.

1.Go to Start>Run>control userpasswords2



2.Go to Advanced tab and check mark Require users to press Ctrl+Alt+Del


3.All done.

Peace.

This one is an old but useful hack for making the Start menu appear as quickly as you click on it in Windows XP.

By default,a delay value of 400 is associated with the registry key of MenuShowDelay(HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ MenuShowDelay).

To change this default value:

1.Open registry editor (Start>Run>regedt32)

(Backup the registry first before doing anything,refer to my earlier post on how to do that).

2.Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop



3.On the right pane,locate the key MenuShowDelay.



4.Double click on it to change the value from 400 to 0.



5.Save the changes and exit registry editor.
6.Click on Start menu and you will see that it has become super fast.
7.All done.

Peace.

What you can't see,you can't troubleshoot that.The device manager suits this logic perfectly.

Basically,all the devices present in Windows XP are listed in device manager,right?
The answer is no.Along with the devices that are present,we can encounter two more types of devices : hidden and ghosts.

Hidden devices are mostly the really old and legacy types that don't get listed by default in XP.

Ghosts or phantom devices as the name suggests are the old memories of devices long gone :) - these are devices that were removed but weren't properly uninstalled from XP.

While examining any device for resources conflict in XP,chances are you will be able to really tell if this is caused by any of the above two categories of devices listed above.

Let's take a look at how to go about displaying these mysterious at first glance system devices.

To list hidden devices:



1.Open Device manager - Start>Run>devmgmt.msc
2.Choose View>Display Hidden Devices

Devices you never knew start appearing on the list.



Showing phantom devices requires modifying the environment variables.Let's create a system-wide variable :

1.Open the environment variables tab by right-clicking on My Computer>Properties>Advanced>Environment Variables.



2.Under the system variables,hit New and enter the values - devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices and 1.



This will enable phantom devices to show up in the list of device manager(Device manager will display option of displaying phantom devices now).These will be gray in color and will most probably have a long list of non-PnP drivers.

All done.

Hope this post gives some insight on the concept of hidden and phantom devices in XP.

Peace.

Some computer games are very addictive,time flies and you keep on playing.Command and Conquers:Generals and it's expansion pack Zero Hour is one of them for me.

Recently,I tried to play one more older games of the Command and Conquer Red Alert series : Yuri's Revenge.Running it on Vista from the Command and Conquer first decade launch screen showed me the following error:

"Fatal: string manager failed to initialize"

This probably meant that the program somehow got stuck while getting initialized,maybe due to lack of admin privileges or lack of backward compatibility by default with Windows XP.

To fix this,select and right click on Command and Conquer first decade icon on desktop and go to properties.



Simply enable the "Run as administrator" option and also the Program compatibility mode as Windows XP with service pack 2 to make all the Command and Conquer series running on Vista.

Just thought I would share this so as not to deprive many of the Command and conquer fans out there who can't seem to load it on Windows Vista.

Happy Commanding and Conquering.

Peace.

Recently I had put in some new music albums in my ipod and along with that also appeared the artwork (the images that are displayed in background while accessing ipod menu).
There is no suitable option from within the ipod to remove them,however itunes will be helpful in removing the unwanted album artwork.

1.Connect the ipod to computer.
2.Itunes will pop up on screen if installed as soon as it detects ipod connected.



3.Go to Music and uncheck Display album artwork on your ipod option.
4.Disconnect the ipod and check,there should no longer be the album artworks in your ipod.

Peace.

This is a non operating system/non technical related post after quite a few months.

We live in a world of tightly integrated electronic communication.What we see as emails on our computers,we see them on our blackberries and other cellular devices.

One very useful feature of Google calendar is it's integration with your cell phone.
Let's take a look at how we can configure calendar to send text messages of our calendared events to cellphone.

1.Login to Google calendar service.

2.Select Settings on lower left corner in My Calendars zone.



3.Go to Mobile Setup.Here you will need to enter the country and cell phone number details. (It is always a good idea to see the list of supported carriers).

4.Once entered,a verification code will be delivered to the cell phone which needs to be entered in the Verification code.



5.All done.

Now on,whenever you have say an important meeting starting,you will also be notified about the same on your cell phone,isn't it convenient?

Peace.

In a domain based environment,Windows clients get their settings from a domain controller.These settings or policies are called group policy objects or GPOs.


Whenever a new or modified GPO is applied to a client yet the client can't seem to reflect those changes,gpupdate/force from command prompt is commonly used to refresh all GPOs on the client box.

What if we want to see what GPOs are getting actually applied in real time to client which will help us actually troubleshoot GPO problems?
There is a very very useful command for this - gpresult run on the client box which lists everything.



Suppose I want to analyze the output of gpresult to see what kind of GPOs are being served on my XP box.So I pipe the output to a txt file which serves as a log for future references too.

Here is how :
1.Open command prompt (Start>run>cmd)
2.Type gpresult>>"c:\gpo_log.txt"



This will make a new text log which has all the information produced by gpresult.



Logging is useful for analyzing as well as troubleshooting various stuff that we come across in a Windows environment and gpresult logged is no different.

Hope it has been an informative post.

Peace.

Security in Windows family has always been a debatable topic.With the advent of long released SP2,there came the red shield like icon - Windows security center.

Windows security center acts like a guard who checks your XP box for following three settings :
1.Firewall status
2.Antivirus software status
3.Windows updates status

What if we have all of those 3 updated and configured religiously but still have to deal with messages from Windows security center? We can disable it for sure.

There is the GUI way of doing it :





1.Start>Run>services.msc
2.Locating Security Center service
3.Hitting stop button.

But wait,there is a cooler way of doing it just by typing few commands from our beloved command prompt.



1.First by checking whether the service is running by typing :
sc query wscsvc
2.Then,simply stopping it :
net stop wscvc

Peace.

Quick - how do you tell how many connections does your box have over say port 445(SMB)or whether that port is really closed?
Or for any other port like 80?

The quickest way I have seen is simply using netstat from command prompt although applying a filter for ports that we want to find out.[Of course we can go to Windows Firewall and then check,but it has too many clicks involved :)]

Let's say I want to see if TCP port 445 which basically in Windows XP is used to run server message block (SMB) protocol directly on top of TCP/IP without using NetBT.

To find out if I really have port 445 open and also the instances of connections that have this port,what I do is :

1.Open command prompt (Start>Run>cmd).
2.In the command prompt window,I type :
netstat -ano|find "445"
3.To get the instances of all connections using 445,I use the /c switch in find :
netstat -ano|find/c "445"

The above two commands with filter on port will tell me if I am really having port 445 open and if yes then how many connections are actually using it.In this case,my box has 2 instances of connections that involve port 445 which is already open.

As seen,the "find" command in Windows is highly useful when it comes to piping outputs from various commands and can also be used to set selective filters.

Happy port hunting.

Peace.

Registry editing can be like swimming in shark infested waters.If you don't know what you are doing by changing registry settings it is always a good idea not to do that in the first place.

Ever seen a standard disclaimer of backing up registry before making any changes to it?
Let's see how to backup registry,in fact let's take a look on how to backup the system state data itself.

Basically,a system state data comprises of :
Boot files
COM+ Class Registration database
Registry


We will need a backup application to backup system state,the default ntbackup in Windows will work just fine for this.

1.Open ntbackup : Start>Run>ntbackup

2.Start the wizard mode.





3.Select Backup files and settings option.

4.Select Let me choose what to backup.

5.Drill down to My Computer>System State

6.Select the device where you want to backup the system state.(It is a good practise to keep multiple copies of backup on multiple devices).

7.The backup will commence and then select the Report option to view the overall details.


8.Rejoice knowing that you have backed up your system state data.

Hope it has been an informative post.

Peace.

In large deployments of Windows,customizing is needed as the boxes are centrally managed and monitored.

One common customization is to add support information to XP that basically lists the contact information of folks whom you need to get in touch with for any system related query.


Let's add that in XP.Here is how :

1.Create a new ini file named oeminfo.ini in Windows\System32 folder.
2.Add the following fields - [General] and [Support Information] as shown in the image.
3.The General field will display the string that will be listed under Computer : heading.Save the file.
4.The Support Information field will add a Support Information button which when clicked will display the required support information.

Peace.

Using remote desktop to access some systems on a regular basis (like say logging onto a domain controller or a file/application server daily) can be a chore if you type in the system name,user name,password,domain everytime you want to access it.

Why not save the RDP connection to each of the frequently accessed boxes so that all that we need to do is just double click the corresponding RDP file?
This will save a lot of time and also increase productivity :) .

To do this :

1.Click on Start>run>mstsc to bring up the Remote Desktop connection window.







2.Select Options to expand the window.

3.Enter the system name which needs to be accessed,the user name,password and domain if applicable.If you dont select the Save Password option,you will be prompted to enter one whenever the RDP file is accessed else you will directly get the remote screen.

4.Select Save As and specify the location where this rdp file will be saved.





5.All done!

Peace.

Double clicking on files that you don't know in Windows is somewhat dangerous.The danger increases especially if the file makes some changes in the system registry which you had not intended at all.

One such file is the .reg file.By default,on double clicking it will merge all the changes it has in the system registry.What if it was a malicious registry change?
How do we know what it has before merging it?

One safe way to deal with this is change the associated action which is binded by default to the file.Let's change the action so that whenever a .reg file is double clicked,it will open for editing and not merge anything.

To do this :

In Windows Explorer, choose Tools>Folder Options >File Types to open the File Types dialog box. Highlight the REG entry and click Advanced. Highlight the Edit action and click Set Default. The Edit action should turn bold. Click OK.

This will ensure that whenever a .reg file is double clicked,it will not merge the changes by default.The same can be done for any other file type using the File Types dialog box.

Hope it has been an informative post.

Peace.

It is important that you should have the best possible visibility while reading as well as working with Windows XP,not only this reduces the eye strain but also increases efficiency.

There is the ClearType technology that ships with XP but is not enabled by default.
Enabling it on a laptop or a LCD desktop will give much better results than enabling it on a CRT desktop.

Here is how it can be turned on :

To enable ClearType, right-click on the Desktop and choose Properties>Appearance> Effects. The Effects dialog box appears. Check the box next to "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts." Select ClearType from the drop-down box, click OK, then click OK again. You'll notice the difference in how type is displayed.

One thing about enabling this is that the effects are only seen after a login to system,not before it.
To make the ClearType effects before login to XP,a simple registry hack can be carried out.

1.Open registry editor (Start>Run>regedt32.exe)
2.Locate HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop
3.Open the FontSmoothingType entry and change its value data to 2
4.Exit the registry editor and reboot.

Peace.

A kernel is the core of any operating system,its something similar to a brain that can make decisions for the OS.

Wouldn't it be great if kernel performance can be optimised like making it make really fast decisions and make the applications launch faster and all other XP nirvana?

There is a registry hack that accomplishes this.When anything is stored in system RAM rather than stored in a paging area or a virtual memory,it will definitely be accessed much much faster.

By default in XP,the kernel is put up in paging area rather than the RAM thereby making it work by first accessing the paging area which is slower than the actual memory.

The following registry hack changes it :
1.Open registry editor (type - regedit in run box).
2.Edit the registry key : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive to a value of 1.
3.Save the changes and reboot the XP box once.

What this will do is simply turn off the kernel paging and instead force it to be in RAM thereby speeding access.(If you need to undo this change,turn the value back to 0 from 1 which will enable kernel paging).

Peace.