Does your Windows never seems to start fast enough ? Then here some possible reasons and fixes that might help you overcome this problem.
Fast Fix 1: Your computer could be loading device drivers for hardware you no longer use. To save on system resources, uninstall those drivers. Since a careless choice can cause your machine to lose an important function, however, create a restore point in System Restore before proceeding.
By default, Device Manager doesn't show devices that aren't currently connected to your system. To make them visible, press Windows-R to open the Run box, type cmd, and press Enter. At the command prompt, type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 and press Enter. Leave the command-prompt window open.
Now press Windows-R again, type devmgmt.msc, and press Enter. In the Device Manager window, choose View, Show Hidden Devices. Click the plus sign (+) next to each of the branches to examine all of the drivers on your system. Devices that are not currently connected appear with a pale version of the icon. If you come across a device that you're sure you no longer use, right-click it and choose Uninstall. Then follow the prompts shown on screen to complete the process. When you're done, close the command-prompt window to rehide your unconnected devices.
Fast Fix 2: Once you have mapped a network drive to a letter on your computer, Windows will automatically restore that connection by default whenever you log on. Since resuming network connections takes time, you can speed your startups by dropping the connections you aren't using.
Press Windows-E to launch Windows Explorer, and type Alt-T, D to open the Disconnect Network Drives dialog box. Pick the drives to disconnect, and click OK.
In the future, if you connect a drive only for the current session, simply enter its UNC path (this appears in the address bar when you select the drive in Explorer, and in the Run box). Or, if you use the Tools, Map Network Drive command in Explorer, make sure Reconnect at logon is unchecked before you click Finish.
Fast Fix 3: You'll free your system's memory and recover processor cycles by clearing out the clutter that starts each time you log in to Windows--and you may even discover some malware in the process. Check out the free Autoruns program from Microsoft-owned Sysinternals.
How do you distinguish the useful startup programs from the useless ones? You can consult Autoruns' built-in research tools, or you can check out the Startup Applications List. This searchable and downloadable list of common startup items provides a description and rating for each one, indicating how likely the item is to be required on a typical system.
Put Some Sizzle in Your Startups
Use BitLocker Drive Encryption without TPM chip
Windows Vista includes a new hard drive encryption feature called BitLocker Drive Encryption. BitLocker can be a very useful security feature for businesses and home users that have sensitive and confidential information stored on their computer. Unfortunately, BitLocker Drive Encryption by default requires a Trusted Platform Module (TPM Chip) version 1.2 or later installed in your computer. A lot of the computers and laptops on the market do not come with TPM chips installed since they are typically only found in premium model business computers. If you have Windows Vista Business, Ultimate or Enterprise but do not have a TPM chip, you can still use BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Hidden away in local group policy is a setting that will allow you to turn on the ability to use a USB storage device instead of a TPM key to store the encryption key. This is a great feature for users that don't have the latest high-end hardware because you can still use hard drive encryption. However, every time you turn on your computer, the USB storage device that has the encryption key located on it must be plugged in. Without it, your computer will not boot up. One BitLocker Drive Encryption is setup with a USB storage device, that USB storage device basically becomes the key to your computer.
Follow these steps to turn on the ability to use a USB storage device with BitLocker Drive Encryption on hardware that does not have a TPM device:
1. Click on the Start Button and key in 'gpedit.msc' and hit Enter.
2. Navigate through: Computer Policy, Administrative Templates, Windows Components and BitLocker Drive Encryption.
3. Right click on Control Panel Setup: Enable advanced startup options and select Properties.
Check Enabled and hit OK.
That's it and you are done.
Add Items to the "Send To" Menu in Windows XP
When you right click a file or a folder, you see a 'Send To' menu in the right click menu. This menu makes the task of transferring files from one place to another easy and without opening the destination folder. By using the Send To command, you can quickly send a file to different locations including a floppy disk, your desktop, another person using e-mail, or the My Documents folder. The SendTo folder contains the shortcuts for the destinations that are displayed on the Send To menu. Every user on the computer has a SendTo folder and can customize its contents.
By default, the Send To menu in Windows XP lists the following commands (destinations):
• Compressed (zipped) Folder
• Desktop (create shortcut)
• Mail Recipient
• My Documents
• 3 1/2 Floppy (A:)
• CD Drive
To add a destination to the Send To menu, you must add a shortcut to the SendTo folder. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type sendto, and then click OK.
3. Add a destination by doing one of the following:
• Use the drag-and-drop operation to move the item that you want to the SendTo folder; to do so, right-click, and then click Create Shortcuts Here.
-or-
• Point to New on the File menu, and then click Shortcut.
Follow the instructions in the Create Shortcut Wizard.
A new shortcut is created in the SendTo folder, and it is displayed on the Send To menu.
To delete a destination from the Send To menu, just delete that shortcut file from the SendTo folder.
Editing The Right Click Menu
When you install some softwares, they add their own options to the right click menu. This can slow down the system as it needs to get all the files ready when you right click. Especially, the compression tools like WinRar & WinZip add their options to the right click menu. A lot of options in the right click menu makes it look untidy too. If you don't need some of the options, then you can customize the menu.
One way is through Registry editing. Here is the Registry Setting.
- 1. Go to Run and type in Regedit.
- Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers, This is the where programs attach to right click menu, This is a universal right click. To make the specific right clicks, you need to go to specific type of file in this section.
- You simply delete the keys you do not want.
File Menu Tools is a tool which can do this for you. Through this software you can add more options provided by the software, and you can remove the contents you want. The only thing is that you should know which files to look for and editing which file will make the correct changes.
Try out this software & customize your right click menu according to your own needs.
Windows or Notepad error ??
This is really very amazing.
Step 1: Open Notepad
Step 2: Write following line in the notepad -
this app can break
Step 3: Save this file as xxx.txt
Step 4: Close the notepad.
Step 5: Open the file again.
What did you see..??
That's something wierd !!
Browse the web using MS Calculator ..
Access the internet via your standard Microsoft Calculator ...
U can do this for fun or when your browser is messed up for some unexplainable reason ...
Steps ...
1. Open your MS Calculator. This is normally found in Start => All Programs => Accessories => Calculator.
2. Open the help-window by pressing the F1 key.
3. Click the top-left corner icon of the help window once (Standard is a Document with a Questionmark).
4. Select 'Jump to URL' .
5. Type your address into the avaliable field, but remember to type http://, and not just www. (or equivalent).
Have fun !!!
Auto Logon In XP
Would you ever like to login in Windows without putting in login details ?? Well, if you are the administrator of your computer then you can force a user to login without putting in the login details. You can easily save some time by skipping the login screen completely, and coming directly to the desktop.
For automatically Login to XP just follow these steps ..
- Click Start –> Run, and type “control userpasswords2″
- You will see a new Window, now in that window, Untick “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”.
- Click OK, and the you will see a new window asking you to type in the username and password with default username as Administrator.
- There you can put in the username you want to specify and put in the login details, click OK, and thats it, you are done with this.
This was so simple. Do try that if you are having different user accounts on a single computer, you can type in the guest account login details as well.
Lock any Folder , without any Software ..
If u wanna lock any folder of your's without any Folder Locking tool , then here is a simple solution.
Suppose you have a folder named “TEST”, and you want to lock it.
Just follow the steps and see the result.
1. Open a notepad and copy paste the code ; “ren test test.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”, without quotes.
2. Save this file as “loc.bat”.
3. Open notepad again and paste in the code ; “ren test.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} test”, without quotes, and save this file as “key.bat”.
4. Just paste both these files where your folder is located. Run the LOC file and your folder will turn into Control Panel.
5. To unlock that you need to run the KEY file and everything will become back to normal.
This is very basic kind of locking but it is definitely cool ..
And remember , don't get yourself locked up by deleting the key files without unlocking the folder ..
Have a good locking time !!
Create ShutDown , LogOff and Restart Shortcuts ..
In Windows you can always Shutdown, Restart and Logoff (in Xp). You can create your own shortcut icons for these. Lets see the one by one.
Assuming that c is your drive in which your OS is installed ...
1. For Shutdown :- “c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -s -f -t 00“.
2. For Restart :- “c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -r -f -t 00“.
3. For Log Off :- “C:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -l -f -t 00“.
Shutdown Your Computer Within Seconds ..
If you want to shut down your computer in a hurry, or if a frozen application prevents you from shutting down in the normal ways, then you can use the following procedure to Shutdown your computer.
This method is absolutely safe, but you won’t get even a single opportunity to save your open documents.
- To perform this emergency shutdown, press Ctrl+Alt+Del to display Task Manager.
- Open the “Shut Down” menu and hold down the Ctrl key and click Turn Off. Poof! your system is Off within Seconds. You don’t even get a second thought to think upon.
Speed up the Start Menu ..
The default speed of the Start Menu is pretty slow, but you can fix that by editing a Registry Key. Fire up the Registry Editor and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ MenuShowDelay
By default, the value is 400. Change this to a smaller value, such as 0, to speed it up.
If this doesn't work for some reason, then you might try the following: Navigate to Display Properties then Appearance then Effects and turn off the option titled Show menu shadow. You will get much better overall performance.
10 Things U May Not Know About Windows XP
1. It boasts how long it can stay up. Go to the Command Prompt in the Accessories menu from the All Programs start button option, and then type ’systeminfo’. The computer will produce a lot of useful info, including the uptime. If you want to keep these, type ’systeminfo > info.txt’. This creates a file called info.txt you can look at later with Notepad. (Professional Edition only).
2. You can delete files immediately, without having them move to the Recycle Bin first. Go to the Start menu, select Run… and type ‘gpedit.msc’; then select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer and find the Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin setting. Set it. Poking around in gpedit will reveal a great many interface and system options, but take care — some may stop your computer behaving as you wish. (Professional Edition only).
3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter ‘rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation’ in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That’s it — just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that’s not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.
4. For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include ‘eventcreate’ and ‘eventtriggers’ for creating and watching system events, ‘typeperf’ for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and ’schtasks’ for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options.
5. XP has IP version 6 support — the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Type ‘ipv6 install’ into Run… (it’s OK, it won’t ruin your existing network setup) and then ‘ipv6 /?’ at the command line to find out more. If you don’t know what IPv6 is, don’t worry.
6. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you’ve got a fast machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files alone by typing ‘regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll’ at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can change things back by typing ‘regsvr32 zipfldr.dll’.
7. Windows key + Break brings up the System Properties dialogue box; Windows key + D brings up the desktop; Windows key + Tab moves through the taskbar buttons.
8. Internet Explorer 6 will automatically delete temporary files, but only if you tell it to. Start the browser, select Tools / Internet Options… and Advanced, go down to the Security area and check the box to Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed.
9. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.
10. You can rename loads of files at once in Windows Explorer. Highlight a set of files in a window, then right click on one and rename it. All the other files will be renamed to that name, with individual numbers in brackets to distinguish them. Also, in a folder you can arrange icons in alphabetized groups by View, Arrange Icon By… Show In Groups.
