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Windows Tips & Tricks!
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Permanently delete
files
If you want to permanently delete
files without moving them to Recycle
bin, hold down the Shift key while
pressing delete. If you don't want
the recycle bin altogether,
right-click the Recycle Bin and
click on Properties. On the Global
Tab, select Do not move files to the
Recycle Bin. If you enable configure
drivers independently, you can set
this up for the drivers you want.
Windows
System Configuration
A very useful tool included with
Windows is the System Configuration
Utility. Select Start > Run and type
'msconfig' in the Open box to launch
the application. The system
Configuration utility makes fiddling
with programs to launch at Startup
or editing autoexec.bat, config.sys
etc. a lot easier. To system
Configuration Utility also allows
you to crease a backup of your
system files. It would be a good
idea to use this before you begin
making changed.
Preview
Images
You can easily preview your Image
files by enabling "Web View" from
the toolbar or from the Windows
Explorer menu, select View > As Web
page. A better way to preview images
is as thumbnails instead of icons.
To enable this view in Windows
Explorer, right-click the folder you
want to preview and click on
Properties. Check the box against
Enable thumbnail view and click OK
to exit the dialog box. Now, form
the View menu, select Thumbnails. |
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Optimizing the Swap File
Windows uses a portion of the hard disk as RAM,
constantly swapping data between RAM and hard disk
as required. The speed of your hard disk is in the
order of 1000 times slower than that of your main
memory. Inefficient use of the swap file could
considerable slow down your system to a very great
extent. One of the best ways to speed up the swap
file usage is to create a permanent swap file. In a
permanent swap file, the file used for swapping
information has a fixed size and location on your
hard disk. When a temporary swap file is used, the
location and size of the file is determined by
application being used and is not predictable. Also,
since a temporary swap file is constantly written to
and is not fixed in size, it would be highly
fragmented across the partition that holds it. A
better option is to create the swap file on a
dedicated partition on your hard disk. By doing
this, the swap file will never be fragmented since
that partition is only being utilized by the swap
file itself. You can configure the swap file size
and location from Control Panel > System >
Performance > Virtual Memory. The size of the swap
file should be around 2.5 times the amount of RAM on
the system.
Dummy entries in
Add/Remove Programs list
Sometimes, even after program are uninstalled, or
due to the files being deleted instead of a
uninstalled, the entry in the Add/Remove Programs
list does not get deleted. To remove it form the
list: 1. Start the Registry Editor. 2. Open
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows /Current
Version/Uninstall.
3. Delete the program entry here. You can also use
TweakUI to do this.
Restart only Windows
When restarting Windows, you don't always need to go
to thought the BIOS initialization and POST. Instead
of simple clicking on Restart form the Shut Down
Windows dialog box, help down the Shift key as you
click on OK. This will restart only Windows. This is
particularly useful when you change some registry
entries or a few system settings.
Improve Removable Disk Drive
Performance
Windows gives you the option to use write-behind
caching to improve the performance of removable disk
drivers.
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Open control Panel > System > Performance and
click on File System.
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Check the Enable write-behind caching on all
removable disk drives check box under the
removable Disk tab and click OK
Note: If this
result in a problem with disk operations, uncheck the Enable
write-behind caching on all removable disk drives check box.
MS Office memory hoggers
A typical installation of MS Office installs Find Fast, an
indexing utility that loads at startup. This hogs system
resources by regularly indexing the entire hard disk(s). You
can improve performance of your computer by removing Find
Fast form your Startup folder. To reclaim the space used by
the Find Fast index, open Control Panel > Find Fast, select
your hard drives(s) and form the Index menu, click on Delete
Index. When you've deleted your Index, click on Close and
Stop form the Index menu. Another item installed in the
Startup folder is named Microsoft Office. This does nothing
apart from loading all MS Office libraries at startup to
speed up launching of any Office applications. Since this is
not necessary, you can delete this shortcut, too.
Stop Automatic Dialing
Many Internet applications or software are often set
to automatically dialup and connect. To setup
automatic dialing, open Control Panel > Internet
Options. Under the Connections tab, enable Never
dial a connection.
Automatic maintenance
The Windows Maintenance Wizard can automate a lot of
routine system maintenance tasks. To open this
wizard, choose Start > Programs > Accessories >
System Tools > Maintenance Wizard. It sets up the
Task Scheduler to regularly run Scandisk, Disk
Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup.
Clean Desktop
To hide all the icons on your Desktop, open the
Registry Editor and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft /Current
Version/Policies/Explorer. Add a DWORD value and
name it NoDesktop. Change it's value to 1. Close the
Registry Editor and restart Windows.
ToolTips
To disable ToolTips in Windows, open the Registry
Editor and navigate to HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Control
Panel/Desktop. Double-click UserPreferencemask and
change its value to 3E 00 00 00. Chose the Registry
Editor and restart Windows.
Speed up your modem
Even if your modem if apparently working well, the
baud rate of your COM Port might not allow you to
reach top-speed. To improve your port's speed:
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Click Start >Settings > Control
Panel > System.
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Click the Device Manager tab, and
click on the "+" sign next to Ports (COM & LPT).
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Select the port your modem uses,
click Properties, then click the Port settings tab
and set the Bits per second to 115200 bps. That way
you won't have a sort of filter on the Port.
Associations in a jiffy
To associate files of a certain type with a
different program, hold down the Shift key while
right-clicking on a file of that type and click on
Open With... from the context menu. Select the
program you want to open files of this type with and
enable Always use this program to open this type of
file. Henceforth, the file will always open with
this program when double-clicked.
A
clean Registry
As time passes the computer's registry accumulates a
lot of corrupted, unused, and unnecessary register
keys, especially if keys are not removed when you
uninstall a program. As a result, you might
experience problems and your machine might function
slower than expected. The latest version of
Microsoft's RegClean could delete a lot of such
registry junk. You can download this from
zdnet
Just search for RegClean and it will let you
download it. Best of all, it is free !!
Assigning passwords to
folders in win 98 and 2000
Right-click on empty space in the folder which you
want to protect and
select CUSTOMIZE THIS FOLDER, then choose CREATE
HTML DOCUMENT FOR THIS
FOLDER. Once the document is opened in Notepad,
scroll down until you see
<script language>="JavaScript"> Insert a blank line
after this string.
Then insert the following text.
var
pass = prompt("Enter the password")
if(pass != "YOURPASSWORD")
{window.location="C:"}
Hit the Enter key on your keyboard
Put
a password in the place of YOURPASSWORD but leave
the quotes. Save the
document, exit Notepad,
refresh the folder (or hit F5), enter your new
password, and the next time
you try to enter that folder,
you'll be prompted for your password. If you enter a
wrong password you'll
end up in C: drive!
This works on Windows 98 and 2000.
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