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Archive for December, 2007

Caught A Virus?

Heard this one before? You must run antivirus software and keep it up to date or else your PC will get infected, you’ll lose all your data, and you’ll incur the wrath of every e-mail buddy you unknowingly infect because of your carelessness.You know th…

Backtracking EMAIL Messages

Tracking email back to its source: Twisted Evilcause i hate spammers… Evil or Very MadAsk most people how they determine who sent them an email message and the response is almost universally, “By the From line.” Unfortunately this symptomatic of the …

Disable automatic updating

To save memory and CPU time turn off the automatic update system in windows. You can always check manually for updates and most users have no problem with that. For those of you lazy bums out there you can leave this feature on but I warned you.

1. Open control panel.

2. (if using XPstyle control panel, click on performance and maintenance.)

3. Click on System.

4. Then click on the automatic updates tab and select Turn off automatic updating. If Service Pack 1 is installed uncheck Keep my computer up to date.

5. Click Ok.

High quality MP3 ripped by Windows Media Player

Windows media player on XP can encode high quality mp3. Here is how:

Install a mp3 codec, then make the following registry changes:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Settings\MP3Encoding
“LowRate”=dword:0000dac0
“MediumRate”=dword:0001f400
“MediumHighRate”=dword:0003e800
“HighRate”=dword:0004e200

Reboot and changes will be evident in media player options.

A better disk cleanup

A Better Disk Cleanup

This tip will show you how to create an unattended disk cleanup which will also empty your prefetch folder. This tip assumes you have Windows XP installed in c:\windows.

Step 1.
Create a new text file and place the following contents inside:

c:\windows\system32\cleanmgr.exe /dc /sageset: 1
c:
cd \
cd c:\windows\prefetch
del *.* /q

Step 2.
Save the file, changing the extension from .txt to .bat
For this tip’s purpose, we will call it clean.bat

Step 3.
Execute the file. This will run the Disk Cleanup program in a special mode which asks what items you will want cleaned when Disk Cleanup performs an unattended cleanup. Check the items you wish to have cleaned up, then click OK.

Step 4.
Right-click on the clean.bat file and click edit. Change the first line to read:

c:\windows\system32\cleanmgr.exe /dc /sagerun: 1

Step 5.
Save the file. You can execute this file in place of running Disk Cleanup, or, to have this program run unattended, run the Add Scheduled Task Wizard in the Control Panel and create a scheduled task using the clean.bat file you just created.

Note: This cleanup script will also clear windows prefetch directory. Often this directory can become cluttered with old appication and a cleaning would free up disk space but it will result in a one time performance decrease and windows has to rebuild the cache with active software afterwards.

Block incoming attacks

Limit your exposure to the outside world by blocking incomming connections.

Start > Settings > Control Panel > Network Connections
Right click on “Local Area Network” And go to “Properties”, In the scroll box, Click on “Internet Protocol (IP/TCP)” and then click on the “Properties” button, In the new window, Click on the “Advanced..” button, Then in the other new window go to the “Options” tab, Click on “TCP/IP Filtering” and hit “Properties”, Check off “Enable TCP/IP filtering (All adapters)” next In the Above “TCP Ports” Click on the Radio button “Permit Only” and then add in the ports that you want people to be able to access… If you’re running a web server add in 80, If you’re running an FTP server add in 21… And so on… Then hit “OK” And close all the other windows, And reboot when it asks you too.

This way you can close the ports that you do not need to be open to the outside world. An alternative to this tweak could be running a firewall or enabling windows built in firewall. Please note that in order for other computers to connect to you, for example sending a file over AOL Instant Messenger or using Windows Messenger to send a file, make sure that the required port is not blocked on your system. Otherwise, nothing will go through.

Adjust Graphics for Speed

Windows XP - has a lot of new cool looking visual elements however, those new elements take up more RAM and cause your computer to be less responsive. By tweaking your graphics settings, you can increase the performance of your computer.

To get started, Let’s reduce the color quality. This setting determines how many colors are displayed on your screen.

1. Right click on your desktop and select properties.
2. Click on the settings tab and adjust the color quality drop down box to Medium (16 Bit).
3. Click OK.

Next, let’s use the windows performance settings to optimize your computer for performance. This will revert back to the old Windows 2000 look as well as take away a lot of the fancy graphics effects. However, if you are really into performance, this is the price you have to pay.

1. Right click on the My Computer icon on your desktop or in your start panel and select properties.
2. Next, Click on the Advanced tab and hit the setting button under performance.
3. On the visual effects tab, select Adjust for Best Performance and hit OK.
4. Hit OK once more to exit system properties.

Now your computer will run slightly faster!

Changing location of My Documents

By default, the My Documents folder for your user account resides in the %Userprofile% folder:

Example: C:\Documents and Settings\Robert\My Documents
(Assuming your user account name is Robert)

If the system drive is running out of space and you want to redirect the My Documents folder to a different partition, follow this method:

• Create a folder in a different drive
• Assign appropriate folder permissions
• Open My Computer window.
• From Common Tasks pane, right-click My Documents and choose Properties.
• Type the target folder path and click Apply

Disable the Shutdown Event Tracker

Description:
If you are annoyed by the Shutdown Event Tracker, the new .NET Server feature, and don’t want to document the shutdowns in Event Logs especially in a testing environment, you can easily disable this feature in the Local Computer Policy MMC. This console is not in the Administrative tools by default, so you have to create it:

1. Open a blank MMC console by typing mmc from the command line.

2. From the empty console, click the File menu and select Add/Remove Snap-in or press Ctrl+M.

3. From the Add/Remove Snap-in page, click Add or Alt+D, choose Group Policy, select Local Computer and click finish.

4. From the Add Standalone Snap-in page, click Close. From the Add/Remove Snap-in page, click OK.

5. Expand Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System and in the right pane locate Display Shutdown Event Tracker.

6. Double-click the Display Shutdown Event Tracker and select Disabled.

7. Click OK to accept the policy change. Close the MMC console, saving it if prompted to so.

8. To refresh the the policy, enter the gpupdate command from the command line.

Control Font Size on Web Pages

I’ve noticed recently that Web-page designers seem to be competing to see how small a font they can use before readers need to break out a magnifying glass. Although small font sizes are only a minor annoyance when running in a low resolution (768 x 1024 or less), a small font size becomes a huge pain if you run a high-resolution setup (1600 x 1200 or greater), even on a large monitor.
Because these Web-page designers are trying to force a fixed font size on their viewers, using the View, Text Size menu option in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 6.0 doesn’t fix the problem. However, you can configure IE to ignore these attempts to give you headaches and take back control of the font size by performing these steps:

1. Launch IE.
2. Open Tools, Options, General.
3. Click the Accessibility button.
4. Select the Ignore Font Sizes on the Web page’s check box.
5. Click OK.

Following the above steps returns font-size control to you by overriding the font size that the Web page requests and using whatever font size you’ve chosen as the default on the View, Text Size menu. Another option if you have a wheel mouse is to place the cursor within the Web page and hold the Control key down. Move the wheel to either enlarge or diminish the font size (rather than to scroll the page). works on all windows even windows server 2003

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