Sunday, June 10, 2012

HACKING WINDOWS

******Changing the default launch Application******

1. Open up My Computer by clicking the desktop icon or on the icon in the Start panel.2. When you have My Computer displayed on your screen, click the Tools menu bar item
and select Folder Options.3. Once the Folder Options window appears, click the File Types tab.4. Navigate through the list of file extensions until you find the extension of the file for
which you want to change the default application. Because I want to change my MP3 player default launch application , I am going to select the MP3 file extension.When you find the file extension that you want to change, select it by clicking it.5. Click the Change button once you have your extension selected, The Open With properties window will load, asking you what program to load it with. It will show a list of common programs that you can choose from, but you are not limited to just those programs. Click the Browse button to navigate to any executable file on your computer to specify exactly what program you want to use if it is not on the list.6. Once you have the application selected that you want to use, just click the OK button to save your changes. You are now finished with changing the launch application.

******Removing items from the context menu******

1. Start up the Registry Editor by clicking the Start button and selecting Run. Then type
regedit in the box and click OK.2. When the Registry Editor appears, expand the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder. You
will now see a list of every file type that is set up on your computer.3. If the entry that you want to remove from the context menu appears in all context menus, such as the preceding Picozip example, you will have to expand the * folder.4. Now that you have the correct folder expanded, expand the Shellex and ContextMenu
Handlers folders. Your registry path should look like HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\
shellex\ContextMenuHandlers.5. Look through the list until you find the entry that you want to remove. Right-click the
folder of the entry and select Delete. You will find that identifying some of the programs
is easy. For example, Picozip is labeled Picozip. However, you may run into some items
that are listed using their application ID number or a vague name. If that is the case,
copy (Ctrl C) the application ID, which is formatted like this—{XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-
XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}—to the clipboard. You may have to expand the folder to see the ID. Then, once you have the ID copied to the clipboard, press Ctrl+F to bring up the Search box in regedit and paste the ID in the box. Next, just click Find and you should be able to find some other references to that same ID in your registry that also might give you some clues to what it is. If that does not work, try doing a search on Google to see if that turns up anything.6. Once you are finished removing all of the entries from your context menus, just close
Registry Editor and you are finished. Your changes will be in effect immediately.

******Revealing the super hidden files******

Revealing the super hidden system files is not very difficult at all. You can uncheck the boxon the list on the View tab of Folder Options, but where is the fun in that? Use the Registry Editor to turn this feature off:1. Click the Start button and select Run.2. Type regedit in the box and click OK to start up the Editor.3. Once regedit appears, navigate through HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.
4. Right-click ShowSuperHidden and select Modify.5. Change the value to 1 and click OK to save your changes.Now you will be able to see all of the files on your computer, including the super hidden system files.

******Fine-Tuning ClearType******

If you do not have ClearType enabled, follow these steps to get it turned on:
1. Right-click the desktop and select Properties.2. Click the Effects button on the Appearance tab.
3. In the second drop-down box, select ClearType under Use The Following Method To
Smooth The Edges Of The Screen Fonts.
4. Click OK to save your changes.
5. Select OK once more to close Display Properties and to apply the new settings.Now that you have ClearType turned on, it’s time to fine-tune its settings. Some users
complain that the new ClearType feature causes the text on their screen to look a little blurrycompared to standard font smoothing. ClearType was designed to smooth the fonts on the screen replacing jagged edges. If you are one of the users that do not like how ClearType looks,with the help of a very cool online tool, you can customize how ClearType looks. Using the online tool that is developed by Microsoft, it is possible to change the darkness and thickness of the text. This will allow you to make the text that appears on your monitor look crisper.
Follow these steps to fine-tune your ClearType settings:
1. Open up Internet Explorer and browse to www.microsoft.com/typography/
cleartype/.

2. Navigate to the ClearType Web interface to fine-tune the settings located on the right
side of the Web page.

3. As the ClearType Web interface is loading, you will be prompted to install the
ClearType Tuning Control. Click Yes on your screen so that this component will be
installed.

4. On the step 1 screen, click Next to move to the next step, because you already have
ClearType started.

5. On step 2 of the ClearType Tuning Control, you have to select if your monitor uses a
red-green-blue (RGB) color scheme or a blue-green-red (BGR) scheme. All LCD computer
monitors are made up of very tiny vertical lines of alternating colors. There are two
different ways that monitors lay out the lines on the screen. Some monitors alternate red,green, and blue lines (RGB) on the screen, whereas other monitors alternate blue, green,and red lines (BGR). ClearType has recently been updated to also support the BGR
format, and now users that have BGR monitors can select this feature. Don’t know
which one to select? It’s easy; just select the option that looks sharper on your screen and then click Next.

6. On step 3, you will be shown six different settings that you can choose to fine-tune
ClearType. Just select the item that looks best to you and click Finish.

******Branding system properties******

1. There are two parts to branding your computer. The first part is creating an image to be displayed on the System Properties General tab. The image must be a bitmap and beno
larger than 180 *115 pixels. Once you have created your file, name it oemlogo.bmp
and save it in C:\Windows\System32 folder.2. Now that you have to get the logo out of the way, you will need to create a file withall of the text that you want to appear on the screen next to it.To do this, open up Notepad
and key in the following code.
[General]
Manufacturer=StevePC
Model=HighwaySpecial 18G
[Support Information]
Line1=No support is provided in English
Line2=Guaranteed to work for at least 5 days
Line3=87% restocking fee for all returns
Line4=Created by shahid3. Once you have your text in the right format, click the File menu bar item and select Save As.4. Save the file as oeminfo.ini in your C:\Windows\System32 folder. Make sure to
change the Save As file type to All Files instead of .txt so that the file is saved with the
correct file extension.If everything went well, the next time you look at the System Properties screen, you should see your new branding information.
Comment please

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Computer Taking Too Much Time To Boot?

Computer taking too much time to boot can be an alarming issue to few problems, you are ignoring lately. So today let me point out all those problems along with their solutions. Here goes the list to speed up the booting time of Windows PC.

Too Many Start-Up Programs

Too many start-up programs can really affect the booting time of your computer. By default, computer needs only few essential programs to boot up completely. Rest, you can disable them as they are only adding to the booting time of your computer. By accessing the System Configuration from Msconfig.exe, you can disable the unwanted start-up programs. Here’s how?

How to disable Start-up program?

Click on start, type msconfig in search bar, and click on msconfig program.
Under Startup Tab, remove all the unwanted start-up programs like Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Google Updates, Internet search bars. But don’t disable any essential one’s in the process. If you are not sure about any program, then better leave it or you can use Soluto to guide regarding the same. Soluto is highly recommended for beginners or novice users.
Click on Apply and OK to confirm.
2. Defragmentation

If you are not defragmenting your Hard Disk on a scheduled basis, then this can also add up to system’s booting time. How? With time your hard disk will become fragmented which causes a single file to get sprawled on different locations. So to retrieve such files, system will surely going to take too much time. To avoid the fragmentation issues, it’s better to defragment the hard disk on a regular basis or you can say once a week or two. You should also defragment your hard disk after you delete huge amount of data from your computer system. Here’s how to do that?

Click on My Computer.
Right Click on the Primary Drive(mostly C:/). Select Properties, then move on to Tools.
Click on Defragment now. The process may take few minutes or more to complete.

3. Disk Errors

Disk Error is the another problem which sometime can cause fatal issues too. So it’s always recommended to check your disk for such errors. Upon doing so, computer system also fixes the file system error and recover bad bad sectors on hard disk too. Same as the above process mentioned in the Defragmentation part.

Click on My Computer.
Right Click on the Primary Drive. Select Properties, move to Tools.
Under Error Checking, click on Check now to fix the file system errors and to recover the bad sectors. If you are doing so for your Primary Drive, then it will schedule a Error Checking at the boot up time. Error checking will takes place when you next start up your system.

4. Low RAM

Upgrading RAM significantly decrease the booting time of your computer system. I recommend more than 512MB or better make it a 1GB RAM if you are using Windows XP, or at least 2GB of RAM if you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7.

5. Unused Hardware

Why allow your computer system to waste time on loading hardware drivers, you are not using at all. You can enable them when you want. So it’s better to disable all those drivers installed in respect to use the hardware which you are not using now. Here’s how to do that.

Click on Start, type Device Manager in the search bar.
Click on Device Manager, which will list all the hardware drivers.
Right click and disable the unwanted one’s.

6. Low Disk-Space

If your Primary Drive is struggling for disk space, then this also adds up to the booting time of your computer system. So make room for disk space by deleting all the junk files or by shifting the application program to the other drives.

7. Use a Good Anti-Virus

Malwares can increase the booting time of your computer system. To avoid, use a good Anti-Virus and always keep it up to date. Scan your computer system once in a week or daily if possible. You can use Microsoft Security Essentials, AVG Anti-Virus, Avast or NOD 32,kaspersky. Use anyone of them and always keep them up to date.

8. Uninstall Programs Correctly

uninstall programs correctly computer system

If you are deleting the unwanted programs using the right click and delete method from where they are stored in the Primary Drive then this can leads to enormous booting time of your computer system. Do not right click and delete the unwanted programs. Because upon doing so the computer leaves some junk in your registry files. Follow the right way to uninstall the unwanted programs off your computer system.

Click on My Computer.
Go to Uninstall or change a program.
Double Click the program to uninstall.

9. Take Care Of Your Hardware

Clean up your hardware once or twice in a month, make sure that the connections are fixed properly. Blow out that dust off of the fans inside in the cabinet. Connect all the hardware properly. Not only it will help you a bit in boosting up the booting time, but it will also lead you to enjoy a much faster computer system. Also, upgrade your hardware from time to time. Move on with the generation.