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My Disclosure Policy

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This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.

Don’t show boot screen when Windows starts

For those who don’t know what boot screen is, it’s a screen with the image of a window (if you haven’t changed it to some other image) that appears first when you start the computer. Many must be tired of looking at it all the time when turning on their PC’s. Some must have even wondered if they could just make it disappear for their screen. Your wish is my command and here is way you can do it. You might think that the procedure is very lengthy, annoying and too complex to do but it’s very simple. It’s the simplest anything could ever be. Here is how you do it:

1. Unhide all the hidden files and folders

2. Go to C: or whatever drive your OS is installed in

3. Open the file ‘boot.ini’ with notepad or wordpad

4. Search for the line ‘multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect’

5. think it’s the last line, add ‘/sos’ to it’s end

6. The new line should look something like this ‘multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /sos’

7. Save the file and restart

Walla, the boot screen is gone and the login seems also a little fast. And don’t get worried if some black screen appears. It’s nothing; Windows just check its file system. Try it. It’s not even a bit risky.

Screensaver

There are several free screensavers that you can get over internet. Even windows itself has got its own set of screensaver. Some screensavers are fun to watch. For those who don’t know what screensaver, shame on you. You don’t even know what screensaver is? Actually, I too don’t know the actual definition of screensaver but it’s that animation that comes in your monitor when you don’t use your mouse and keyboard for a time period that has been set. Seems simple but what it does is not just entertains us. A teacher of mine told me that, screensaver as its name refers, saves the screen/monitor. If your computer stays idle for a long period of time, then the lasers keep on hitting the same place of the screen which in a long run may damage the screen. So, what screensavers do is show animations of dynamic content in the screen so the lasers hit multiple places rather than a single spot. Hence, saves the screen. Interesting huh? Well, I was too, when I really knew what it did.

How long you’ve been running your computer?

This is a very small tweak but an interesting one and sometimes useful too. There may be times when you want to know for how long the computer has been on. Specially, this trick is for the parents who want to know for how long their kids have been hanging up in the computer playing games. Kids may say that they’ve opened the computer just few minutes ago. Kid, it’s time you tell the truth or else Daddy’s gonna be real angry when he finds out that you are lying to him. The command is simple and need to be executed in command prompt (cmd).

1. start -> run

2. type ‘cmd’ (without quotes) and enter

3. In the command prompt, type ‘systeminfo’ and enter

It will give you a list of information. The one you need is System Up Time which is down somewhere. You can also get several other information relating to your system through this command. Just scroll down the information and you will find information about OS manufacturer, version of the OS, processor info., physical and virtual memory, etc. It’s just a line of code just check it out. For advance use of this command type ‘systeminfo /?’ in the command prompt to get the details.

Change text on the start button of XP

Have you ever thought of putting your name in place of ‘Start’ in the start button of your XP? Well, don’t just stand and think …do it. By a use of a simple freeware and some change in the registry value you can write anything in place of start. For this you need to make change in the explorer.exe file in the C:\Windows and since explorer.exe is a binary file it requires a special editor. I personally used a freeware utility called Resource Hacker for the purpose. So can you. Download it from http://delphi.icm.edu.pl/ftp/tools/ResHack.zip.

First you need to back up the explorer file. Just copy it to some other location.

o Then start Resource Hacker

o Open the explorer.exe file and navigate you way to String Table

o Expand it and go to no. 37 if you are using XP layout and 38 in case of classic layout

o it select the no. 1033

o the right pane, look for word ‘Start’ in no. 578 or 595 probably

o Change the text to desired text you want

o Compile the script

o Save as in ‘c:\windows’ with some other name and Exit Resource Hacker

o Open Registry

o Navigate your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

o In the right pane click double click ‘Shell’ and change the value data to the name that you used to save the modified explorer.exe

Exit the registry, logoff or restart to see the effect taking place

Adding right-click menu items from files and folders

Well, I was going through my own post on removing right-click menu items from files and folders and I found that something was missing. People not only want to remove items, they also want to add items in their right-click, don’t they? First I thought that a little change in the previous post should do that. I thought that just adding a key in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers should do the trick but it didn’t. Then I searched for the tweak and finally found just to facilitate my readers with it. Just back up your registry first then follow the procedure.

Start -> run
Type ‘regedit’ (without quotes) and enter
The registry editor will open
Navigate yourself to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell
Right-click the Shell key and choose New -> Key
Name it anything, this will appear in the right-click menu
Then right-click the new key that you made and create another key
Name it ‘command’
Select ‘command’ and in the right-pane double click the default value
Enter the name of application(e.g. wordpad.exe) , click OK and exit the registry
The above process is for adding the item in the right-click of the folder only. To do same for files you need to navigate yourself to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell. If there is no shell key, create one and the rest of the process is same as above.

Enjoy this trick and please comment. Your comments are valuable to me.

Remove right-click menu items from files and folders

This here is also an interesting trick that one can use to modify; remove in this particular context the right-click menu items from files and folder. Everyone must have right-clicked a file and folders and I guess only few have noticed the items that are available. Among those few also one or two have ever wondered how these items came or wanted to remove items that are not much of their use. For those, it’s a jackpot. You can easily remove the items in the right-click of files and folders. It’s just a simpler registry tweak. You just need to know where and what to modify. Before doing any modification in the registry back up your registry in case any malfunction may occur, the system may crash. I remember once I changed a value in registry and the explorer didn’t opened.

Enough of gossips, lets move on with the process:

1. Start -> run
2. Type ‘regedit’ (without quotes) and enter
3. The registry editor will open
4. Navigate yourself to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers
5. Click on the ‘+’ sign to expand
6. You will see some of the programs that have added themselves to the right-click menu
7. Just delete the key or in the right pane double-click the default value and put dash ‘-’ infront of the value to disable it
8. Exit the registry

You will see the effect as soon as you exit the registry. There is no need to restart your computer.

The above process was just for removing item from right-click menu of the file. For removing items for the folders and drive step 1 has to be changed to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers respectively
Enjoy and keep reading.