HOWTO : change the location of Desktop folder at Windwos 7

If like me you would also like to change the location of your Desktop folder(security reasons or willing to share the same Desktop on all of your computers), keep reading.


The solution is pretty simple :-) Simply go to following path : 
C:/users/name/Desktop
Then right click on the Desktop folder and then choose properties. After it click on "Location tab" and there you can change the location of the Desktop folder.


in XP, it is the same story but a little bit more complicated as you should go to registery(Start->Run->regedit) and change the value of this entry in registry : 


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Desktop

Setting default email program at windows xp

• Right-click on the Start 
• Select Properties 
• Click on Customize... next to the selected Start menu. At the bottom, you see E-mail and you can choose the e-mail program 
• you are done & just click OK

How to run Remote Desktop from CMD or RUN

To run Remote Desktop from CMD(windows command line) or run in start menu write :

mstsc.exe

or just simply

mstsc

Enable remote desktop from CMD

Go to CMD and then run this command line at your command promt, Remote Desktop is enabled :

reg.exe add "HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\terminal server" /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

How to turn on automatic logon in Windows XP

You can use Registry Editor to add your log on information. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
3. Using your account name and password, double-click the DefaultUserName entry, type your user name, and then click OK.
4. Double-click the DefaultPassword entry, type your password under the value data box, and then click OK.
   
   If there is no DefaultPassword value, create the value. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. In Registry Editor, click Edit, click New, and then click String Value.
   2. Type DefaultPassword as the value name, and then press ENTER.
   3. Double-click the newly created key, and then type your password in the Value Data box.
   If no DefaultPassword string is specified, Windows XP automatically changes the value of the AutoAdminLogon registry key from 1 (true) to 0 (false) to turn off the AutoAdminLogon feature.
5. Double-click the AutoAdminLogon entry, type 1 in the Value Data box, and then click OK.
   
   If there is no AutoAdminLogon entry, create the entry. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. In Registry Editor, click Edit, click New, and then click String Value.
   2. Type AutoAdminLogon as the value name, and then press ENTER.
   3. Double-click the newly created key, and then type 1 in the Value Data box.
6. Quit Registry Editor.
7. Click Start, click Restart, and then click OK.

After your computer restarts and Windows XP starts, you can log on automatically.

If you set a computer for automatic logon, anyone who can physically gain access to the computer can also gain access to everything that is on the computer, including any network or networks that the computer is connected to. Additionally, if you turn on automatic logon, the password is stored in the registry in plain text. The specific registry key that stores this value is remotely readable by the Authenticated Users group. Therefore, only use this setting if the computer is physically secured and if you make sure that users who you do not trust cannot remotely see the registry.

Source : Microsoft Support

How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first)

I found this on Ubuntu Forums and found it very cool way to have dual operating system(Windows & Linux) beside eachother. Although this one is written for Windows7 but it works with Vista and XP. If you have Windows installed on your pc, you do not need to go through these troubles. The reason is that while you are installing Linux, Grub automaticly detects that you have one operating system already on your system and you are going to have one Linux beside it, and the result is that it will give you a list of operating systems to choose on each booting of your computer. But when you have Linux installed and suddenly you want to have Windows beside it as well, there would come troubles as Microsoft does not care about your wishes to have two operating systems beside each other(as Linux does). So you have to move it a little bit and do things manually as it is written in this very useful tutorial. I hope you find it useful as well.

Original tutorial :

I have recently seen many posts from people trying to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 beta, but not succeeding. So I tried it out myself and found a solution.
Index
1. Obtain a copy of Windows7.
2. Partition your disk with gparted.
3. Install Windows7.
4. Re-install Grub.
5. Edit Grub to List Windows 7.
6. Have Fun.
__________________________________________________ ________________________________

1. Obtain a copy of windows 7.

Official Microsoft Link - http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...FRE_EN_DVD.iso

*This Link Is Now DEAD Go to the Microsoft website and get your own download. Requires java*

*You can also find a torrent of this but for legal reasons I cannot provide a link. *


2. Partition your disk

**This does go wrong in some cases, if in doubt back up your valuable data.**

Boot from a Ubuntu live cd or a gparted live cd.
Start up gparted, If ubuntu is on the whole disk you need to re-size it by at least 8 gb for Windows 7. (Make sure windows 7 is on the second partition to make it easier for grub) You will be left with some unallocated space on your hard disk if you want you can partition it to NTFS or you can do it later on the windows install.

3. Install Windows 7

Follow the on screen instructions, Select the un-partitioned space to format and install windows on, or if you already made it NTFS choose your NTFS partition.

**It will ask for a product key but you have 30 days to do that. Note: Beta keys will work with the RC**


4. Re-install GRUB

Now you have windows 7 but it has completely eaten your boot loader so you need to re-install grub.
Boot from the Ubuntu live CD and go to terminal.
Type in terminal:

"sudo grub"
"grub> find /boot/grub/stage1"

That should return your Ubuntu partition in the form of (hdX,Y), use that:

grub> root (hdX,Y)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

(you don’t need to type the grub> bit)

That has re-installed grub but you can no longer see windows7

5. Edit grub.
Go to terminal from normal ubuntu and type :

“sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst”

A large text file will open and at the bottom leave a line and add this:

title windows 7 beta (Loader)
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

(Do not type this line but if that does not work on re-boot try “hdo,0 or hd0,2” and so on until it works.)

Now that is done you can re-boot into windows 7 and ubuntu happily

******************Edit***********************
Hi
I have remembered that if you also have vista installed on your machine when you in install 7, that windows 7 will add itself to the vista bootloader.

So You will need to point grub to the vista partition so it will load the vista loader and give you the option for 7 and vista.

Also To work out what partition number your 7 partiton is use gparted it will give you results like "Windows 7 sda2" that means hda0,2 or if you have two internal hard drives than change the tab in the top right to the appropriate disk. Then take note of the sda2 but as it is on the 2nd drive it will be hda1,2. And so on..........

Source

Windows was unable to find a certificate to log you on to the network>MyNetwork

I am able to connect to the internet(I can load pages, messenger, everything) through my router but windows is giving me the message"Windows was unable to find a certificate to log you on to the network -> MyNetwork".

"Windows was unable to find a certificate to log you on to the network>My Network"That's caused by improperly setting the encryption to WPA-RADIUS instead of WPA-PSK on the client. The router and the client are both trying to find a RADIUS server with which to authenticate. Since you don't have one, it complains using Microsoft techno babble. Change the encryption to WPA-PSK (pre-shared key) on both ends.

Codec Pack for WMP

Wanna watch divx files not in other popular(good) media players but crappy Windows Media Player, oh well you need to pimp it up then :

http://www.xpcodecpack.com/

This is a package of different codecs which will update your Windows Media Player to play different files(avi, ...).

File Systems for Harddisk, which one to choose ?

There are two different file system formats compatible with Windows operating systems – NTFS and FAT 32 (MS-DOS). Use the information below to determine which format is best for you.

Use NTFS if…
...you will be using the drive only with Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista (performance will generally be greater when compared to FAT 32). This file system is compatible in read only mode with Mac OS X 10.3 and higher. See technical note at left for information on the 2TB volume size limitation under Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 2000.

Use FAT 32 (MS-DOS) if…
...you will be using your drive with both Windows and Mac OS X 10.3 or sharing the drive between Windows 2000 and Windows XP or Windows Vista. Maximum single file size is 4GB.

source : Lace documentations on the RAID product

2TB limit on 32bits Windows systems

Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 2000 do not support volumes greater than 2TB. Windows XP x64, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Vista Enterprise/Ultimate (32- and 64-bit versions) do, but in order to create volumes bigger than 2TB from these operating systems, you must convert the disk to GPT file system.

FAT 32
FAT is an acronym for File Allocation Table, which dates back to the beginnings of DOS programming. Originally, FAT was only 16 bits, but after the second release of Windows 95 it was upgraded to 32 bits, hence the name FAT 32. In theory, FAT 32 volume sizes can range from less than 1MB all the way to 2TB. It is the native file system of Windows 98 and Windows Me, and is supported by Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. When FAT 32 is used with Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista though, volume size is limited to 32GB (by the Windows partition utility, i.e. Disk Manager), and the individual file size is limited to 4GB.

NTFS
This acronym stands for New Technology Filing System, and it is the native file system for Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. NTFS offers several features that are not available with FAT 32; i.e. file compression, encryption, permissions, and auditing, as well as the ability to mirror drives and RAID 5 capabilities. The minimum supported volume size for NTFS is 10MB, with a maximum of 2TB when initialized in MBR format or without a limit when initialized in GPT format, with no limit to file size. Volumes created in NTFS can only be directly accessed (not through shares) by Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista without resorting to help from third-party products.

source : Lace documentations on the RAID product

Installing Windows XP on the Asus EEE 1000HE

Installing Windows XP on the Asus EEE pc using a single USB flash drive.


Please note this tutorial works on all computers not just the Asus EEE PC.
To complete this tutorial you need a 32bit version of Windows XP or Windows Vista installed on your home PC.

What you'll need:
USB_PREP8 (alternative download)
PeToUSB (alternative download)
Bootsect.exe (alternative download)
Special Note: If you use the program Nlite be sure to keep the manual installation files as the USB_prep8 script relies on these files.

Extract the files in Bootsect.zip
The next step is to extract USB_prep8 and PeToUSB.
Next copy the PeToUSB executable into the USB_prep8 folder.
Inside of the USB_prep8 folder double click the executable named usb_prep8.cmd.

The window that opens will look like this:

Press any key to continue

You next window will look like this:These settings are preconfigured for you all you need to do now is click start.
Click Yes and go on ...
Once the format is complete DO NOT close the window just leave everything as it is and open a command prompt from your start menu (type cmd in the search bar or run box depending on your version of windows.).

Inside of the command windows go to the directory you have bootsect.exe saved.
(use the cd directoryname command to switch folders)

Now type "bootsect.exe /nt52 F:" NOTE F: is the drive letter for my USB stick if yours is different you need to change it accordingly. What this part does is write the correct boot sector to your USB stick, this allows your PC to boot from the USB stick without it nothing works.
Please note: When running the bootsect.exe command you cannot have any windows open displaying the content of your USB stick, if you have a window open bootsect.exe will be unable to lock the drive and write the bootsector correctly.

If all went well you should see "Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes."(screen shot below)
Now you can close this command prompt (don't close the usbprep8 one by mistake) and the petousb window.

You window you see now should look like this:

Mine looked like this : (T: as temp drive, F: as my USB and the XP directory as I:\, which was a virtual drive)If it doesn't try pressing enter.

Now you need to enter the correct information for numbers 1-3.
Press 1 and then enter. A folder browse window will open for you to browse to the location of you XP setup files (aka your cdrom drive with xp cd in)
Press 2 and enter a letter not currently assigned to a drive on your PC
Press 3 and enter the drive letter of your USB stick
Press 4 to start the process.

The script will ask you if its ok to format drive T:. This is just a temp drive the program creates to cache the windows installation files. Press Y then enter.
Once it's done formating press enter to continue again
You can now see the program copying files to the temp drive it created. Once this is done press enter to continue again.
Next you will see a box pop up asking you to copy the files to USB drive yes/no you want to click yes.
and then you will observe copying operation ...
Once the script has completed copy files a popup window asking if you would like to USB drive to be preferred boot drive U: select YES on this window.
Now select yes to unmount the virtual drive.
Ok we are done the hard part, close the usbprep8 window.
Now make sure your EEE pc is configured with USB as the primary boot device.
Insert your USB drive and boot up the EEE.

On the startup menu you have two options, select option number 2 for text mode setup.

From this point on it is just like any other windows XP installation delete/recreate the primary partition on your EEE pc and format it using NTFS. Make sure you delete ALL partitions and recreate a single partition or you will get the hal.dll error message.

Once the text mode portion of setup is complete it will boot into the GUI mode (you can press enter after the reboot if your too excited to wait the 30 seconds)

Once the GUI portion of setup is complete you will again have to boot into GUI mode this will complete the XP installation and you will end up at you XP desktop. It is very important that you DO NOT REMOVE THE USB STICK before this point. Once you can see your start menu it is safe to remove the usb stick and reboot your pc to make sure everything worked.

This method has advantages over all current no cdrom methods of installing XP to the EEE. You do not have to copy setup files in DOS to the SSD and install from there. It gives you access to the recovery console by booting into text mode setup, and it gives you the ability to run repair installations of XP if you have problems later on.

I hope this worked out for you and please post feedback to the comments section.
Please note due to the amount of comments this article has received you must now click on "Post a Comment" below the existing comments to view the most recent feedback in a popup window.

Learnt at this Source but implemented for 1000HE with extera notes that you should take care of for this version by ME

My Review, Eee style ...

My review of my new brand Asus Eee 1000HE ...

The Asus Eee 1000HE comes in dimensions of 266mm(W) x 191.2mm(D) x 28.5mm~ 38mm(H) and weights 1.45 kg. You can find it in black, white, blue, pink and silver but I have not heard anyone ever seen that silver out of picture. The computer's design can make every single person confess to its beauty and stately at the same time. The shining black lid gives her a gorgeous look and at the same time can be counted as one of its cons(-). Although the shining black is fascinatingly beautiful, it can get easily the fat from your fingerprints very easily on her and it is not the best thing you want to see on a black beauty. But you don't need to worry as it comes with a cool soft handkerchief to clean it.

The screen is a 10” LED Backlight WSVGA screen (1024x600) and I really liked it. The best resolution you get 1024x600 while actually you can have 1024x768 but don't bother it doesn't fit the screen. I mean the resolution is good enough for Windows but not for Linux. For Linux it actually is a little bit too small ... Specially for the terminal, you dont get to see all the info on the screen by default unless you change the fonts size.

The most fascinating part of this pc is its battery. It does have a 6-Cell Li-ion Battery which is being advertised to last 9.5 hrs, and of course it is mentioned that operation lifetime subject to product model, normal usage conditions and configurations. Learn more about battery life >> My experience showed around 7-8 hours battery life which is lovely to go around with a charger free laptop and enjoy it :-) I should mention battery life under Linux OS is less than Windows.

If I want to keep talking about the stuffs around this black beauty I would have to talk about the I/O devices which can be mentioned as followed :
1 x VGA Port (D-sub 15-pin for external monitor)
3 x USB 2.0 => (2 on the right and one on the left side)
1 x LAN RJ-45
2 x Audio Jack (Head Phone / Mic-in)
Card Reader: MMC/ SD(SDHC)

On the top, the keyboard is not the best keyboard I have had(IBM) but it is okay I guess. With a double Fn buttons which the extera one is not placed well enough. Also another negative point of this keyboard is a replaced and smaller shift button beside the new Fn one that makes things worse and takes its time to get used to it. The keyboard also suffers from lack of direct Page up,Page down, Home and End button ... I do doubt the good quality and solid built of it as well. It just doesnt look very stable and a quality keyboard ... But come on the whole damns thing is very cheap and even the keyboard is not that bad ...

The touchpad is the other pros of this machine. It is kind of an Apple touchpad with poorer quality. You can scroll with 2 fingers and this will mostly prevent a lot of bugs that nearly every single other brand notebook suffers from. They all mix up Zooming in and out in the browsers and it is really bothersome ...

And the last and not the least is a tiny little 1.3M pixel webcamera which is just okay and will never reach Apple webcam quality(IT IS CHEAP :-D).

Now that we covered the outfit, lets get in the beautiful box then ;-)

The CPU is a Intel® Atom N280, the memorry is by default a 1 GB DDR2(which I made it 2 GB) and finally the H.D.D which is a 160GB HDD plus 10GB Eee online Storage. The Eee Storage service is complimentary for the first 18 months. You can register account information for 6 months extension (depend on country). The computer also has very good Wifi and Bluetooth units. The device enjoys having WLAN 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth2.1 + EDR.

The worst part of the computer was a very NOT STANDART Bios which took me 2 hours to find out how to boot my computer from USB. The complicated non standard BIOS configuration does not recogonize USB memorry as a removable device but a H.D.D !!! So it leads to this that you should first choose the USB as the first Hard Disk and then choose to boot from this hard disk from the boot menu.

My computer in Norway came out with Win XP Home edition. My problem with it was that it did not have an English version and I had to choose between Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Samisk !!! Well I formatted the whole disk and installed a XP pro on it from USB(Tutorial comes in the next post) for emergency use and a nice Fedora Linux as my first O.S. :-)

That's it and I can come to conclusion here ... Although I underlined all the negetaive points I found but this is my dream pc after my IBM crashed last November(3 years old). Since then I had changed 4 different computers and was not sattisfied with any of them and thansk to a very good customer service of an IT shop here in Norway, I could give them back in 30 days trying period :-) The machine is small, light, good looking and has nearly everything I need.

CMD, how to shutdown/restart windows

If you getting tired of every time have to clicking Start menu, and then click on Turn Off Computer, and then still have to click on Turn Off or Restart or Log Off in order to log off, restart or shut down your computer, and feel that it’s time wasting, you can create a one-click shortcut that allows the user to shutdown or restart Windows, or go into standby or hibernate mode, with just a single click on the shortcut itself. Best of all, the shortcut can be put at any place - desktop, Quick Launch bar, or Start Menu, and can even launch the shutdown or restart process from command line or command prompt.

In order to shutdown or restart the Windows with just one click shortcut or from command prompt or command line, users can use shutdown command line utility/command that comes with Windows 2000 (with the Resource Kit installed) and Windows XP or Windows Vista (native). To access shutdown command, simply go to DOS command prompt by clicking on Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt or Start -> Run and then type in Cmd to launch a command prompt window.

To create a one-click shortcut to shutdown the Windows computer, right click on your desktop or any folder (or click at File at toolbar), and then select New, and then click on Shortcut. A New Shortcut wizard will ask for location of this item. In the text box, type “shutdown -s -t 01″ (without quotation marks). Click on Next when done. When ask for a name for the shortcut, give any descriptive name you prefer, such as Shutdown. Then click on Finish, and you can now use the shortcut created to shut down PC immediately after click.

If you want to create a shortcut that quick restart the Windows instead of shutting down the computer, follow the above instruction, but “shutdown -s -t 01″, key in “shutdown -r -t 01″ for location of this item. Again, give a proper descriptive name to the shortcut, such as Restart, and the shortcut is ready to be used to restart the Windows right after click.

As in the shutdown command above, -s parameter will shutdown the computer, while -r will shutdown and restart the computer. -t 01 set the timeout or time to lapse in seconds for a shut down or restart to begin. By default, if no -t argument is specified, shutdown command will wait for 30 seconds countdown before shutdown or restart. The best part for shutdown command is that it can abort a system shutdown, by using -a as the option for shutdown, i.e. “shutdown -a”. There are other options or parameters that available, and users can view all of the flags with “shutdown /?” command at command prompt.

The options available for shutdown are:

No arguments : Display this message (same as -?)
-i : Display GUI interface, must be the first option
-l : Log off (cannot be used with -m option)
-s : Shutdown the computer
-r : Shutdown and restart the computer
-a : Abort a system shutdown
-m \\computername : Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort
-t xx : Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds
-c “comment” : Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters)
-f : Forces running applications to close without warning
-d [u][p]:xx:yy : The reason code for the shutdown

click here for the source

XP Pro logs off immediately after you log in

Got a problem that both in Windows itsself and in Safe Mode you can not login ? It logs off right after entering your username & password, well here is your way out of it :

Problem: Computer Logs off out when you login
Cause: Search Assistant (search bar aside the clock in windows)

3 Steps.

1.- Get into the recovery console (with boot disks, you can get them from microsoft page).

2.- Get the file userinit.exe from another NOT INFECTED computer. (located in windows/system32 folder)

3.- Overwrite the userinit.exe original file (from the infected computer) with the new one (use a cd or disk to transport it) (COMMAND: COPY e:/userinit.exe c:/windows/system32/userinit.exe)

4.- Rename the userinit.exe to wsaupdater.exe

5.- Exit and ENJOY.

Source : http://www.opentechsupport.net/forums/archive/topic/20552-1.html

Easily Set Default OS in a Windows Vista and XP Dual-boot Setup

If you are running a dual-boot setup with more than one Windows operating system, It's pretty easy to configure the default boot operating system with the GUI interface. Note that if you are using Windows Vista as one of the operating systems, you will need to make this change from Vista, not XP.

First, you'll need to right click on Computer and select Properties:

Next, click Advanced System Settings

Now click on the Settings button under Startup and Recovery

And just select the operating system you want to use:

Easy stuff.

PLAN B : bcedit command from command prompt

When you install Windows Vista as a dual-boot with your regular Windows XP partition, Vista is always set as the default OS. If you want to set XP as the default OS instead, there's a quick command you can run to change it back.

First you'll have to open an administrator command prompt. Type cmd into the search box, and then hit Ctrl+Shift + Enter to open it in administrator mode. You should be prompted for the UAC dialog.

Enter in the following command:

bcdedit /default {ntldr}

Example:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /default {ntldr}
The operation completed successfully.

Now when you reboot, it will set XP as the default.

Source :
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/easily-set-default-os-in-a-windows-vista-and-xp-dual-boot-setup/