Add Defragment to your right click context menu

By DustinPosted on

Sometimes, you want quick access to defragment your hard drives. Well, you can save yourself a few clicks by adding the Defragment command to your right click context menu. This can come in handy (although it does nothing to speed up the defrag process itself).

1. Go to Start, type in regedit and press enter (Or you can go to Start, Accessories, Run and type regedit).

2. Navigate to the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshell.

3. Name it defrag (this name can be anything, really).

4. On the right pane, double click the Default value and name the Value Data field with “Defragment“. This text is going to be what you see when you right click a drive, so it is also custom.

5. Right click on the defrag key that you made earlier and choose New and Key.

6. Name it command.

7. Double click the Default value of this key, and change the Value Data with defrag %1 -v.

8. Now, when you right click a drive, you will have the Defragment command available. It does open a Command prompt to do it’s work.

Can I delete the Windows.old file?

By DustinPosted on

If you do an upgrade using Windows Vista, you end up with a directory called “Windows.old”. Sometimes, this folder can be quite huge! So, many people ask if they can just delete the folder. In a word: yes.

However, there is a quick and easy way to do it.

1. Go to Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup

2. When it asks “Which Files to Clean Up”, select “Files from all users on this computer”

3. Select the drive where your “windows.old” is located.

4. Windows will scan the drive and calculate how much space you can save by deleting some files.

5. Select “Previous Windows Installation(s)” in the “files to delete” list. Select OK.

After it does it’s work, you should no longer have the “windows.old” folder, and you should have reclaimed a bit of hard drive space.

Change default boot screen in Vista

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft’s dull boot screen with just the progess bar can be replaced in just a few easy steps.

For a quick and easy way to change your boot up screen to something a little better than the default progress bar, follow these few easy steps. This will give you the better looking Aura boot screen.

1. Go to the Start Orb, type “MSCONFIG”, without quotes, and press enter. Click on the “Boot” tab.

2. Check the “No GUI Boot” box. Click “Ok”.

3. Reboot to see the new boot screen.

Change Default Icons of A Shortcut

By DustinPosted on

Windows has always allowed you to change the appearance of your icons, and the procedure is pretty much the same in Vista and 7. If you don’t like the way your default icons look, you can always change them. There are plenty of built in icons to choose from, as well as many able to be downloaded. If you feel extremely adventurous, you can try your hand at designing one yourself.

Here is how to change the default icon in Windows.

1. Right click on a Folder, Shortcut, or Drive and click Properties.

2. On the Shortcut tab, click the Change Icon… on the bottom of the panel.

3. Select the icon of your choice, browse for a new icon collection (usually in c:WindowsSystem32imageres.dll or shell32.dll) or a custom .ico that you’ve built or downloaded.

4. That’s it. You’re done.

Before and After

Before & After

Create Folders With No Name

By DustinPosted on

Sometimes you want your Desktop to be nice and neat, so you only have a few icons on there. But, you know what the Recycle Bin and My Computer looks like already (this works with other icons, as well, I am using these two as an example). So, here is a quick and easy way to get rid of the names below the folder.

Right click the icon you want to change and go to Rename.

Hold down the ALT key and press 0160 (ASCII for the Space), and press enter. Tada! No name for the icon. You can do this to whatever icon you’d like.

Disable Autorun on CD/DVD Drives

By DustinPosted on

Many times, you don’t want your CD or DVD to process the Autorun file. You know what you want to do, and you do it. But, disabling the Autorun feature isn’t the easiest to find. In fact, you have to edit the registry to do it. Here is how.

1. First, open the Registry Editor (Start, Run, type regedit -or- Start, type regedit in the search box and press enter).

2. Navigate to the key ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetservicescdrom


3. Right click the key on the right pane titled AutoRun and click Modify. Change the 1 to a 0.

4. Restart your PC, and the Autorun feature is disabled for your CD/DVD drive. This can be very handy for those that dislike the Autorun feature.

How do I open the Vista box?

By DustinPosted on

While this may seem a simple, trivial question, many have asked it and it truely is a hard box to get open!

Here’s how to do it:

Remove the red and clear tape on the right hand side of the box. You may need to cut it. Pull the red pull tab on the top left part of the box to open. Easy, and theft proof? 🙂

Thanks to Pepper in Seattle for the image.

I just added more RAM, why won’t Windows see it? (Under 4GB)

By DustinPosted on

I just upgraded to 2 GB of RAM. Why is Windows still showing 1 GB?

If you upgraded your RAM, and your BIOS shows the added RAM, but Windows does not, give this a try. This is different than is you are adding more than 3 GB to a 32Bit version of Windows.

1. Go to the Start Orb, type “MSCONFIG” (without quotes) in the search box and press enter.

2. Click on the “Boot” tab, then “Advanced Options”.

3. Uncheck the “Maximum Memory” box if it is checked. It may be checked and set to use your old amount of memory.

This is the most common reason I see memory upgrades go un-noticed in Windows (other than the 4GB Limit on 32Bit Windows!).

List installed applications and versions from the CLI

By DustinPosted on

You can get a list of the installed applications, and their versions from a simple and easy to use command line tool. Follow these easy steps to see what is installed without installing a third party program (although there are some GREAT third party programs out there that do an excellent job!).

1. Open a command prompt (either Start > Accessories > Run or Windows Key & R).

2. Type WMIC and hit enter. You will now be in the WMIC tool, with a prompt that says wmic:rootcli>

3. Type product get name,version and hit enter. Alternatively, you can get a txt or html file by using /output:c:listapps.txt product get name,version or /output:c:AppList.htm product get name,version , respectively.

4. You will end up with a display similar to this: