Tag: windows utility

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Minimal reasons to know about system crashes

If you are using Microsoft Windows O.S then you might have seen “Blue Screen of Death” ( BSOD). I have experienced it 3 times in my own system and have seen many times in my friends system too. If you have not seen this yet, it means you are lucky that your system is working fine :P.  But it’s good to know that what are the causes that leads us towards BSOD? It may happen for various causes, few are listed here:

1.  The number one reason why Windows crashes is hardware conflict. Each hardware device communicates to other devices through an interrupt request channel (IRQ). These are supposed to be unique for each device.

For example, a printer usually connects internally on IRQ 7. The keyboard usually uses IRQ 1 and the floppy disk drive IRQ 6. Each device will try to hog a single IRQ for itself. If there are a lot of devices, or if they are not installed properly, two of them may end up sharing the same IRQ number. When the user tries to use both devices at the same time, a crash can happen.

2. Bad Ram Ram (random-access memory) problems might bring on the blue screen of death with a message saying Fatal Exception Error. A fatal error indicates a serious hardware problem. Sometimes it may mean a part is damaged and will need replacing.

3. BIOS settings Every motherboard is supplied with a range of chipset settings that are decided in the factory. A common way to access these settings is to press the F2 or delete button during the first few seconds of a boot-up. Once inside the BIOS, great care should be taken. It is a good idea to write down on a piece of paper all the settings that appear on the screen.
That way, if you change something and the computer becomes more unstable, you will know what settings to revert to. MS  Windows is better at allocating IRQ numbers than any BIOS. If possible set the IRQ numbers to Auto in the BIOS. This will allow Windows to allocate the IRQ numbers (make sure the BIOS setting for Plug and Play OS is switched to ‘yes’ to allow Windows to do this.).

4. Hard disk drives After a few weeks, the information on a hard disk drive starts to become piecemeal or fragmented. It is a good idea to defragment the hard disk every week or so, to prevent the disk from causing a screen freeze. There are many tools to defragment it a.       Disk Defragmenter b.      ScanDisk

5. Viruses Often the first sign of a virus infection is instability. Some viruses erase the boot sector of a hard drive, making it impossible to start. This is why it is a good idea to create a Windows start-up disk. Use any good anti-virus for it. I use Eset NOD 32 . McAfee, Norton are also very good in that.

6. Software A common cause of computer crash is faulty or badly-installed software. Often the problem can be cured by uninstalling the software and then reinstalling it. The System Registry can be corrupted by old references to obsolete software that you thought was uninstalled. Ccleaner  to clean up the System Registry and remove obsolete entries. It works on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE (Second Edition), Windows Millennium Edition (ME), NT4 and Windows 2000.

7. Overheating Central processing units (CPUs) are usually equipped with fans to keep them cool. If the fan fails or if the CPU gets old it may start to overheat and generate a particular kind of error called a kernel error. This is a common problem in chips that have been over clocked to operate at higher speeds than they are supposed to. One remedy is to get a bigger better fan and install it on top of the CPU. Specialist cooling fans/heatsinks are available from http://www.computernerd.com or www.coolit.com CPU problems can often be fixed by disabling the CPU internal cache in the BIOS. This will make the machine run more slowly, but it should also be more stable.

8. Power supply problems With all the new construction going on around the country the steady supply of electricity has become disrupted. A power surge or spike can crash a computer as easily as a power cut. If this has become a nuisance for you then consider buying a uninterrupted power supply (UPS). This will give you a clean power supply when there is electricity, and it will give you a few minutes to perform a controlled shutdown in case of a power cut. It is a good investment if your data are critical, because a power cut will cause any unsaved data to be lost.

Source : http://faq.programmerworld.net/pc/10-reasons-why-pcs-crash.html

How to change the default location of My Documents

In Windows O.S. My Documents resides at C:\Documents and Settings\username by default and whatever you download would go there by default. Ex: gtalk shared files, gmail documents, songs , pictures etc (unless and until you have not specified the alternate path for downloads).
Nobody wants to go deep inside to open a file. At least I never choose my documents for my downloaded stuffs storage purpose.

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How to change the default location of “Program Files”

Have you ever given thought that why all the applications in Windows O.S. getting installed at default location “C:\Program Files” ?
Can’t it be according to our choice?

Yes it can be. And I have two reasons to change it default location anyway (either you feel its necessity or not but it’s good to install application at other location instead of “C:\Program Files”).

Why we need to change the default location of Installed application?
Reason is very simple:
1.       If you are a computer geek like me 😛 or you belong to a profession where you need to install many large sized applications like CAD apps, MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, media players, games etc. Once you will feel that C drive (By default O.S gets installed in this drive only) is not sufficient for installing applications because of growing size of “program files directory” which may slow down your system. So its better to install applications in other drive rather than C

2.       Windows O.S is how much promising with its robustness, how much its virus free, you people know it very well. It may crash because of any silly mistakes that we may do like opening virus contained files, using thumb drive (pen drive) and many more. By that time all installed application will also go in vain and you need to install everything from the beginning. Why not to install applications in other location, so that it may not get affected even O.S gets crashed?

How we could do it?
We could do it by two ways:
1.       While installing application, it will ask for location where it will install it. At that time itself we can provide some other location. For example: D:\Program Files (if Program files folder is not there then create it first and locate it while installing applications).

Through this way you can install software according to your choice of drives. Say all media apps should get installed in D drive and all web tools should get installed in F drive.

2.       We could change the default location permanently using registry editor.

a.       Click on start->run (windows XP) and type regedit, sand then press enter. (Shortcut key for run command is windows key + R)

b.      Look for “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion”

c.       When you will click on Currentversion, You will see a value named ProgramFilesDir  at the right side of that window. By default its value is “C:\Program Files”

d.      Double click on that value and change the default location wherever you wish to install your application from now onwards. Ex: “D:\Program Files”

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Automatically Turn On Num Lock, Scroll Lock, Caps

  • sujit
  • December 19, 2010
  • 7

When you start your PC, Num Lock, Scroll Lock, and Caps Lock don't automatically toggle on. You can automatically turn each of them on or off whenever your PC starts, for all accounts on the PC. As a practical matter, most people probably want to have only Num Lock automatically turned on, but this Registry hack allows you to force any combination of keys on or off.

Steps to follow:

1. Run the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Keyboard.
2. Find the String value InitialKeyboardIndicators. By default, it is set to 0, which means that Num Lock, Scroll Lock, and Caps Lock are all turned off.
3. Set it to any of the following values, depending on the combination of keys you want turned on or off:
0        Turns off Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock
1        Turns on Caps Lock
2        Turns on Num Lock
3        Turns on Caps Lock and Num Lock
4        Turns on Scroll Lock
5        Turns on Caps Lock and Scroll Lock
6        Turns on Num Lock and Scroll Lock
7        Turns on Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock Exit the Registry. When you restart, the new setting will take effect

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Enable disable USB port using registry editor

When I was in college, many times I needed to disable system's USB port so that nobody other than me can use that port. So what I was doing is simply editing registry editor for USB port everytime. When I had to use it, I was enabling it else I would be keeping it inactive and would rather say to my friends that "buddy! USB port has some problem in my system :(" 

I know you might have seen such a common topic here there always but whats the harm in keeping such stuffs in our site too! So I shared it here (may be little bit late, but i am sure it will still help many people from our blog :))
Now the trick lies here in registry editor USBSTOR keyword which is under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services To disable the access to USB port, in Vista/Windows XP and 2000, follow the steps below  (I have not tested it on Win 7. Please someone verify it and let us know)

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate, and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR
4. In the right pane, double-click Start.
5. In the Value data box, type 4 (REG_DWORD), click Hexadecimal (if it is not already selected), and then click OK. 6. Quit Registry Editor.

To re-enable a disabled port, follow these steps below:
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate, and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR
4. In the right pane, double-click Start.
5. In the Value data box, type 3, click Hexadecimal (if it is not already selected), and then click OK.
6. Quit Registry Editor. Or else If you are lazy person like me 🙂 then just save two different .reg files one for enabling and other for disabling purpose.

Steps To make one click working for enbaleUSB:
1. Open Your favorite editor or simply notepad
2. Type these lines there: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR] "Start"="3"
3. Save it as enableUSB.reg (You could save it as anything but for our comfortness I wrote like that. extension should be .reg anyhow)

In the same way to disable USB port follow these steps:
1. Open Your favorite editor or simply notepad
2. Type these lines there: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR] "Start"="4"
3.Save it as disableUSB.reg

Lock folder without any software

Sooner or later, you may require an application to lock down your important folder. So, why not to lock and unlock folder without any application. Just follow few simple steps and your work will be done.folder-lock-logoSooner or later, you may require an application to lock down your important folder. So, why not to lock and unlock folder without any application.  Just follow few simple steps and your work will be done.

Method 1:

Step 1: open your favorite editor and type: ren foldername foldername.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

Step 2: Save it as lock.bat or whatever name you wish to give but .bat extension should be there.

Step 3: Open text editor again and type: ren  foldername.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} foldername

Step 4: Save it as key.bat or whatever name you wish to give but .bat extension should be there. Now double click on lock.bat to lock “foldername” and double click on key.bat to unlock “foldername”. For ex: say my foldername is jassi then just replace the word foldername to jassi. At one time you can use lock and key batch file for locking one folder only.

Method 2:

As we saw in method 1, that only one folder will work at one time and if someone knows about key.bat, he/she can unlock that folder. So better to have .exe or .com .bat file which can lock or unlock  any folder at your wish with initialized password that only you would know.

Step 1:

Open your favorite editor and type:

cls @ECHO off title Folder Locker color A echo Which folder you want to lock or unlock? set/p "folder=>" if EXIST "%folder%.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" goto UNLOCK if NOT EXIST %folder% goto MDfolder :CONFIRM echo Are you sure u want to Lock the folder(Y/N) set/p "cho=>" if %cho%==Y goto LOCK if %cho%==y goto LOCK if %cho%==n goto END if %cho%==N goto END echo Invalid choice. sleep 1 cls goto CONFIRM :LOCK ren %folder% "%folder%.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" attrib +h +s "%folder%.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" cls color C echo Folder locked sleep 2 goto End :UNLOCK echo Enter password to Unlock folder set/p "password=>" if NOT %password%==jassi  goto FAIL attrib -h -s "%folder%.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" ren "%folder%.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" %folder% echo Folder Unlocked successfully sleep 2 goto End :FAIL cls color 4A echo Invalid password goto UNLOCK :MDfolder cls echo %folder% was not there so md %folder% echo %folder% created successfully sleep 2 :End

Step 2:

Save it as locker.bat or any name but be sure that extension is .bat and yeah before saving it change password according to your ease. Right now its jassi . Find that keyword and change as you wish. Now double click on locker.bat, one command prompt will come and will ask for folder to lock and unlock. If folder is not there it will create too. It will not unlock unless and until you give correct password.
Being .bat extension people may edit it so at that time you may wish to change it in .com or .exe extension. You can do that by downloading  Bat_To_Exe_Converter.exe which is free ofcourse.


Note: Main important thing to note here {21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D} , its  nothing just the address of control panel. So We renamed our folder as control panel destination, which means if you click on that locked folder now. It will open control panel. Hope you will enjoy it!!!