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Windows tools

So I thought I would clean out a few more pinned articles in my bloglines before I went to bed. By a few, I mean 9. Lets just get started with this.

The first one is real simple. This is how you can easily disable Aero before running a program. In many cases you would want to do this before running a 3D intensive game. All you have to do is find the shortcut, right click and go to properties, click the compatability tab and check the box that says “Disable desktop composition”. That is it. Aero will disable itself next time you launch the shortcut and enable itself when the program is done.

The next tip it two-fold. First there is a quick tip on how to backup your DVD’s with 1 click. Sure that 1 click is going to take you a few hours to complete, but all you have to do is click once. The second part is a bit more involved but shows you how to backup your DVD’s and play them easily on a PS3. Sure you could always put the DVD in the PS3 and play it but who wants to get up? This uses a great tool, which I have yet to use, called PS3 Video 9.

Next up is another two parter and this is all about extracting things you never knew you could extract out of Windows. If you want to use a icon that a certain program uses. You can use IconsExtract or if you want to extract all the drivers you are using, to save as a backup, you can use DriverMax.

One of the last useful updates I have is a visual tweaker for Vista. It is called Vista Visual Master and has a lot of very useful tools. It gave me the ability to use custom themes again after I installed SP1 and that is worth a download itself.

Here are a few that most people probably won’t find very useful but I am going to give them a try for various reasons.

To remove passwords from Excel documents you can either buy a tool called Excel Password Remover or you can run one of many macros that will remove the password for free. I want to link to the full article so you can see all the comments with the macro options.

The last two I have are random but I know I will need them one day. First is a way to disable cached domain logins in Windows. This also may work to increase the number of logins available when off the domain but I need to test with that. To do it all you have to do is open the registry and find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Once you find that just change the cashedlogonscount to whatever value you want. Note that 0 disables this ability.

This last one will come in real handy when making my classroom images. A tool called CleanHandler will clean up those autoplay options that pop up in Windows when a cd/usb stick are plugged in.

I feel pretty good after that update so I will leave you with that.

How-to set a screensaver before login in Windows XP/Vista

I haven’t fully tested this for Vista yet but it has the same key as XP so I am assuming it works the same. This is very similar to the setting up a default wallpaper but you use the SCRNSAVE.EXE key instead of Wallpaper.

Browse the registry to

HKUS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Just change the SCRNSAVE.EXE key to wherever your .scr file is located. There is also options for setting if there is any screensaver, ScreenSaveActive, the time out, ScreenSaveTimeOut, and if the screensaver is secure which seems dumb to me since no one has logged into the computer yet, but whatever.

How-to set wallpaper image before login in Windows XP

Open up the registry and browse to:

HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop\

edit the Wallpaper key to point to where ever you have your wallpaper stored (eg. c:\windows\wallpaper.bmp). The file needs to be a .bmp to show up but that is all you should need to do.
After a restart the background will show up behind the login window assuming you are not using the welcome screen.
If a user logs in and then logs out their wallpaper will show up instead. But this is great to keep things looking the same when computers are restarted often.

Catching up

I have had quite a few articles and tools that I have been wanting to post here but I haven’t made the time to do it. So I guess I am just going to make one big post for all of them. Most of these tools came from the wonderful How-to Geek but there are a few other good ones in the mix.

First up is replacing your task manager with process explorer in Windows Vista. In XP it is usually as simple as going to options and clicking on replace task manager. In Vista there is a bit more of a trick to it if you still have UAC ruling your life. UAC is the first thing I turn off in Vista so there wasn’t any problem for me. Head over to the How-to Geek for further instructions and screenshots.

The next tip is all about drivers. First you could always see what drivers you have installed at the command line, but that isn’t very fun. I guess you could see what drivers are installed and export the list to a text document, excel spreadsheet, or something else. Or you could just transfer the drivers directly from one machine to another. This is great news if you are moving from one computer to another, or if you are just having problems with your computer and want to do some troubleshooting.

Downloadsquad makes the list of useful tools with the Revo Uninstaller. I have never heard of it before but already really like it. Not only can it uninstall your programs and search for left over files and registry entry’s, but it also has built in shortcuts like the on screen keyboard, msconfig, system properties, etc. And because the new version is free AND portable I can keep it on my usb key and take it with me when troubleshooting machines.

Downloadsquad also showed me a Universal Extractor that could be very useful for extracting files that 7-zip can’t already open. I haven’t tried it yet but I defiantly want to keep it in my bag of tricks.

You would think this post would be done now because there is already so much stuff. But I have been procrastinating for a while now on these tools.

Inventgeek had one of the best do-it-yourself articles I have sen for a while. How to make your own thermal paste from diamond dust. I really want to give this one a try on my PS3 but it is going to have to wait just a little bit. I am still a bit nervous about putting it back together. The opening up doesn’t scare me at all. It is only the reassembly.

The last two articles go back to the How-to Geek. If you support machines like I do you probably use the Group Policy Editor quite a bit in Windows XP. This tip shows you how to add it to the control panel. There is also one for adding User Accounts Utility (userpasswords2) in the control panel.

Last but not least. How to Remote Control Leopard with TightVNC brought to you by Lifehacker.

Well I am officially caught up with the articles I wanted to add here. Now I think I will try some of them out and maybe play some more video games.