Friday, November 6, 2009

customize "send to" items in windows xp

You know you can customize "send to" menu and you can add more new destination in Send To lists. this can be done in a simple way, follow these steps.

  • Click start, click run
  • Type sendto and press enter
  • This will open window with default Send To lists (Compressed (zipped) Folder, Desktop (create shortcut), Mail Recipient, My Documents)
  • Now drag-and-drop any program, folders and drives, shortcuts to this folder
  • For example - we take Microsoft word program, go to the program installation folder, find winword and drag-and-drop it to the send to folder
  • Now to verify new location, right click on a text or a wordpad document, point to send to, click winword
  • This will open the selected file with the Microsoft word

disable automatic update and service

If you want to disable automatic updates for windows you can do it by in control panel or system properties, but you know that even if you turn off updates in here automatic update service will continue to run in background. in order to disable this service follow these steps.

  • Click start , click run
  • Type services.msc and press enter
  • Now find the automatic update service and double click to open it
  • Now stop the service by pressing stop button under "service status"
  • Then under "startup type" select disable
  • Click apply and ok
From now on "windows update" and "windows update service" will be stop

restore missing tabs in "display properties"

In windows xp sometimes you notice that your "display properties" tabs were missing suddenly. (actually sometimes hides itself) such as "Themes , Desktop, Screen saver, Appearance, Settings" ,this can happen for many reasons, the exact cause for this is yet to be found, but we know how to restore the missing tabs in display properties, follow these steps.

  • Click Start, click Run
  • Type regsvr32 themeui and press enter
  • Again Click Start, click Run
  • Type regsvr32 /i shell32 and press enter
Learn more about how to unregister and re-register DLL files

Friday, October 23, 2009

add more columns to task manager

You can add more column to process page of task manager, this ensures to view more running processes. in this example we gonna show you how to add "virtual memory size" to task manager process page.
  • Press alt + ctrl + del to open task manager
  • Now click on process tab
  • Click on the view menu and click select column
  • In the "select column" window select virtual memory size by checking the box
  • Click ok
  • Now you can see the new column named VM Size , in here you can identify how processes used virtual memory size for each process

disable auto reboot when error occured (blue screen)

This will show you how to disable automatic restart option in registry, follow these steps.
  • Open registry editor
  • Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl
  • In the right side double click AutoReboot key
  • Change the value to 0 to disable and 1 to enable
  • Exit registry editor and restart pc

windows low on registry space (win 2000)

The most possible cause for this is errors in windows partition, as a result of this error you cannot change the page file values. the first thing to try is using scandisk.

Solution
  • Start command prompt
  • Type chkdsk /f and press enter, this will ask to schedule scandisk in next restart, press y
  • In the restart system will scan the partition you specified, after login to windows your problem will be fixed.
Verify pagefile in registry
  • Start > run
  • Type regedit and press enter
  • Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
  • In the right side open pagingfiles key
  • The default registry value described in here, for example if you set initial size of 2046 and maximum size of 4092 for your pagefile, your registry key value should be C:\pagefile.sys 2046 4092

reduce the time of operating system selection menu

If your pc in a dual boot mode (such as xp and vista) you notice that every time you restart or switch on pc operating system selection menu is displayed, the default timeout is 30 seconds, if you want you can reduce default timeout. follow these steps.

  • Right click on my computer and click properties
  • Click on advanced tab
  • Under "startup and recovery" click settings tab
  • Now reduce the timeout by clicking the down arrow head in "time to display list of operating systems"
  • After done click ok
  • Then click apply and ok
  • Reboot the pc and you can see the changes for default timeout
Also you can change the default highlighted operating system to most you preferred, for example if you use windows xp and vista, the xp will be on the top and vista will be second choice, but it always highlighted default operating system as vista, if no selection been made before timeout, pc loads windows vista. you can change the default highlighted operating system, to do this follow these steps.

  • Right click on my computer and click properties
  • Click on advanced tab
  • Under "startup and recovery" click settings tab
  • In here under "default operating system" the first displayed operating system is the default highlighted operating system, to change the order click down arrow head and select the other operating system you prefer, after done click ok
  • Reboot the pc to see the changes