I’ve been annoyed that I’ve not been able to change the default Save As/Open locations, as well as changing the 5 options I get on the Places Bar. Here’s what it looks like default:
Category: Microsoft Windows
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Turning off the mail count in the Windows XP login screen – Registry
The other day, my girlfriend had been using my computer, and logged into MSN. When I restarted the computer, I noticed this message:
This is both annoying, and it really looks stupid. I mean, sure I get a bit of email, but I rarely have as many as 20 emails in my inbox, and even if I did, my hotmail inbox is not my primary email. Add to that the fact that this count has been taken from my girlfriends’ hotmail and we’re starting to get to the bottom of my frustration. Frankly, I don’t want it to tell people whether there are any unread email at all.
Apparently, there are a few programs that feed into this count; Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird and MSN Messenger to mention but a few. So, how do we remove it? As it happens, it is pretty simple to do just that, but it does require some fiddling about in the registry, so if you’re not comfortable with that, just leave it alone and clean up your inbox. Here’s how to do it:
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Deactivating Automatic Reboot after Windows Update
Have you ever returned to your computer only to find it having restarted, and all of your data gone? For a myriad of reasons, I keep my computers running continuously for a long time at a time. This makes this insistence on a reboot not only annoying, but in its extremes, it can actually make me lose work. To prevent this, I have disabled the auto-reboot, and I am no longer annoyed with repeated requests for reboots.
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Changing the Program Files Folder
Why would one want to change the default Program Files folder? I like to compartmentalize my disks so that should something go wrong, I can still recover data after a reinstallation. Part of preparing this is the fact that all of my computers’ main hard drives (HDD) are partitioned into a minimum of two partitions, a 5GB one for the system, and only the system, and the rest for everything else.
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A better Task Manager
Windows Task Manager is a decent enough tool, but it doesn’t really give you all that much information, nor is it always able to do what you need it to, such as end certain processes. By default, the Processes view looks something like this:
While this is enough for most users, it isn’t always enough information, nor capability, for techies. A wonderful little company called SysInternals, now owned by Microsoft, has made a wonderful little utility called Process Explorer. Let’s have a look at the information it gives us:
Not only does it feature tree-structure of processes, but it also features windows to show live data and history of CPU usage, Commit history and I/O Bytes. Clicking any of these windows will display a full system information window, as shown below. These features are only the tip of the iceberg of what should make Process Explorer an essential part of any techie tool kit.
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Changing drive letter
At times you might want to ensure that, no matter how many drives you have attached to you computer, when you attach a specific one, it’ll always show up with the same driveletter. You might wish to do this for backup-purposes, or for automization purposes, or for whatever other reasons you might have.
To do this, you need to connect the drive, make sure it is found and readable by Windows. Then enter the start-menu, click “run” and enter the command «diskmgmt.msc» to open the Disk Management console, as shown above.
Locate the drive you wish to allocate a different driveletter for, and right-click it. In the menu, choose «Change Drive Letter and Paths». In the menu that subsequently pops up, re-choose the drive, and press change.
Drives are allocated driveletters from A-Z, A usually being reserved for a 3.5 or 5 ¼ inch floppy disk drive, C usually being reserved for your %SYSVOL%-drive, or SYStem VOLume, the drive which contains your Windows-folder.
If you wish to assign multiple disks, you should start from Z and work your way down the alphabet.
Assign the drive letter, and press OK. A dialog box will be shown, telling you that «Changing the drive letter of a volume might cause programs to no longer run. Are you sure you want to change this drive letter?»
IMPORTANT: If there are ANY programs at all that routinely run from or gets data from this drive, you might want to reconsider doing this in the first place, or at least make sure that you reassign these changes elsewhere as well, to ensure that your system continues to run.
If you still wish to change the drive letter, press «Yes» in the dialog box. If you do not wish to do so, press «No» (pretty logical eh?).
If you press «Yes» both the dialog box where you assign the new drive letter, and the warning one will disappear. If you press «No», you are returned to the dialog box where you assign the new drive letter.