Pin A Drive in Win 7 Taskbar

Pin A Drive in Win 7 Taskbar

This is a really very useful but simple trick. Many of you might already be knowing this. Those who don’t know can read on. Follow the steps given below to pin any of your drives to taskbar.   

1. Right click on your desktop and create a new folder. Name it as anyname.exe.
2. Now drag and drop this folder to Taskbar.
3. Right click on the new Taskbar icon. Right Click on the name of the folder. Select Properties.
4. In the properties window, under the shortcut tab, change the target value with any drive you want. For eg. if you want to set it to ”D” drive and then type “D:\” and press ok.

Note : You can change the name in the General Tab.

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How to Zip

How to Zip

Say you have many files that all need to be e-mailed, but you don’t want to add them one by one and you don’t think all of them will be within the recipient’s e-mail size limits.

What do you do then ? Why zip ‘em up, of course!

So....here is how to do it in a flick of a second .........

Browse to the folder where the files you want to zip are at. Now highlight the files by either drawing a box around them or by holding the Ctrl key and selecting each of them. Once you have all of the ones you want to zip up highlighted, Right-Click one of them, go down to “Send to” and choose “Compressed (zipped) folder”.

Like magic, your highlighted files will appear in one convenient package. If you don’t like the name Windows gives your zipped folder, just rename it!

If you don’t want to use the built-in Windows zip utility, there are also third-party programs like WinZip and WinRar, that have more features, like the ability to set the compression size and file extension.

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How to hide usernames in Windows 7

How to hide usernames in Windows 7

The login screen of Windows Vista and Windows 7 makes it very easy to see the user name of the last person that logged in. This may be fine on personal computers, but on shared computers, this could be a security threat. A potential intruder would only have to find out the password, which is very possible with the right software. To solve this problem, we have to change a value in the registry. Don’t worry; it is easier than it sounds. But before we change anything, it is best to make a backup of the registry.

Note: If you’re uncomfortable editing the Windows Registry do not attempt this tip.


1. Press [Windows Key] + R to bring up Run.

2. Type “regedit” (without quotes) into the text box and hit enter.




3. In the Registry Editor, click on File -> Export…




4. Enter “backup” (without quotes) as name and save the file to the desktop.




Now we can start editing the registry…

1. Press [Windows Key] + R to bring up Run.

2. Type “notepad” (without quotes) into the text box and hit enter.






3. Insert the following text into the document that opens up:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
“dontdisplaylastusername”=dword:1

4. Press Ctrl + S to save the document. As a name, type “loginscreen.reg” and save it on the desktop. (IMPORTANT: enter the name with quotes)




5. Go to your desktop and double click on “loginscreen.reg”. When you are asked if you want to allow the program to make changes, click “Yes”.

6. You can now delete the loginscreen.reg file and enjoy your secure PC!

To change your login screen back to the default setting, repeat the above steps with one small change. The line:

“dontdisplaylastusername”=dword:1

needs to be changed to:

“dontdisplaylastusername”=dword:0



Note: In case you didn’t know, the registry is the part of the computer that stores all its settings. Do not allow programs or files to make changes to the registry unless you know they are trustworthy. It is usually a good idea to make a backup of the registry before editing it. By doing that, you can restore the registry afterwards if anything goes wrong. You can restore the registry by simply double clicking on the exported file.

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Some Win Key Shortcuts for Windows 7 Users

Some Win Key Shortcuts for Windows 7 Users
 
Here are 11 beautiful shortcuts for Windows 7 users. Lets take a look: -
 
Win + Up Arrow – Maximize

Win + Down Arrow – Minimize

Win + Left Arrow – Snap to Left

Win + Right Arrow – Snap to Right (see a pattern here?)

Win + Home – Restore or minimize all other windows

Win + T – Press once to focus the first taskbar entry; press again to cycle through taskbar entries

Win + Space Bar (hold) – Peek at the desktop

Win + G – Bring gadgets forward to the top

Win + any number key (1-9) – Open a program on the taskbar. (The number corresponds to the pinned program’s location.)

Win + + (plug sign) – Zoom in

Win + - (minus sign) – Zoom Out

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Windows 7 Libraries

Guide to Windows 7 Libraries

A Library in Windows 7 is a set of folders within your computer to categorize things in a better way, with more control to group or save the files anywhere on the PC. We have been using similar features in earlier versions of Windows (and in Windows 7) which are My Pictures, My Documents etc. But back then, you could save your files to that particular location specified for those libraries. With the new Library feature in Windows 7, you have total control on adding folders from all over the PC to any such Library, save files to any of them and even create new Libraries depending on your needs.

INFO: Head over to Microsoft to learn more about the Library feature.

Creating a New Library

Open the explorer window and right-click on Libraries. Go to New>Library. Name the library whatever you like.

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How to start up folders in Vista and Windows 7 with menu on the top

How to start up folders in Vista and Windows 7 with File, Edit, View, Tools, etc. on the top

Instead of this:

Wouldn't it be nice to have it like this?

Vista and Windows 7 has the “old” way of having the menu on top disabled by default, but it does let you enable it temporarily, if you would like.

When you have a folder open, press the Alt key and the menu will appear. Press Alt again and it will disappear.

Temporarily is fine, but here is how to do it so that the menu bar stays there:

First, open one of your Windows folders. I opened the User folder. To access it, go to your Start button and left-click. The Start menu will pop up; go up to the very top of the right pane where your name is (under the picture), and left-click on it.

Your user folder will pop up and the top-left of the folder will look something like this:

To enable the menu bar permanently (or until you want to change it back), left-click on Organize. On the drop-down menu, left-click on Layout. A new menu will pop up.

Okay, last step. Point your Cursor to Menu Bar (it's at the top of the menu) and left-click to put a check by it.

That's it! Now every time you open a folder in Windows, the menu bar will be there.

(Note: If you decide you want it disabled, just follow the above instructions, only when you get to Menu Bar, left-click on it to remove the check mark.)

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Best way to Password Protect a Folder without any software

Best way to Password Protect a Folder 

without any software

Make a new folder ( name it as you like )

Inside this folder make a (.TXT ) file & copy the following inside it: 

cls
@ECHO OFF
title Folder Private
if EXIST "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" goto UNLOCK
if NOT EXIST Private goto MDLOCKER
:CONFIRM
echo Are you sure you 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.
goto CONFIRM
:LOCK
ren Private "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"
attrib +h +s "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"
echo Folder locked
goto End
:UNLOCK
echo Enter password to unlock folder
set/p "pass=>"
if NOT %pass%== password here goto FAIL
attrib -h -s "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"
ren "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" Private
echo Folder Unlocked successfully
goto End
:FAIL
echo Invalid password
goto end
:MDLOCKER
md Private
echo Private created successfully
goto End
:End

After u copy the command go to line ( 23 ) u will find "password here" Change to any password u want.

After that, save it as locker.bat (the txt file will change to an application file)

Now go back to the folder & u will find a this locker.bat file.

Click on it & u will find a new folder called Private.

Now copy what u want in it & after that go to locker.bat by clicking it, it will open and ask you if you want to lock your folder? Y/N ?

Type Y

If you want to UNLOCK your folder, go open locker.bat & type your password and the Private folder will be made visible again.

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Open a Command Prompt at any Folder - Windows 7

Open a Command Prompt at any Folder

Command prompt fans will welcome this handy tip. With it, you can open command prompt at any folder when you are in Windows Explorer. Remember – Powertoys for Windows XP ?? One tool in this PowerToy was ‘Open Command Window Here’.

Now, you can get exactly the same interface by this simple unknown trick: Before right clicking any folder, hold down the Shift key and then you would see the ‘Open Command Prompt Here’ in the context menu on clicking on which you can start a command prompt session from that folder as shown below:

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Search the Internet from Start Menu - Windows 7

Search the Internet from Start Menu

The start menu search box is convenient way to search through PC – but you can also use this search box to perform double duty by making to search the internet from well within the Start menu search. To enable this log on with an administrator account and perform this:

1. In the Start menu   search box, type ‘gpedit.msc’ (without quotes) and press enter to run the Group Policy Editor.

2. Go to User Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Start Menu and Taskbar.

3. Double click “Add search internet link to Start Menu”, and then from the screen that appears, select Enabled. Then click OK and close the Group Policy Editor. See the figure for details":

4. From now on as soon as you type the item in the search box, a ‘Search the Internet’ link will appear. Just click on the link to launch the search in your web browser with the default search engine as shown in figure:

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Get Hidden Themes back in Windows 7

Get Hidden Themes back in Windows 7

When you first installed Windows 7, during the final setup phase, the interactive setup asked for your langauge, time and currency. Then based on your response, it installed wallpaper set and the corresponding themes based on your location. For example, if you choose, English (United Kingdom) for your time and currency format, then the available themes and backgrounds will include a United Kingdom section and it’s various wallpapers.

Now, the hidden themes, though, are background scenery and themes from other English-speaking countries – Australia, Canada, Great Britain and South Africa. Normally you can’t access those backgrounds or themes, but there is a simple way by which you can install and use them:

1. Press Windows key  + R to bring forward the Run dialog box. TypeC:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and press Enter (Note: If your Windows is installed on drive other than C:, use that alphabet instead.)

2. Now, Windows Explorer will launch and will show you the list of sub-folders under C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT viz. MCT-AU, MCT-CA, MCT-GB, MCT-US and MCT-ZA. These sub-folders have the wallpapers for a specific country: i.e. AU for Austrialia, CA for Canada, GB for Grait Britain, US for United States and ZA for South Africa.

3. Now, in the search box which is located on the extreme right side of window, type *.theme . After this you would get all the hidden themes with the similar interface as shown

4. Now, just select all the themes by pressing Control (CTRL) + A and then copy the selected themes to folder C:\Windows\Resources\Themes. After that when you would open personalization gallery, there under the installed themes section, you would see all the hidden themes as shown below:

Now, you can use these newly installed themes as per your liking, by right clicking the desktop, choosing personalize, and then choosing a background or theme. They would be listed in the section ‘Installed Themes’.

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Change Windows Explorer Default Folder

Change Windows Explorer Default Folder

Windows 7 users know that when they go to their Windows Explorer, the first window that opens up is for Libraries. Well, that’s fine and dandy, but what if I want to start off someplace else? What then?

Today we’re going to learn how to change all that. So locate your Windows Explorer icon on your taskbar, or type Windows Explorer into your Search Box. Either way, right-click the Windows Explorer icon and select Properties.

Under the Shortcut tab, focus your attention to the text input box next to Target:

Simply type the address of the folder you want Windows Explorer to start in after the %windir%\explorer.exe. So, for example, mine would look like this:

Note: An easy way to select a new default location is to browse to the location, right click in the address bar, select Copy address as text and paste in the Target box. 

After your new default folder location is in, click Apply then OK.

Now open up Window Explorer again and take a look at where you’re at! If you ever want to go back to the original location, simply follow the same steps and delete just the location address you inputted.

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Almost Everything You Need to Know About DHCP

Almost Everything You Need to Know About DHCP

This article will help you to learn everything that you need to know as a systems administrator (or SysAdmin) about this protocol and what can you do with it.

What's DHCP? And why it's recommended to use it? Imagine that you're working as a SysAdmin for a large company with 500 desktop computers; you need to set to each desktop computer IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, DNS servers, and other network settings. How could you do that?

If you'll try to perform this task manually you're probably going to waste a lot of time on sitting on each computer 5-10 minutes, beside time, you can for example accidentally enter wrong IP address to few clients, or to type the same IP address to few clients too.

In order to solve these "problems" you can use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (or DHCP) in your network.

DHCP allows you  to manage the networks' IP addresses scopes and other TCP/IP settings like DNS, Default Gateway, etc. from central place, this central place called DHCP server. Beside the management, if there's any problem you don't need to run between your clients, you just need to connect to your server and to check the DHCP settings, as I mentioned – the DHCP works from central place, so if there's a problem, it's probably from the server, so you know where to go in case of problem and your saving time.

The DHCP server can provide easily IP addresses to clients automatically so you don't even need to configure and set options in the client side, all you need is to setup DHCP server, configure scope options and some other TCP/IP settings in the server side and that's it. You can provide to your clients IP addresses from the selected range that you've configured and some other TCP/IP options.

Note: DHCP in my opinion can be called "The next generation of BOOTP", because the BOOTP came first before the DHCP, and today we're using BOOTP in order to deploy operating systems by booting from the network. Beside this, DHCP was developed in order to support in large networks – something that BOOTP can't provide.

How DHCP works?

Without entering to the related technical information (DORA process) the DHCP client request from the DHCP server IP address for a while, the length of time that the DHCP client can use the dynamic IP address that the DHCP server provided can be called lease, just like the name: lease means that the client "rent" an IP address for a specific time from the DHCP server, if the client wants to continue using the specific IP address the client needs to re-assign the address by renew the lease, this will happen before the expiration time of the lease if the client is still in the network.

More in depth, the DHCP service works by using the DORA (Discover, Offer, Request and Acknowledgment) process (you can trace on the whole process using a network monitor utility):

1. DHCPDISCOVER – The client broadcast a DHCPDISCOVER packet in order to locate a DHCP server in the network, in some cases that the DHCP server isn't in the same subnet of the client, you'll need to configure in your network devices (usually routers) a DHCP Relay Agent, in order to transfer the DHCPDISCOVER packet to the DHCP server.
2. DHCPOFFER – The DHCP server broadcast a DHCPOFFER packet to the client which includes an offer to use a unique IP address for the client.
3. DHCPREQUEST – The client broadcast a DHCPREQUEST packet to the DHCP server with an answer, and "asks" from the server to "rent" the unique address that the server offer to her.
4. DHCPACK – The DHCP server broadcast a DHCPACK packet to the client, in this packet the server acknowledge the request from the client to use the IP address, and provide to the client the IP address lease and other details such as DNS servers, default gateway, etc. if the server cannot provide the requested IP address or from some reasons the address is not valid the server sends DHCPNACK packet in stand of DHCPACK, more information about DHCPNACK is under the specific subject – DHCPNACK.

Note: DHCP service uses port 67/UDP in the DHCP server, and 68/UDP at the DHCP clients.

It's recommended to check that your firewall doesn't block these ports in order to able the DHCP server and clients to communicate, and also check that your network devices supports DHCP Relay Agent in case that some of your clients are in different physical subnet.

In some cases you'll notice another DHCP messages like these:

1. DHCPDECLINE – If the client recognizes that the IP address that the DHCP server offer to her in use, the client will generate a new request to another IP address (in the DHCPREQUEST step).
2. DHCPRELEASE – This message is commonly in use when the client "give up" and release IP address.
3. DHCPRENEW – This is the request packet to renew and continue "renting" the IP address lease.
4. DHCPINFORM – The DHCPINFORM is packet that the client send to the DHCP server in order to get more details from the server, for example DHCPINFORM can be send in order to locate another DHCP servers in the network.

DHCPNACK

The DHCPNACK or Negative Acknowledgment is a packet that the server sends if the IP address is not available in stand of DHCPACK (in use on other client for example) or the address is no longer valid.

In case of DHCPNACK the client must restart the lease process in order to get an IP address.

DHCP Scopes, Exclude and Reservation

DHCP Scope is a range of IP addresses that you configure in your DHCP server as range of addresses that designed for distribution to the clients.

For example, if you set a scope with a range from 10.0.0.100-10.0.0.200, you can easily provide only from this range IP addresses to your clients.

You can also create more than one scope, but it's recommended to check that your scopes aren't duplicating one with each other's. At the scope creation process you can add some more TCP/IP parameters such as subnet mask, IP addresses lease time, router (default gateway), DNS servers, etc. so when the clients gets the IP addresses they'll get also the other parameters from the scope.

In some cases, you'll need to prevent the client using some addresses, for example if your scope is from 10.0.0.1 up to 10.0.0.100, and your servers using 10.0.0.1-10.0.0.10, you can exclude these IP addresses from the scope and exclude the DHCP to distribute them to the clients, in most of the DHCP servers this option called exclude.

Reservation is a great option if you're planning to provide specific dynamic IP address from the DHCP server to unique DHCP client. If for example in the 10.0.0.1-10.0.0.100 scope you want to provide for specific client a unique address that will be always of the client, you can easily set reservation for the client using a unique identifier – the MAC address, the MAC of Media Access Control is a unique hexadecimal physical address for network adapters.

DHCP & DNS

When you're installing DHCP server you can configure the DHCP server to set DNS updates to any DNS server that support dynamic updates. More information about the combination between DHCP and DNS you can find right here.

Active Directory & DHCP Servers

In Microsoft Windows Server with Active Directory you need to authorize your server in order to work with the DHCP service.

In the past you could install few DHCP servers – as you wish, this action occurs problems like server crashing, etc.

In the new Windows 2000 Server/Server 2003/2008 you must authorize your server in order to start the DHCP server, if there's an authorized DHCP server in the Active Directory environment and a non-authorized server trying to start the DHCP service in order to distribute IP address, the server will failed in this task and the DHCP service in the local computer will stop.

DHCP Relay Agent

DHCP Relay Agent is any kind of host (usually a router or server) that listen to DHCP/BOOTP broadcast from clients on subnets without local DHCP servers.

The DHCP Relay Agent forwards the packets from the clients and the DHCP server that sitting on different physical subnets to each other in order to supply 'connection' between the DHCP Server to the clients, and opposite (from the clients to the server).

In conclusion

DHCP is a critical "must have" network service because using DHCP helps you, as a System/Network Administrator, to manage you clients by assigning, tracking and re-assigning IP addresses.

Netanel Ben-Shushan is an IT Consultant & Trainer from Israel, who works mainly with Microsoft infrastructures, networking and information security systems. He's the creator of www.ben-shushan.net, a personal website in Hebrew with technical guides, articles, tips and tricks from the IT field.

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