For Windows XP:
"0" Blank File, and Clock AVI File
For Windows XP, If you look in your "My Computer\C:\WINDOWS\" In this folder, after all other folders, you find a text file named "0". If you open it, nothing will be in there, hence the filename "0". Another thing would be a file called "Clock". It's an AVI file. It can open it in Windows Media Player. It's a very simple and plain animation.
These 2 files, were probably left in by the Microsoft Programmers as Easter-Eggs for anyone that could find them.
Con Folder
1. In any windows or dos try to make a folder named 'con'.
2. You will be presented by an error that it already exists, or other error preventing you creating this directory.
Ok, there is a secret file in Windows XP called "quotes". In order to get there you must be somewhat familiar with how to use Windows, simply open up My Computer (explorer) and double click on your main drive (probably C:) next navigate to: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc This is where the quotes file is. Open the file named quotes in your favorite text editor (notepad, MS Word) then look at the quotes put there by the MS developers!
Easier way to force win in Solitaire
Here is how to make you instantly win a game of solitaire. Simply press Alt + Shift + 2.
The Steps: One Click Shutdown Button Shortcut:
1. Shutdown shortcut: The first step to a your one click shutdown shortcut button, is to right-click on your desktop, now choose New, then choose Shortcut. The Windows Shortcut Wizard will appear. In the box that appears, in the "location of shortcut area" type in shutdown -s to shutdown. For the name leave it shutdown or type in a new name like SHUTDOWN or OFF.
2. Reboot shortcut: The first step to your one click reboot shortcut button, is to right-click on your desktop, now choose New, then choose Shortcut. The Windows Shortcut Wizard will appear. In the box that appears, in the "location of shortcut" area type in shutdown -r to reboot. For the name type in Reboot or Restart.
3. After you have create your shortcuts on your desktop, just double-click on one to shut down or reboot your computer. Now it time to customize your new shortcuts. One Click Shutdown Button Shortcut.
4. Switches you can use with shutdown shortcuts. There are some switches you can use to customize your shutdown shortcuts. To use the switches type in, shutdown -s will shut down PC, shutdown -r will reboot PC, shutdown -f will forces any running applications to shot down, shutdown -l will log off the current user, shutdown -t nn will indicates the duration of delay, in seconds, before performing the action, and shutdown -c "message" will display a message in the System Shutdown windows, max 127 characters and must be enclosed in quotation marts.
5. I use these two technique to create one shutdown & one reboot shortcuts on my desktop, one for turning off my computer, and one for rebooting. These are the ones I use:
shutdown -s -t 04 -c "later Geek!" - This one will shut down the PC.
shutdown -r -t 04 -c "Rebooting Now!" - This one will reboot the PC.
6. Just a little more customizing. Now your need to change the icons to a better looking icons. Right click on your new shutdown shortcut and pick properties on the menu. Then click on change icon, now pick a new icon for your shortcuts. I picketed the red icon for the shutdown shortcut and a green icon for the reboot shortcut. The shutdown shortcuts are automatically put on your desktop, but to make it more convent I put them both on my toolbar. You can move them by dragging and dropping them on to your quick launch toolbar, it up to you.
Now you have two new one click shutdown and reboot shortcut buttons on your desktop and or toolbar. One Click Shutdown Button Shortcut. Easy yes! Remember to come back to WebTechGeek.com for more how to's!
For Windows 9x:
Windows 98 Team
1. In the Windows directory go to "Application Data\Microsoft\WELCOME"
2. Create a Shortcut for the file Weldata.exe by right clicking on the file and selecting "Create Shortcut"
3. Right click on the newly created shortcut and select "Properties"
4. In the shortcut tab, add the following at the end of the "Target" edit box " You_are_a_real_rascal". This causes the application WELDATA.EXE to be called with the argument 'You_are_a_real_rascal'
5. Now in the "Run" combobox select "Minimized"
6. Click OK and double click the shortcut & ENJOY!
Volcano!
Right click on the desktop and click on Properties. On the Screensaver tab, select the 3D Text screensaver and open its properties. In the text box, type "volcano".
Registration Wizard hidden credits
1. Click Start, Run, and type WELCOME.EXE to load the Welcome to Windows program.
2. Click REGISTER NOW.
3. When the first screen of the WINDOWS 98 REGISTRATION WIZARD comes up, hold down CTRL-SHIFT and right click on the image to the left.
4. Voila.. hidden credits from the program's creators.
Reference to Wassily Kandinsky in Setup
In the actual Windows 98 setup files, there is a file called "DOSSETUP.BIN". If you look at the contents of this file with Notepad, Wordpad, DOS's EDIT, or any other text editor, you will find the following phrase near the end of the file:
Wassily Kandinsky was the great Russian painter who participated in the Expressionist movement in Germany, taught at the Bauhaus, and edited the Blue Rider Almanac.
Hearts Card Look
1. Press Start Button and then press "Run".
2. Type "regedit".
3. Goto: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Applets\Hearts
4. Insert a new String called "ZB".
5. Then Type "42" as String.
6. Start Hearts
7. Press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+F12 to see the Cards of the others.
Eject your PC!
1.Press Start.
2.Then Programs.
3.Then Applications.
4.Right click on calculator, then properties.
5.Click change icon. Double click the normal calculator icon.
6.Press Ok.
7.Press Start.
8.Wait a couple of seconds.
Windows 98 Team 2
1. Double click on the clock to bring up the date & time properties
2. Click on the 'Time Zone' tab
3. Hold down the Ctrl Key, ( here's the hard part,) Click and hold the mouse button down on Cairo Egypt.
4. With the mouse button still down, drag the pointer to Baton Rouge, LA.
5. Release the mouse button, but continue holding control.
6. Click the mouse button, and drag from Baton Rouge to Redmond, WA, release the button, and if it was done right, the same movie as was played in the 'Windows 98 Team' will play. Just a different way to get to it.
For IE5.5 or before:
See your self!
Open IE 5.5 Click on Help > About. Hold down Ctrl + Shift + Alt and click on acknowledgements.
Star Trek Space map!
Open up IE and click Tools > Internet Options > General > Languages. Click on the Add Button. Type "ie-ee" (no quotes) and click OK. More "User Defined [ie-ee]" to the top of the list. Exit back to where you can browse in IE again. Click on Search toolbar button and click Customize. Also, select Previous Searches. in search assistant, click on Fine Yourself. in the box that says "Please specify where you would like to be found" type in anything to g to to a star trek space map!
Run Your Computer in optimal Speed:
1. Speedup the Start menu
The Start menu takes quite a while to display the list of programs installed. In order to get Windows XP to display the list faster, you will have to edit the registry settings. But before you set about doing this, remember to back up your registry before making any changes. To speed up your Start menu, go to Start > Run and type regedit. This will open the registry window. Then navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
\Control Panel\Desktop folder. Thereafter, scroll down in the right panel and double-click on the menu ‘Show Delay File’. In the Value Data box, change the default value for the menu speed from 400 to a lesser number, such as 1 or even 0. Click OK. You should now find a significant increase in the Start menu speed.
2. Modifying visual settings
If you have only 128 MB RAM, your machine might be a bit sluggish after installing Windows XP. So to achieve optimal performance without buying additional RAM, disable certain visual settings and free up some precious memory. Go to the Control Panel, click on the Advanced tab in System, and choose Settings under the Performance option. Change various graphical effects. Uncheck the animation and shadow options as they tend to consume a lot of memory. You should get a better response from your OS now without spending any money on RAM.
3. Grouping/ungrouping taskbar items
Try opening more than three windows of any program, for instance Internet Explorer, and you will see them automatically grouped together under a single button. This happens because Windows XP, by default, enables the option for grouping similar programs on the taskbar. To uncheck this option, right-click on a blank area of the Taskbar and select Properties. Under Properties, deselect ‘Group Similar Taskbar Buttons’, and then click OK.
If you want to specify the number of windows before Window XP groups the program windows, you will have to navigate to the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows \CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Taskbar Groupsize. Now right-click on Taskbar Groupsize and change the hexadecimal value to whatever you like (for example, 4 or 5 or even 10). XP will now group the programs according to the number you set.
4. Disabling Automatic Windows Update and System Restore
There are certain services such as Windows Update and System Restore, which are automatically loaded and occupy a lot of space. If you would like to disable them, right-click on My Computer and choose Properties. Click on the System Restore tab and check the box ‘Turn off System Restore’. This will increase Windows performance and save disk space.
Similarly, locate the ‘Automatic Update’ option just next to ‘System Restore’. This option will periodically ask you to update the OS. You can go ahead and disable this, but remember that you will have to update Windows manually after applying this option since there will be no reminders.
5. Creating personal screensavers
You can use your photographs for creating slide show presentations or even creating a screensaver. Right-click an empty spot on your desktop, choose Properties, and click the Screensaver tab. In the Screensaver list, click on ‘My Pictures Slideshow’, and click ‘Settings’ to make any adjustments such as how often the pictures should change, their size and whether you would like to use transition effects between pictures. Click OK to finish. The screensaver that will now be generated will display photographs from the My Pictures
folder in a random manner.
6. Increasing connection speed
Some of us may find that after installing Windows XP, the Internet connection gets slower. A possible reason for this is the QoS (Quality of Service) installed. This service reserves 20 per cent of the bandwidth for itself, even with QoS disabled. In order to remove this reserved quota, you will have to make sure you are logged on as Administrator. Go to Start > Run and type gpedit.msc. Expand the ‘local computer policy’ branch, the ‘administrative templates’ branch, and the ‘network’ branch. Highlight the ‘QoS Packet Scheduler’ in the left window and in the right window double-click the ‘limit reservable bandwidth’ setting. Then, on the Setting tab, check the ‘enabled’ item and change the ‘Bandwidth limit %’ to read 0. After doing this, you should immediately notice a boost in your Internet connection speed.
7. Bridging connections
If you’d like to connect two or more computers via LAN, then you should utilize the Network Bridge option provided in Windows XP. There is no configuration required and you do not need to purchase additional hardware such as routers or bridges. IP addressing, address allocation, and name resolution is highly simplified in a single subnet IP network. To use this feature you
will have to open Network Connections. Under LAN or High-Speed Internet, select each of the private network connections that you want to be part of the bridge. Right-click one of the highlighted private network connections and click Bridge Connections.
8. Removing MSN Messenger
How do you remove MSN Messenger in Windows XP? Not from the Add/Remove program list but by locating SYSOC.INF in the \Windows\INF folder (hidden file and folder). Open it in Notepad and locate the line: msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
Remove the word ‘hide’ from the line and save the file. After making the necessary changes, you’ll be able to see MSN Messenger in the Add/Remove Windows components list. You can then remove it for good.
9. Renaming multiple batch files
In Windows XP, you can easily rename multiple files at a single go and save a lot of time. Click Start and click My Pictures or the folder where you have saved the pictures. Switch the view from the default Filmstrip to Thumbnails by clicking the Views button on the toolbar. Select all the pictures you want to rename by highlighting the last picture you want, then press and hold down the [Shift] key until you include all the pictures that have to be renamed, ending with the first picture in the list. Right-click the first picture, and then click Rename. Rename the first picture, and then click in the white space next to one of the pictures. The pictures are renamed all at once!
10. Creating boot-up disk
In order to create a bootable floppy disk in XP, insert a floppy and go to the floppy icon in My Computer. There you will have to right-click the floppy drive icon and click on the Format option. You will see the option ‘Create MS-DOS Start up Disk’. After creating the boot up disk, you will be able to boot into Windows XP using this disk.
for further assistance you can Email me or visit my website :: www.makdee.co.cc
Mainak Bhattacharya
EE, 2nd Yr, GNIT, Email: cthmeifucan@makdee.co.cc
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