Automatic maintenance
The Windows Maintenance Wizard can automate a lot of
routine system maintenance tasks. To open this wizard,
choose Start > Programs > Accessories > System
Tools > Maintenance Wizard. It sets up the Task Scheduler
to regularly run Scandisk, Disk Defragmenter and Disk
Cleanup.
Clean Desktop
To hide all the icons on your Desktop, open the Registry
Editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft
\Current Version\Policies\Explorer. Add a DWORD value
and name it NoDesktop. Change it's value to 1. Close
the Registry Editor and restart Windows.
ToolTips
To disable ToolTips in Windows, open the Registry Editor
and navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop.
Double-click UserPreferencemask and change its value
to 3E 00 00 00. Chose the Registry Editor and restart
Windows.
Speed up your modem
Even if your modem if apparently working well, the baud
rate of your COM Port might not allow you to reach top-speed.
To improve your port's speed:
Associations in a jiffy
To associate files of a certain type with a different
program, hold down the Shift key while right-clicking
on a file of that type and click on Open With... from
the context menu. Select the program you want to open
files of this type with and enable Always use this program
to open this type of file. Henceforth, the file will always
open with this program when double-clicked.
A clean Registry
As time passes the computer's registry accumulates a lot
of corrupted, unused, and unnecessary register keys, especially
if keys are not removed when you uninstall a program.
As a result, you might experience problems and your machine
might function slower than expected. The latest version
of Microsoft's RegClean could delete a lot of such registry
junk. You can download this from zdnet Just search for RegClean and it will let you
download it. Best of all, it is free !!
Assigning passwords
to folders in win 98 and 2000
Right-click on empty space in the folder which you want
to protect and
select CUSTOMIZE THIS FOLDER, then choose CREATE HTML
DOCUMENT FOR THIS
FOLDER. Once the document is opened in Notepad, scroll
down until you see
<script language>="JavaScript"> Insert a blank
line after this string.
Then insert the following text.
var pass = prompt("Enter the password")
if(pass != "YOURPASSWORD")
{window.location="C:"}
Hit the Enter key on your keyboard
Put a password in the place of YOURPASSWORD
but leave the quotes. Save the
document, exit Notepad,
refresh the folder (or hit F5), enter your new password,
and the next time
you try to enter that folder,
you'll be prompted for your password. If you enter a wrong
password you'll
end up in C: drive!
This works on Windows 98 and 2000.
