Category — Windows Tips

No doubt Windows 7 themes are more beautiful and gorgeous than the themes of XP. Especially Windows 7 default, Bluewater, Avatar, EA Sports are really awesome collections for the Windows 7 users. If you are running on Windows7 then no issue, but the XP users might feel the crisis of such an exclusive theme.

XP users can’t install these themes because the theme file extension “.themepack” is not supported by XP. So if you can change the extension to the XP supported extension “.CAB”, you have all done.

First if you have any Windows 7 theme, open it in XP and look the file extension is .themepack that is absolutely unrecognized to XP. You can download some awesome Windows 7 themes from Microsoft site.

Now to change the extension, right click on the file and set the extension as .CAB, then click on “OK”. Now it will get recognized by your installed XP. Extract the .CAB file and double click on the .theme file to start to install. Activate the installed themes from “Properties” option.

Sometimes it may create problems during the extraction, then download and install WinRAR in your PC. Now the .CAB file should look like a RAR archive. So you can easily do the job by extracting it.

Once after extracting, you can further use the images as your desktop background as well.

The feature is present in the operating system installation CD/DVDs. Immediately after inserting an installation CD the setup window automatically appears and prompt you to head on with the steps.

You can integrate the similar feature in USB drive also. Just put an autorun.inf in USB drive along with the installation file, setup process will start automatically. No need to manually open by double clicking.

1. Open Notepad and type the following text.

[autorun]
open=setup.exe

Here setup.exe is the installer of the program and so it might vary for case to case. Suppose for Photoshop it is photoshop.exe, then put the above code as

[autorun]
open=photoshop.exe

Save the file as autorun.inf of “File Type” as All in Notepad.

2. Now put the file in USB drive or CD/DVD.

Now re-insert the USB drive or CD/DVD and look the inside program is starting automatically.

I hope you are already familiar with Windows XP installation but do you know that you can perform a complete XP installation in only 9 minutes instead of 39 minutes. Generally all the versions of XP take 35-39 minutes to install but now it can be done by only 9 minutes. Just you have to apply a simple Windows tweak.

I have tested this trick while installing XP (Service Pack3) on my laptop and it worked perfectly. So do not waste time and try it yourself following the steps below.

How to Reduce the Installation Time:

1. Insert a fresh copy of Windows XP installation CD/DVD and restart your computer.

2. Make sure your computer can boot from CD/DVD. If not, enter into BIOS settings and set the Boot priority to CD/DVD drive. Now It would start to boot from the inserted CD/DVD.

3. It would start to copy the Windows files to hard drive. Wait for the message “Setup will completed in approximately: 39 minutes” to appear in the left pane.

4. Once appeared, press “Shift+F10” to open the command prompt.

4. Type “taskmgr” without quotes and press Enter to open Task Manager. Now search for the process “setup.exe”. Once found, right click on it and set the priority as “High”.

Thus you have all done. Now closing task manager and command prompt, wait for only 9 minutes.

This trick can be also applicable for Vista and Windows 7 but I personally think it’s not required since Vista, Windows 7 installation generally take less times by default.

Timer is a programming that can start or stop a project after a certain amount of time. The term “Timer” is generally used in Electronics field to mean auto-start or stop an electronic device. But now I am going to let you know a simple trick by which you are able to shut down your computer by a timer program after a specified time automatically. Though the job can be done by several software, in this article we will use a simple Windows tricks.

Read our another article to pause your computer after specified time.

Procedure is so simple, just check out the details below…

Click on Start Menu>Run. Type shutdown.exe -s -t xxx and press Enter. The field xxx should be replaced with amount of time in seconds. That means if you want to shut down your PC after 2 minutes, replace the field xxx with 120. Check out a screenshot below…

Thus the timer program is set. From now on just after 2 minutes your computer will automatically get turned off.

Now the question is how can you deactivate this program. It’s also simple, just again click on Start Menu>Run and type shutdown.exe –a. Press Enter to terminate the timer the process.

Note:

1. Make sure that multiple programs are not running on your PC at the time of shut down.

2. Your computer should not full of malicious programs or viruses otherwise the trick would not work.

Recommended Reading: How to Create a Windows7 Universal Disc.

Would you think about your important file’s security? Do not worry!!!, just create a backup of entire hard drives for future restore.

My recommendation is to create a backup while you have just re-installed operating system and installed essential programs and then write it in a DVD to keep in safe place. [Read more →]

Now we are going to let you know a very simple registry tweak that will help you to remove or change the username in start menu. The start menu in Windows generally shows the username of the currently logged-in user. To change the username, you have to go to user account and rename the username with administrator power.

But you can’t remove the username from here. To do this, we have used here a small registry tweak. The details procedure is given below. Since registry is the most sensitive area of Windows take a registry backup before proceed.

How to Remove the Username in Start Menu:

1. Open registry editor(click on “Start Menu”/click on “Run”/type regedit/click on “OK”).

2. There are two panes, the left for path and the right for the corresponding value. Follow the path given below and explore the values in Explorer.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer

3. Now right click on the empty area in the right pane and click on “New”. Then click on “Dword Value” and rename the new entry as NoUserNameInStartMenu .

4. Right click on the new string and then click on “Modify”. The value insertion window would appear. Put a value1 in the Value data box. Click on “OK” to save the change. Set the Base as “Hexadecimal”.

That’s all. Now restart your computer and come back to see the change.

How to Change the Username in Start Menu:

1. Click on “Start Menu” and go to “Control Panel”.

2. Click on “User Account”.

3. Choose the current user and click on the “Change my name” option to change it. As you noticed in the screenshot above that I have changed it from Abhishek to Saimon.

Close the Control Panel window and click on start menu. The username would be definitely changed.

Driver is the main operator of several computer devices such as audio, video, graphics, LAN, wireless, bluetooth etc. Try to Remember when you had bought your PC the vendor provided you a disc labeled with Drivers. You must know that it’s the heart and soul of a computer.

But sometimes the driver CD/DVD may broken or lost. Though a lot of drivers are there in the web for free download but it’s really a tough job to find out the right one that match your PC. Sometimes it becomes impossible and creates critical situation. [Read more →]

You must use the “Show Desktop” option in Windows XP . It is mainly used to access the data on desktop while two-three another windows are appearing on desktop. You can access your desktop by a single click.  However in this article we would create a Show Desktop application and then inject it to start menu and system tray.

A few applications have not the facility to minimize while it is performing like Windows Live Writer at the time of  publishing draft to blog. This is the perfect situation to use the show desktop button. Just click on it and get your desktop appeared.

How to inject the “Show Desktop” button to Start Menu and System Tray:

1. Open Notepad (from accessories/press start+R and then type notepad.exe). copy/paste the following code.

[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop

2. Save it as “Show Desktop.scf” on desktop. Now drag and drop the file to start menu button and it would automatically integrate the show desktop option to its menus.

3. To inject it to system tray, just drag and drop the file from desktop to system tray. It would be automatically integrated to the end of system tray.

Backup is nothing but the exact copy of your hard drives including existing data at that moment and restore is the replacement of that backup with your current data. Once the backup of your hard drive is created, you can easily restore it at any moment.

Another Recommended Reading: How to Access Data in an ISO Image without Writing.

[Read more →]