Posts Tagged ‘Windows’
Disable Balloon Tips on Windows
Who is not annoyed by the approximately thousand balloon tips popping up on every boot of the Windows XP system telling you what is not alright with your computer. But fear not, as for nearly all problems, there is also a solution for this one, although you have to venture deep down into your Windows registry!
Before you start, notice that balloon tips may display important messages you would not want to miss. Follow this guide only if you are aware of the consequences and are able to keep your system in shape yourself!
To open the registry, open start > Run… and enter regedit. You will be shown a window parted into two frames, one on the left, displaying a whole lot of folders and one on the right, displaying the folders’ contents.
To disable the balloon tips, browse the folders on the left to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer > Advanced. Now rightclick on any free space on the right frame and select New > DWORD Value. Name the new key EnableBalloonTips. After that, rightclick it and select Modify. In the opened window, change the value from 1 to 0 and make sure that Hexadecimal is checked as Base. Now close the registry and reboot your machine. If you have done all accordingly to this article you will be shown no balloon tips anymore.
Create System Restore Points in Win XP automatically
Since older system restore points are deleted after some time, it is always good to create some new regularly. But to always have to browse through the countless menus day by day can be really annoying, that is why we will use Windows’ Notepad and Scheduled Tasks functions to ease our lives.
First we create a short script that creates system restore points in our notepad, therefore open one and type in these two lines:
Set auto_rp = getobject(“winmgmts:\\.\root\default:Systemrestore”)
auto_sys_rp = auto_rp.createrestorepoint (“Automatic System Restore Point”, 0, 100)
When saving, make sure to not save it as text document but select All Files from the Save as type dropdown menu and name it something like automatic_sysrp.vbs. vbs is the type of file here, make sure you have it correct, since otherwise the script will not be executable.
Now that you have created the script, you can doubleclick it to create a system restore point. But to have it done automatically, we are going to use Windows’ Scheduled Tasks function. Therefore, enter Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Scheduled Tasks. Select File > New > Scheduled Task from the control bar. Give it a name, rightclick it and select Properties.
In the opened window, browse the location of the vbs script you just created and go to the Schedule tab. Enter a time when the restore point shall be created and click on Apply when you are finished. A new system restore point will now be created at the time you specified or on doubleclick upon the script.
How to run Windows 8 in Virtualbox
Trying to run Microsoft’s Development Version of Windows 8 you might run into some problems – the two major ones being these two:
What Windows Version shall I choose in the construction of the machine?
The solution here is to choose the appropriate version of Windows 7. If you downloaded the 32 bit edition, choose Windows 7 32 bit, same for 64 bit.
When I start the machine I get some error!
Starting the machine for the first time you will most likely get the error stating:
“Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.”
[...]
Status: 0xc0000225
Info: An unexpected error has occured.
This is what you are shown:
To fix this, stop the machine and enter its settings. Go to Settings > System and check Enable IO APIC:
Exit the settings and start the machine again. You should now be able to configure the installation.
How to save the music from a youtube video as mp3 file
Have you ever wanted to save the sound from a youtube video on your harddisk as mp3 file? There is a handy Firefox plugin named “Youtube to mp3″ available for that. Open the following link in the Firefox webbrowser:
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/11047/
and click on the “add to Firefox” link to install the plugin. Then restart firefox to activate the plugin.
How to remove old java versions from Windows
When you install the latest java runtime enviroment, it gets installed beside your existing java installation. With every java update, more space is used on the harddisk. To remove old java versions, there is a tool named JavaRa which can be downloaded here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/javara/files/javara/JavaRa/JavaRa.zip/download
Unpack the JavaRa.zip file and double click on the JavaRa.exe to start JavaRa. Select the language:
and click on “Remove older versions”.
How to get a list of all open ports on Windows 7, Vista and XP?
There is a small freeware Utility called CurrPorts from Nirsoft that displays all open ports on windows.
Download CurrPorts to your computer:
32Bit version: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.zip
64Bit version: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports-x64.zip
Unpack the .zip file and double click on the file cports.exe to start CurrPorts. The application will show you a list of all open ports and offers the ability to apply filters on the list.
How to delete saved passwords for network drives in Windows
If you saved a password for a network drive in windows and want to remove it, press the keys [Windows] + [R] to open the windows command line. Then enter
control keymgr.dll
and click on “OK” to open the windows credential manager which allows you to manage and delete passwords saved in Windows.
This procedure works for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.
How to extend the Windows 7 activation period to up to 120 days
Windows 7 has to be activated within a period of 30 days. You can use the following command up to 3 times to extend the activation period to up to 120 days. The Command has to be executed as Administrator user on the Windows shell:
Click on “Start” > “All Programs” > “Accessories” and then right click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as Administrator”
In the command promt window enter the following command and hit return:
slmgr -rearm
This slmgr command works also on the Test versions of Windows 7 that Microsoft offers on their website. It has to be executed before the activation period ended.
How to prevent the automatic restart after a Windows update?
One solution is to stop the windows update service to prevent that Windows XP restarts the computer after an update. The update service will be started again after the next boot.
Click on “Start” > “Run” and enter the command:
net stop wuauserv
Windows starts slower after defragmenting the harddisk
If your windows installation starts slower after you defragmeted the harddisk, it might be nescessary to run the defragmentation utility on the boot files too which were normally skipped when running the defrag utility. To defragment the boot files, click on “Start” > “Run…” and then enter the command “defrag -b :c”:
