A Faster Way To Shut Down And Log Off Your Windows XP

If you’re experiencing slow shutdowns and log offs on your Windows XP, this trick will help you.

Instead of accessing the shutdown menu via Start->Turn Off Computer, open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete.

Press “Shut Down” at the top of the Task Manager and choose what you want your Windows XP to do:

Stand By
Hibernate
Turn Off
Restart
Log off
Switch User

10 Tricks With A USB Thumb Drive

Any ordinary USB memory device can do a lot more than you probably thought it could. It can carry programs, encryption and even a full installation of Windows XP! Here is our tenlist for the coolest things you can do with a USB thumb drive:

1.Take your programs with you
We all know how frustrating it is when we take your files to another computer just to discover that the software required to read the files is not installed.

Here’s the simplest solution – take your programs with you – on your USB thumb drive. Here’s how to do it with Portable Apps:

1. Go to the Portable Apps website and download the installer, choosing the software you want to carry along.

2. Run the installer and install the software to the root of your USB thumb drive.

And you’re done! As soon as you connect your thumb drive into a computer, Portable Apps will open up automatically.


2.Surf anonymously

With Portable Apps and Firefox, you can surf the web without leaving any trace on the computer you are using. If you want extra security, install a Firefox security plugin such as FoxyProxy. To iput Firefox onto the drive, just copy-paste the Firefox folder from you computer, or install Firefox onto the thumb drive.


3.Set a program to run automatically (autorun)
Using autorun, you can set a program to start up automatically when you connect the drive to a computer. You can also use the same script for a data CD-ROM. Note that some computers have autorun disabled for security purposes. [Here's how to disable autorun.]

Open up notepad and paste the following script:
[autorun]

ShellExecute=filename

Label=description

UseAutoPlay=1

Make sure you replace filename with the full path to the file. For example, a file called program.exe in a folder called “programs” on the thumb drive would be /programs/program.exe

Replace description with a short description of the program, for example, My Jukebox or Mozilla Firefox.

Save the file as autorun.inf, making sure you select “All Programs” from the save menu, not “Text document”!


4.Help! I’m lost!

Ever lost a USB drive? Even if you haven’t, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll lose a few during your life. And with all the important information on it, it could be a disaster to have it fall into someone’s hands.

A good idea is to encrypt all the information on the drive, but you would still want it back, wouldn’t you? Luckily, the folks at the Daily Cup Of Tech have come up with a solution.




Save a program called “Help! I’m Lost!” on the drive, that a finder just can’t get around opening. The program opens a message box with your personal “I’m lost” message. It’s a good idea to offer the finder a bigger reward than the drive itself, so that they’ll be interested in contacting you.


5.Hide the drive inside something



Why not surprise your friends and co-workers by sticking something that looks like a broken USB cable into the computer’s USB drive?

You’ll be sure to get a few shocked faces when you start to play a movie from it.

The guys from Technobuzz.net show us how to do it. (You are gonna need an unbelievably small thumb drive for this…)

6.Secure your PC

Just like with an RFID badge, you can use a USB drive to lock and unlock a PC. Insert it to begin working and pull it out when you’ve finished, locking the computer. There are several programs for this . Rohos, a commercial program and WiKID, a semi-open source one.

If you really need to secure your computer with a USB drive, I suggest you give Rohos a try, as WiKID is rather complicated.

7.Portable jukebox
Don’t just carry the music with you, also carry the player! You can install audio programs such as WinAmp and CoolPlayer+ on your thumb drive. Just unextract the ZIP folders to the USB drive.

If you want the jukebox to start up automatically when you connect the memory stick to the computer, use the autorun feature shown tip 3 and point it to the exe of your audio player.

8.Encrypt your data


If you carry any sensitive indormation on your USB memory stick, a good idea is to encrypt it. Hardware-level encryption will help, but it will cost extra. You can get a free program to encrypt your data just as securely. For this I recommend TrueCrypt, but most others will also do.

You will need admin access on the computer you want to use your encrypted thumb drive on, so this it’s usability a little.

9.Run a standalone OS for dedicated tasks

The easiest OS to boot from a USB drive is probably Linux. There are many small capacity Linux versions out there that will fit on your drive. The best 3 are Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and Webconverger.

Make sure you select a version that needs less space than your USB drive’s maximum, so you have room for files and software.

And this leads us nicely to the final tip…

10.Run Windows itself from a USB thumb drive

Modifying Windows to work on a USB drive is quite difficult, but luckily there are some tools that will do it for us. Note that you will need a separate Windows license for this, as Microsoft only lets you use one for each single computer, and a USB drive is treated by them like a computer…

What you’ll need:

1.A licensed copy of Windows
2.A USB device, min. 1GB (We recommend a USB hard disk, as a flash memory stick will become unusable after 100000 writing processes. Assuming that only 2 processes are used per second, the drive will last only 60 days with 8 hours of work each day… A hard disk doesn’t have this problem.)

Protect your Identity

Like many other audio players, Windows Media Player rushes out to the Internet to find information for you when you play a CD. Some of this information, such as song titles and album art, is useful, but Media Player also identifies your copy of Media Player to the site where it's getting data. Why? According to the help file, "The server uses this unique identifier to monitor your connection. By monitoring your connection, the server can make adjustments to increase the playback quality and to alert you about events that occur when receiving streams over the Internet."

If you're disturbed by this exchange of information, here's how to stop it. In Windows Media Player, click Tools > Options and go to the Player tab. Notice the option that says "Allow Internet sites to uniquely identify your player?" Turn it off.

Add sound to almost every event in Windows

XP comes with a new set of sounds that will surely add pizzazz to the way you work in Windows. But there's one problem -- you need to actually turn on the Windows default sound scheme before you'll be able to hear them.


To turn on the Windows XP default sound scheme, follow these directions:


Single-click the Start menu.
Single-click the Control Panel.
Single-click the Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices icon.
Single-click the Sounds and Audio Devices icon or the text labeled "Change the sound scheme."
Make sure you're on the Sound tab and locate the pull-down menu under Sound scheme.
Select the Windows Default option and press Apply. Windows will ask you if you want to save the previous sound scheme. Since there wasn't a sound scheme already loaded, just choose No.

If you look under the text labeled "Program events," you'll be able to sample your new sounds or customize them with your own. Read Customize Events Sounds if you'd like to learn how to do this yourself.

Set Processes Priority

Follow this tip to increase the priority of active processes, this will result in prioritisation of processes using the CPU.

CTRL-SHIFT-ESC

1.Go to the second tab called Processes, right click on one of the active processes, you will see the Set Priority option


2.For example, your Run your CDwriter program , set the priority higher, and guess what, no crashed CD’s

Disable CD Autorun

1) Click Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC

2) Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System.

3) Locate the entry for Turn autoplay off and modify it as you desire.

Pivot a new Internet Browser

Pivot – a new Internet Browser from Microsoft, and no its not an another name or code name for Internet Explorer 9, its a completely new Web Browser from Microsoft Live Labs, a new experiment.



Compatibility

Pivot only runs on Windows 7 and Vista. Server OSes such as Windows Server 2008, and earlier operating systems such as Windows XP, are not supported.

Auto logon for Windows XP

Would you rather not have to log on after your computer starts? If you’re the only person who uses your computer, you can make life a little easier by skipping the Welcome screen completely and having Microsoft Windows XP take you straight to your desktop.

To automatically log on to Windows XP upon startup
1.Click Start, and then click Run.

Note: Remember your user name at the top of the Start menu, because you’ll need it later.




2.In the Open box, type and click OK.



3.Clear the Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer check box. Click OK.


4.Click the User name box, type the user name that was displayed on the Start menu in step 1. If you normally type a password to log on, type your password in both the Password and Confirm Password boxes. Otherwise, leave these boxes blank. Click OK.




Auto logon now allows anyone to start and use your computer without typing a password.

Note: Keep in mind that you should not enable auto logon if you need privacy for any files on your computer. If you need to maintain privacy, create separate user accounts for everyone in your home, and protect your account with a password.

Create a personal screen saver using your photos

If you like using a screen saver and have digital photos on your computer, you can easily make your own screen saver using the pictures that you have stored on your PC. You can set up your screen saver in Microsoft Windows XP to display a slide show of some or all of your pictures when you’re not using your computer.

To set up a My Pictures slide show
1.Right-click on the desktop, and then click Properties.



2.In the Display Properties dialog box, click the Screen Saver tab. Then, click the Screen saver list, and click My Pictures Slideshow



3.Click OK.


The next time your screen saver starts, you’ll see a slide show of all the pictures in your My Pictures folder. If you want to see your pictures right away, follow these instructions to add a shortcut to your desktop that immediately starts the slide show.

Simplify using your mouse: change double-click to single-click

When you browse the Web with Microsoft Internet Explorer, links open with a single click. Yet, when you browse My Computer or My Documents, a single click lets you select a file or folder, but you have to double-click to open it.

If you'd rather single-click to open files and folders, you can change the setting on your mouse (don't worry, this process doesn't require any double clicks).

To change the settings on your mouse

1.Click Start, and then click My Computer.


2.Click Tools, and then click Folder Options.


3.Click Single-click to open an item. Then, click OK.



Now you can navigate folders and open files with a single rather than a double click. If you need to select a file, simply hold your mouse over the file for a few seconds without clicking

5 Time-Saving Tips using Outlook 2007

There are never enough hours in the day when you’re running a small business, so every minute saved is an added bonus. Without spending money, could you be getting more out of the software you already own? Here are five ways Outlook 2007 can help you win back some time:

Save time searching: Outlook's Instant Search means you can dig out keywords, contact information and dates from any Outlook record – such as emails, your task list, contacts or calendar items. You’ll be amazed at how much time it will save you back-tracking. And remember, once you've found an individual email, you can track automatically through the relevant conversation to see what happened before and after.
Get organised with the big picture: Outlook’s To Do bar has all the tools in one place to organise your day - like your calendar and a list of upcoming appointments and tasks that need completing. The To-Do bar is all your priorities neatly organised in one place.
Connect quickly with colleagues: Outlook lets you share your calendar, so important contacts have immediate access to your information. You can also publish your calendars to Office Online and send electronic business cards, making it even quicker to communicate with people. That means you can not only share your availability with colleagues, but also with clients. You can choose to share full calendar information, or just your availability. Which is handy: there's no need for customers to know that your blocked out time is actually a corporate day out at Ascot Races…
Find out what's going on around you: Outlook will save you time keeping pace with what’s going on in your industry and in the outside world by letting you manage news bulletins, RSS feeds and blogs – all through the same single interface. In today's rich multi-media internet world, it's helpful to have text, audio and video feeds all collated and organised in one place.
Go mobile! With one easy click, the Outlook Mobile Service lets you send and receive text and picture messages between Outlook and any mobile phone. In fact, Outlook will even forward contacts, appointments, reminders and tasks as text messages if that's most convenient – ideal if you're often out on the road.

Google Wave is a real time communication & collaboration tool that is termed as the next evolution of email. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files. A wave can be both a discussion and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps. Wave builds on the concept of cloud computing.

Google Wave is supposed to replace traditional email systems and improve them by using more interactive, live, on-the-fly methods to deliver information. Traditional emails work on a basis of typing a message, potentially styling the message, and hitting “send” and off it goes to the recipient. Traditional instant messaging systems work by typing a message, hitting enter and automatically sending to the recipient for instant delivery. Wave offers a hybrid of the two. If both people are logged on, they can open a conversation (called a wave) and send a message to the recipient which will not only instantly send to the recipient, but the recipient can (optionally) see every letter when you type it and write back instantaneously. This speeds up conversation drastically instead of having to wait for others to reply to press enter to start writing your response. Given that the recipient is offline, they will receive the wave in their inbox in bolded.

Few terms used in Google Wave :

Wave – Each wave can be thought of as a separate thread in a Forum. They are like topics or conversations between a group of people.
Wavelet – A wavelet is a sub entity of a Google Wave. It is like an individual conversation you would have in between a larger discussion. Kind of like talking to your friend during a Conference.
Blip – A blip is like a single comment within a wavelet. It’s just one comment.
Google Wave features :

1. Real-time functionality : You can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character. This can result in faster conversation as you might not need to wait for sender to complete the statement (Blip). This property also applies to Live transmission of any type and real-time changes to multimedia such as images, documents and programs.Real-Time information is shared between users.

2. Embeddability : Waves can be embedded on any blog or website. Visitors to a web page can manipulate the wave straight from the site itself. It can be replacing comments in blogs.

3. Playback Facility : You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.

4. Extensions : An extension is a mini-application within a wave similar to extensions in Facebook or iGoogle. Developers can build their own apps within waves.As #2 quoted waves to be embedded in Blogs, Blog extensions can Embed the Wave into a blog.

5. Drag-and-drop file sharing : It has drag and drop sharing of digital assets like photos, sound and video attachments just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.

6. Mobile support : Google Wave can be viewed on a mobile device.

7. Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.

8. Open Source : The Google Wave code will be open source, so Likewise Firefox Add-ons Developers would be submitting lot of innovative applications using Wave API.

9. Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” If you write it has bean good day Wave would suggest that you can change the spelling.

10.Share Google Search Results you can directly share Google search results within a wave.Simple Google it within Wave and embed them in your wave.

11.Translation Features : It has a great futures like translating between 40 different languages by using Rosy Extension.

12.Add new people to conversation You can add new people to conversation very easily. Simply drag them from your contacts into your Wave.

13.Polling Facility : Polls can be added into a wave which can be voted on by all those who are sharing that wave.

14.Webcam Video Chat is yet another feature of Wave.

It is also becoming developer heaven for developing gadgets and extensions and Google has announced that there will be an official Wave app store. According to References from Mashable Google Wave is going to become project management tool for the future as well future marketing tool. Marketers will have the ability to create customer support in real time.

Basic Shortcut Keys

Ctrl + A Select all text.
Ctrl + C Copy selected item to clipboard.
Ctrl + Ins Copy selected item to clipboard
Ctrl + V Paste the copied item from clipboard
Shift + Ins Paste the copied item from clipboard
Ctrl + X Cut selected item.
Shift + Del Cut selected item. Windows Explorer: Permanent delete item.
Ctrl + F Find.
Alt + F File menu options in current program.
Alt + E Edit options in current program
F1 Universal Help in almost every Windows program.
Home Goes to beginning of current line.
Ctrl + Home Goes to beginning of document.
End Goes to end of current line.
Ctrl + End Goes to end of document.
Shift + Home Highlights from current position to beginning of line.
Shift + End Highlights from current position to end of line.
Ctrl + Left arrow Moves one word to the left at a time.
Ctrl + Right arrow Moves one word to the right at a time.

How to create your own shortcut key for favorite programs?

You can create your own keyboard shortcut to open any your favorite programs, files and folders.note that you can create keyboard shortcut only with program shortcut on your desktop or the start menu programs.

Follow the giving steps to create your own keyboard shortcut for favorite program:

First right click on desktop shortcut or on any start menu program and choose Properties from the menu.



Here under the shortcut tab, click in Shortcut key box.

Now press any key on your keyboard that you want to use as combination with CTRL+ALT. For example, if you want to create keyboard shortcut to open MSN Messenger, simply press 9, your keyboard shortcut for MSN Messenger will be CTRL+ALT+9.




Now press OK button and test your shortcut key.

How to delete files that are used by other programs in windows XP/Vista?

you can delete the files and folders that are being used by another programs and applications, for example a virus affected file. You have tried to delete such kind of files or folders and received the any following messages.

Cannot delete file: the file is in use by the other program

Cannot delete file: There has been a sharing violation

Cannot delete file: The file is in use by another program or user

Cannot delete file: Disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

Cannot delete file: The source or destination file may be in use




Normally, a windows restart will allow you to delete such files or folders that are being used by other program, but if you want to manage it without restart your computer then simply you need to download a freeware tool called Unlocker.

You can download this tool for any windows version using Unlocker link. Download it and run the easy setup.

After installation, right click on file or folder that you want to delete and select the option Unlocker.



If your requested file or folder is used or locked by other application then a small window listing of lockers will appear.





Here simply click on “Unlock All” button and now you can easily delete this file.

Useful Adobe Photoshop Shortcut Keys

Shortcut keys with Ctrl + Shift / Alt Combination

Ctrl + Shift + O Photoshop's File Browser
Ctrl + Shift + P Page Setup Dialogue Box
Ctrl + Shift + S Save As Dialogue Box
Ctrl + Shift + K Color Setting Preferences Box
Ctrl + Shift + F Fade Dialogue Box
Ctrl + Shift + X Liquify Filter Tool
Ctrl + Shift + N Create New Layer Preferences Box
Ctrl + Shift + M Launches ImageReady
Ctrl + Shift + E Merges all layers into a single layer
Ctrl + Alt + Z Step Backward
Ctrl + Shift + - Zoom Out
Ctrl + Shift + + Zoom In
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N Creates a new empty layer
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + S Save For The Web Dialogue
Ctrl + Alt (in most Dialogue Boxes) - Changes the 'Cancel' command to 'Reset'
Ctrl + Alt (in the 'Save For Web Dialogue') - Changes the Cancel command to Reset

Useful Adobe Photoshop Shortcut Keys

Shortcut keys with Ctrl+ Combination
Shortcut keys Action

Ctrl + N To open new Document
Ctrl + M Curves Dialogue Box
Ctrl + A Selects all in the currently foreground document or
currently
Ctrl + D Deselects all in the currently foreground document or
currently
Ctrl + J Automatically creates a duplicate of the currently
selected layer
Ctrl + K Preferences Dialogue Box
Ctrl + L Levels Dialogue Box
Ctrl + F4 Closes current document
Ctrl + ' Toggles Grid Lines
Ctrl + Q Quits Photoshop altogether
Ctrl + R Toggles Rulers
Ctrl + U Hue/Saturation Dialogue Box
Ctrl + O Opens New File
Ctrl + P Print Dialogue Box
Ctrl + Z Undo last Action
Ctrl + Tab Toggle between open documents
Ctrl + Shift + C Copy Merged
Ctrl + H Toggle Extras
Ctrl + ; Toggle Guides
Ctrl + Shift + ; Toggle Snap
Ctrl + X Cut
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + X Pattern Maker
Ctrl + Shift + V Paste into selection
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + V Paste Outside
Ctrl + T Transform Tool
Ctrl + Shift + T Repeats the last performed Transform
Shift + F5 / Shift + Backspace (Key) Fill Layer Dialogue Box

How to manage the compatibility issues of Office 2007 to earlier office versions?

By default all Microsoft Office 2007 applications use the different files extensions than the earlier versions. All earlier Office applications used the file extensions as .doc, .xls and .ppt for Word, Excel and PowerPoint respectively, but now Office 2007 applications uses the .docx, xlsx and .pptx file extensions for Word, Excel and PowerPoint respectively. These all new file extensions are not compatible with all previous versions of Office applications, that is why Office 2002 and Office 2003 applications cannot open and read the .docx, xlsx and .pptx file extensions.
However, you have an option in Office 2007 to save the files with in older files extensions, But if you are frequently using the older versions of the file and also if the files created by you are to be shared on other computers which have earlier versions of Office, you may want to save all your new documents in the older format, but that would create duplicate files. There is better option in Office 2007 applications to change the default saving file format to the older format and then the new file format in Office 2007 will be changed to .doc, .xls and .ppt for Word, Excel and PowerPoint respectively.
Follow the given steps to set the default older file format for Word 2007:
First click on Start button, go to Program then click on Microsoft Word 2007 to run the word application.
Now click on File menu in the top left corner then click on Word Options button to change the default word options.
In the left side panel, click on Save option, and now "Customized how documents are saved" option will appear in right side panel. .