Working with the Vista Index

The new search capabilities in Windows Vista are certainly a significant step up from those in Windows 2000 and Windows XP. For once, you can actually find what you're looking for in a reasonable amount of time. By default, however, the new Vista search feature only indexes the partition where the operating system is installed, which is usually the C: drive. That's fine, unless you have a second partition or second hard drive you use to store your data files. In that case, you have to manually add the second hard drive to the search index. Luckily, it's only a two step process!



Step 1: Turn On the Search Indexing for the Second Hard Drive/Partition




Double click on your My Computer icon, right click on the drive and choose Properties. Then check the box that says "Index this drive for faster searching." Finally, click OK.


For some strange reason, that doesn't actually add the drive to the index, so you have to perform one more step.



Step 2: Add the Drive to the Indexing Options




Go to Start, Control Panel and click on Indexing Options. In the dialogue box, you'll see a list of current locations that are indexed by the Indexing service. Click on the Modify button and check off the second partition or hard drive you want indexed (for example, D:, E:, etc).



If you don't see the drive you're looking for, make sure you press the "Show all locations" button at the bottom of the window. You should then see all of the possible choices:



That's it! Windows Vista will then begin indexing the new location and results from the extra drives will appear in your searches. Now, you can also add network drives to the Vista search index, as long as the drive is a mapped drive. Note that turning on the indexing in Vista is a great way to find files quickly and I would suggest keeping it on all the time. However, you may want to turn it off if your computer seems to be running slow.



Either way, this is an easy way to make your Vista searching even easier!

Access Stored User Names and Passwords with rundll32.exe

The Stored User Names and Passwords applet lets you assign user names and passwords to use when needing to authenticate yourself to services in domains other than the one you are currently logged into.

The normal way of running this applet can be difficult to find quickly, so here is a way to launch it using a desktop shortcut using the rundll32.exe program:

Click on START - RUN and type the following (follwed by ENTER):

Rundll32.exe keymgr.DLL,KRShowKeyMgr

Hibernation is a feature that allows your system to shut down quickly and save everything that is open in the RAM to be stored on the hard drive until the computer is powered on again.

XP and 2000 use a file called hiberfil.sys to save everything it needs when they go into hibernation. If you never use the hibernate function, you can turn it off.

When this feature is disabled, the hiberfil.sys file is deleted. This can free up the as much disk space as the amount of ram that you computer has. For example, if you have 1GB of RAM, you could be freeing up to 1GB of hard drive space.

In XP, go to Control Panel > Power Options > Hibernation and uncheck / Enable hibernation.

In 2000, go to Control Panel > Power Options > Hibernate / tab and uncheck / Enable hibernate support.

If you should want to re-enable hibernation, go back in and check / Enable hibernation in XP or Enable hibernate support in 2000.

Disable "Low Disk Space" Notification in Wondows XP

Open regedit & follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\
Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer

2. On the Edit menu, click New, click DWORD value .

3. Name the new DWORD Value as NoLowDiskSpaceChecks

4. Right click the new DWORD Value and Modify the data value to 1.

5. Exit the registry editor and restart your computer.

Fastest Way to Refresh a Page in Firefox

This How To is made for those that refresh pages very often and look for ways to improve their efficiency.

It's a small trick.


Ok, there are 3 ways to refresh a page in Firefox efficiently:

1. Pressing F5, this is a simple and fast way, requires your finger to press a key.

2. The RAW refresh is the second most efficient way, it's used when you want to refresh a page that loads from the cache some images instead of contacting the server. Therefore even you have a new picture on a page you'll still see the old picture. To RAW refresh press CTRL+R.

3. The third method is to push the refresh button which is located through the toolbar's other extensions and buttons.

4. The fourth and in my opinion the fastest way to refresh a page and the most comfortable because you only use the mouse and you move it very little even comparing it with pushing the refresh button is like this:

1. Click on the page tab you want to refresh and drag it anywhere on the page. The page will be refresh as soon as you let go. Because you do it with only 1 hand is comfortable, I believe is faster then the refresh button. Try this trick, I believe you'll like it.

Just a Tracking post

TRACKing post

Enable and Disable your automatically running CD-ROM

When you insert a CD-ROM disk,


your CD-ROM drive always runs automatically for the default setting (autorun CD-ROM). We have a tip to disable running your CD-ROM drive whereas you can enable it running again as you want. This tutorial will teach you to enable or disable running CD-ROM drive by editing a registry. Follow these steps.

* Click Start > Run .
* In the Run dialog, type regedit and press Enter.
* In the Registry Editor window, Go to the path like below,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\CurrentCo ntrolSet\ Services\ Cdrom

* Now you can see the AutoRun DWORD in the right panel, double click on it.
* Change the Value data to 0 for disabling automatically running CD-ROM, then click OK. If you want it to automatically run again, you must fill 1 value in the Value data.
* Close Registry Editor window and reboot your computer.
* Test it by inserting your CD-ROM disk. Now your computer does not automatically runs your disk.

Want to increase your laptop battery's life

Follow the few steps to increase the laptop battery's life:

Lower the backlighting on your screen:

The screen of your Laptop takes up significant amount of power and you do not require its maximum brightness. You should have to check your system and decrease the screen brightness it to a comfortable point.


Stop your wireless signal when you are not using.

After turning off your Laptop can save max. 20 minutes of your laptop's battery time because WiFi can use a considerable quantity of power. By right clicking you can stop your WiFi signal when you are not using.


Manage the correct power scheme in XP

Windows XP contain a number of predetermined power plans, which control settings like how rapidly your laptop turns off and when your screen saver boots in. You can change your laptop power scheme by choosing Control Panel > Power Options. For max. Battery life from the "Power scheme" chooses the option "Max. Battery" and decline the list. There are good choices for you just like "Low Power Mode" and Portable /Laptop. They don't conserve as much power as Max Battery. After selecting a power scheme you click Ok button to finish the process.

Computer Repair Tips

You only had experience with Windows operated computers, so this is what we referring to you. Computer repair specialists were always hard to find, and many times we had to try to figure out a solution to fix a computer which stopped working, because no specialist would come home, and to take a PC to the service company was extremely troublesome.


Computer Repair Tip 1: Defragment Often

The information on the hard disk is written in chunks called sectors. One application can spread across many such sectors, and if they are not next to each other, the head which reads the information on the hard disk has to make additional movements, thus increasing the reaction time of the computer, resulting in sluggish, slow launch of the respective application.

Computer Repair Tip 2: Clean Up Disk Errors

This is easy to do: on My Computer, select the drive you wish to clean up errors on, right-click on it, then select Properties. The first option from the second tab of the menu that opens is Check Disk. It won't run, but you can schedule it to start next time when you'll reboot your computer.

Computer Repair Tip 3: Remove Temporary Files

This is called the Disk Cleanup and you can find it in the same menu as in Computer Repair Tip no 2. It will free up some space on your hard drive, which is good, but the speed gain won't be noticeable for human senses.

The only computer repair tip that worked perfectly each time, and offered me a fast system, at least for a couple of months was to reinstall Windows.

How to disable Ctrl+C at Windows startup How to disable Ctrl+C at Windows startup

The problem: Windows lets anyone press the Ctrl+C keys during its initial booting phase and stop the booting. If the user is knowledgeable enough about the MSDOS mode, s/he can then examine the contents of all your drives and folders, etc. To prevent this from happening, you can reconfigure your computer to disable the Ctrl+C keys in the MSDOS mode.

The following method may be used to fix this problem:

First, make a backup copy of the C:\CONFIG.SYS file (just in case something goes wrong) by copying this file onto your emergency startup disk. Also, make sure that you can actually use the startup disk to boot your computer into the MSDOS mode.

Open C:\CONFIG.SYS with Notepad and add the following line at the very beginning of the file:

BREAK=OFF

Now save the file and reboot the computer.

For more information about the CONFIG.SYS file and its contents, please refer to the file Config.txt, installed by Windows in your C:\Windows folder.

Note: Note that this setting also disables Ctrl+C for all programs running in the MSDOS mode.