Installing ImgBurn

The first and foremost step is to download and install ImgBurn in your computer.

Burning Windows 7 ISO image

• Open ImgBurn software. You will find many options in front of you.

• From the given options, select “Write image file to disc“.

• Navigate to the “Browse for a file” option.

• Locate the location of the ISO image in your computer. Select the ISO image file from the location and click “Open“.
• Immediately a new screen appeared requiring you to click on the “Write” option.

• ImgBurn will now burn your ISO into the DVD. (It is highly recommended to check the Verify box. This will force the software to verify the ISO image).

• Laptop users may get an error message (as shown below), but don’t panic. Just click “OK” to continue.

• The burning process will resume. After sometime, you should see the following message assuring you that your ISO image has been burned successfully.

• You should have a working Windows 7 installer DVD now. We strongly recommend you to Verify your DVD works before booting it to install Windows 7. Do this by going to Computer, double clicking on your optical drive’s icon, and double clicking on setup.exe. The Windows 7 install tool should load.

Once the verification is successfully done, you are ready to install Windows 7 from the DVD.

The post How to Burn a Windows 7 ISO Image to a DVD appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

Step 1.

Download Farmville magic Tools and install it in your computer (Windows only).

Run the Farmville Magic Tool. Open the Farmville game in your Facebook account. The magic tools window will appear on your screen just like the picture below.

Step 2.

Left click on the “cow” icon and drag it into the farm. Remember to keep the farm visible while performing this action.

Step 3.

If all things turn out well, the three most important buttons – Plow, Plant and Harvest will be enabled on your machine.

Step 4.

Using Beliefs and Causes Farmville allows you to zoom to the maximum distance possible.

Step 5.

Hit the Magic Plow Tool button and select either the Plow Tool or the Multi-tool. If you happen to land up in a massive farm, use the Tractor for efficient and speedy operation.

Step 6.

To exactly plant the user preferable seed from the market, select the Magic Plant Tool. Magic Plant Tool automatically selects and plants all the stuff to be planted. Here too, you can select the “Seeder” option for lesser time consumptions and faster reward.

Step 7.

Select Harvester and click Magic Harvest Tool. This will automate the harvest process. By selecting Custom crop you can inform Magic tools of some parts that were not selected. This option enables you with the feature of direct harvest within the program.

That’s it. You can now sit back and enjoy the fruits of your “hard work”

The post Farmville: Effective Cheats Unveiled appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

Here, we unveil a new utilization feature of the Windows 7 taskbar. Often, some programs and shortcuts to various applications are pinned to the taskbar for easy accessibility. However, sometimes for reasons concerning privacy and confidentiality, the user may want to hide these icons so that other users logging into his computer do not have access to his private applications or programs. We’ll now plow on the process to achieve  this useful tweak.

To start with, the icon that needs to be hidden should remain invisible at the taskbar with only the creator knowing its perfect location and the authority to view and access it. We, here, take Mozilla Firefox as an example to the program that requires to be hidden. On completing the following procedure, your taskbar will contain Mozilla Firefox as a launch up program while keeping it invisible to anyone who logs on to your computer.

Making a program icon invisible

To make an program icon invisible, you need to use a software called “Resource Hacker”. Download this freeware to start the process. The dowloaded file is a “.zip” file. No installation is required to use this software.

On extraction, locate the file “ResHacker.exe” in the extracted folder. Right click on this file and select to “Run as Administrator”. Confirm on request to open Resource Hacker.

1. After the software opens, go to “File” menu (or simply press Alt+F). Select “Open” and navigate to the location where the Mozilla Firefox execution file is present. (It should be in the folder “Mozilla Firefox” in the “Programs” folder of the directory where Mozilla is installed). Select the file “firefox.exe” file and click “Open”.

2. The Resource Hacker wizard opens up. Select “Icon” and then click on the “Action” tab on the menu-bar. Select “Replace Icon“.

3. The “Replace Icon in” window appears. Select “1″ in the right pane of the window under the tag “Select icon to replace” and then click to “Open file with new Icon…“.

4. Navigate to “C:\Windows\System32\ ” and click on “shell32.dll” to open it.

5. On clicking “Open” a list of icons appear under the tag “Select new icon“. Select the icon number 52. Then click to “Replace”.

You will be notified that the icon has been replaced.

To proceed, you have to replace a second set of icons. Select “Open” under “File” menu. On asking whether to save your work, select “NO“, as the task is not completed yet. Follow the steps 1 to 5 once again with the exception that in step 3, this time, Select “32512″ in the right pane of the window under the tag “Select icon to replace”. Follow the remaining steps as you have done previously.

Save the file you have just created by pressing Ctrl+S to the installed program folder of Mozilla Firefox (in the folder “Mozilla Firefox” in the “Programs” folder of the directory where Mozilla is installed).

Exit Resource Hacker.

The new file created “firefox.exe” can be visualized when you open the folder where Mozilla is installed. This file, does not have an icon, or more technically, the icon of this file is invisible. The original Firefox execution file still remains within the folder with it being renamed to “firefox_original.exe”. Now, right click on the file “firefox.exe” and select “Pin to taskbar”.

To the right of the pinned programs on the taskbar, appears a section which, on hovering your mouse pointer over it, displays “firefox.exe – Shortcut”. You have just created a secret invisible icon in your Windows 7 taskbar. Drag this section to the extreme left of the taskbar to the right of the “Start” button.

Your taskbar remains just as it was before you created this invisible icon. None, but you know the exact location of this icon. Your privacy gets boosted up with an increased accessibility option.

Note: Updating Firefox will again require you to retrace the above steps to restore your invisible icon in the taskbar. Same process can be performed for any other program.

The post How to Hide Application Icon In Windows 7 Taskbar appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

However, Microsoft came up with a different alternative in Windows 7, one that is not as user friendly as it was in Windows XP. We’ll see why it is so and how we can fix this up.

The Alternative Way in Windows 7

To the extreme right bottom corner of the Windows 7 taskbar, just after the time and date indicator, is a small rectangular sectioned area whose function is not indicated unless you bring your mouse pointer over it. This area acts similarly as the Show Desktop icon in Windows XP. Clicking on the above specified area, minimizes all active open windows and brings up the desktop for easy access to the user. Clicking on it again, restores the open windows as they were before. While this is a good implementation, it gets overlooked easily, as the small section remains unlabeled and unused.

If you are more familiar and find it more easy to have a Show Desktop icon as in XP, you can always create one and use it in Windows 7 for easier access to your desktop.

Creating a Show Desktop Icon in Windows 7

Start by clicking on the Start menu and go to All Programs. Click on Accessories and then select Notepad.

A Notepad file opens. Copy and paste the following code in the Notepad file :

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

Note: There should not be any space between the “comma” and “3″ in the 3rd line of the code.

Click on “File”  menu of the Notepad window and select “Save As…”. Save the Notepad file as “Show Desktop.scf” and select desktop as the location.

A file named “Show Desktop.scf” appears on the desktop. Creating the file in Windows 7 is complete.

Using this Show Desktop icon :

Now, leaving your created file on the desktop isn’t really going to help as you have to minimize every window to access it. For easy access you can either pin this file to the Start menu, or add it as a toolbar in the taskbar. To pin it to the Start menu just drag the file to the “Start” icon. Windows automatically pins it to the Start menu.

To add this file as a tool in the system tray

• Create a folder in any location of your computer. Name it as Show Desktop.
• Copy the file, you’ve created, “Show Desktop.scf”.
• Right click on the taskbar and select Toolbar>New toolbar.
• Select the created “Show Desktop.scf” file on the desktop to add it as a toolbar.

Now you can easily access your desktop while working in an open window by either opening the Start menu and selecting Show Desktop, or by simply clicking on the Show Desktop icon in the toolbar. Users familiar with Windows XP will find this very user-friendly as it is easy to access your desktop now in Windows7.

Note: The created file must be saved with a “.scf” extension and not the default “.txt” one.

The post Restore the Show Desktop Icon In Windows 7 appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

To fix this fragmentation problem, we need to run the disk defragmentation application where it locates the various parts of a file and arranges them in running order. By default, Windows comes with its own set of defragment tool that anyone can use, but it suffers from some drawbacks such as inability to defragment a single selected file and ignores files that are smaller than 64 MB.

On the other hand, there is this effective utility named Auslogics Disk Defrag which lets you overcome all of this drawbacks. This useful Auslogics product comes with features like:

• able to defragment all drives at once.
• able to defragment a single file or folder.
• auto defragmentation in the background.
• wipes out all the free space so that no data can be restored.
• able to change the algorithm of defragmentation.
• schedule regular defragmentation session.
• compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

It also contains several advanced features like optimizing your hard drives for maximum performance and keeping the MFT feature zone clear.

How to use Auslogics Disk Defrag

One good thing about Auslogics Disk Defrag is that it is easy to use.

If you want to defragment a single or multiple drives simultaneously, simply select the drives you want to defragment and click on “Defrag” button.

Clicking on the arrow beside the Defrag button allows you to change the algorithm of the defragmentation process. Here you can chose to just analyze the disks or to defragment the selected drives. You can also chose “Defrag & Optimize” option where it tweak the system for best performance. This process is slower but more effective than just the “Defrag” method.

If you just want to defragment some specific files or folders, go to Action->Defrag File or Action->Defrag folder. You can then select the file or folder to defrag.

Another interesting feature about this software is that you can set the algorithm of the defragment process. One option is to remove the users’ temporary file before defragmentation. This can significantly reduce the defragmentation time. You can also set option not to defrag files bigger than a certain size. Moving the system file to the beginning of the disk can also help to increase your system speed.

You can also schedule the defragmentation process from the “Schedule” tab.

Auslogics Disk Defrag is free to download and use. For those who wanted more powerful software, you can also try the premium version – Auslogics BoostSpeed.

Does this software make your defragmentation process a whole lot easier? Hopefully your PC performs faster too.

The post Defragment Your Disk With Auslogics Disk Defrag appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

1. View .docx file in older Office version

Microsoft has released a compatibility package to run the newer documents file in older version of Office. Just download the Microsoft compatibility pack. After installing the compatibility pack you will be able to read the .docx files in your current installation of Microsoft Office.

2. Install OpenOffice

For those who are not using Windows as their main operating system Microsoft Office as their main office suite, they can install OpenOffice and get it to open .docx file.

If all you need is a lightweight solution, you can also install the OpenOffice.org Portable app onto your USB drive.

3. Using Google Docs

If you don’t want to install any software in your computer, then you can upload the .docx file to Google Docs. You can then use Google Docs to read, edit or print your documents. All the content of the document will be saved in your Google account.

4. Using ThinkFree

Other than Google Docs, ThinkFree is another online based word editor that allows you to view your .docx file. Open the the website and upload any office file. It will show you the document content. Generally Thinkfree does not require registration to view a document file, but if you want to edit that document or share in the internet, you will have to sign up for an account. One thing though, you can avoid the sign up process by logging into your Gmail account.

The first time you login with your Google account, you have to grant the permission to ThinkFree to access your Google account.

5. Convert the docx file to your preferred format

There is another hassle free method to view a .docx formatted document. You can use a converter to convert the .docx file. There are several online tools that you can use to convert a .docx file.

• Zamzar – It is a fast online tool and easy to use. Just sign in to Zamzar and start to convert your docx file in your preferred file format.
• Docx converter – With Docx converter, you can convert the docx file to many file formats such as doc, pdf etc. Docx converter also comes with a desktop widget to allow you to convert the files directly from your desktop. Download Desktop widget.

What other methods do you to use to view your .docx file?

The post How to Open .docx File Without Microsoft Office appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

In Windows 7, there is this feature that allows you to clone your system to an image file so you can restore from it in the event some disasters happened. In this article, we are going to show you how to clone your system drive in Windows 7 and restore your system from that.

Cloning your system

1. In the Start menu search box, type “backup and restore” and press “Enter”. It will open the Backup and Restore window in control panel. Now Click on “Create a system image” from left side of the window.

2. Once the “Create a System image” window appears, choose “On a hard disk” option and locate the drive where you want to save the backup. You can also choose DVDs option, but be forewarned that it will require more than one DVD to complete the backup. Using an external hard disk would be a better choice.

3. After confirming the backup location, you can click on the “Next” button to proceed in the next step. Here is where you choose the drive to backup. The system drive (C:) is checked by default. For other drives, simply check the box beside them to include them in your backup.

4. In this step, you have to confirm whether you have selected the right location of backup and the correct drives which you want to backup. Click the “Start backup” button once you have checked everything is correct.

5. The backup process will take some time to finish. You can go for your coffee break for now.

After the backup is completed, you can now remove your external hard drive and keep the backup image file in a safe place.

Restoring from the backup image

To restore your PC from the backup image, you can either boot it up from the startup screen (if your OS cannot be booted up anymore) or restore from the control panel (when you just want to revert back to an older setting).

Restore from Control Panel

1. Type “backup and restore” in the Start menu search box to open Backup and Restore window.

2. Click on “Recover system settings or your computer”.

3. Click on “Advanced recovery methods”.

4. Choose the option “Use a system image you created earlier to recover your computer”.

5. Now you’ll get a option to back up the files like documents, pictures, music, located in the current system drive. You can skip this process by clicking the “Skip” button.

6. Hit the “Restart” button. When your computer starts again, just choose the location of the backup image file and proceed.

Restore from startup screen

1. Restart you computer, hold down the F8 key when booting to enter the advanced boot option menu.

2. Select your preferred keyboard layout. Click Next to proceed.

3. Put a user name and password, click OK.

4. Choose “System Image Recovery” from the System Recovery option menu and follow the instructions.

That’s all to create a backup system image and restore your system from it. Do let us know if you use any other ways to backup/restore your PC.

The post How to Create a Backup System Image in Windows 7 appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

What we are going to do is to make use of the NTFS’s Alternate Data Streams to store our sensitive data. The Alternate Data Streams allow us to hide stream in some file name. This data stream is not visible or shown when accessing the main file. So if you want to hide data like password, email address or bank A/C number, you can add those as a simple text and hide them as a stream in some file name.

Let’s get down to the dirty work:

Open command prompt and type the following syntax:

notepad AnyFileName.txt:SecretData.txt

Here “AnyFileName” is the actual filename of the text file while “SecretData.txt” is the hidden stream contained within AnyFileName.

A window will popup asking for your confirmatoin. Click Yes.

A notepad editor will appear. You can now type the sensitive data that you want to hide.

Go to File -> Save to save the file.

You can add more than one hidden stream in the same file. Simply type the same command (but with different stream name) to add the new stream.

Notice that the main file name is “AnyFileName.txt” and there are no clues from the exterior that it contains a hidden file within it.

How do I access the hidden data?

To read the hidden stream from command prompt type the syntax below:

more < FileName.txt:StreamName.txt

For instance in our example the command should be

more < AnyFileName.txt:SecretData.txt

You will have to remember the file of your hidden stream in order to recover it from the text file.

How do I detect the hidden file if I’ve forgotten the file name?

Yes you can detect the hidden files using the application Stream.exe. This application will monitor all the files with the stream file name if they exist.

For instance the syntax of detecting the hidden stream is

streams.exe AnyFileName.txt

If you want to delete just the stream from the file then type this command:

streams.exe -d AnyFileName.txt

This command will delete all the streams from the file AnyFileName.txt.

The above process is very handy to store some private text data in your system. Unless the other users of your PC are tech savvy or hackers, the chances are they will never notice your little secrets.

If you are still not satisfied, you can further enhance the security of those files by making them inaccessible and undeletable.

The post How to Hide Confidential Data In Text Files appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

Add Administrative tool

If you need to access the system Administrative tools frequently, it may be a chore for you to open them from the Control Panel (Control Panel > System and Security) all the time. A better option is to add the Administrative tool in your Start menu where you can access it easily.

1. Right click on the Start menu and choose “Properties”.

2. A Taskbar and Start Menu Properties screen will appear. Under Start menu tab, click the “Customize” button.

3. Now scroll down and look for “System administrative tools”. Here three options are available. Choose “Display on the All Programs menu and the Start menu”.

4. Click “OK” to save the changes and close out the remaining windows. Now the Administrative tool is available in your start menu. You can access all the Administrative tools from there.

You can also make a shortcut of the administrative tool in desktop by right clicking on the “Administrative tools” button that you have created recently in your start menu and drag it to the desktop.

Add the old Run command and the Recent Item

You might notice that the “Run” command and the “Recent Items” is not available in the Start menu in all the version of Windows 7. Many users like to have those in their start menu. The Recent Items arranges the shortcuts of your recently accessed documents, picture, videos, or other files so you can access those files again easily.

1. Right click the start menu button and choose “Properties“. Now in the Taskbar and start menu properties screen, click “Customize” button under the “Start menu tab“.

2. Scroll down until you see the “Run command” and  “Recent Items” options. Check the boxes beside them and click on “OK” to accept the changes.

3. Now click on “Apply” and “OK” to close all the windows. Now both the “Run” command and “Recent Items” are available in your start menu.

Delete all the Recent Items with a single double click

If you have recently accessed some files that you don’t want others to know, with this trick, you can easily and quickly delete all the entries from the Recent Items.

Note: This does not delete the original file. It just deletes the shortcuts that are stored in the “Recent” folder.

You can delete manually the shortcuts from the “Recent” folder by typing  “shell:recent” in the start menu search box, but there is a script which allows you to delete all the shortcuts from the Recent Items list by not more than one double click. It works like a magic. Let’s write the script code.

1. Open notepad.

2. Write down the following code in the notepad document file. Do not copy/paste from here. It will not work.

var fso = WScript.CreateObject(”Scripting.FileSystemObject”);
var WSH =  new ActiveXObject(”WScript.Shell”);
var folder =  WSH.SpecialFolders(”Recent”);
fso.DeleteFile(folder + “\\*.*”);

3. Save the file as DeleteRecentDoc.js

Note: While saving, change the “Save as type” to “All files”.

The file you have created looks like as below.

Whenever you’ll run this file, the record of all the recently used items will be deleted. Now store the file any where in your hard drive, for convenience of uses, right click on it and create a shortcut to desktop.You may change the icon of the aforesaid file if you wish to do so.

The abovementioned tricks are only a tip of the iceberg on what you can add in the Start menu. Do share with us if you have any tricks not are not covered above.

The post How to Customize Windows 7 Start Menu For Better Efficiency appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

By default, the size of the text and the icons are set to small (100%). That is alright for a regular monitor. If you are using a wide screen monitor, the 100% setting may be too small for you. Here’s how you can easily configure them to a bigger size.

• Go to “Control Panel” (Start -> Control Panel)
• Select “Appearance and personalization”. Click on “Display”.

• In the next window, three options will appear. Note that the third option will only appear if your monitor supports the resolution 1200 x 900

• You can choose any of the following.

Smaller – 100%: This is the default option.

Medium – 125%: This size sets the text and the other item to 125% of the normal size.

larger – 150%: This size sets the text and other items to 150% of the normal size.

• Choose “Medium” and click on “Apply”. Immediately you will get a message asking you to log off your computer.

• Click on “Log off now”.
• You should be able to see the changes the next time you login.

In some situations, after enlarging the text and icon size, you will find that the texts may no longer fit to your screen. You may have to adjust the screen resolution of your computer as well.

• Navigate to “Control Panel > Appearance and personalization” and click on “Display”.
• Select “Resolution” from the left pane.
• Set the Screen resolution, which fits best to your monitor and click on “Apply”.

• When prompted if you want to keep the display setting, click “Keep changes“.

• Click on “Advanced settings” option and switch to “Monitor” tab.

• Choose “True Color (32 bit)” from the “Colors:” dropdown menu.
• Click on “Apply” and then “OK”.

If you want to set the custom text size, follow the steps below.

• Select “Set custom text size (DPI)” from the left pane of the main “Display” window.
• Set the percentage of normal size of text and icons by dragging the mouse on the scale.

• Click on “Apply”.

The post How to Change the Icon Size and Display Settings in Windows 7 appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

Here are the steps to make older programs run in Windows 7/Vista.

• Open Control Panel from the start menu of  Windows 7/Vista.
• Click on “Programs” from the right pane.
• Now you can see “Programs and features”. Under this header, click on “Use an older program with this version of windows“.
• The program compatibility wizard will appear with a caution message.
• Click “Next” to continue.

For Windows Vista

• Now 3 options will appear. You can run program compatibility wizard for those programs that are already installed but not running properly by choosing the the option”I want to choose from a list of programs“. There is another option that allows you to choose the location of the setup file of the application which you are going to install in Vista.
• After choosing the appropriate option, you have to select the operating system in which the program is compatible. Here I have chosen Windows XP service pack 2.

• The next window allows you to change the display settings for the application. This is only necessary if you experienced any problem with the display.

• If your programs need the administrator privilege to run, check the box Run program as administrator and click “Next“.

• Windows will now check if the program compatibility settings work fine for the older program. Once it is done, it will show a UAC security prompt. Click “Allow“
• If it finds any compatibility issue, it will show an error message.

• If everything is fine, go back to the compatibility wizard page and choose “Yes, set this program to always use these compatibility settings“. Click “Next” and then “Finish“.

For Windows 7

• It will list all the installed programs.
• Pick the incompatible program from the list. If you have not installed (or can’t install) the program, you can choose “Not listed” to select the setup file of the program.
• Now two options will appear. The first is for testing with the recommended settings and the second one is for customizing the settings. If you are having problems with the display and user permissions, choose the second option.

• If you choose the recommended compatibility settings, the system will find the suitable settings for the program. If you have chosen the second option, you will see a window where you can configure the display and user permission issue.
• Click on “Start the program“.
• Once it is done, go back to the program compatibility wizard and click on “Next“.
• Choose “Yes, save this settings for this program“.

You can also set the compatibility mode by right clicking on the executable file.

• Right click on the executable file and choose Properties.
• Select the Compatibility tab.
• Check the “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” option.

Make the necessary configuration and click OK.

You will have a better chance of running the older programs in Windows 7 than on Vista. However, it still doesn’t guarantee to work for all software. You might want to contact your software vendor to see if a newer release of the software is available.

The post How to Run your Older Programs in Windows 7/Vista appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

1. Disable Unnecessary Visual Effects

• Right click on “Computer” in windows start menu and choose “Properties”.
• Click on “Advanced System Settings” at the left pane.
• Under the “Advanced” tab, click on “Settings” under “Performance” category. Select the “Custom:” option.
• Look through the list and uncheck the effects that you have no used for it. (Note: For optimum result, uncheck all the check box except the last four items). Click OK.
• Restart your computer.

You will notice the result immediately.

2.Increase the Boot Speed

With this small tweak, you can decrease the boot time of your Windows 7.

• Press Windows Key + R to launch the Run window.
• Type “msconfig” and hit Enter. The System Configuration Window will appear.
• Under the “Boot” tab, find the box (on the right side) labeled with “Time out”. Generally it is set to 30.
• If you are using only one operating system then you can set the value as 0. But if you are using more than one, then set to 3.
• Check “No GUI Boot” option.

• Click the “Advanced Options” button.
• Check the box labeled with “Number of Processor” and select the number of processors in your computer. Most probably it will be 2.

• Now click “OK”.
• Click “Apply” and then “OK”.

Note: The above tricks will work only If you are using multi-core (more than one) processor in your computer.

3: Disable Windows Aero theme

Windows Aero theme is the eye candy in Windows Vista/7. While its performance was greatly improved in Win 7 as compared to Vista, it is still taking up a large amount of memory and squeezes the graphics card to its maximum. If you can live without the eye candy, then it is a great choice to disable it.

• Right click on the desktop and select “Personalize” .
• Chose One of the standard themes from the right hand side. “Windows 7 Basic” is a good choice.

4. Remove unwanted items from startup menu

Some of the applications that you have installed are automatically added tn the startup menu without your knowledge. If you are wondering why your Windows take so long to startup, they are mainly the culprit. The best way to fix this is to remove the unwanted programs and services from the startup menu.

• Press Windows Key + R and type “msconfig” in the run dialogue box.
• Go to the Startup tab. Uncheck the applications that you have no use for. (Make sure you do not remove any system services).

5.Use your USB flash drive as RAM

In Windows 7, there is this awesome and useful feature that allows you to use your USB flash drive as an external RAM.

Before you start, make sure that you are using a freshly formatted USB drive.

• plug in your USB drive. Right click on the USB drive in My Computer window and select Property.
• Under “Ready Boost” tab, check the box “Use this device”.
• Configure the space of your USB flash drive that you want to allocate for system speed.

6. Disable unnecessary system sounds

When it is active, the system sound can take up a lot of system resources and slow down the computer.

• Press Windows Key + R to open the Run window. Type “mmsys.cpl” and hit Enter.
• Go to the Sound tab. Select “No Sounds” from the Sound Scheme dropdown box.

Note: You can still keep some of your favorite sounds, but you must disable the Shutdown, Start up, Logoff, Start navigation and Logon sound for the best performance.

If you know of any more ways to speed up Windows 7, do let me know in the comments.

The post 6 Essential Tips to Speed up Windows 7 appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

Add “Open Command Prompt in This Folder” option

When you work in Command Prompt, many time you need to change the directory and generally you use the command “cd directory path”. If the file is in the deep of your hard disk then repeating the task to change any directory is quite boring. You can add an entry in the right click menu by which you can open the command prompt directly in the folder, just right clicking on it. Here is the simple registry tweak.

Press Windows key + R. Type “regedit” to open the registry.

Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell in the registry editor.

Create a new key under “shell” and name it “Command Prompt”.

In the right pane modify the value of “Default” by right clicking on it and then “Modify“. In the “Value data” field write “Command Prompt here”.

Similarly create another new key under the key “Command Prompt’ and name it as “command“.

Select the new key you’ve just created and modify “Default” similarly and put the following code in the “Value data” field.

cmd.exe /k cd %1

Now close your registry editor and right click on any folder. You should see the “Command Prompt here” option.

After choosing the option the command prompt will appear with the file path pointing to that folder.

Add “Copy the content to clipboard” option

Suppose you want to copy the whole text of the notepad document and paste it in MS Word document. So you will have to open the notepad file and then select all the text and then copy. But all the jobs can be done by just right clicking on the notepad file and and selecting the “Copy to clip” item.

Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfile\shell in the registry editor.

Create a new key under shell and name it “Copy to clip”, following the same procedure as the previous case. In the right pane modify the value of “Default” and you can give any thing meaningful that will appear in the right click menu, say “Copy the contents to clipboard”.

Again create another new key under “Copy to clip” and name it “command“. Right click on “Default”, click on “Modify” and put the following code in “Value data” field

cmd /c clip < “%1”

Right click on any text file and choose  “Copy the content to clipboard”. The content of the file is now copied in the clipboard.

Now you can paste the content in any application.

Add “CopyTo” option

Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers in the registry editor

Right click on ContextMenuHandlers and choose “New->Key”.

Give the name of the key as “CopyTo”.

Double click on the value named as “Default” in the right side. Enter the following code including the braces in the “Value data” field.

{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

The CopyTo item will be added in the right click menu. Now right click on any file or folder and chose “CopyTo”. The following pop-up box will appear.

You can choose here the location where you want to copy the file or folder.

Add “SendTo” option

To add MoveTo item in the right click menu navigate to the same key as described above.

Create a new key in the similar way and give the name as “MoveTo”.

Similarly put the following code in the “Value data” field.

{C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

See that the MoveTo item has been added to the right click menu.

All the procedures described in this article works for Windows 7, Vista as well as Windows XP.

Enjoy!

The post Customize the Right Click Menu in Windows 7 appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

Changing the logon screen via the registry

Before you start, please backup your Windows registry to be on the safe side. The following process involves changing the registry and tweaking it to change the logon screen in Windows7

• Press Windows key + R. Type “regedit” and hit Enter.
• Now navigate to the following path as shown below:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background

• On the right pane, right click on the blank space and choose New->DWORD Value. Give the name as “OEMBackground”.
• Double click on this newly created key and set the vale to –1. Chose the base as Hexadecimal and click “OK”.

• Go to your system drive (C:\) and navigate to C -> Windows ->System32 ->oobe.
• Create a new folder named “info”. Under “info” create another folder named as “backgrounds”.
• You are almost done. Now copy the image that you want to put in the logon screen into the “backgrounds” folder and rename it to “backgroundDefault”.
• Restart the computer and the change will be reflected.

The above process is pretty simple, but the downside is that it requires you to hack into the registry (which most people are afraid to do so) and it works only for a single login screen. If you want to switch to a different background, you have to restart the process from scratch.

Change the Logon screen with Logon Screen Rotator

For those who want a more automated way, logon Screen Rotator could just be the app for you. This application automates the process and changes the logon screen in each logon or as defined by the user.

• Download logon Screen Rotator.
• It is a tiny program that does not need any installation. Double click on the application file that you’ve downloaded.

• Right click on the blank space under the “Images”  tab and click on “Add Image” to add the images you want to put in the logon screen. It is recommended that the size of the images should be less than 256 KB.

• Under “Settings” tab, you can customize the settings of the application. Here you can disable the changes for the other users by checking the box labeled with “Disable Other Users Changing Settings”. You can also setup the frequency of changing the screen under “Change Logon Screen” option.

• Now click on “test” to see the effect.
• When you are done and happy with the testing, click the Close button in right hand top corner to close the logon screen rotator window. Immediately it will appear a message like this.

• Click on “Yes” to enable the program.

Restart Windows 7 and watch the effect. Now it will change the logon screen as you’ve set up the option in the setting tab.

Enjoy.

The post How to Customize Windows 7 Logon Screen appeared first on Make Tech Easier.