Friday, April 28, 2006

Remote Administration For Windows - Windows administration tricks and tips.: Remove those stinkin "help balloons"

Remote Administration For Windows - Windows administration tricks and tips.: Remove those stinkin "help balloons": "Remove those stinkin 'help balloons'

I don't know about you, but those little bubbles that Microsoft displays to inform you about 'important' things are starting to drive me crazy.

'You have unused icons on your desktop'

'You have updates waiting to be loaded'

'What the hell you looking down here for?'

etc etc

I am just tired of it, and I know a quick way to fix it. There is a Microsoft KB article dedicated to this subject:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307729

The short of it is - you can disable these balloons by changing this registry key:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\EnableBalloonTips

To 0

(You might need to create this DWORD value if it does not already exist)"

Remote Administration For Windows - Windows administration tricks and tips.: Disable USB Drives

Remote Administration For Windows - Windows administration tricks and tips.: Disable USB Drives: "Disable USB Drives

Once in a while I have a friend, or customer that needs to keep people from using the USB ports to copy data off of a system.

It is easy to lock a machine down, disable the floppy, and cdrom in the bios. Many times when you try to disable USB - it disables it entirely.

This can be a real pain on newer laptops or systems that don't even have a PS2 interface for the mouse or keyboard.

There is a simple registry change that will keep the USB storage drivers from starting when the system boots. Keeps people from walking up to a PC and copying data off with a USB key, but allows you to keep your scanner, keyboard, and mouse working.

As always - back your system up before messing around in the registry.

Just open regedit and browse to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

Notice the value 'Start'

Switch this value to 4, and USB storage devices are disabled.

Switch this value to 3, and USB storage devices are enabled."

Friday, April 21, 2006

Monday, April 17, 2006

XP's Little-Known 'Rebuild' Command

InformationWeek | XP Management | Langa Letter: XP's Little-Known 'Rebuild' Command | April 17, 2006: "There's an easy fix for 'Missing HAL.DLL,' 'Invalid Boot.Ini,' and several other fatal startup errors."

Monday, April 10, 2006

Troubleshooting Windows XP, Tweaks and Fixes for Windows XP

Troubleshooting Windows XP, Tweaks and Fixes for Windows XP

Description of the startup switches for Excel

Description of the startup switches for Excel:
"excel.exe /regserver Forces Excel to register itself and then quit. Use this switch when you want Excel to rewrite all its registry keys and reassociate itself with Excel files, such as workbooks, charts, and others. Example: /regserver"