Friday, November 13, 2009

Windows 7 - Move the recycle bin to the Taskbar

To move the Recycle Bin to the Taskbar, you need to re-enable the Quick Launch Toolbar, by doing the following:

1. Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar

2. In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
3. Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “large icons”.

4. Create a short-cut to the Recycle Bin within that Toolbar/folder. The Recycle Bin will be fully functional.

5. Use your favourite Tweak tool to remove the Recycle Bin from the Desktop.

6. Rearrange the toolbar as you please, and then lock the taskbar again.

How to re-lock a Bitlocker drive

So you've turned on Bitlocker encryption for a drive. You've unlocked it and done your work, but how do you re-lock it? Here's how to add an entry to the right-click context menu to re-lock the drive.

1. Open up Notepad and type in the following, replacing 'E:' with the drive letter of your Bitlocker drive:
manage-bde -lock E: forcedismount
2. Save the file as lock.bat somewhere accessible, such as C:\Windows or C:\Program Files\

3. Open up Registry Editor. Navigate to the following Key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell
4. Create a new key named runas with the default value set to Lock.

5. Now right-click on runas in the left window pane and create a new key called command.

6. Set the value of the Default Entry to c:\windows\lock.bat or whatever locaiton you chose at step 2.

7. Navigate back to the runas key and create a new String Value called AppliesTo. Set the value to E: or whichever drive you have encrypted.

8. Goto Windows Explorer and test your new right-click context menu entry!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Installing Windows on a RAID array without a floppy disk

For those of you installing Windows on a new PC with a RAID controller but without a floppy disk drive, check out nLite. It will allow you to integrate your third party raid driver with the Windows installation files, and then create a bootable Windows image.

http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html

Monday, July 13, 2009

Melelle

New blog about anything and everything to do with fashion as seen through the eyes of two twenty-something women: Melelle.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Disable zip folders in Windows 7

To disable zip folders showing in the folder list of Windows Explorer, remove the following registry keys:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
; Disable ZIP support in Windows
; restart Windows after applying this patch
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{E88DCCE0-B7B3-11d1-A9F0-00AA0060FA31}]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0CD7A5C0-9F37-11CE-AE65-08002B2E1262}]

It appears to work for both Vista and Windows 7. Be sure to backup your registry first!

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Windows 7

So I installed Windows 7 the other day, and it really is quite something. Considering this is only a release candidate and not the final version, it is incredibly usable.

Here's some tips that I've discovered through my daily usage:
  • To get back the 'hibernate' button on the Shutdown menu, go into Advanced Power Options and disable hybrid sleep;

  • If an old program that you've installed isn't working properly, try 'taking ownership' of the folder;

  • If you prefer your Taskbar icons to be a bit more descriptive, try going into the Taskbar properties and setting it to 'Combine when taskbar is full'.