Creating Useful Shortcuts
What are the different ways to Eject your CD or DVD drive?
You can press the Eject button on the Physical Drive is it has one, right click on your CD or DVD drive in ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Eject’, or even use a Screw Driver and force it open!
I’m a lazy person who’s often looking for ways and means to make my task or job simpler.
Pressing the Eject button on the Physical Drive and… too lazy to move! (Not mentioning using Screw Driver)
Go to ‘My Computer’ and… too troublesome!
So is there other alternative?
Definitely, and now you can eject your CD or DVD drive with just a double click of your mouse on the Shortcut Eject Icon.
Here’s a simple way to eject your CD or DVD drive with just a double click of your mouse.
1. Download ejectcd.exe and place it on your desktop
2. Double click on it your CD or DVD drive will be ejected.
As simple as that =)
Here’s another useful shortcut which allows you to shutdown your PC or Laptop with just a double click of your mouse.
1. On your Desktop, Right Click > Shortcut (Selecting New Shortcut)
2. You will then see a Popup Window (Create Shortcut Wizard)
3. In ‘Type the location of the item’, key in ‘SHUTDOWN –s –t 01’
I will explain in detail what does –s and –t stands for later
4. Click ‘Next’ and you will be prompt to name the Shortcut.
Give it any name you want and click ‘Finish’
Now, whenever you hope to Shutdown your PC or Laptop, Simply double click on this Shortcut Icon.
You can also fully customize this Shortcut Icon.
Right Click > ‘Properties’ > ‘Change Icon…’
This allows you to change this Shortcut Icon to any Image you want.
If you hope to create a Shortcut Icon for restarting your PC or Laptop, simply change the –s to –r.
As –s stands for Shutdown while –r stands for Restart.
Change the number behind –t to set the time for your PC or Laptop to wait in seconds before shutting down.
You can also insert a comment by adding –c ‘Your Text’ to the line. It will display the Text you specified while counting down the time in seconds.
More useful Shortcuts will be share in later post =)
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Official Windows Vista Tips and Tricks
So, it’s been awhile since Windows Vista has been released and been used by people around the world.
How’s Windows Vista Performance till date?
Has it made life easier for you or even simpler when Windows XP is around?
I’ve done a search around the Internet and I’m quite surprised that in fact there’s quite a large sum of people who’s still using Windows XP and prefer XP to Vista.
They might say it’s due to performance and usability between XP and Vista.
But think about it, you’re comparing Windows Vista to Windows XP that has been patched with all types of service pack.
There are still lots of space for growth in Windows Vista.
How many new features have you explored in Windows Vista?
I’ve posted quite a few great features regarding Vista in Computer TNT, and if you do a search in Google you could find tons of it.
Even Microsoft comes up with its very own Windows Vista Tips and Tricks.
Windows Vista Tips and Tricks, Click Here to download it in PDF.
This Windows Vista Top 10 Tips and Tricks are divided into 4 main sections ‘Security and Protection’, ‘Search and Organize’, ‘Mobility & Collaboration’ and ‘Other Windows Vista Tips’.
It might not be the most detailed Tips and Tricks.
But it’ll definitely provide you with information on functions needed to perform task on your Windows Vista.
Functions that don’t even exist in Windows XP.
If you’ve ever visit Microsoft Windows Vista site, you’ll noticed that Microsoft did tried to aid their user in this Microsoft XP to Vista transition.
They provide various Videos on new Windows Vista Features and showing you ways on how you can make the most of Windows Vista.
There’s even WebCast (Live and On-demand) available for all registered user.
For companies who are interested in moving from XP to Vista, there’s Training Tools available, which helps them to develop training plans or presentation for employees.
So why not drop by Microsoft Windows Vista site today and check out these useful resources?
You might just find the information that you’ve been looking for months =)
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ActiveX : Definitions and Functions
What ActiveX Does And Why You Need It
What is ActiveX?
ActiveX is a technology based on Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM) architecture that is primarily used by software programmers to create object oriented software components that can be used across multiple applications.
ActiveX controls are based on this ActiveX technology and are used by Web developers to create ActiveX components that are used to incorporate various interactions in Internet Explorer web pages.
For instance, by using ActiveX controls, you can incorporate functionalities that enable you to play online music, display animations, and open PDF and Word documents.
The main reason ActiveX controls are so popular is that the technology provides developers with ready-to-use components to incorporate similar functionalities in their web pages and applications.
What Causes ActiveX Problems?
Security is the most critical issue associated with ActiveX technology.
This is because the technology was originally developed by Microsoft for single user-single computer use and was incorporated in applications by using the Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology.
However, later on the technology was extended and people started distributing ActiveX components over the Internet without giving any attention to security.
This is the reason why every time you download and install an ActiveX control on your computer, the control has rights to your system that are equal to the rights of the currently logged on user.
Therefore, if by mistake you download a malicious ActiveX control, the person or hacker who has developed the control will have the capability of causing the same amount of damage to your PC and network as the currently logged user.
How to Prevent Malicious ActiveX Attacks
Not much can be done to fix these security flaws because they are inherent in the basic architecture of the ActiveX technology.
However, over the years Microsoft has introduced several precautionary rules and regulations to control the spread of malicious ActiveX controls — for instance, ActiveX control developers need to get their components signed to inform users about who published the code and confirm whether the code they are downloading has been tampered with or not after it was signed.
Microsoft has also hyped up the security features in Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista operating system and Internet Explorer 7 web browser.
However, these security measures are often not enough and most of the time, you have to take certain preventive measures yourself to prevent malicious ActiveX attacks. For instance, you must:
- Enhance the security of your Internet Explorer and Email program to prevent them from running ActiveX controls without your consent or stop them from running controls from certain websites.
- Implement a firewall to prevent malicious codes from gaining access to your PC and your network.
- Keep your antivirus and antispyware programs updated with latest definitions and run regular scans to prevent, detect, and remove malware infestations.
Other than the above security vulnerabilities, you may also receive ActiveX errors, when the components you download are not installed correctly on your system or there is some other problem such as a damaged registry or an incorrectly registered DLL.
For example, one of the most common ActiveX errors that users encounter is Active X runtime error 429.
The ActiveX error 429 occurs when the ActiveX component you are trying to download is unable to create an object on your PC.
You may fix this error by downloading and installing Microsoft Script Runtime from the Microsoft Windows Script components.
If this does not fix the error, the problem must be due to a damaged registry.
To fix registry problems, you may use a reliable registry cleaner tool to scan and remove any unwanted information from the registry and remove or repair any damaged or erroneous entries within it.
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Recovery of MS Office Files
Recovery of MS Office Files from Temp Files
Microsoft Office has extensive AutoSave and Auto Recovery options that allow you to rescue your work in the event that it is lost due to a power failure, system crash or plain human error.
However many people don't know how to use these features or that they even exist.
Even if you don't have these features enabled, you can sometimes recover data from the various temporary files that are created by Office while you are working on the document.
Microsoft has changed the way AutoSave and Auto Recover works in different versions of Office.
Therefore you may want to experiment before you rely on this information.
Finding the Temporary Files
When a new file is started a temporary file is created.
This file can be located either in the windows temp directory or right beside the Actual File.
This temporary file will have a few different letters after the tilde (or squiggly line “ ~”).
These are good ones to look for to find some lost info:
Word
If you are looking for files used by word, then the following file types should be searched for, where "xxxx" is a number.
- A word document file will look like ~wrdxxxx.tmp
- A temp document file will look like ~wrfxxxx.tmp
- An auto recovery file will look like ~wraxxxx.tmp
- An auto recovery file that is complete will have the extension of .wbk.
The temp file for PowerPoint looks like pptxxx.tmp
Excel
The temp file for excel looks like ~dfxxxx.tmp
There are others, but these are the ones most likely to contain data that can be recovered.
Finding and using the temporary and auto save files
Word
The default auto save time for word documents is 10 minutes. You can control this time in Options under the "Save" tab. The auto save files are placed in one of the following two locations, which is where you should look to recover the data.
1. "C:\ Documents and Settings\
2. "C:\ Documents and Settings\
When you have found a file that looks like it might contain data, you may want to open it in notepad instead of trying to get Word to reassemble it.
The easiest way to do this is to open Notepad from the start menu then drag and drop the file in to it. The file will then be opened so that you can view the contents.
If the document was open when the system failed (power failure or crash) then you could try just opening Word again (not the document, just Word itself from the start menu). Word will then try to recover the lost document.
Excel
Excel doesn't have the AutoSave feature enabled as default, you have to add it.
This is because it isn't always practical to have this functionality enabled.
If you have it enabled and wants to experiment with a spreadsheet, you should create a copy then open that so that the AutoSave doesn't overwrite the original.
To enable the AutoSave feature, you have to use an Add In.
Go to "Tools" "Add Ins" and choose "AutoSave".
With Office XP, AutoSave has been moved out from Add Ins to Options, in a similar way to Word.
You will find the settings under "Save" where you can also disable the Auto Recover feature for that particular workbook.
Excel automatically saves every 10 minutes to the default location of "C:\ Documents and Settings\
The files are identifiable as they are saved as a number .tmp e.g. "28.tmp".
This means that they look different from word or any other temporary files that are being saved there by other applications.
PowerPoint
PowerPoint Auto save feature is enabled as default and will save every 10 minutes.
It will prompt you for a file name the first time the auto save runs.
If you are looking for the temp files for PowerPoint then the naming convention is pptxxx.tmp (where xxxx is a number) and they are saved by default in "C :\ Documents and Settings\
Other Useful Information
If you have been working on a file for hours and the document was created via copying and pasting or at one point had cut the entire page or document to paste some place and then placed something else on the clip board, the data may not have been lost.
This is because when any info is copied it is sent to a temp file with the name ~wrlxxxx.tmp.
Therefore you could search your system for files of this name and then use the same "Drag and Drop" technique to view the data in Notepad to recover the data.
Another interesting thing to note is that when a change is made to a document that requires a temp file to be created, when you press the save button all the temp files are merged together into one file and the file is renamed to what you called it.
The original document that you created is then deleted.
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