Tips and Tricks

**Guttu** · 03-23-2006, 04:34 AM

I was about 2 coomplain #18
BUT THEN READ THE LAS LINE

when ur HDD goes 20GB+ then u have to partition
else the data loss will b high
I've 1 partition where I bakup data
and bakup that prtition regularly
there is no other activity there except copyin the files
to b baked up. this ensures a bit more safety

**tuluvaguy** · 03-23-2006, 10:58 AM

One more problem most of the people are facing is not of enough ventilation..
Most of the people doesnt know this :(

**tuluvaguy** · 04-03-2006, 10:59 AM

Hi friends.Id u like the tips and tricks??
Well i will post some more if I get reply
Cz i donno whether you find it useful or not..!!!

**Guttu** · 04-10-2006, 10:29 AM

Plz go on tulvaguy
ur thread is gr8

dont stop it

**Tonix** · 04-12-2006, 11:14 PM

Nice stuff mate... :)

**tuluvaguy** · 05-06-2006, 08:44 AM

When you add drives to your computer, such as an extra hard drive, a CD drive, or a storage device that corresponds to a drive, Windows automatically assigns letters to the drives. However, this assignment might not suit your system; for example, you might have mapped a network drive to the same letter that Windows assigns to a new drive. When you want to change drive letters, follow these steps:

1) Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.

2) Under Computer Management, click Disk Management. In the right pane, you’ll see your drives listed. CD-ROM drives are listed at the bottom of the pane.

3) Right-click the drive or device you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

4)Click Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the drive letter you want to assign, and then click OK.

You will not be able to change the boot or system drive letter in this manner. Many MS-DOS-based and Windows-based programs make references to a specific drive letter (for example, environment variables). If you modify the drive letter, these programs may not function correctly.

**tuluvaguy** · 05-06-2006, 08:53 AM

For the most part, this is not recommended, especially if the drive letter is the same as when Windows was installed. The only time that you may want to do this is when the drive letters get changed without any user intervention. This may happen when you break a mirror volume or there is a drive configuration change. This should be a rare occurrence and you should change the drive letters back to match the initial installation.

To change or swap drive letters on volumes that cannot otherwise be changed using the Disk Management snap-in, use the following steps:

Note: In these steps, drive D refers to the (wrong) drive letter assigned to a volume, and drive C refers to the (new) drive letter you want to change to, or to assign to the volume.

1) Make a full system backup of the computer and system state.

2) Log on as an Administrator.

3) Start Regedt32.exe (or Regedit.exe in Windows XP).

4) Go to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

5) Click MountedDevices.

6) On the Security menu, click Permissions.

7) Check to make sure Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.

8) Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.

9) Go to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

10) Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".

11) Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename. In Windows 2000 you must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.

12) Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:". (This will free up drive letter C: to be used later.)

13) Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".

14) Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.

15) Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".

16) Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".

17) Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32 (not required in Windows XP).

18 ) Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this should probably be Read Only).

19) Restart the computer.

**tuluvaguy** · 05-06-2006, 08:59 AM

deleting an "undeletable" file

Sometimes you want to delete a file but when you do so an error message pops and tells you it cannot be done. Do successfully delete such a file do the following:

1) Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open.

2) Close all open programs.

3) You now need to close EXPLORER.EXE. The proper way to shutdown Explorer is to raise the "Shut Down Windows" dialog (select "Shut Down..." from the start menu), hold down CTRL+SHIFT+ALT and press the CANCEL button. Explorer will exit cleanly.

Note: The <CTRL> at the 'Shut Down Windows' dialog method of closing Explorer is built into Explorer. (It was specifically designed so that developers writing Shell Extensions could get Explorer to release their Shell Extension DLLs while debugging them).

4) Go back to the Command Prompt window and change to the directory where the undeletable file is located in. At the command prompt type DEL <filename> where <filename> is the file you wish to delete.

5) Go back to Task Manager, click File, New Task and enter EXPLORER.EXE to restart the GUI shell.

6) Close Task Manager.

**tuluvaguy** · 05-06-2006, 09:02 AM

Do NOT upgrade your disks from Basic to Dynamic by using a custom made MMC!

Creating your own console is a very handy tool, but don't use it to upgrade a system or boot partition to dynamic disk!

On a W2K/XP machine, when you click 'Yes, restart' at the prompt, then the MMC in the background will ask you to save its settings, immediately following an 'End task' dialog.

Somehow, the snap-in does not finish the upgrade to dynamic disk properly, because at the next boot you will inevitably get an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE message.

Note: Not all W2K or XP machines have this "bug" in them, but because I've seen quite a handful have this problem I'm writing this warning. Try it yourself and if it works - you're lucky.

**tuluvaguy** · 05-06-2006, 09:07 AM

quickly format a floppy disk by use of a shortcut

If you format many floppy disks you know how tedious it is to get to the Format command. You have to first open either Windows Explorer or My Computer, then right-click on the floppy disk drive icon, and select the Format command from the shortcut menu.

You can shorten this three-step procedure into a single double-click tweak.

To do so, right-click on the desktop and select the New/Shortcut command from the shortcut menu.

When you see the Create Shortcut wizard, type the command

Rundll32.exe shell32.dll,SHFormatDrive

in the Command Line text box.

To continue, click Next and give the shortcut an appropriate name, such as Floppy Format. Then, click the Finish button.

This tip works for Windows 9X, ME, NT, W2K and XP.