Use 100% Internet Connection Bandwidth

Hi Friends!

Thanks for your overwhelming support in following my blog! It gives me inspiration to continue with the work..

Today, we are going to learn to utilize 100% network bandwidth in our internet connection. So does it ring a bell? Were you now not utilizing 100% of your network's bandwidth?

Well, the answer is NO. Windows reserves 20% of your network bandwidth for QoS (Quality of Service).

Qos includes Windows Update, streaming videos, VOIP... anything that uses QoS packet scheduler.

Before enumerating the steps to do that, let's understand some scenarios:

• All programs share 100% network bandwidth
• The 20% comes into picture only when a program requests for priority (i.e. a QoS program is running)
• Utilizing 100% does not ensure that your network connection will become fast, as the network bandwidth is availed by all the requesting programs( point 1)

So, I suggest, not to mingle with it. But as an user, it's your decision! 

Now, let's see how to do this:

Step 1: Open Run. Type regedit. Press OK

Step 2: Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SOFTWARE->Policies->Microsoft->Windows folder

[I apologize for the bad image quality]

Step 3: Right click on the Windows folder-> New -> Key and create a new folder: Psched

Step 4: Click on the Pshed folder  you created int the previous step. The right pane will have a (Default) entry.

Step 5: Right click on the white space anywhere below the (Default) field -> New -> DWORD(32-bit) Value. Name it as NonBestEffortLimit

Step 6: Right click NonBestEffortLimit key that you created in the previous step and Click Modify.

Step 7: Now at the pop up, enter in the Value data text box 0 and click on the Decimal radio button for Base.

And we are done. The value which you have set in the Value data text box in the 7th step is the amount of bandwidth(in percentage unit) you want to reserve for QoS.

To restore it to the initial state:

Simply delete the Pshed folder or you can manually enter the value as 20 in the text box.

Happy Downloading!! ^_^

Android Icon in Your Chat

Hi Friends!

I was going through the features in Google Labs, & found out that they got a whole new Universe of customization for our gmail.

Lets explore each of these:

The first one about which I'm gonna write is to see the android robot in chat box besides the name of the friend who is logged in using Android.

So lets get started:

Step 1: Click on the Settings button at the top right corner of the page below your profile icon.

Step 2: Navigate to the Labs tab and then scroll down as shown:
                   

                         

Step 3:  There's no step 3. You are done!! just click on the 'Save Changes' and you are done!


Feel free to drop a comment!                        

Set Environment Variables in Win XP

Hi Friends!

I apologize again for not continuing with BSOD chapter. I know, some of you would be feeling that this punk is overflowing with ideas & not completing the earlier ones. But, as an adage goes, 'Don't blame the person, blame the situation.' Well I guess, it all fits in here well.

In my quest to help people, when I encounter some one stuck up with something, I feel( and I hope you'l agree) that his priority increase manifold!

So in this post, I am going to talk on how to set up environment privileges in XP machine(same steps follows for Win7).

So let's get started.

Topic: Set environment variable in Win XP.

Let us first understand what Environment variables mean:

Many Operating Systems use environment variables to pass configuration information to applications. They are used as key/value pair where both the key and the value are strings.

Step 1: Right click My Computer -> Properties

      
Step 2: Click on Advanced tab. There you will find Environment Variables button at the bottom of the page. 

                                             

Step 3: You will see a screen as the one below.

                             
Now to create a new environment variable, click on New(enclosed in rectangle)

Step 4: Now give the key/ value pair you like to make as environment variables.

           
The Path environment variable

The path variable to a file basically represents its location on the file system. It tell the OS, where to find that file. Typically, a group of directories which are repeatedly used, are found. To see, what the path variables contains, go to cmd -> 'echo %PATH%' (don't worry about the case, they are not case-sensitive).

         

As you can see, there are multiple values, each separated by ';'.

In the same way, you can double click on the variable on the variable in step 3.

So, I guess my java friends won't find issues in this section of the program.

Happy Coding!! ^o^

Taskkill Command

Hi Friends!

I apologize for not continuing with my BSOD article. The reason is quite hilarious: Last friday, one of my mates said that he feels like 'Neo'( from the Matrix series), when he sees himself working in comand prompt, like a scientist!!

He added, that, how easy it is to open programs from Run(Windows+R), if only, there could be such a short cut to kill a process using Run utility.

We all had a laugh as killing a process from task manager is the easiest method in the business, but, for people like him, there is a command - taskkill, which helps you to close any existing running program.

So lets get started.

taskkill(as the name suggest) kills one or more processes. The only hurdle is that it processes can be killed using process ID or image name(both could be known from Task Manager-> Processes tab)

The PID column is not visible by default, you need to select it from the list of columns to be shown in task manager. To make it visible, Click on View->Select Columns...

You will get another pop up, check all columns which you wish to see.

& PID is available to you.

Now, as we are equipped with both the parameters(though we need to know only one between them), we are ready to execute this command.

The syntax of the command is

taskkill [/s Computer] [/u Domain\User [/p Password]]] [/fi FilterName] [/pid ProcessID]|[/im ImageName] [/f][/t]

Let us now dissect the command one by one:

1. /s Computer specifies the name or IP address of the remote computer. Default: Local computer

2. /u Domain \User specifies account permissions of the specific user

3. /p Password specifies password for the account mentioned in 2.

4. /fi Filter Name: This is the protagonist of the story. It specifies the filters you can while executing your command. Using this you can apply filter on any column listed in task manager.

Eg:  taskkill /f /fi "USERNAME eq NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" /im devenv.exe

       taskkill /f /fi "PID ge 2000" /im *

 The keywords 'eq' -> 'equal to' , 'ge' -> 'greater than' are commonly used operators.

5. /pid ProcessID specifies the process id

6. /im ImageName: specifies the image name. Eg: notepad.exe, firefox.exe, iexplore.exe, devenv.exe, appleMobileServiceDevice.exe...

7. /f specifies that the process(es) should be terminated forcefully. Please note that all remote processes are killed forcefully; so this element is not much of use, when used for remote machine

8. /t: You might have seen when you right click on a process in task manager, you get two(among other options) options as Kill Process, below that Kill Process Tree. The -t element is for the second case. It species that all child processes should be killed along with the parent process.

One more example

    taskkill /f /im notepad.exe

Don't worry about remembering the image name for processes, with some practise, you will remember commonly used processes image name.

I hope now that my friend( and many other), could completely visualize themselves as Neo!

Rest is Next. Till then Adiós!



  

Blue Screen Of Death: Part-I CAUSE

Hi Friends!

I am sorry I kept you wating for my post for such a long time. Well, I just moved to IT city of India (it is not its' official tag, but people call it though) & was busy adapting to the new environment.

Lets come to the topic of todays learning: Blue Screen Of Death. Lets get started.

All Windows users would have faced this screen at least once in their life time. Correct??

To begin with and to write on this topic, I made an extensive search on the net about- what this problem is; where/how could you log this error & possible solutions(including a link to Microsoft KBHotfix).

As this is the first part of the series, let's try to understand what causes this error?

Windows(even linux, FYI) OS runs in two modes:
slave/user/unprivileged mode and the master/kernel/privileged.

Now, the inquisitive human mind asks, "what are they? Right?".
To put it in simple terms to answer this question, let us understand it as to perform a specialised task, the user-mode(code) makes a system call into supervisor mode and here the trusted code of the OS will perform the necessary task and return the result to the user space.

Stop errors(general term for BSOD) are invariably caused by kernel portal components exceptions for eg. hardware, third-party drivers or anti-virus services.

The screen turns blue because there is some exceptions occured in the kernel (either through device driver error or the service error), and when Windows detects some error in the Kernel, it will try to abort the processes, lest something more dangerous occur. Hence we get a blue screen and typically it is followed by a system restart.

Brien had presented the anatomy of this error. You could read it link here.

Hope this gives a clear idea of what causes the error, the next post will be on Saving a memory dump and the solution to this nemesis.

Catch you in the second part of this blog.

Till then,

Have a safe computing!

Use Pen Drive As RAM

Hi Friends!

As promised, this post is dedicated to learn how to use pen drive as RAM. We will learn to do that in just 2 steps... ya you heard me, just 2 steps!

So let's get started (Win XP users will have to use third party software like ebooster)

Step 1: When you insert your USB 2.0, right click on USB -> Properties.

Step 2: Click on ReadyBoost tab.

Best Practice: Use Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost to avoid accidental deletion of data from RAM portion of your pen drive.

Click Apply -> OK.

Two points are noteworthy:

• Even if you accidentally remove your pen drive, the data is there on the hard disk( but reading from hard disk will deteriorate performance!)
•  All the data written in RAM portion of your pen drive is encrypted using AES 128 standard. So there is no issues as cached data is encrypted

And, we are done... just 2 steps.

Happy computing!

Know Your Mobile Number

Hi friends!

I am sorry I promised you that my this blog will be on how to use pen drive as RAM, but one of my friend took a new SIM and while giving me his new contact number said that he has forgotten it!!

The question arises: does he need to go to his room.. take out the SIM's envelop and then know his contact number? No, Not in today's world!

In today's consumer focused market, most of the telecom providers provides simple codes through which you can request your contact number :)

Let's look at some of the codes from various telephone operators( for Indian users only!):

Provider	Code
Vodafone	*111*2#
Reliance	*111# or *1#
Airtel	Sms IM to 57070 or *140*1600#
BSNL	Call 24365 and ask them
Docomo	*580#
Idea	*100# or *789#
Uninor	*1#
Virgin	*1#
Bpl	*222#
Loop	*222#
Videocon	*1#
Aircel	*#1#888#

I hope this list covers our needs. In case it doesn't, post it as a comment.

Catch you all soon! ^_^

Use Hard Disk As RAM

Hi Friends!

We all face performance issues in our system(general sense!) like the computer is slow... Why does system becomes slow? From where (memory) does CPU takes data to execute (forget about cache right now)? What is RAM?

Now let's get an idea about what RAM is:

RAM is Random Access Memory( i.e memory reads can be Random) , is faster (approx. 10 times faster than Secondary storage) and all the programs to be executed are brought into RAM and then fed to CPU.

So the focus of this blog will be to use spaces in our Hard disk as if it were RAM (a concept called as Paging in OS). So let's get started

Step 1: Go to Start-> Computer(right click)-> Properties

Step 2: Now on the left pane, under Control Panel Home, click on Advanced system settings

Step 3: Navigate to Advanced tab, under Performance tab, click on Settings... 


Step 4: When Performance Options window, click on Advanced tab.

Step 5: Under Virtual memory, you get to change the paging file size for all drives. Click on Change... button (step 3-5 are shown below)

Step 6: Here you can uncheck Automatically manage paging file size for all drives and set values as per your requirements

Click OK. It will ask you for a restart. Restart your system and we are done!

In the next post, we will learn to use pen drive as RAM.. till then enjoy your machine!! ^_^

Add Images to Signatures in Gmail

Hi Friends!

Today we are going to take a different domain in our regular tricks.

In this posts, we are going to learn to add images to our gmail messages. So let's get started:

Step 1: Navigate to Settings as shown

Step 2: Once inside Settings, navigate to Labs 

Step 3: Enable - Canned Responses and Inserting images

Step 4: Now go to Compose Mail. Write whatever you want as your signature and add image (click on the icon, Choose file to the image file and OK)

You will have something as shown above.

Step 5: Now click on Canned responses. Further steps are shown in figure

Step 6: Now discard this message. Click on Compose Mail-> Canned responses -> Insert ->Signature(the name you gave for canned response created in last step)

Kudos.. Cheers! We have added image to our Gmail message. Now whenever we need to compose a mail, just follow step 6. Nothing more! In my case the canned response is as shown below

Happy emailing!! ^_^

Run Executable in Windows 7

Hi Friends!

One of my friend pinged me on facebook that he is unable to run any executable in his system. So, in today's post, we will try to solve this issue.

Running any executable in your system is basically a registry value's entry. Most viruses change this value to something else, and as a result, explorer.exe behaves abnormally while handling executables.

So, let's get started:

Step 1: Press Windows+r (run)

Step 2: Type regedit. Press OK

Step 3: You will see a window as shown below:

Click on the + HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT


Step 4: Hover down to exefile\shell\open\command

Follow steps as shown in figure

Step 5: Change the (Default)  to "%1" %* [note the double quotes, they are present, just copy-paste this value].

Similarly change the value for IsolatedCommand to "%1" %* 


Step 6: Now navigate to .exe in the same hierarchy.

Step 7: Change (Default) to exefile


And we are done!

Now you would be able to run all executable in your system.

Feel free to express your views.

List of Anti Virus Software for Windows

Hi Friends!

Today we are gonna look into list of anti virus vendors that Microsoft has partnered to provide security to your system.

Microsoft recommends that you install anti virus( or security) software to keep your system safe from potential threats. Also you need to keep that software up to date.

So, to begin with, navigate to security software link. (You can click on different tabs depending upon your OS).

Once there, you will find list of various anti virus software that Microsoft has partnered.

Click on any one of them, install Trail or Full version depending upon your budget.

And you are done! So you have anti virus installed and your system is protected.

Feel free to give your recommendations or suggestions in the comment section. 

Manually Update Windows XP

Hi Friends!

So after a long time I am back to provide you more insights into our dear(est) Windows.

In this blog, we will be focusing on how to manually download updates for your Windows. So let me introduce to you http://www.windowsupdatesdownloader.com/ .

'Windows Updates Downloader' is a third party utility and is free. The advantage with this utility is that this utility downloads the necessary updates from Microsoft update servers and stores it in your local machine. So you just have to run this utility and then rest assured that your system is getting updated!!

You can also distribute these updates to other machines.

Note: This utility is useful for Win XP, Vista, 2000 Pro, 2003 Server, Office 2003 and Exchange 2003.

My friends using Win 7, the steps are shown in figure.

It's pretty straight forward. Now you will be directed to:

Some of my friends are still stuck up with XP, so this was to help them!

I found it useful, clean and easy to use.

Feel free to leave a comment.  

Optimize Your Pen Drive for Better Performance

Hi Friends!

Today we are going to learn to Optimize the performance of your pen drive.

The concept behind this trick is that Windows, by default has Quick Removal as USB's policy. In this posts, we will learn to change it from it's default policy to something which can boost it's performance.

Caution: This process requires that you always perform an Eject operation with the device.

Let's start rolling.

Step 1: Click Start. Right click Computer -> Properties

Step 2: Click on Device Manager, top left corner (as shown below)

                             

Step 3: Expand Disk drives. It will give you list of all drives in your system.

Step 4: Right click on your pen drive. Click Properties.    

Step 5: Click on second tab, i.e. Policies.

Step 6: Under the Removal policy panel, click on Better performance. Click OK.

                                                                           
All the steps enumerated from Step 3 are shown in the above pic.

Step 7: Now, remove your pen drive using Eject in the system tray and then connect it again.

That's it, now transfer to and from the pen drive and be assured that that Windows is using the best policy for optimization of your USB.

That's all for now. Wait for next posts, till then Keep Exploring and Sharing!! ^_^

Boot your Windows like Linux

Hi Friends!

Heartily apologies for not posting/sharing tricks. You know this week, kinda busy(just kidding!)

Let's rock and roll. Today, we are going to learn to boot your Windows like Open Source(which drivers, processes, executable are being loaded into memory and in what order) instead of the blank screen with the cursor blinking at the top left corner.

Step 1: Press Windows+r to open run

Step 2: Type msconfig and hit enter

                                           
Step 3: Click on the second tab: Boot


Step 4: Check OS boot Information 

                                        
Step 5: There's actually no step 5. We are done, now restart your system.

You will view all the system information while booting process is taking place. For OS freaks, this is kinda cool, to know which one is the parent process in Windows. See this screen for better visualization.

                             
Feel free to leave a comment!

Password Protected File in Win 7

Hi Friends!

Today I am going to share with you a very special trick to lock and hide a folder in Win 7. It's simple and quite unique, an extension to my earlier posts( the one in which I wrote about folder in God Mode) and the main advantage is that it doesn't require any Third party software.

Of course, everything has a loop hole and the same goes with this one. I will tell about this in the below section.
First let's get started.

Step 1: Create a folder of any name.

Step 2: Double click the folder to enter inside it. Now create a new text file as shown below

                                     
Step 3: Open this text document. Copy and Paste this code:

cls
@ECHO OFF
title Folder Personal
if EXIST "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" goto UNLOCK
if NOT EXIST Personal goto MDLOCKER
:CONFIRM
echo Are you sure you want to lock the folder(Y/N)
set/p "cho=>"
if %cho%==Y goto LOCK
if %cho%==y goto LOCK
if %cho%==n goto END
if %cho%==N goto END
echo Invalid choice.
goto CONFIRM
:LOCK
ren Personal "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"
attrib +h +s "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"
echo Folder locked
goto End
:UNLOCK
echo Enter password to unlock folder
set/p "pass=>"
if NOT %pass%== PASSWORD goto FAIL
attrib -h -s "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}"
ren "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" Personal
echo Folder Unlocked successfully
goto End
:FAIL
echo Invalid password
goto end
:MDLOCKER
md Personal
echo Personal created successfully
goto End
:End


Change the PASSWORD to the password you want to keep. For example, if you want to keep your password as google then rewrite as follows:
                                        if NOT %pass%== google goto FAIL

Step 4: Save this text file as Locker.bat as shown below

                                   
Note the double quotes for "Locker.bat" and Save as types to All Files. Actually only one between the two is needed i.e you either save the file name in double quotes and leave the Save as type to Text Document (*.txt)
or
you can leave the double quotes and change the Save as types to All Files.
I did both to tell you that even this works fine.

Step 5: Now double click the Locker.bat file created above, after a second you will notice that a folder with the name Personal is created (the third line of the code, before we check for the existence of the folder).

                             
Step 6: Copy and Paste whatever you want to keep in this 'Personal' folder. Then double click the Locker.bat file, it will prompt you for confirmation on Locking as shown:

                             
Step 7: Press Y or y  as per the code to lock the folder.

                             
Now the folder will disappear, even if you have set the Folder Options to Show hidden files, folders, and drives

                                
Step 8: To unlock and show this folder, double click Locker.bat. This time it will prompt you to enter the password

                                           
As you can see, I have provided the password in Caps, as the password is case sensitive. Also, keep in mind that the script written above does not show any messages if you enter incorrect password. It just vanishes.

And we are done!

Some tips: you don't need to feel frightened if you forgot your password, just right click Locker.bat, and choose Edit

                                        
Now you can see your password and Unlock 'Personal' folder by following from Step 6 (second part).

As an extra protection measure, you can change the attribute of Locker.bat to hidden and then select Don't show hidden files, folders, and drives(see the second image in Step 7). And whenever you want to use this folder you can change your selection in Folder Options.

Hope you find this useful. Feel free to leave any comments.

          

Enable Default Administrator Account using Command Prompt in Win 7 or Vista

Hi Friends!

Here I am with another post on Windows tricks. In this post, we will learn to activate the Admin account in Win Vista and 7 using command prompt.

The trick is pretty simple and the command is quite self-explanatory. So let's get our hands wet.

Step 1: Open command prompt in administrative mode(as shown below)

                                         
Step 2: Now type in the following command: net user administrator /active:yes

                                             
Step 3: Now log-off your system (Press Win + L) and see that this time you have an option for admin account as well.

N.B.: This admin account is not password protected, so you have to manually set the password.

There are two more methods to do the same. We will learn about them in next posts, till then:

Keep reading... ^_^

God Mode in Win 7

Hi Friends!

Today we are going to learn about Microsoft's undocumented feature-The God mode(AKA Windows Master Control Panel shortcut and All Tasks)- that gives the users quick links to special areas of operating system in Win 7(both 32 and 64- bits). It's called the God mode as it provides the capabilities to navigate to any domain/controller of your system.

Let's start rolling:

Step 1: Create a folder anywhere in your system

Step 2: Rename it to anything.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
    

N.B. : Notice that the icon of this folder has changed to something like the Control Panel.

Step 3: We are done. Now double click on the folder to reveal a link to almost anything in your system

                                                     
So as I told you(as the picture is not clear), when you will enter into the folder, you will find link to tools, utilities, interfaces etc.
There is actually nothing new, all this can be achieved in Control Panel as well. It's just a long big list.

Caution: This shortcut works fine in both Win 7(32 and 64- bit) and Windows Server 2008 32-bit. For Vista user with 64-bit version, this shortcut is not advised as it leads to system crash- you need to boot in safe mode or to the command line and delete this folder.