Tag Archives: Tips

Windows 8 Getting Start Experience

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After the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, I was very excited to give it a try on my hyper-v VM. There is a lot of difference between Windows 7 and 8, especially Windows 8 has optimized a lot for tablet users.

Lock screen

  • Windows 8 lock screen provides quick view of latest data, time, unread emails.
  • Windows 8 supports picture password.

Start Menu

  • Win 7 classical start menu is removed
  • New start menu for Metro UI Applications

Desktop mode

  • Clock desktop tile from start menu to enter classical desktop mode.
  • The desktop user experience is same as Win 7.

Charm Button

  • Allow you access Search, Share, Start, Devices, Settings shortcuts quickly .
  • Shortcut: Win Key + C image

Reboot or Shutdown

How to Reboot or Shutdown in Windows 8

Work with application

  • Win Key + tab to switch between applications
  • To close metro UI app, click and hold at the top of screen and pull down to the bottom of screen.

Search

  • Type from start menu to launch search

How to delete windows.old after upgrading to Window 10

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Windows.old is a folder that contains archive information from previous windows system when you upgrading to Windows 10.  It mainly stores programs and files that are required to run the earlier version of Windows and contains following folders.

  • Windows
  • "Documents and Settings"
  • "Program Files"

You might end up having a Windows.old folder taking up 20+ gigs on your system drive. If you don’t need windows.old folder and want to safely delete this folder, follow the instructions below:

  1. Select Start, then All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and then Disk Cleanup.
  2. If you are using Windows 7 or Windows 8, select Clean up system files. If you are using Windows Vista, select Files from all users on this computer.
  3. Select the Previous Windows installation(s) check box, and click OK.

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IMPORTANT: Be sure to back up all important documents/files from the previous OS before following this article.

Remove Windows.old from command line

takeown /F c:\Windows.old\* /R /A /D Y 
cacls c:\Windows.old\*.* /T /grant administrators:F 
rmdir /S /Q c:\Windows.old

Windows Server

If you upgrade a server from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012, you need to enable desktop experience to use this disk cleanup utility.

Span Remote Desktop Across Multiple Monitors

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To span remote desktop across multiple monitors, launch an RDP connection using mstsc /span from the command prompt on your machine. This works on Vista/Windows 7. If you have a Win2K3 machine then you need have Terminal Services Client 6.0 installed. You can download it here.

Update

If you use Remote Desktop Client 7.0 connect to Window 7 or Windows server 2008 R2 remote machine, you can simply check "Use all my monitors for the remote session" to do this.

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Forget WordPress Admin Password

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After setup local WordPress environment, WordPress will generate a password for admin logon. The password is so strong that forget the password can easily happen. The easiest way to get admin password back is reset it again in database.

Here is the SQL command that will do it:

UPDATE 'wp_users' SET 'user_pass' = MD5('PASSWORD') WHERE 'user_login' ='admin' LIMIT 1;

Note you need update red PASSWORD to the real password you want reset.

After the command succeeds, you will be able to login to WordPress with new password.

Find Computer Owner

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At times people want to find out who owns a certain machine.

My Network places -> Search Active Directory -> Find: Computers, Enter Computer name: "FOOBAR", Click "Find Now", Select Result, Right Click "Manage" -> Local Users and Groups -> Groups -> Administrators -> (Find who is an admin on the box).

Another method is to open dsa.msc in MMC and Select "Advanced" View, then lookup computers and look at the Security tab.

The tool, srvinfo.exe, is also useful for learning info about a machine.

Nice Win7 shortcut key combinations

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A list of shortcuts specific to Windows 7

Windows shortcuts

WinKey + Up arrow

Maximize window

WinKey + Down arrow

Restore/Minimize window

WinKey + Left arrow

Snap window to left

WinKey + Right arrow

Snap window to right

WinKey + Shift + Left arrow

Jump window to left monitor

WinKey + Shift + Right arrow

Jump window to right monitor

WinKey + Home

Restore/Minimize all other windows

Taskbar shortcuts

WinKey + T

Preview the first taskbar entry

Press again to move forward through taskbar entries

WinKey + Shift + T

Preview the last taskbar entry

Press again to move back through taskbar entries

(after pressing the keystroke once, use left and right arrow keys to cycle through)

Winkey + # (1-9)

Launches a new instance of the application on the # (1-9) slot on the taskbar

Desktop shortcuts

WinKey + Space

View the desktop

WinKey + G

Bring gadgets to the top of the Z-order

WinKey + P

Opens projection options (Computer Only, Duplicate, Extend and Projector Only)

WinKey + X

Mobility Center

 

Accessibility shortcuts

WinKey + +

Zoom in

WinKey + -

Zoom out

Explorer shortcuts

Alt + P

Show/hide preview pane

Mouse Shortcuts

Shift + Left click on taskbar icon

Open a new instance

Shift + Middle click on taskbar icon

Open a new instance

Ctrl + Shift + Left click on taskbar icon

Open a new instance with admin priveleges

Shift + Right click on taskbar icon

Show window menu (Restore/Minimize/Close, etc)

Shift + Right click on taskbar group

Show window group menu (Restore/Minimize/Close All)

Ctrl + Left click on taskbar icon

Cycle between windows (or tabs) in the group

How to make your machine think it has less memory than it really does

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There’s a hidden, system, read-only file called boot.ini in system boot drive.

Here’s a sample to run 1 GB dual as a 128 MB uniprocessor:

[boot loader]

timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /numproc=1 /maxmem=128

Recover deleted mail in outlook

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Have you ever deleted an email, emptied your deleted items folder and then realized one day or two later that you need them? Well you can recover them in outlook using the following easy steps:

Select the 'Delete Items' folder
Go to Tools->Recover Deleted Items...

You will see a nice list of all the email that you have deleted. However, you'll need to know either the sender or the subject since you can't search or open the items but you could always recover everything and then re-empty the Deleted Items Folder.

Update: In Outlook 2010, its Folder –> Recover Deleted Items