Hide Recycle Bin icon from Desktop in Windows XP

Even though there is options to hide and display My Computer, My Documents from Destkop, for some reason, Microsoft don’t provide any option to hide Recycle Bin icon from Desktop in Windows XP.

What if that little innocence Recycle Bin icon irritate you much? Do you want to get rid of it? Well, it’s easy! Just follow these steps:

• 1. Go to Start Menu –> Run
• 2. Type regedit.exe
• 3. Navigate to the following path from the left column: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Explorer \HideDesktopIcons \ClassicStartMenu
• 4. In the right column, right click –> New –> DWORD

• 5. Then enter the following string without quotes “{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}”

• 6. After that double-click on that Name and set the Value to 1.

• 7. You should see something similar to the following screenshot.

After that repeat the steps 1-7 except in step 3, navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Explorer \HideDesktopIcons \NewStartPanel

Once you’ve done the above, you can go to Desktop, right-click and refresh. Recycle Bin icon will be gone. What if you want it back? Well, just set the above two Reg values to 0.

Source : Microsoft KB

How to check which programs from your PC are connecting to which servers on the internet

Have you ever wonder which program on your PC are currently connected to the internet? Well, you don’t even need to install any new program to figure that out.

Windows XP and above have already got the built-in command line program called netstat, which can give you a lot of useful network related information. Just follow these steps:

• Start Menu –> Run –> cmd
• Type : netstat –b, for me I got the output like :

TCP LT-SV505:4661 65.55.57.252:http ESTABLISHED 4760
[chrome.exe]

TCP LT-SV505:3091 ip-167-34-219-155.ip.secureserver.net:23396 ESTABLISHED 4388
[Skype.exe]

From the output, I can know that currently Skype and Chrome are connecting to the internet from my PC. But remember, netstat command will give you a lot of other system processes that are connected to the internet as well. Make sure you Google each process name before ringing any alarm bell.

Source : Microsoft Product Documentation

How to disable Automatic Updates restart prompt

If you are using Windows XP with Automatic Updates on, you’ll be quite familiar with the dialog box below.

It becomes very annoying when you are really busy and the dialog box keeps on coming back. Well, finally I’ve got the easiest solution to get rid of it.

Just go to Start menu –> Run, type services.msc.

You’ll see the following window and right-click on Automatic Updates, choose stop as follow:

Right after you clicked “Stop”, the annoying “Do you want to restart your computer now?” dialog box will go away altogether with the system tray icon. Now you can focus on your work undisturbed.

Source : Microsoft Answers

How to edit Powerpoint template

This is just silly. I can’t figure out how to update the year in the left corner of my company powerpoint slide. I’ve tried footer and header, no help at all. Finally Google comes to rescue.

So I think this might be worth to share with you all as well.

Just go to View menu –> Master –> Slide Master

That’s it though! You can edit any part of the template as you wish. If you want to save that as new template, you can easily do so via File –> Save As and choose Design Template as Save as type.

Source : Office.com

How to delete every other row in excel

If you want to delete every other row in Excel, you’ll need to use the following macro.

• On the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Visual Basic Editor.
• For Excel 2007, click Visual Basic in the Code group on the Developer tab.
• On the Insert menu, click Module.
• Then copy paste the following code :

Sub Delete_Every_Other_Row()

' Dimension variables.
Y = False ' Change this to True if you want to
' delete rows 1, 3, 5, and so on.
I = 1
Set xRng = Selection

' Loop once for every row in the selection.
For xCounter = 1 To xRng.Rows.Count

' If Y is True, then...
If Y = True Then

' ...delete an entire row of cells.
xRng.Cells(I).EntireRow.Delete

' Otherwise...
Else

' ...increment I by one so we can cycle through range.
I = I + 1

End If

' If Y is True, make it False; if Y is False, make it True.
Y = Not Y

Next xCounter

End Sub

• Switch to the worksheet that contains the data, and then select the cell that you want to delete.
• To run the macro, point to Macro on the Tools menu, and then click Macros. (For Excel 2007, click Macros in the Code group on the Developer tab.)
• Select the Delete_Every_Other_Row macro, and then click Run.

Hopefully, future Excel versions will have built-in functions to delete every other row.

Source : Microsoft KB

File Size Column missing in vista or Windows 2008 server

Recently I noticed that in my Vista’s Windows Explorer there’s apparently no file size column anymore! I can remember seeing that after upgrading to Vista, so definitely not Vista issues.

So after a lot of Googling around, I’ve come to realize that the main culprit is Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista (KB940157), which comes with Automatic Updates.

The solution for this mess is to delete the following registry key:

HKLM \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \PropertySystem \PropertySchema \@CachedSchema

After that don’t forget to restart your PC. Then the file column will magically reappear. I’ve tested this solution on Windows 2008 Server as well.

Source : Microsoft Technet

How to install fonts without admin right

In Windows, you can’t install new fonts if you don’t have admin rights. Microsoft have made it extremely difficult for normal users to install fonts. As all the Fonts in Windows live peacefully in C:\Windows\Fonts, which is only writeable by Administrators or elevated privilege account owners

So, how can we install fonts without having to ask for Admin rights? Well, thanks to Tsukasa, there’s a workaround. He has developed a tool called Registerfont (You can download here)

What this tool actually does is that add a number of fonts to your font cache which do not need to use an elevated user account. How to use this tool is very simple.

• Just download the above file.
• Extract it to anywhere you can have access.
• Find the Bin folder and copy the font files into it.There you’ll also find registerfont.exe
• Go to Command Prompt and locate to registerfont.exe then type “registerfont add font1.ttf font2.ttf font3.ttf … font1000.ttf”

What if you don’t even have access to command prompt?

Well, then, you can create shortcut by right clicking on Registerfont.exe, choose create shortcut. After that right-click on that shortcut and go to Properties. Then append the string add with the name of the font file you want to add.

Example : “C:\Documents and Settings\usernamexxx\My Documents\RegisterFont.exe” add font1.ttf

Please note that you have to put Registerfont.exe, its shortcuts and all your fonts in the same folder. That’s it! Once you run the shortcut, you can see that the fonts you added are available to all your favourite Windows applications such as MS Office or Web Browsers.

Recover your lost Excel passwords

I enjoy Microsoft Excel a lot. In fact, a lot of my daily usage and my budget plans are normally done in Microsoft Excel. As I used more and more Excel and contain a lot of confidential data in Excel file, I need to keep it as securely as possible.

I love Microsoft Office for their invention of Password protection feature since earlier versions of Office. Their Password protection made me feel save from my friends and co-workers, who are very curious about all my files in my computer. But one of the bad thing is that, as I’ve got a lot of password, sometimes I forgot the password of the file that contain all my budgets for the last whole year.

I was sweating a lot. But then Excel password recovery program (link) save me from disaster. This software is really a great deal. It checks up to 140,000 passwords per second, that is four times faster than it’s competitors.

So if you’ve encountered a password forgot nightmare like I do, you don’t have to sweat anymore. Just use that program!

How to open docx files without Office 2007

Microsoft has introduced a new file format called the Microsoft Open Office XML Format (.docx) with their latest office suite, Office 2007.

But most people are still using Office 2003. The big problem is that this new format is incompatible with older Microsoft Office versions or any other Office alternatives such as Open Office or Lotus, StarOffice, NeoOffice. Before anyone blame Microsoft, they have already created a program called Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. After you’ve downloaded this program, you can easily convert new Office format such as .docx to old Office format .doc and vice versa.

Or if you don’t want to install any program, you can try .docx online converter. Hope this advice help your incompatibility headache.

5 things people love about Windows

Most of my visitors (90-95%) are Windows users. So I discussed with some of them about why they use Windows and what they love about it. Here is most common points.

Application Support
Don’t get me wrong, the competitors have some cool software suites, but if there is a program out there, then there is a good chance it was made for XP, or has a version available for Windows.

Gaming
Hands down, XP is a gaming machine. Gaming companies always make an XP version, and very few port their game over to the competitor’s operating system. Virtually, there are no games available only to competitor’s operating system, not to Windows. It’s always the other way around.

Customizations
Sure prepackaged computers may be great for novice users . But what if you want to build your own? Windows makes it extremely easy. You can just go into any computer shops, buy any hardware components you want without having to worry about whether there’s a driver available or not.

Familarity
Like it or not, most companies/corporations use Windows. So if you are a PC users, you must be able to use Windows. That made most of us familiar with Windows. Microsoft marketing teams are really genius too. Instead of bashing competitors’ OS, they offered great discount to high schools and University. After all those kids have graduated, what would they get used to? Huh, see?

Free help from friends or family
When your computer faces some problem or you want to tweak a bit, it is easier to find Windows expert among friends or family. It would be very difficult to find people who are expert in other OSes.

If I have to write it down all, the list would go on and on. So let me stop here.