Windows services you can disable to improve startup speed and security

Windows services run in the background when you start the computer no matter who’s logged in.

I’ll tell you the services which I think can be harmful for a system especially if your computer is over a network such as Internet/ University/ Office as bad boys can be anywhere.

To start the services management console, Go to Start Menu –>> Run and then type services.msc

After that disable any of the following services.

• 1. Stopping Windows Messenger Spam

Have you ever see a popup with a “Messenger Service” in the title bar while you’re surfing the net. If you did, that means someone is using the Messenger for sending adware to your system.

To stop it, disable the “Messenger” service from the Service Manager.

• 2. Disable NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing

It allows for someone to remotely access to your computer through NetMeeting. Unless, you’re regularly NetMeeting often, you should disable this.

Disable the “NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing” service from the Service Manager.

• 3. Disable Protected Storage

This service stores the passwords and the auto complete function with Internet Explorer. Unless, you want to use it, I recommend you disable it.

Disable “Protected Storage” service from the Service Manager.

• 4. Remote Desktop Help Session Manager

This service provides supports for Remote Assistance. If you use this service rarely or not at all, it is recommended to be disabled.

Disable “Remote Desktop Help Session Manager” service from the Service Manager.

• 5. Remote Registry Service

This service allows for your system registry to be accessible remotely. If you don’t require the assistance of someone to remotely have access to editing your registry settings, then disable this service.

Disable “Remote Registry” service from the Service Manager.

There you have it, 5 simple services which you can disable to improve not only security but also startup speed for your system.

Come back already

I come back from vacation only to find BtoN has got a lot of comments (some are spammy). Please excuse me if there’s any delayed in reply. There’s a little drip in traffic (trust me I’ll make it up). For my email inbox? Yes, there are many (really many) emails that I need to read or delete.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! has released long-awaited Yahoo! Messenger for Vista. I’ve just installed now and will follow up a full review later. As of now, Yahoo! Messenger for Vista looks really really buggy and omit a lot of features(such as voice call, video call, phone out/in, etc). If Yahoo! can’t iron out those bugs, they should drop the whole project.

If you want to see Yahoo! UI intended for Vista, you should download Yahoo! messenger for Vista Preview version and install it as you can still use your old messenger also.

Vacation for a week

Hello, everyone, I’ll be going on vacation for a week. So that excuse me for a while. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy browsing through my archives and make sure you’ve read all my top posts to get idea of what Bridge to Nova is really about.

How to lock computers when idle by using GPO

What I wanted to do is that, after my computer has been idle for 3 minutes, it should lock itself. How to achieve this is one of the trouble for me for almost two days. I have been digging around the net, but no answer. I tried to find myself in GPO (Group Policy Editor), but I don’t find the option directly.

But many articles I read on the net pointed me that I can changed four options in GPO. But that is for screensaver. I tweak a bit to achieve what I want. Remember I have told you guys about how to create shortcut to lock computer. Well, I used that tweak.

Here are the steps that I took:

• First go to Start –>> gpedit.msc
• Go to User Configuration –>> Administrative Templates –>> Control Panel –>> Display

There are many options there, but you just need to change four of them as follow.

• For screen saver option, just choose Enabled.
• For screen saver executable, choose Enabled and then type “rundll32 user32.dll,LockWorkStation“
• For password protect the screen saver, choose Enabled.
• For screen saver timeout, choose Enabled and then type the amount of time you want to lock your computer in seconds. (For example, if you want to lock your computer after three minutes of idle time, type 180)

That’s it. Next time if you’re away, you don’t have to worry about some other would invade your computer.

BtoN’s Tips : I have tested this on Vista and should work on Windows XP too. For screen saver timeout, if I set value less than 60, it won’t work.

Cnet did it again

I don’t trust Cnet anyway. I have always doubted about their product reviews and ratings. I’m sure all of these reviews are clearly biased based on how well someone paid them.

You know what? Cnet just named Vista as top ten terrible technology of the year. Come on, I confessed that Vista has been out for almost a year and has got many resistance than XP introduction was. But this is because XP has been out for 5 years and as strong as a rock. When the time XP was introduced, everybody was sick with Windows 9x Blue Screen of Death.

I’m sure Cnet must be paid by Apple marketing guys behind the door. Just look at their pathetic sentence such as:

Windows Vista conforms to all of the above. Its incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade

Isn’t this funny?

How to keep update with your favorite website which don’t offer RSS

RSS feed is a very convenient way to keep in touch with our favorite website. But what annoy me most is some of my favorite website don’t have RSS feeds at all. So that I have to manual check regularly whether they have updated their content or not.

One of my friend told me there are many websites that offer to keep you updated with our favorite website which don’t have RSS. After filtering through googling results, I found these two websites (Feedity and Feed43) suit my need.

By using these websites, you can enjoy the following services:

• Data syndication facility to web-based services and SMB’s globally.
• Web data integration with backend systems, databases, and mashups.
• Create a custom RSS web feed for any ANY webpage!
• Easily track and monitor changes to your favorite web sites.

How their service work is that they converts free-form HTML or XML documents to valid RSS feeds by extracting snippets of text or HTML by means of applying search patterns, and then joining these snippets together using output templates to form user-friendly content of feed’s items. The principle of extracting specific data from source documents is also known as “HTML scraping”.

Yes, I’m combining two of these web sites technique to explain it just like one website because basically these two web sites work the same way.

Google china can find warez

Believe it or not Google china can find many software easier than ordinary search. Seeing is believing. Let’s try now.

• Go to http://www.google.com/intl/zh-cn/
• Type the name of the program you want followed by cracked download (for example : Office 2007 cracked download)
• Then click the third button.
• All the results will be in Chinese. Just click randomly and you can download the software you want with no waiting time and no download limit.

I’m not sure downloading from Chinese site will be faster than your favourite download sites. So if this not work for you, just stick to the method whatever you used to. I’m not responsible for any of your action. This is just a tip.

Apple attack Vista once more

I wonder whether Apple marketing guys has got anything to do other than to attack Windows Vista. I mean Apple should tell their potential customers about how good their MAC is and why they should get it. Not simply making a stupid ads like below.

The only thing good about this ads is the idea of using two leaderboards to make one video ads. That’s it. Are you thinking to buy a MAC in the near future? Read my top 10 reasons why you shouldn’t waste your money on MAC.

How to get rid of Thumbs.db file

If you’re a Windows XP user, you might have seen Thumbs.db file in some folders. It is a hidden file.

What is Thumbs.db file?

Thumbs.db is a file used by versions of Microsoft Windows that stores a cache for Windows Explorer’s thumbnail view. Thumbs.db is saved in each directory that contains pictures or photos.

In which Windows versions you can find it?

You can find it in Windows XP Pro and Home. I’m not sure about Windows 9x (Who would’ve used it anyway nowadays?)

In Windows Vista, Microsoft replaced thumbs.db files with a centralized thumbnail database thumbcache_xxxx.db located in Users[user name]AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsExplorer.

How much space could it take?

You may not believe it, but it could take a few hundred MBs.

How can you get rid of it?

• Go to Start –>> Control Panel –>> Folder Options
• Go to the View tab
• Remove the check box from Do not cache thumbnails
• Click the Ok

What is the advantages and disadvantages of removing it?

• Advantages are that you can save a few hundreds of your hard disk space and you’ll never see those annoying little hidden file here and there.
• Disadvantage is that if you browse a folder that contains many image files with moderate file size, it will take a long time for that folder to load because the thumbnail images have not been cached in Thumbs.db.

So next time if you see one of your friends is wondering about thumbs.db file, you can easily bossy him/her with enough confident.

Source : Wikipedia

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.