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

Well, anyway, if you want to view the feedburner counts of the blogs that don’t display, you might be able to see it if you’re lucky. In fact, lucky here means those blog owners should have got change of mind and should be stupid too.

Here’s how to achieve this.

This is my feed address.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/BridgeToNova

If you want to see my subscriber, you should type in the address bar as follow.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/BridgeToNova

What do you see now?

I’m not lying to you. You can’t see my counts because I know this trick and I’ve already prevented from it by deactivating in my feedburner dashboard. But hey, there are a lot of bloggers out there who don’t know this and you can check their feed counts.

I always change Outlook default setting by digging into Advanced Options via Tools –>> Options and then change the default folder. Hey but there’s an easier way to do this.

Just click on the Customize Outlook today button on the upper right corner of your Outlook as in the following pic.

After that you will see the following screen.

Be sure to uncheck, “When starting, go directly to Outlook Today” checkbox. The default for these would make Outlook to go directly to your inbox. If you prefer to go Outlook to any other folder than your inbox, you can choose any folder you want by click on Choose Folders button.

Hope this tip would help you make more productivity.

But for me, as a Office 2007 user, sometimes I forget to save the file in Word97-2003 compatible mode and save it in 2007 new format and then send to my friends and coworkers, who are still using Office 2003 or older. After a couple of times happened, I’ve got to find a way to change Office 2007 default save file format. After a dozen times of accidentally sending a Word 2007 document to co-workers still stuck on Office 2003, I’ve decided to make Word save in the Word 2003 format by default.

Here is the procedure:

1. First click on the Office button and then choose Word Options as in the following picture.

2. After that Choose the save on the left column. And then from Save files in this format drop-down menu, choose Word97-2003 Document (.doc) as in the following pic.

After that click save. From now on, Word 2007 will always save file in Word 97-2003 format. No more incompatible format saving any more. As you can guess, even though I told you only about Word 2007, you can apply this tip in Excel 2007, Powerpoint 2007 and any other Office 2007 applications.

Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly. XML error message: The processing instruction target matching “[xX][mM][lL]” is not allowed.

This is because Blogger uses more strict and standardized XML. The above error simply mean the Adsense code is not standardized XML. To solve this, we need to replace all the html character such as ‘<’ with ‘>’ ‘”‘ with ‘”‘. Check the example below: This is original code.

This is XML standardized code:

You can use your text editor to replace all the HTML manually. Hey why don’t you check out Blogcrowds HTML parser. It is very easy and convenient. Be warned that changing the ads might violate the TOS of your specific ads company. So be sure to check with them to play safe.

Well, I have always just clicked NO, and moved on. I never even bother to click YES. I just wanted to get on with my work, so that I find a way to stop the computer to avoid showing that popup. Well, now I’ve got the tip to fix the problem. It is a simple fix.

• Just right click on the My Computer and click Properties.
• Once the System dialog box is open, click the Advanced tab
• And then click the Error Reporting tab at the bottom.
• Check the box that disables Error Reporting.

That’s it. I never have to look at that annoying popup again!

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.

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.

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

So I googled around and found out that I’ve to edit VMware hard disk configuration file manually as follows.

ddb.adapterType = “ide”
ddb.geometry.sectors = “63″
ddb.geometry.heads = “16″
ddb.geometry.cylinders = “16383″

And I delete these lines in VMware config file .vmx.

scsi0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
scsi0:1.present = “TRUE”
scsi0:1.fileName = “disk-2.vmdk”
scsi0:1.deviceType = “rawDisk”

Your config file might not look exactly as mine. But you know what to look and how to change. Any question? You can contact me via contact form or leave a comment.

Reference : VMware forum