Common Control Panel Applets

The follow are some common Control Panel Applets that are located in the \windows\system32 directory.
If you find yourself using any of these frequently, then you can simply make shortcuts to them on your desktop.

Viewing Installed Drivers

If you want to see a list of installed drivers, you can run the driverquery program
There are a lot of available switches to view different types of information.
On use can be to export to a CSV file for viewing in Excel
An example would then be:
Driverquery  /v  /fo  csv  > drivers.csv

Identify Faulty Device Drivers

If you are having problems with lockups, blue screens, or can only get to safe mode often the problem is due to a faulty device driver.
One way to help identify them is through the use of the Verfier program

1. Start - Run - Verifier
2. Keep the default of Create Standard Settings
3. Select the type of drivers you want to confirm
4. A list of drivers to be verified on the next boot will be shown.
5. Reboot
6. If your computer stops with a blue screen, you should get an error message with the problem driver

Determining Which Services are Associated with SVCHOST

Since so many critical services are run with each svchost,
You can see which ones are being used by opening a cmd prompt and running:
tasklist /svc /fi "imagename eq svchost.exe"

Note: This is available only with XP Pro

Creating a Suspend Shortcut

If you would like to create an icon to suspend your computer,

1. Right click on the Desktop
2. New / Shortcut
3. Enter in rundll32.exe PowrProf.dll, SetSuspendState
4. Give it a name you want
5. Now when you click on that shortcut, your computer will shutdown and suspend

Menu Bar in Task Manager  is Missing

If you start the Task Manager and menu bar and tabs are missing, the Task Manager is running in Tiny Footprint mode.

To fix this, simply double click on an empty space in the top border

IPCONFIG Error

When you run IPCONFIG and get an error:

An internal error occured: The request is not supported.
Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services for further help.
Additional information: Unable to query routing information

You need to copy a clean TCPIP.SYS file to the \windows\system32\drivers directory and reboot.

Disable USB Drive

Attaching a USB storage like Pen drive or HDD to the system by users always appears as a nightmare for System Administrators. This becomes a potential source of all viruses, worms and Trojans to attack the system. Also company’s secret can also be copied very easily to it. If the USB Controller is made disabled from the BIOS other USB gadgets like Printers, Mouse etc cannot be attached to the system. This registry tweak will only disable all USB Storages but others gadgets will run properly.

Hide Drives in My Computer:

Sometimes in a multiuser environment Administrator may want to hide a single drive or few drives to get appear from My Computers. This can be done by doing some Registry Tweaks. Here is how to do that :
Use these decimal numbers to hide the drive(s):
A: 1, B: 2, C: 4, D: 8, E: 16, F: 32, G: 64, H: 128, I: 256, J: 512, K: 1024, L: 2048, M: 4096, N: 8192, O: 16384, P: 32768, Q: 65536, R: 131072, S: 262144, T: 524288, U: 1048576, V: 2097152, W: 4194304, X: 8388608, Y: 16777216, Z: 33554432, ALL: 67108863
For example to hide drive A and drive D, you would add 1 (A) + 8 (D) which means the value should be set to "9".
To disable all the drives set the value to "67108863".

System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
Value Name: NoDrives
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)

Here is a sample How to Disappear C Drive

Remember C Drive is only disappeared from My Computer but still it can be accessed from Windows Explorer

Being forced to reinstall but want to avoid reactivation?

Once you activate your copy of Windows XP Operating System, a file gets created/updated in %SYSTEM%/system32 directory. It is called wpa.dbl file. If you need to reinstall, take a backup of this file and once you have reinstalled the OS, just copy it back to the same directory.

How to verify XP software you bought is OEM/UPGRADE/RETAIL?

Microsoft has a definite product marketing strategy. Whenever they launch any new product line, there are various flavors of it available right from day one. Some are given adjectives like UPGRADE version or FULL, others RETAIL v/s OEM and then of-course we have various categories of the product like HOME, PRO , SERVER , ADVANCED SERVER etc etc. Well have you ever thought what you bought is same as what was you were supposed to brought ? How to verify the difference?  Here is the help.

Look for a file called Setupp.ini that is present on your Windows XP CD and double click on it and browse its content. There is a field called PID=.

This PID is what would tell us exactly what we have got. First 5 bytes of PID decide whether (it is OEM or RETAIL or is an UPGRADE) and last three digits determine what kind of CD KEY it will accept. Here are some of the typical PID values:
Retail = 51882 335
Volume License = 51883 270
OEM = 82503 OEM

Automatically defrag drives with a new context menu item !!

Create a new Registry import file named defrag.inf in Notepad (be sure to save with it with the Save as type set to All Files and not Text Documents) and place the following text inside:

; defrag.INF

; Adds Defrag to the right click context menu in Windows XP

[version]
signature="$CHICAGO$"

[DefaultInstall]
AddReg=AddMe

[AddMe]

HKCR,"Drive\Shell\Defrag\command",,,"DEFRAG.EXE %1"

Then, right-click and choose Install. This will add a context menu to XP that allows you to automatically defrag drives, using the command line version of the built-in defragmentation utility. To use it, navigate to a drive in My Computer, right-click, and choose Defrag. A command line window will appear, and that drive will be defragged. When it's complete, the window just disappears.

To remove this functionality, Open regedit.exe and navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\

Then delete the Defrag folder and close Regedit.

Speed up the Start Menu

The default speed of the Start Menu is pretty slow, but you can fix that by editing a Registry Key. Fire up the Registry Editor and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ MenuShowDelay

By default, the value is 400. Change this to a smaller value, such as 0, to speed it up.

If this doesn't work for some reason, then you might try the following: Navigate to Display Properties then Appearance then Effects and turn off the option titled Show menu shadow. You will get much better overall performance.

Display Hibernate Option on the Shut Down dialog

For some reason, Hibernate isn't available from the default Shut Down dialog. But you can enable it simply enough, by holding down the SHIFT key while the dialog is visible. Now you see it!

But before running this trick please ensure Hibernate is enabled from Power Option.

Delete files when the Recycle Bin is hidden

Here's how it works: Make sure a bunch of windows are open on the screen, with at least one of them hiding the Recycle Bin. Then, find a file or group of files you'd like to drag to the Recycle Bin. Pick up the files with the mouse and move them to the lower right of the screen. As you reach the bottom area of the screen, pass the mouse cursor over a blank area of the task bar, hover there for an instant, and--wow!!--the open windows all minimize, leaving the Recycle Bin available to accept the dragged files. Good stuff. This tip also works when windows are maximized, assuming the file(s) you want to delete are visible in one of the available windows.

Add/Remove optional features of Windows XP

For some reason, Microsoft has removed the ability to specify which Windows components you want to install during interactive Setup, and when you go into Add/Remove Windows Components in the Control Panel, you still don't have the full list of applications and applets you can add and remove.Thankfully, this is easy to fix.

To dramatically expand the list of applications you can remove from Windows XP after installation, navigate to C:\WINDOWS\inf (substituting the correct drive letter for your version of Windows) and open the sysoc.inf file. Under Windows XP Professional Edition, this file will resemble the following by default:

[Version] Signature = "$Windows NT$"
DriverVer=06/26/2001,5.1.2505.0

[Components]
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4
WBEM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wbemoc.inf,hide,7
Display=desk.cpl,DisplayOcSetupProc,,7
Fax=fxsocm.dll,FaxOcmSetupProc,fxsocm.inf,,7
NetOC=netoc.dll,NetOcSetupProc,netoc.inf,,7
iis=iis.dll,OcEntry,iis.inf,,7
com=comsetup.dll,OcEntry,comnt5.inf,hide,7
dtc=msdtcstp.dll,OcEntry,dtcnt5.inf,hide,7
IndexSrv_System = setupqry.dll,IndexSrv,setupqry.inf,,7
TerminalServer=TsOc.dll, HydraOc, TsOc.inf,hide,2
msmq=msmqocm.dll,MsmqOcm,msmqocm.inf,,6
ims=imsinsnt.dll,OcEntry,ims.inf,,7
fp_extensions=fp40ext.dll,FrontPage4Extensions,fp40ext.inf,,7
AutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,au.inf,hide,7
msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7
msnexplr=ocmsn.dll,OcEntry,msnmsn.inf,,7
smarttgs=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,msnsl.inf,,7
RootAutoUpdate=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,rootau.inf,,7
Games=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,games.inf,,7
AccessUtil=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,accessor.inf,,7
CommApps=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,communic.inf,HIDE,7
MultiM=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,multimed.inf,HIDE,7
AccessOpt=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,optional.inf,HIDE,7
Pinball=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,pinball.inf,HIDE,7
MSWordPad=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,wordpad.inf,HIDE,7
ZoneGames=zoneoc.dll,ZoneSetupProc,igames.inf,,7

[Global]
WindowTitle=%WindowTitle%
WindowTitle.StandAlone="*"

The entries that include the text hide or HIDE will not show up in Add/Remove Windows Components by default. To fix this, do a global search and replace for ,hide and change each instance of this to , (a comma). Then, save the file, relaunch Add/Remove Windows Components, and tweak the installed applications to your heart's content.