Some windows tricks and suggestions

Here are some tricks and suggestions you may like. I’ve tested these on XP platform….

1. A VIRTUAL DIARY

You want a quick diary on your pc, but dont want to install a separate program for this purpose. And writing notes in a word processor by giving date-time everytime isn’t a good idea.

• Open ‘NOTEPAD’.
• Type .LOG (remember .log or .Log wont work)

• Save the file with any desired any name and close the notepad window.
• Now everytime you will try to open this notepad file….the current date and time will be already placed there. So, this way it’ll become a virtual diary.

2. HIDE ONLY FILE-NAMES

Consider, you have some bunch of files like photos or music files. Those are not private but you want to hide only their filenames from others. Its easy, just hold down the ‘SHIFT’ key while selecting ‘THUMBNAILS’ view from ‘VIEW MENU‘ of the window. Amused?? All names are gone.

Its cool, but only works when others dont know this trick. If  they already know then they will bring up the filenames by repeating the process again. Anyway it doesn’t hurt to try  at least.

3. WIN ACTIVE DESKTOP

Its a good idea to work on your PC and simultaneously check the current stock quotes, match scores or mail feeds. You don’t need to open another browser window for it. Just add a web item to your desktop by using Windows Active Desktop feature.

• Open display properties by right clicking on desktop and selecting ‘properties’
• Click ‘Desktop’ tab then click on ‘Customize Desktop…” Button.

• Click on ‘Web’ tab, select ‘New’. Here type the website url e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk
• Click ‘OK’, let it synchronise…click ‘OK’ twice and you are done.
• Dont forget to mention the update interval so the page refreshes itself.
• You can put this web item anywhere on your desktop and be updated.

4. VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

If you have a file or something which could be potentially dangerous to your PC and you have to run it. Then you should run it in virtual machine instead of directly. Virtual Machine creates a virtual hardware platform on top of a software layer. This way, if virus or worm tries to initialize, it will only infect virtual machine and your OS remains safe..

In the above image you can see a virtual machine (VMware is used) is running XP environment upon Vista platform.

5. RESTRICTIONS TO UNWANTED

If you use Internet via your admin account then your PC have more chances to get infected by viruses or worms. Due to the fact that, if a virus got installed during web surfing thru your admin account, virus will have full access to admin rights. It can interfere with your security rules and internal configurations.

Instead, opt using ‘Limited Account’ to surf web, so the incoming worms will have limited rights, because OS restricts it to do admin activities.