Windows Tips and Tricks

This is a collection of useful tips for using MS windows (if you have to ...).

The first, obvious trick is to try and make it as Unix-like as possible. Click here for tips on how to make DOS/windows more unixy.

However, there are some other handy things you can do to enhance the Windows GUI:

1. Hidden folders

   If you would like to have your control panels available as sub-menus from the start bar, Simply create a new Folder under Start Menu, and call it "Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}".
   Similar tricks can be used for other 'hidden' folders:
   

   • Dial-Up Networking.{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48}
   • Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
   • Inbox.{00020D75-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
   • My Computer.{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
   • Recycle Bin.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
   • Network Neighborhood.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
   • Desktop.{00021400-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
   • Briefcase.{85BBD920-42A0-1069-A2E4-08002B30309D}
   • Fonts.{BD84B380-8CA2-1069-AB1D-08000948F534}

2. Windows Explorer tips.

   The program explorer.exe has several "hidden" command line options. If you send it one parameter (eg. "explorer c:\windows") it will open that location in a normal window. If you want the explorer view, you need to use the "/e," parameter (eg "explorer /e, C:\windows").

3. Easy editting of Start menus

   In windows 9x, double-clicking on one of the folders in the start menu will open it for editing. However, this does not happen in NT. If you often change your Start menu programs, it is probably worth putting a link in your start menu. This will usually be under "C:\winnt\profiles\(USERNAME)\startmenu" under windows NT. Simply create a shortcut to "C:\winnt\profiles\(USERNAME)\startmenu" in this directory and you will have an easy way to change your Start menu programs.

4. Send to ... menu

   The items in the "send to.." menu (which appears if you right-click on an item in explorer) are found under "C:\winnt\profiles\(USERNAME)\SendTo". You can add shortcuts here to any programs you often use for editting, etc.

5. Open command prompt at a specified location

   There is a powerToy to enable you to right-click a folder in explorer and open a command prompt at that position. However, you can easily create this yourself by using a parameter to the "start" command. Create a batch file with the text :-
   start /d%1
   and add a shortcut to it into your "SendTo" directory, and you have an instant "Command Prompt here" function.

6. Change to a directory on another drive

   If you use cd to change to a directory on another drive, it will not change your current drive. Thus, you often need two commands, e.g.
   cd c:\temp
c:

   However, you can do this in one line using:
   cd /d c:\temp

7. Map network drives

   In windows NT, when you map a network drive (eg. make your F: drive point to a shared drive on another machine), there is a "reconnect at logon" option. However, this doesn't work if you need a password to connect to the remote drive. To get around this, place the following in a batch file in your startup directory:-
   net use f: \\remote\share password
   Where f: is the drive you want to map to, \\remote\share is the share you wish to access, and password is the password you use.

8. Remove/change the Splash Screen (win98)

   When you start windows 98, you get a splash scren popping up. To remove this, you need to edit c:\msdos.sys.

   Since this is a read-only file, first you need to make it editable:
   

   attrib -r -s -h C:\MSDOS.SYS 

   Then edit it to add the line
   

   LOGO=0

   just below the [Options] line
   (or, if you have a line setting LOGO to 1, change that)

   Then set the permissions back using:
   

    attrib +r +s +h C:\MSDOS.SYS

   If you want to change the startup screen, replace c:\logo.sys with your own 320x400 256 color bitmap.

9. Change Shell (windows 98)

   When windows starts, it usually runs explorer.exe, which gives you the start menu, etc.

   If you want a leaner version,, you can change this by changing the shell option in c:\windows\system.ini
   e.g. Change to shell=progman.exe for the win 3.1 Program Manager

   I have written a program to help do this, which is available here.

10. Power off after Shutdown (NT)

    Win98 has a niffty feature where the PC powers down after a shutdown. This new capacity requires an ATX power supply. You can get similar functionality in Windows NT by applying the following Windows NT registry hack:
    Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
    Name: PowerdownAfterShutdown
    Type: REG_DWORD
    Value: 1 Enable power off after shutdown
    After this, the shutdown dialog should be Shutdown and Power Off.

11. Dual boot to linux using the NT bootloader

    If you have NT on your machine, you will in all probability need the NT bootloader to load it. If you want to dual boot to linux, you may well think you need to have lilo or something as well - leaving you with two levels of bootloader.

    If you dislike this idea as much as I do, there is a way to use the NT bootloader to load linux (Thanks to Eddy Jansson for this one - the original ariticle is here).

    You will need to install lilo on your root/boot linux partition (ie. NOT on the MBR). To do this, you need a line "boot = /dev/hdxx" (where hdxx is your boot partition) in your lilo.conf.

    The copy the boot sector of this partition into a file, using
    dd if=/dev/hdxx of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
    

    Then you need to copy this file onto a partition you can see from windows, and add a line to c:\boot.ini to tell windows about it: e.g.
    c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"