Software & internet

Coming up with a password which is both easy to remember and safe is no easy task. Try one or all of these different techniques to create a secure but memorable password.

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The difference between DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW explained

There’s DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and even DVD-ROM! So what’s the difference between all of these different names, aren’t all DVDs the same? Well, it’s not quite that simple.

Let’s first start with the most obvious difference: some have R and some have RW. The “R” stands for readable, while the “W” stands for writeable.

The main difference between DVD-R and DVD-RW, or DVD+R and DVD+RW is that the R disc formats can only be written to once, and then it is only readable and can’t be erased for the rest of its digital life. While RW discs are can be written to and erased many times, they are both readable and writeable.

“R” discs are perfect if they are only needed to be written to once, such as giving some files to a friend or transferring them between PCs. “RW” discs have their strength in the ability to be used many times over, which is great for routine system backups, etc. And naturally, the RW discs are slightly more expensive than the R discs, but you’ll have to decide if the trade offs are worth the money.

Now, onto the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R. As I just described above, DVD-R & DVD-RW are sister discs, the difference being one is writeable once, while the other is writeable multiple times. The same thing is true for DVD+R & DVD+RW. So the question is, what’s the difference between the plus and minus?

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I ran across this the other day on another site and I thought that a couple people might find it helpful, so here we go:

1. First go Start/Run, and type in ‘cmd’ to bring up the Command Prompt.
2. Type ‘CD \’ and hit enter.
3. Type ‘DIR *.dll /s /b > regdll.bat’ and hit enter.
4. Type ‘Notepad regdll.bat’ and hit enter.
   Now Notepad is going to bring up a list of your .dll files, nevermind that for a moment.
5. Now type ‘Path’ and hit enter to see your current path. It will bring up something like: Path=c:\Windows;c:\windows\Command
6. (supplement your Windows Version, ex: C:\WINNT, or C:\Windows) Now type: ‘Path=c:\windows;c:\windows\Command;c:\Windows\Program~\Accessories’ and hit enter.
7. Verify again by typing ‘Path’ and hitting enter, and then type: ‘C:\WINNT\System32\Regsvr32.exe /s C:\’ and hit enter again.
8. Now, go back to Notepad and if you have Win98 use the replace feature in Wordpad (CTRL + H) or notepad to search for ‘C:\’ and replace it with this: ‘C:\Windows\System\Regsvr32.exe /s C:\’
   If you have Win2000, etc. use the replace command in note pad to search for ‘C:\’ and replace it with this: ‘C:\WINNT\System32\Regsvr32.exe /s C:\’
   *Be sure to type the replace string exactly like above or it won’t work*
9. Use “Replace All” to make the changes to the entire file.
10. When it finishes, save it, exit notepad or wordpad, and return to the Command Prompt.
11. Type ‘regdll’ and press enter. If you followed the above steps correctly it will now go through and re-register all your .dll files.

1. Start, Run, ‘Regedit’.
2. Press ‘Ctrl’+'F’ to open find box and type ‘Recycle Bin’ to search.
3. Change any value data with ‘Recycle Bin’ to whatever name you want to give it ( ie, like ‘Trash Can’ or ‘Dump’ etc).
4. Press F3 to continue searching for ‘Recycle Bin’ and change wherever you come across ‘Recycle Bin’ to new its new name.
5. Repeat step 4 until you have finished with searching and changed all values to its new name.
6. Close regedit and hit F5 on desktop to see the new name on screen.

Note: As a good practice, always backup your registry before changing anything although changing ‘Recycle Bin’ name is a simple tweak and doesnt affect anything else.

XP PRO has a lot of fun utilities. One of the most useful ones I have found to date is the ability to remotely reboot a PC. There are 2 ways of doing this. You will need to have admin access to the PC to preform these actions. That being said, here is the first way to do it:

1. Right click my computer, choose manage.
2. Highlight the Computer Management (Local) then click on Action, choose connect to another computer.
3. In the window that opens fill in the machine name of the PC you want to connect to and click ok.
4. Once connected right click on Computer Management (Remote machine name) and choose properties.
5. Go to the “Advanced” tab and click the Settings button under Start up and recovery.
6. Click on the Shutdown button.

Under action choose what you want to do (you can log off current user, shut down, restart, or power down. you can also choose if you want to force all applications to close, close hung apps, or wait for all apps to close by themselves).

The second way… Remember dos… that good old thing. Open up a command prompt and enter in the following:

%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe -r -m \\Machinename.

The command prompt has more switches and options. I highly suggest using shutdown.exe /? to see all the posibilities.

Many people are able to boot into an Operating System without any problems. But in one day, what if the boot files that include NTLDR, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com[/] file are corrupted due to virus infected, you are not able to boot into the OS. You will end up with reinstalling and repairing the OS in order to be able to boot into the OS again. Doing so will take you a lot of time. Therefore, in this tutorial, it will teach the user how to make the bootable floppy disc that can boot into Windows. So, when the user encounter the OS booting in the future due to boot files corruption, they are still able to boot into the OS and repair the OS bootup in less than a minute.

Pre-requites Tools

• A blank floppy disc
• A PC with running Windows 2000 series, Windows XP series, or 2003 series

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1. Lock XP Workstation
   You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter ‘rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation’ in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That’s it — just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that’s not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.
2. Remove Windows XP system software
   XP hides some system software you might want to remove, such as Windows Messenger, but you can tickle it and make it disgorge everything. Using Notepad or Edit, edit the text file /windows/inf/sysoc.inf, search for the word ‘hide’ and remove it. You can then go to the Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel, select Add/Remove Windows Components and there will be your prey, exposed and vulnerable.
3. New commands
   For those skilled in the art of DOS batch files, XP has a number of interesting new commands. These include ‘eventcreate’ and ‘eventtriggers’ for creating and watching system events, ‘typeperf’ for monitoring performance of various subsystems, and ’schtasks’ for handling scheduled tasks. As usual, typing the command name followed by /? will give a list of options — they’re all far too baroque to go into here.
4. Windows XP supports IPv6
   XP has IP version 6 support — the next generation of IP. Unfortunately this is more than your ISP has, so you can only experiment with this on your LAN. Type ‘ipv6 install’ into Run… (it’s OK, it won’t ruin your existing network setup) and then ‘ipv6 /?’ at the command line to find out more. If you don’t know what IPv6 is, don’t worry and don’t bother.
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Keyboard Shortcuts Result in Microsoft Word

1. CTRL and A : Selects all in the current document.
2. CTRL and B : Bold text.
3. CTRL and C : Copies the item or text to the Clipboard and can be pasted using CTRL and V.
4. CTRL and D : Displays the Font dialogue box.
5. CTRL and E : Centre Alignment.
6. CTRL and F : Displays the Find dialog box, to search the current document.
7. CTRL and G : Displays the Go to dialog box, to go to a specific location in the current document.
8. CTRL and H : Displays the Replace dialogue box.
9. CTRL and I : Italic text.
10. CTRL and J : Full Justification.
11. CTRL and K : Create Hyperlink
12. CTRL and L : Left Alignment
13. CTRL and M : Tab
14. CTRL and N : Creates a new document.
15. CTRL and O : Displays the Open File dialogue box.
16. CTRL and P : Displays the Print dialog box.
17. CTRL and R : Right Alignment.
18. CTRL and S : Displays the Save dialog box.
19. CTRL and U : Underline text
20. CTRL and V : Pastes the copied item or text from the Clipboard into the current position in the document.
21. CTRL and X : Cuts the item or text selected to the Clipboard.
22. CTRL and Y : Redo the last undone action.
23. CTRL and Z : Undoes the last action.
24. CTRL and ENTER : Insert Page Break.
25. CTRL and F2 : Show Print preview.
26. CTRL and F4 : Closes the active document window.
27. CTRL and F6 : Opens the next document window.
28. F1 key : Get help or use the Office assistant.
29. SHIFT and F1 Key : Context sensitive help.
30. F2 Key : Move text or image.
31. SHIFT and F2 Key : Copy Text.
32. F3 Key : Insert an autotext entry.
33. SHIFT and F3 Key : Change the case of the selected text.
34. F4 Key : Perform last action again.
35. SHIFT and F4 Key : Perform a Find or Go to action again.
36. F5 Key : Displays the Go to dialogue box, from here you can also Find and Replace.
37. SHIFT and F5 Key : Move to a previous revision.
38. F6 Key : Go to the next frame or pane.
39. SHIFT and F6 Key : Go to the previous frame or pane.
40. F7 Key : Launch the Spell checker.
41. SHIFT and F7 Key : Launch the Thesaurus.
42. F8 Key : Extend the current selection.
43. SHIFT and F8 Key : Shrink the current selection.
44. F9 Key : Update the selected fields.
45. SHIFT and F9 : Key Switch between a field code and it’s result.
46. F10 Key : Activate the menu bar.
47. SHIFT and F10 Key : Display a Shortcut Menu. Same as right clicking.
48. F11 Key : Go to the next field.
49. SHIFT and F11 Key : Go to the previous field.
50. F12 Key : Save file As, equivalent to tools menu.
51. SHIFT and F12 Key : Save document, equivalent to tools menu

This is another technique to hide your file :

1. create a new folder somewhere on your hard drive
2. when you name it hold down “Alt” and press “0160″ this will create and invisible space so it will apper as if it has no name.
3. right click in and select “Properties”.
4. select the tab “customize” and select “change icon” scroll along and you should a few blanc spaces click on any one
5. click ok when you hav saved the settings the folder will be invisible to hide all your personal files

that’s all.. ^_^

If you want to encrypt the contents of an individual file or directory, Windows XP Pro will do the trick, provided you enable NTFS on your hard drive. To encrypt a file :

1. right-click on it to bring up the Properties window.
2. Click on the Advanced button.
3. then in the Advanced Attributes dialog box click on Encrypt contents to secure data. This will encrypt the file (using either DES, which employs a 56-bit key on each 64-bit block of data, or 3DES, which uses a 56-bit key three times on each 64-bit block of data), and it will provide a certificate just for you. This certificate is key.

if you reinstall Windows or otherwise lose your user account, your access to the encrypted files will be gone, too. You need to export your certificates to back them up: For detailed instructions, search on export certificate in Windows Help.Windows XP does not require you to enter your password when you open the encrypted file. Once you log on to a session, encrypted files are available for you—and anyone who walks up to your system—to view.

Windows XP Home doesn’t support this method. Both XP Home and XP Pro, however, let you create password-protected compressed files. To do this :

1. right-click on the desired file and choose Send To -> Compressed (zipped) Folder.
2. Open the resulting folder and select Add a Password from the File menu.
3. delete the original file. Note that this encryption is relatively weak. It should dissuade casual users but won’t put up much of a fight against someone determined to hack it apart.