How to Find Your Computer Name and Change it

There will be times when you need to know your computers name. This is not the same as your computer username. You might use your computer name to share files and printers on your home network and sometimes the default computer name is just too difficult to remember. This is the number one reason for changing your computer name. If you are using the computer name to setup a shared printer you will need to rename your computer something easy. You do not want a string of numbers and letters.

How to find your computer name and change it?

1. Press the Windows key and the Pause Break button at the same time. How easy is that? Applies to Windows Xp and Vista.
2. Or go to Start menu>control panel>system (For Vista you can get more details by clicking on the items in the left bar menu.)
3. Or go to the Start Menu and right-click on My Computer and select Properties (For Vista its not my Computer but just computer)

To get a similar dialog box, as above, to appear in Vista you need to look a bit further. When you open system properties as in the steps above, you also need to click on a menu item in the left panel. For example, you can click on Advanced Options. This will bring up a dialog box like the Windows XP one.

You can also see your computer name  in System properties as the arrow shows below. And here you can click on change settings to change your computer name.

Where is the name of your computer?

1. Choose computer name from the tab
2. And there it is in small writing…If it is a difficult or overly long name click on change. Change your computer name to something easy. Mine is called ‘server’ See screenshot below.

Can I change the computer name and still keep all of my files?

Changing your computer name will not effect your files on your computer. The will stay where they are, untouched and safe. Changing the name of your computer may effect your network settings. For example if you are sharing a printer and the path to the printer is rizviprinter and you change rizvi to saboo it will not find the printer.

Notes:

• Windows Vista displays the computer name on the first page of the system properties.
• When networking or sharing files you can either use your computer IP Address or your computer name.
• All computers on the Network should have different names and IP address’s to avoid conflicts.

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How to Shrink a Partition on Your Hard Drive

If you have your hard drive partitioned and want to change the size of the partitions or the amount of partitions you have on your computer, you can. It is still going to wipe your data but if you backup your files to the main partition just while you are shrinking the other partition then you can move it all back after. 

How to shrink a partition?

In this tutorial I have 3 partitions on my hard drive. The first is C: drive, then D: drive, and finally E: drive. You can see this in the screen shot below. The first thing I am going to do is shrink E: drive. Now we must open the disk management tool in Windows Vista.

I cannot guarantee this will work in Windows Vista Home and Windows XP as this was done using a higher version of Vista.

Yes they could be depending on what version of Windows you are using. Be warned that I strongly suggest you backup any data or files that your partition has on it.

If you leave files on there and decide to shrink the partition some versions will clearly not let you do this, while others will but we all know accidents can happen. Its always better to be safe than sorry.

If I shrink a partition will the files be lost or wiped clean?

If you use partition software then you can basically shrink a partition with the files on it.

How to open disk management to shrink a partition?

1. Go to the start menu.
2. Right click on my computer or computer for Windows Vista.
3. Choose manage from the menu.
4. Choose storage.
5. Then click on  computer management.
6. Choose Disk Management in the left side menu. Then you see all your drives listed in the right side.

When you open disk management you will see the partitions I have on my computer. Now to continue to shrink drive E:

1. Right click on Drive E: as shown in the screenshot below.
2. Choose Shrink Volume from the menu.

• Now a box will appear. It will automatically choose the size to shrink the partition by.
• change the size of the shrink by changing the amount in the box that is highlighted blue.
• When you are happy with your size press Shrink.

Now see the screenshot below. My E: partition was 116mb and now it is 58.27mb. The data and files that was on there is gone. And now I have 58.17gb of free space. To use this free space we need to right click on that area and choose to create a new volume. We can also extend E: back out to 116mb by using the free space.

Shrink a Partition in Windows Seven

In Windows Seven you can decrease the size of the main partition without removing files first. You are restricted by the position files. It is probably a good idea to defrag your files to place them in an organized state, ready for the partition shrink. You can shrink the existing partition from the end of the volume to create new unallocated space. Then you can label the drive and start loading it up with files.

Easily Resize, Copy, Move hard disk partitions without losing data!

Notes on shrinking a partition

• You can experiment with any of your partitions but not C: drive. (except Windows seven)
• You cannot shrink C: drive unless you use another program likePartition Magic
• You can shrink any other partitions but you will still loose the files on it.

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How To Add Your Own Windows Tips

Are you sick of seeing the same tips again and again when you first logon to Windows? Now you can change them to whatever you want, whether it's quotes, jokes or a to-do list, anything is possible.

Open your registry and find the key below.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\ Tips

Create a new string valued named by incrementing the existing value names and set it to the required tip text.

eg. 32 - Dont forget to Visit /http://techsohail.blogspot.in

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Change The Storage Location Of 'My Documents'

Normally windows saves the "My Documents" folder on your C-drive. 

But when you right-click on it and go to properties, you can change the location where you want windows to save your Documents folder.
 

I have a partition set up with just windows on it, and all my things i want to keep are on different partitions/disks. 

So now I put My Documents on another partition than where I have windows installed. 

If windows screws up and you have to format your C-drive again, your documents will be spared at least...

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Manual virus removal from 'System Volume information'

In Windows,  System Volume Information is a system folder, to keep track of the changes took placed on a partition in a fix time period. This folder exists in every partition on your HDD. By default this folder is hidden, but you can see it by showing the hidden and system files and folders.The information stored in these folders helps Windows to revert to an earlier state, when you use the System Restore tool.

But sometimes, some malware files get in the System Volume Information folder. This can happens by any of following reasons:

1.  the malware wants to get there so that user doesn't have access to delete it and from where it can restore itself, 
2. or some malware file gets deleted and Windows decides that the file was important and it automatically stores it there, in case you ever want it back.

Well, you can easily clean malware infection from this folder by using the following simple steps:

• Right click on My Computer, then go to Properties
• Now in Windows XP:  Go to System Restore tab, enable the option Disable System Restore on all drives and click Apply. This should erase all System Restore Points, including the infected file(s).
• In Windows 7: Go to System Protection > then under protection settings choose hard drive that have malware and click Configure > Turn off system Protection > ok
• After this, again enable the system Restore option and press Apply again, so that you'll re-enable System Restore.

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Delete Recent File List In Windows Media PLayer

This tip requires a change to the Windows Registry. Please see the MSFN Guide "Backup Your Registry" if you are new to the Windows Registry.

Windows Media Player (WMP) is a built-in application that allows you to play multimedia files. Like many other applications, WMP remembers the most recently played files and displays them in the Recent File List under the File menu. This feature is useful if you regularly play certain files, but you may want to clear the list if you share the computer and a user account or create archives and CDs.

There are two ways you can clear the list:

I. The ClearMRU.exe Utility is available for free in the Windows Media Player Bonus Pack from Microsoft, but Microsoft does not support this tool.

II. You can also manually delete the list through the Windows Registry:

1. Start the Windows Registry Editor, regedit.exe, by typing regedit in the Windows Run Command Line.

2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Player\RecentFileList.

3. Delete the RecentFileList subkey.

4. If you've also streamed content from the Internet, you can delete the RecentURLList subkey.

5. Exit the Registry Editor.

6. Restart the computer.

To keep certain files in the list, don't delete the entire key. Deleting individual entries within the key will get rid of the files that you no longer want in the Recent File List.

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Add open cmd prompt here to context menus

Copy following to notepad and save as cmd here.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd]
@="Command Prompt"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd\command]
@="cmd.exe /k \"cd %L\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd]
@="Command Prompt"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\command]
@="cmd.exe /k \"cd %L\""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\cmd]
@="Command Prompt"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\cmd\command]
@="cmd.exe /k \"cd %L\""

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Delete An Undeletable File

Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open.

Close all open programs.

Click Start, Run and enter TASKMGR.EXE

Go to the Processes tab and End Process on Explorer.exe.

Leave Task Manager open.

Go back to the Command Prompt window and change to the directory the AVI (or other undeletable file) is located in.

At the command prompt type DEL <filename> where <filename> is the file you wish to delete.

Go back to Task Manager, click File, New Task and enter EXPLORER.EXE to restart the GUI shell.

Close Task Manager.

Or you can try this

Open Notepad.exe

Click File>Save As..>

locate the folder where ur undeletable file is

Choose 'All files' from the file type box

click once on the file u wanna delete so its name appears in the 'filename' box

put a " at the start and end of the filename

(the filename should have the extension of the undeletable file so it will overwrite it)

click save,

It should ask u to overwrite the existing file, choose yes and u can delete it as normal

Here's a manual way of doing it. I'll take this off once you put into your first post zain.

1. Start

2. Run

3. Type: command

4. To move into a directory type: cd c:\*** (The stars stand for your folder)

5. If you cannot access the folder because it has spaces for example Program Files or Kazaa Lite folder you have to do the following. instead of typing in the full folder name only take the first 6 letters then put a ~ and then 1 without spaces. Example: cd c:\progra~1\kazaal~1

6. Once your in the folder the non-deletable file it in type in dir - a list will come up with everything inside.

7. Now to delete the file type in del ***.bmp, txt, jpg, avi, etc... And if the file name has spaces you would use the special 1st 6 letters followed by a ~ and a 1 rule. Example: if your file name was bad file.bmp you would type once in the specific folder thorugh command, del badfil~1.bmp and your file should be gone. Make sure to type in the correct extension.

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How To Create Bootable USB

You do not have a CD / DVD and you want to try a  Live bootable CD via USB. 

Or say You want to make a bootable USB.

 

WinToFlash starts a wizard that will help pull over the contents of a CD or DVD or a disc image in ISO format and prepare the USB drive to become a bootable replacement for the optical drive.

• It Supports Windows XP, Vista and Win 7.
• Freeware
• Easy to Use

How to use it:

1. Download and install and Run it.

Download From here

2. Now choose any operation from the list. and press Run.

3. Select the Location of iso file in Source and also select Usb Drive's Location and press run.

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