Simple Informations

This is a small list of folders and files which were displayed by the method mentioned on the previous post in this series.
Recycler : Recycler is a twin of Recycle Bin. The Recycler folder contains a Recycle Bin for each user that logs on to the computer, sorted by their security identifier (SID).
System Volume Information : This contains the log files and backups of important System Files that are used for System Restore in Windows. (System Restore allows you to roll back all the settings and System Files to a previous time)
NTLDR : This is the Windows NT loader, boot loader. This is replaced by winload and Windows Boot Manager in Windows Vista
NTDETECT.COM : This file is used by Windows NT during startup to detect basic hardware. This is used for Systems having BIOS.
Autoexec.bat : is most often used to set environment variables such as keyboard, soundcard, printer, and temporary file locations. It is also used to initiate low level system utilities.
These are the main folders and files in XP.

On the last article we have discussed about seeing all the files that are part of Windows. Now lets see whether we can directly access these folders. As it turns out Windows by default will not grant you permission to the folder System Volume Information.

Thats because the folder contains important System Restore Point informations. So what do you do when you can’t touch your own property. well it is there that the Windows file sharing comes into play. It may sound a little weird at first but it is true. Lets see how.

Step 1 : Go to Tools>>Folder Options and select View tab.

Here scroll down to the bottom, you can see a check box named Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended), UNCHECK the box, click APPLY and OK. Now you are done with the settings part. So just take the Properties (ALT+ENTER) or RIGHT CLICK>>PROPERTIES) of System volume Information you can see a new tab named Security here. You can see that there will be a user named SYSTEM there and it has full permission (refer picture).

You need to add your User account as a user here and give full permission to your self in order to gain access. Click Add button and type in your user name and click Check Names your user name will be filled along with the computer name automatically.

Click OK. now just click on user name of yours and check Full control. Click Apply, OK and you are done.

You can get access to files that return an “Access Denied” error by using this method. are some Files and Folders which need some more work to open I’ll discuss it in next post. Till then try this and figure out what all were hidden from you.

This is the first among a series of posts on administering Windows . It starts with how to see the files and folders that were hidden by Windows for some reason. The series is actually inspired from the one done by Samanathon on Starting your Day with a fresh Computer. He did a good job and I am a regular visitor of Saman’s Blog.

A Super Hidden or a Protected Syetem File is a file that is normally not shown in the Windows Explorer even if you have enabled Show Hidden files (Tools>>Folder Options>>View>>Show Hidden Files and Folders) in Windows Explorer). This is because if some of these files are deleted or changed Windows may encounter a fatal error. Some of such folders are :

• C:\Windows\system32\dllcache
• System Volume Information - this is in all the drives
• Recycler - which is also in all the drives

So the first step involved is to make Windows show all the Super Hidden files. This can be done in two ways. One is directly through Windows Explorer Tools>>Folder Options and the other is through registry. So the former being easier and straight forward I’ll discuss it first.

1 . Through Windows Explorer

In Windows Explorer from Tools (Alt+T) menu take “View” tab in “Folder Options”.Make sure that you have selected Show Hidden Files and Folders and that you have unchecked Hide Protected operating system files options. Click Apply and then OK. This will enable you to see system files that had previously been hidden from your view.

2 . Through Registry Editing

This is a little more complex.(It is recommended that you read the following posts before you go into the registry. Try this if you know Registry editing. Make a backup of the registry before you proceed.( The Introduction to Windows Registry , Know how to backup your registry )

Follow these steps..

1 . Run ( WIN+R ) regedit and open registry editor.

Go to the Key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.

2 . In there you will see a Registry DWORD named ShowSuperHidden Make the value 1 instead of 0.

3 . Now all you need to do is to restart Windows Explorer. to do so you can goto Start>>Shut Down and Click Cancel while holding down SHIFT+CTRL+ALT. Now press ALT+CTRL+DEL this will bring Task Manager. Take File>>New Task and type explorer and press Enter.

Now if you go to any drive you can see the previously Hidden files there. Note that you will still need to enable Show Hidden files option in Folder Option.

Resizr is a free online image editing site. I will allow you to use almost all the basic photo editing features. “RESIZR was conceived in July 2006 by Matt Miller, after trying to help a user upload an image to the Urban Pug Forums. After suggesting some tools, it became apparent that there might be a need for a brutally simple online image resizer.”

With Resizr you can Crop, Resize, Change filetype (GIF,PNG,JPG), sharpen, adjust levels, change the tone of the image (to B/W &&; sepia), adjust brightness and contrast and even control the quality of output file. Resizr is equivalent to a photo editing software. It is free and also saves your file for a specific amount of time before which you can download it.

eSnips is a social content-sharing site, where you can publish and share any media type. You will get 5Gb of storage space on the servers when you signup for eSnips.

You can find lots and lots of books, music files, photos etc on eSnips. But if you want to download them you will need flash player. Here is the workaround if you do not have flash player installed but still want to download a file from eSnips.

This is the screen shown if you do not have flash installed.

View the source of the web page by pressing CTRL+U - firefox, opera, IE ; Find the section with the text “var scribd_doc = scribd.Document.getDocFromUrl” (do a search). Now select the URL of the file you need from inside the brackets. More details can be found in the image below.

Paste this URL to the address bar and you will get the file you searched for.

An LCD flat panel display is much better for your eyes if you spend a lot of time in front of a computer. If you spend a little more money than a CRT monitor you can get a sleek ,light and less power hungry LCD TFT display. I was recently searching for an LCD monitor and finally bought the HP 1908w 19″. So I was forced to do a little research (lol) in the area. I am sharing it because some of you may get some benefit from it.

Size :

If you are using the LCD for daily work and not for group entertainment (like a movie) you will not need much larger than a 19″ screen (or may be 22″ if you go that far).

Aspect ration :

Aspect ratio is the ratio of width and height of your screen. 4:3 means for 4 units of width 3 units of height is taken (like 1024x 768 is 256x4 and 256x3). If you like to use your monitor mainly to watch movies go for a 16:10 wide screen aspect ratio. You can get 16:9 also on some Samsung models. If you plan to use it mainly for document editing and office work it would be better to go for an aspect ratio of 5:4 (10280×1024).

Response time :

Response time would not be much of a concern to you unless you are a die hard gamer. If you are then go for something like 5ms or faster (3ms). The Gray to Gray response time is more of a use to the customer actualy.

Contrast :

To put it in simple terms contrast is the intensity difference between Black and White pixels. Go for higher contrast.

Brightness :

Here also the higher the better. but never settle for anything lower than approximately 280cd/m^2.

Connectors :

VGA the 15 pin connector is a standard. Go for DVI or even HDMI ports. Here even if you don’t have a graphics card that supports DVI you can use the monitor with the VGA cable. (VGA is th 12 pin connector - normally blue that you can connect to the onboard graphics of any computer).

Price :

Here in India you can get a decent 19″ LCD screen for upward of 220 US dollars. If you need more features you got to spend more.

Bottom Line

Go for LCD monitors as they provide you with maximum screen size(viewable) in any size class. If you are a professional designer or something there are only very few LCD TFT screens that can compete with CRTs as of now. Search for more than three manufacturers and in more as many shops as you can. Always ask for a demo of the product if you haven’t seen one of the models before. Use the monitor in a dark room also if possible. Play a movie and also ask for the warranty details.