Everyday Nerd

If you are a good nerd, you’ve downloaded some sort of CD / DVD image file, in in number of formats: .iso .bin .cue, and several other types.  There are many ways to access these files, like burning them (as intended I suppose) or mounting them with a virtual device.  I used to use Daemon Tools for everything, but I ran across Elby’s Virtual Clone Drive.

One of the coolest thing is that you can right click on the virtual CD/DVD drive, and choose to Mount or Unmount.  Nothing runs in the tray, and I didn’t even have to restart my machine after installing!

Virtual CloneDrive is a free product from Elby, a company that offers cloning software.

Download Virtual CloneDrive Here

UAC is a great security enhancement to Windows Vista (over XP) but you know, it can be rather annoying too!  As an administrator, I use certain programs that require me to “Run as Administrator” - such as command prompt, computer management, and others.  Thanks to the HowToGeek, here are 4 ways to make your vista experience better…

**Note:  Disabling and/or modifying UAC may put your system at risk.  To be the most secure, leave UAC at default settings.

 1:  Disable UAC completely via Command line:

Disable UAC:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Enable UAC:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

2:  Disable for Administrators Only

To configure this setting on Windows Vista Business and Ultimate, you can use the Local Security Policy configuration. Just type in secpol.msc into the Start menu search box and hit enter.

Now browse down to Local Policies \ Security Options

Find the following in the list: “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” and double-click on it.

 Change the setting to “Elevate without prompting”. You should be all done.

<< Download Registry Tweak >>

3:  Disable Screen Dimming

UAC itself is a good thing - but on some video cards, it seems to take forever for the screen dimming to pop, and prompt you.  So, this is my personal favorite - keep the security, but get rid of the dimming:

<< Download Registry Tweak >>

4:  Create Specific shortcuts that don’t prompt for UAC

This is quite a nice little trick.  You want UAC, you want Desktop Dimming, but you just have one program that  you run all the time that you don’t want to prompt you for UAC.  This is for you…

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: [Lifehacker]

For the average Windows Vista session, the "Needs your permission to continue" prompts are just momentary, occasional annoyances which can be disabled or by-passed. But if you’re planning to do a lot of tweaking or installations, having a dedicated Administrator account—like the kind available in XP—can be mighty helpful. The How-To Geek blog shows how to enable (and disable) the account from the log-in screen:

• First you’ll need to open a command prompt in administrator mode by right-clicking and choosing "Run as administrator"
• Now type the following command:
  net user administrator /active:yes

Log out and you should see an "Administrator" account available. Un-doing the tweak requires running nearly the same command, but with /active:no at the end. Like the Geek, we’ll note here that only experienced users who know exactly what they’re doing should use this type of account, and that Microsoft obviously doesn’t want you to do this as a normal thing. All the same, it could be a boon for easier troubleshooting.

Have you ever had software that shows up in Add/Remove Programs, but doesn’t have the Remove/Uninstall button? 

I recently had a program (a custom repack of WinZip) that only had the Repair option.  Well, I use WinRAR exclusively,  so I wanted to remove it.

To fix this open Regedit (Start, run Regedit), and navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\

From here, you can either go through each sub-folder, looking for the software in question, or highlight Uninstall, go to Edit, Find and type the name of software you are looking for.

Once you find it, look for two keys:  NoModify & NoRemove - they are pretty self explanatory as to what each key does.  Change the key value from a 1 to a 0 (zero) to deactivate the key.

Next, open Add/Remove Programs again, and you will see the Uninstall button now!

This works for Windows XP / Vista (Probably 2000 as well, but not tested)

I regularly remote administer servers, most of which are Windows Server 2003 R2.  I starting having an issue a few weeks ago when connecting to certain servers that the mouse response was extremely slow.  The keyboard function was fine.  I had a quick fix - every time I click the mouse, I would press the Ctrl key, which seemed to speed it up, but was extremely annoying.

Now I have found a fix!

Open a Command prompt as Administrator, and enter this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

If you want to to re-enable it:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

This immediately fixed the issue - no more slow RDP sessions!  Now, back to work…