Vista Talks » Tips and Tricks

Notepad Trick For 2010

szehau — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:31:42 +0000

The following notepad trick was created by a 14 years old blogger. To see the trick, open notepad on your windows, copy and paste the following text to the notepad:

666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
666996666699669966999999996699666669966666669966666699669999999966996666996666666666666696666666666666666666666
666996666699669966999999996699666669966666666996666996669999999966996666996666666666666999666666666666666666666
666996666699669966996666666699666669966666666699669966669966669966996666996666666666669969966666666666666666666
666996696699669966999999996699999999966666666669999666669966669966996666996666666666699666996666666666666666666
666996999699669966999999996699999999966666666666996666669966669966996666996666666666999999999666666666666666666
666999969999669966666666996699666669966666666666996666669966669966996666996666666669999999999966666666666666666
666999666999669966999999996699666669966666666666996666669999999966996666996666666699666666666996666666666666666
66699666669966996699999999669 9666669966666666666996666669999999966999999996666666996666666666699666666666666666
666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
669966666996666666669666666666999999996699999999669966666699666666669966666996699999999669966666996666666666666
669966666996666666699966666666999999996699999999666996666996666666669996666996699999999669966666996666666666666
669966666996666666996996666666996666996699666699666699669966666666669999666996699666666669966666996666666666666
669999999996666669966699666666999999996699999999666669999666666666669969966996699999999669966966996666666666666
6699999999966666999999999666669999999966999999996666669966666666666699669969 96699999999669969996996666666666666
669966666996666999999999996666999666666699666666666666996666666666669966699996699666666669999699996666666666666
669966666996669966666666699666996666666699666666666666996666666666669966669996699999999669996669996666666666666
669966666996699666666666669966996666666699666666666666996666666666669966666996699999999669966666996666666666666
666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
666996666669966999999996666666669666666666999999996666666699999996699999999666999666699999999666666666666666666
666699666699666999999996666666699966666666999999996666666699999999699666699666699666699666699666666666666666666
66666996 6996666996666666666666996996666666996666996666666666666699699966699666699666699966699666666666666666666
666666999966666999999996666669966699666666999999996666666666666996699696699666699666699696699666666666666666666
666666699666666999999996666699999999966666999999996666666666669966699669699666699666699669699666666666666666666
666666699666666996666666666999999999996666996996666666666666996666699666999666699666699666999666666666666666666
666666699666666999999996669966666666699666996699666666666699999999699666699666699666699666699666666666666666666
666666699666666999999996699666666666669966996666996666666699999999699999999666999966699999999666666666666666666
666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666

Click the Edit > Replace menu on notepad, replace the character six "6" with underscore "_" and you will see the magic happen!

[Update: This is what you will see!]

Save Word To PDF Without A Word PDF Converter

szehau — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 05:45:00 +0000

PDF or Portable Document Format is a widely used document format nowadays. It is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008.

Microsoft Office applications (Office 2007) now even can work with PDF directly without needing to install any PDF converter. Before this, there is various ways you can convert a Word document to PDF.

You can easily find online tools that help you to convert your document to PDF. But this come the privacy issues - are they keeping you document in their server?

You can also easily download PDF converter freeware easily and install them as a "PDF printer" or use it as a standalone program. But sometime, these programs simply cannot get the actual result that you wanted it to be.

To save your Word document or Excel document as PDF, simply open your document with Microsoft Office. Use the "Save As" option in Microsoft Office menu, choose "PDF or XPS" and save as the filename you want. Make sure you have chosen the PDF as the file type in the save file dialog.

You can use the same method to save your other Office documents to PDF files as well. In case you do not see the "PDF or XPS" option in your Office menu, you will need to download the "2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS" plug-in from Microsoft website.

Kill A Windows Process When Task Manager Is Disabled

szehau — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:37:08 +0000

Sometime you may find windows difficult to bring up the Task Manager windows when one of the running program hangs. You want to kill the hung process so that your computer can work normally but you wait forever before the Task Manage comes up.

No matter you are running the taskmgr.exe from the Run dialog box; or right click the task bar and select Task Manager; or press Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard; to wake up the Task Manager, sometime it just won't work and it is very annoying.

To overcome this problems, you can actually use the taskkill command at command prompt. Before you can kill a process, you also want to know which process to kill (normally identified by its image name or process id or window title). To list out a running processes, you can use the tasklist command at command prompt.

tasklist - This tool displays a list of currently running processes one either a local or remote machine.

Syntax -TASKLIST [/S system [/U username [/P [password]]]] [/M [module] | /SVC | /V] [/FI filter] [/FO format] [/NH]

To get details on the tasklist command, type tasklist /? at the command prompt.

For example, to list out the running processes:
tasklist /fi "status eq running"

To kill a process at command prompt, you need to execute taskkill followed by the process id or image name.

tasklist - This tool is used to terminate tasks by process id (PID) or image name.

To get details on the taskkill command, type taskkill /? at the command prompt.

For example, to kill a running process by image name:
taskkill /IM notepad.exe

For example, to kill a running process by process id:
taskkill /PID 1230

Create Your Own Handwriting Font For Free

szehau — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:24:49 +0000

How cool is it if you can type in your own handwriting font in your favorite word processing programs or image editing software like Microsoft Word Adobe Photoshop or any Windows applications. You can then send a e-card in this Christmas with your own handwriting on it to your friends and surprise them!

FontCapture, a web application developed to let you create computer font from your handwriting. There is no software required to download in order to generate the font you wanted and the best is, it's totally free!

To create your own handwriting font is pretty simple. First, you will need to print out the font template form (in PDF format) and fill in the font with your handwriting.

When you have done that, scan the filled form and save as an image file (prefer PNG but JPEG is OK too) in your computer. And then point your web browser to FontCapture website and upload the image template.

Depend on your Internet connection, the whole process could take several minutes. FontCapture will then generate the fonts for your computer in digital format. Save the generated file in your computer for later use.

The created font can be used in both Mac and Windows. To install a font in Windows, simply copy the font file to your [Windows Drive]:\[Windows Directory]\Fonts. For example C:\Windows\Fonts. To install a font in Mac, double click the font file and click "Install font" when prompted.

3 Simple Tricks To Prevent Keylogger From Stealing Your Password

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:15:39 +0000

Keylogger or keystroke logging software is a software that installed in a computer to track of log the key struck on keyboard. Normally Keylogger does not appear as a windows, instead it resides in computer memory. The computer user who use keyboard may not aware their actions are actually being monitored.

It is pretty insecure to use a computer if the computer is being installed keylogger intentionally or unintentionally (a as kind of spyware). This is especially true when we are using computer of people we do not know or when we are using a public computer (e.g. cybercafé). The sensitive data like password and credit cards information.

Most of the time we are not allowed install any software at public computer. Therefore we can't install any anti keylogger software or keylogger removal software to prevent the threat from happen.

The things we could only do is to use a trusted computer and be careful when using other untrusted computer. Below are the 3 simple tricks that we can use to avoid a keylogger from logging the sensitive information we type when using the untrusted computer.

Use Keyboard and Mouse Trick
When typing a sensitive information in a text field, you try to fool around with the keylogger by the combination actions of mouse and keyboard. For example, when you type abcefg for your password, you can type a then click at other place or switch to other program (e.g. notepad) and then type z and repeat the two steps until you have finished typing your password. Then the keylogger will record az.... which is a invalid password. Another way to fool around the keylogger would be to play around with the position of characters in your password (e.g. type b first then use mouse to move the text caret to first position to type a and so on).

Use On-Screen Keyboard
Windows comes with a program called On-Screen Keyboard. You can use the On-Screen Keyboard to "click" in the characters you want into the text field. The keyboard works as a virtual keyboard for you computer. In case you worry the On-Screen Keyboard send the click events to the text field as keyboard events, you can alway use On-Screen Keyboard together with the "mouse and keyboard" trick.

Use Portable Browser
You can take your portable browsers (like Google Chrome and Firefox) together with your USB drive. These browsers come with a feature call "remember password" that you can use to login into your email without keying anything .Then you can use this application safely at cybercafé's computer or any public computer which is shared with other users. Be sure you key in an save the sensitive information at home or at a trusted computer before use it at untrusted computer.

Hope you find this 3 simple tricks useful to you. Do leave me a comment know if you have a great trick on preventing keylogger (without installing any keylogger removal or anti keylogger software).

Windowless Task Manager

szehau — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:35:05 +0000

Windows' Task Manager (any version since 2000) can actually be in windowless (or border-less, or tiny footprint, or whatever you call it). Running in windowless mode mean you now have a window without title bar at top and status bar at the bottom.

Task Manager in windowless mode is pretty useful especially for software programmers who need to monitor the running programs at the background and how the programs utilize the computer's CPU and memory. The windowless Task Manager can be resize to small enough with useful information to save some space on screen.

To activate the windowless Task Manager, simply double clicks on the empty space on the Task Manager. You can then resize and move it to a appropriate place. To restore the original state, simply double clicks empty space on the windowless Task Manager.

[via walkernews.net]

Rename Files in Windows With Auto-Numbering

szehau — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:45:26 +0000

Windows users can actually rename their files and let windows to renumber the files automatically without installing any third party software. However there is only one numbering format is provided: "Name (number). extension".

The trick is pretty simple. If you notice that every time you create a new file with a same filename for an existing file, Windows will help you to rename it another filename with number in bracket. The trick is almost the same. To rename files with auto-number:

Select your files in the sequence you want. For example if you want to rename a.txt, c.txt, b.txt to name (1).txt, name (2).txt, name (3).txt then you must select a.txt, c.txt and b.txt in sequence (press Ctrl button and mouse click to select).
Press F2 and you will be allowed to rename the first file. Rename it as Name (number). extension.
Press Enter to apply.

... and Windows will help you to rename the rest files in sequence with numbers.

Change Other User’s Passwords in Command Prompt in Windows Vista

szehau — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:40:27 +0000

Instead of clicking "Start" button, then click on "Control Panel", then click on "User Account", click on "Manage other accounts", and finally click on a user account to change his or her password, you have a simpler way to change other user's password.

Simple open a command prompt and type in the following command:

net use "User name" *

And hit enter, type in the new password and hit enter. Enter the same password for the second time and hit enter. That's all you need to do to change other user's password. How simple is it?

* Please note that you must have administrative right to change other user's password.

Free Up Hard Disk Space and Speed Up Windows by Revo Uninstaller Freeware

szehau — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:06:24 +0000

Revo Uninstaller is a freeware with no spyware and adware that's provides powerful uninstalling feature over the Windows'Add or Remove Programs control panel. Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel.

With its advanced and fast algorithm, Revo Uninstaller analyze an application data before it actually uninstall the application. It helps to remove additional unnecessary files, folders and registry keys that are usually left over on your computer.

You can also use Revo Uninstaller to fix a broken installation. Revo Uninstaller scans for an application's data on your hard disk drives and in the Windows registry and shows all found files, folders and registry keys so you can delete them safely.

Other 8 handy and useful tools you can find after you have installed Revo Uninstaller are:

Auto Start Manager - Stop programs that start automatically on Windows startup; speed up loading of Windows!
Windows Tools Manager - Handy and useful tools bundled with every version of Windows; easily find useful system tools and options!
Junk Files Cleaner - Find and remove unnecessary files from your computer; free up disk space and delete files you do not need!
Browsers History Cleaner - Erase web browser history, visited pages history and temporary internet files of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape and Opera web browsers; free up a lot of disk space by deleting temporary internet files like temporary saved videos, temporary flash files, temporary pictures etc!
Office History Cleaner - Remove the history of most recently used files in MS Office; remove your tracks by deleting the list of last opened MS Office documents!
Windows History Cleaner - Remove the history of recently opened files, delete temporary files, remove usage tracks and other history items that are saved by Windows; remove your tracks saved by Windows for a lot of operations!
Unrecoverable Delete Tool - Erase files and folders forever; be sure that nobody could recover your files and folders after deleting!
Evidence Remover - Make sure already deleted files, folders and other data are unrecoverable; securely erase your data!

Revo Uninstaller can be installed on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server and Windows Vista. However 64 bits Windows are not supported.

Download Revo Uninstaller.

Windows Vista’s Hidden Aurora Animation

szehau — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:20:12 +0000

Since the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft loves Aurora's. In Windows Vista, there is hidden Aurora animation that you can simply activate by type a simple command.

To see the magic just type "winsat aurora" in the start menu search box, hit Enter and wait for a while. To exit the animation screen, simple press the Esc button on your keyboard.

Display a Text Message On Your Windows Vista Logon Screen

szehau — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 07:05:28 +0000

You can put a notice on your Windows Vista logon screen so that each time when your PC is booted up, it displays a notice to the person who boot up the PC. You can put two lines of text: the caption and the message that describes the caption.

To put the text on Windows Vista logon screen, you will need to edit your Windows' registry entries.

Press Windows Key + R to bring up "run" window. Type in regedit to start Windows registry editor.
In registry editor, navigate the tree on the left to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.
On the right pane, double click legalnoticecaption and type in the text that you want to put it as caption. Click Ok to apply the changes.
On the right pane, double click legalnoticetext and type in the text that you want to put it as message.Click Ok to apply the changes.
Exit registry editor and Log off to see the changes.

Note: You can also use Start -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy to edit the text message but this option is only available in Windows Vista Business and Enterprise editions.

[via The Windows Club]

Free Up Hard Drive Space By Installing Windows Vista SP2

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:49:39 +0000

Other than fixing various bugs and improvement in performance, some of the PC World forum users report that seeing big chunks of their hard drives freed up after installing Vista Service Pack 2.

It is not only a few ten megabytes or hundreds of megabytes, some of the successful SP2 installer report tens of gigabytes opening up. It might be the installation wipe out the old Restore Point in Windows point that takes a lot of hard drive space.

I you haven't installed SP2, maybe you can download and install the updates today and see it can help your PC to free up some space.

How to Enable Hibernate in Windows Vista

szehau — Fri, 29 May 2009 06:44:38 +0000

Do you realize that Windows Vista does not have the hibernate feature? Instead of hibernate, in Windows Vista, you can only put your PC or laptop in “Sleep” mode (or standby mode in Windows XP) where Windows Vista keeps your session in memory and your PC or laptop in a low power state. So that you can quickly resumes work when you need it.

What is hibernate mode in Windows? Unlike "Sleep" mode, hibernate mode put your session in physical disk (hard disk) and switch off your computer totally. Windows can let you quickly resume your work by loading the session from physical disk without needing to reload the whole operating system.

Enable Hibernate in Windows Vista

Hibernate feature is disabled by default in Windows Vista, to enable hibernate, make sure you have the administrator right. Then open a command prompt (click on Start button and type cmd in the search box) and type in the following command and hit enter:


powercfg -H ON

... And that's all, hibernate feature is enabled. You can check this by clicking Start button and then click on the little right arrow button on the bottom right of the Start menu. You will see the Hibernate option is there.

To Make Hibernate as the Default Action

You may want to make your computer hibernate when you press the power button on your computer or click on the power button on your start menu. The changes will require a few more steps.

First, make sure the powercfg -H ON command is executed in administrator mode. Open control panel and switch to classic mode by clicking "Classic View" at the left hand side of the window. Double-clicks on the "Power Options" icon in the control panel window.

Click on "Choose when to turn off the display" link at the left hand side of the window.

Click on the "Change advance power settings" link.

A window will be popped-up. Expand the "Power buttons and lid" tree. You will see a list of action that you can configure. Click on the action you want to configure and a list of option will be available for you to choose (Do nothing, sleep or hibernate).

Finally, click OK button to accept the changes made.

Use Snipping Tool to Capture Screen Shots

szehau — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:12:16 +0000

Instead of pressing "Print Screen" and paste the captured screen shot into Microsoft Paint program, you can use Windows' free snipping tool to capture screen shots. It is included in Windows OS.

You can capture a screen shot, snip or any object on your screen (e.g. window) and then annotate, save or share the image.

Simply use a mouse or tablet pen to capture any of the following types of snips:

Free-form Snip. Draw an irregular line, such as a circle or a triangle, around an object.
Rectangular Snip. Draw a precise line by dragging the cursor around an object to form a rectangle.
Window Snip. Select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box, that you want to capture.
Full-screen Snip. Capture the entire screen when you select this type of snip.

After you capture a snip, it's automatically copied to the mark-up window, where you can annotate, save, or share the snip.

How to Turn Off or ON Windows Live Messenger’s Sign In Feature

szehau — Sun, 03 May 2009 09:48:28 +0000

Windows Live Messenger (WLM) has a feature that allows user to signin at multiple PCs or devices (e.g. PDA and mobile phones) at the same time. Is it a good feature to have or not? To me, it is better to disable the feature for security purpose.

To turn off the signin multiple PC feature in WLM, open your messenger, click on the "Show menu" icon on the right. And then select "Tools" > "Options".

An options window will be shown up. Click on the "Sign In" section on your left, remember to check the "Sign me out of all other places when I signin to Messenger" and "Show me all the other places I'm signed in at when I sign in". Finally, click "OK" to save the changes.

The first option will force the signed in session in other PC to be expired and the second option will show the PC you have signed in at other place. To me, the second option is pretty important because you will know whether you have forgotten to sign out your account at other people PC (e.g. cybercafer); or whether someone is using you account (or someone has hacked to your account for certain purpose). Then you can take neccessary action like changing your account's password or report to Mircrosoft if you suspect someone has hacked into your account.

Vista Talks » Tips and Tricks

Notepad Trick For 2010

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Save Word To PDF Without A Word PDF Converter

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Windowless Task Manager

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