Disable the Irritating Sticky / Filter Keys Popup Dialogs

Disable the Irritating Sticky / Filter Keys Popup Dialogs

Have you ever been doing something, like playing a game, and had that obnoxious Sticky Keys dialog pop up? You answer No and it goes away… and then shows up again the next day. Here’s how to make it go away for good.
In case you aren’t sure what we mean… hit the Shift key five times fast.

Yeah, annoying. It’s a helpful accessibility feature for some people, but it’s really irritating for the rest of us.
Disable Sticky or Filter Keys
If you didn’t click on the “Go to the Ease of Access Center” link, you can simply navigate in Control Panel to the Ease of Access center, and find the link for “Make the keyboard easier to use”.

Once you are there, you’ll want to make sure the boxes for “Turn on Sticky Keys” or “Turn on Filter Keys” are turned off—which simply means the feature isn’t active at the moment, but doesn’t mean the annoying popup will go away.
For that, you’ll have to click on either “Set up Filter Keys” or “Set up Sticky Keys” (or both).

Disable Filter Keys Popup
If you went to the Filter Keys setup screen, remove the checkbox from “Turn on Filter Keys when right SHIFT is pressed for 8 seconds”.

This will completely disable the irritating popup.
Disable Sticky Keys Popup
If you chose the setup for Sticky Keys, uncheck the box for “Turn on Sticky Keys when SHIFT is pressed five times”.

And that should disable the annoying popup dialogs for either Windows 7 or Vista. Windows XP users will find similar shortcuts under Accessibility in Control Panel.

Restore Desktop Icons

If you are a big fan of using the My Computer, My Documents and My Network desktop icons on your desktop in the past, this tweak will show you how to display the Windows Vista equivalent icons on your desktop.  In only a few steps you will have the Computer, User's Files and Network and even a Control Panel icon on your desktop if you desire.

1. Right click on your desktop and select Personalize.
2. Click Change Desktop Icons under tasks on the top left.
3. Check the icons you want to display.
4. Hit OK.

Speed up wireless WAN connections

In Windows Vista the networking components were designed to be much more intelligent and automatically adjust the network settings to optimize the connection speed.  This is a great new feature.  Your network components basically tweak themselves for optimal performance.  In most situations, these components automatically adjust perfectly for best performance. However, with wireless WAN cards the detection of network conditions is flawed and can result in slower network performance.
To fix this problem, Microsoft has released a hotfix for users affected by this issue. If you have a Wireless WAN device,  I suggest you give this hotfix a try.
KB 940646 details:

This problem occurs because of the way that TCP receive window auto tuning is used in Windows Vista for connections that only receive data.
Windows Vista obtains a round-trip time (RTT) estimate at the time of connection setup and every time that a new segment of data that is transmitted. A connection that only receives data is limited to the single RTT sample that is obtained at the time of connection setup. Because the connection only receives data, the connection cannot "converge" to the actual RTT of the connection. For example, because the RTT data may fluctuate for various reasons, a "converge" operation is performed to estimate a meaningful RTT by using blending current and previous RTT data. However, if the connection cannot converge to the actual RTT of the connection, the bandwidth delay product (BDP) estimate that Vista obtains is also incorrect. Therefore, the connection's receive window is limited, and throughput of the connected transmission network is reduced.


Download 32-bit version
 
Download 64-bit version

Complete Guide to Networking Windows 7 with XP and Vista

Since there are three versions of Windows out in the field these days, chances are you need to share data between them. Today we show how to get each version to be share files and printers with one another.
In a perfect world, getting your computers with different Microsoft operating systems to network would be as easy as clicking a button. With the Windows 7 Homegroup feature, it’s almost that easy. However, getting all three of them to communicate with each other can be a bit of a challenge. Today we’ve put together a guide that will help you share files and printers in whatever scenario of the three versions you might encounter on your home network.
Sharing Between Windows 7 and XP
The most common scenario you’re probably going to run into is sharing between Windows 7 and XP.  Essentially you’ll want to make sure both machines are part of the same workgroup, set up the correct sharing settings, and making sure network discovery is enabled on Windows 7. The biggest problem you may run into is finding the correct printer drivers for both versions of Windows.

Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 & XP 
Map a Network Drive
Another method of sharing data between XP and Windows 7 is mapping a network drive. If you don’t need to share a printer and only want to share a drive, then you can just map an XP drive to Windows 7. Although it might sound complicated, the process is not bad. The trickiest part is making sure you add the appropriate local user. This will allow you to share the contents of an XP drive to your Windows 7 computer.

Map a Network Drive from XP to Windows 7
Sharing between Vista and Windows 7
Another scenario you might run into is having to share files and printers between a Vista and Windows 7 machine. The process is a bit easier than sharing between XP and Windows 7, but takes a bit of work. The Homegroup feature isn’t compatible with Vista, so we need to go through a few different steps. Depending on what your printer is, sharing it should be easier as Vista and Windows 7 do a much better job of automatically locating the drivers.

How to Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 and Vista
Sharing between Vista and XP
When Windows Vista came out, hardware requirements were intensive, drivers weren’t ready, and sharing between them was complicated due to the new Vista structure. The sharing process is pretty straight-forward if you’re not using password protection…as you just need to drop what you want to share into the Vista Public folder. On the other hand, sharing with password protection becomes a bit more difficult. Basically you need to add a user and set up sharing on the XP machine. But once again, we have a complete tutorial for that situation.

Share Files and Folders Between Vista and XP Machines
Sharing Between Windows 7 with Homegroup
If you have one or more Windows 7 machine, sharing files and devices becomes extremely easy with the Homegroup feature. It’s as simple as creating a Homegroup on on machine then joining the other to it. It allows you to stream media, control what data is shared, and can also be password protected. If you don’t want to make your Windows 7 machines part of the same Homegroup, you can still share files through the Public Folder, and setup a printer to be shared as well.
 
Use the Homegroup Feature in Windows 7 to Share Printers and Files
Create a Homegroup & Join a New Computer To It
Change which Files are Shared in a Homegroup
Windows Home Server
If you want an ultimate setup that creates a centralized location to share files between all systems on your home network, regardless of the operating system, then set up a Windows Home Server. It allows you to centralize your important documents and digital media files on one box and provides easy access to data and the ability to stream media to other machines on your network. Not only that, but it provides easy backup of all your machines to the server, in case disaster strikes.

How to Install and Setup Windows Home Server
How to Manage Shared Folders on Windows Home Server

Conclusion
The biggest annoyance is dealing with printers that have a different set of drivers for each OS. There is no real easy way to solve this problem. Our best advice is to try to connect it to one machine, and if the drivers won’t work, hook it up to the other computer and see if that works. Each printer manufacturer is different, and Windows doesn’t always automatically install the correct drivers for the device.

We hope this guide helps you share your data between whichever Microsoft OS scenario you might run into!

Remove Shutdown button from Logon Screen

To remove the shutdown button from the logon screen in WinXP and 2K, use regedit and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
change the value of the dword 'shutdownwithoutlogon' to '0'. exit regedit.
that's it!

How to Remove unnecessary files from Windows 7 start menu

from: Youtube

Stop Windows Update from Hijacking the Sleep/Shutdown Button

As an avid user of the Sleep function on my laptop, I’ve been more than irritated with Windows 7 or Vista’s habit of changing the Sleep/Shutdown button into an “Install Updates and Shut Down” button whenever there are updates from Windows Update.
After the last time I accidentally clicked this stupid button when I just wanted to enter sleep mode, I decided to look for a solution.

Update: Windows 7 does the same thing to my Shutdown button, and this same registry hack fixes the problem.

Manual Registry Hack
If you’d like to manually create this hack, you can open up regedit.exe using the start menu search box and then browse down to the following key, creating the key if it doesn’t exist.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

Add a 32-bit DWORD value called NoAUAsDefaultShutdownOption with a value of 1. No reboot should be necessary.
Now our Sleep button should be back to the way it was, but if you wanted to use the Install Updates and Shut Down option, it’s still available via the shutdown menu:

Download Registry Hack
Unzip the file and double-click on the StopHijackingMySleepButton.reg file to activate the registry hack. You shouldn’t have to restart anything, as the changes will happen immediately. There’s also a registry file to uninstall the hack.
I believe there is a similar option for XP, but I’m guessing the key is located in a different place.

Download StopHijackingMySleepButton Registry Hack

Credit to: HTG.com

How to Install Windows 7 and 8 using a USB Flash Drive

Physical DVD drives are becoming a thing of the past as the size of our PCs continue shrink and new form factors are emerging. Microsoft distributes Windows 7 and Windows 8 on physical discs or images of DVDs called ISO files that are typically burned to physical media. This has become problem as a number of laptops and tablet PCs no longer ship with DVD drives. The best way to install Windows on these devices is to use a USB flash drive that contains the Windows installation files.  As an extra benefit, modern USB flash drives are typically much faster than DVDs resulting in a quick install.
Before we get started you will need:

• Windows 7 or Windows 8 ISO file and WinRAR or a burned DVD with the install source files
• 4 GB USB flash drive for Windows 7.  You may need a 8 GB USB flash drive for some Windows 8 images. 

Option 1 - The manual Method

Step 1 - Preparing the USB flash drive

Let’s get started. First we need to format the USB flash drive to erase any existing data on the drive.  Click on the Start Button and then Computer to bring up your drives.


Next, right click on the removable USB flash drive and select Format.

Click Start and the USB flash drive will be formatted.

Step 2 - Preparing the source files

Now it is time to extract the setup from a Windows 7/8 ISO image file.  If you have a physical Windows install DVD then skip to step 3.
To extract the files from the ISO file you will need WinRAR. If you do not already have WinRAR download and install that now.
Once you have WinRAR installed navigate to the ISO file in explorer and right click on the file and select the bottom Extract to <folder name> option.

The ISO file will now be extracted to a sub-folder with the same name as the ISO file. This can take a few minutes to complete.

Step 3 - Copying source files to USB flash drive

The final step is to copy the install source onto the USB flash drive in a way that will allow the Windows 7/8 install to boot up. The trick here is to use XCopy.  Depending on where your source files are located there are two different methods to copy the files onto the flash drive.

Using extracted source files

Open up command prompt and navigate to the directory you extracted the source files from the ISO file with the CD command. Then, run XCOPY *.* J: /e and hit Enter to start the copy. Be sure to replace J with the drive letter of your USB flash drive.

Using a physical Windows install DVD

The instructions are slightly different when using a physical DVD.  Open up command prompt and type XCOPY D:  J: /e and hit Enter. Replace D with the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive and replace J with the drive letter of your USB flash drive.

Step 5 - Installing Windows 7/8 from the USB flash drive

Once the file copy has completed you are ready to plug the USB flash drive into your computer. Turn it on and hit the keyboard shortcut to bring up the boot menu for your model. Typically it is F12 or F1. After you select your USB flash drive the Windows 7/8 installation should begin to load. At this point, installing Windows is the same as on a normal laptop or a desktop.

Option 2 - Automatic Method

Microsoft now has a free utility that will automatically make a bootable USB flash drive from a Windows 7/8 ISO image file. Simply download the tool, specify the location of your ISO file and the wizard will do everything for you.



Download the Microsoft Store Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool
Read more on the Microsoft Store Tool site

Credit to: Steve Sinchak