There is a small battery integrated into your computer’s motherboard to keep the PC clock running even when the computer is turned off. When the battery runs out, you will start seeing error messages such as “System CMOS checksum bad – Default configuration used” when starting up the computer and the date and time getting reset back to the default BIOS manufacturer date. You can still start up the computer by pressing a button to resume the boot process and Windows will load as normal.
The problems start when you begin using the computer. Created, modified and accessed time on files and folders will get messed up, emails are marked with the wrong date, secure HTTPS websites won’t load in your web browser, evaluation periods of trial software may instantly expire, and etc. Windows has an automatic time synchronization feature to keep your computer’s clock accurate, but unfortunately, it is scheduled to only run once a week on some systems.
Changing the integrated battery on the motherboard will solve the problem and it’s quite easy to accomplish on desktop computers but can be much harder to do on laptops. If you don’t want to or can’t take things apart, here are a few ways to automatically synchronize your PC clock on Windows startup. This way you don’t have to manually change the time settings each time you power up your computer. (more…)
It doesn’t really matter what version of Windows you have, the best way to get your system working at its full speed and as issue free as possible is with a clean install of the operating system. Simply using Windows over time will eventually degrade its performance. It’s also a good idea to clean install Windows 10 after upgrading so you are not transferring problems from your old Windows install.
It’s easy to get hold of a Windows 10 ISO image, burn it to DVD or write to USB and do a clean install. However, it’s more difficult to source official install media for older operating systems like Windows 7. Of course, there are many unofficial sources but the files have often been cracked, tampered with or altered in some way. Using a trusted source for the download is the preferable option.
The best way to guarantee you are getting a clean and untouched Windows ISO image is by going directly to Microsoft themselves. It used to be easy to download Windows 7 ISO images until they were all removed from Digital River after sales of Windows 7 were discontinued in 2014. Microsoft prefers consumers to download a Windows 10 ISO from the Media Creation Tool instead of a direct download. (more…)
A boot disc is very useful because it can be used to perform troubleshooting tasks on an unbootable computer. Most of the time software that belongs in the category of data recovery, antivirus and hard drive backup/restore provides the option to create a boot disc which is sometimes known as rescue disc. Although these software can run from Windows, they are actually most efficient when run offline from a bootable disc.
An example scenario is you’ve accidentally deleted an important file. You can of course install a free data recovery software such as Recuva and attempt to recover the deleted file. However installing it on the computer will face a potential risk of the installed program overwriting the deleted file. To increase the chance of recovering the file, immediately shut down the computer, boot it up with a bootable WinPE disc and run Recuva from the Windows PE environment.
A boot disc is normally based on either Linux or Windows PE. Linux is commonly being used because the operating system and most third party tools are free, the generated boot disc is more compact in size and can run on slower computers. As for Windows PE, it has the best hardware support and most users would be familiar with it such as the hard drive naming convention (C:\) in Windows compared to Linux (/dev/sda). However, Windows PE may have a higher system requirement because the latest Windows PE 5.1 already need at least 512MB just for the base and adding more drivers, packages, or apps will obviously require more memory.
Here we have a list of free boot discs based on Windows PE that come with a collection of useful tools which we think that every computer technician or even a normal user should have to hand. (more…)
Windows 10 has been out since 2015 and is now the most used Windows operating system. Windows 7 was the most used for several years but is no longer supported due to its decade long support cycle ending. That means there are no more security updates unless you are a business willing to pay a fee. Many Windows 7 users simply do not want to upgrade because the operating system is stable and does everything they want.
Despite its popularity, the last Windows 7 Service Pack 1 install DVD was released way back in 2011. If you install Windows from one of those discs, there are dozens of patches and hotfixes found when you check for updates. Rather belatedly, Microsoft tried to reduce this problem by releasing the Convenience Rollup update in April 2016 which includes 123 patches. But even that is not enough and it still leaves the system requiring dozens more patches to get fully up to date.
Instead of getting everything through Windows update, a quicker way is installing patches from an offline source such as a USB flash drive or hard drive. This is faster but still takes time. A better option is to integrate all the updates into the Windows media so they are installed as part of the original operating system. Windows XP has a popular tool called nLite to do this, Vista has its own version called vLite which doesn’t work too well with Windows 7 Service Pack 1. (more…)
In a Windows operating system, it is a safe practice to always use the “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” to eject a plugged in USB flash drive instead of directly pulling it out to prevent any opened files from being corrupted. Doing this will also trigger Windows to enable the dirty bit on the flash drive where Windows will automatically prompt to scan the drive for error the next time you plug it in. If Windows found corrupted files during check disk, it will simple convert them into .CHK files that can only be recovered via third party tools.
Although Windows provides a safe and convenient way to safely eject your USB flash drive, there are no options to easily remount or reconnect the ejected drive. It seems like the only way is to unplug the drive and reinsert it into the USB port for Windows to re-detect and re-mount the USB flash drive. This can be very troublesome if the device is connected to the USB port located at the rear of the computer.
Fortunately there are a few workarounds to remount an ejected USB device without unplugging and reinserting into the USB port, and here are 5 ways to do it. (more…)
Remember in the previous post I mentioned about how to simplify the system hardening process for Windows Server 2003 & Windows XP Professional system using Security Configuration and Analysis in Microsoft Management Console, you can easily locate those security templates inside MMC console, but if you try to do the same thing in Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 system, you will found that the security template is missing from C:\Windows\security\templates\ directory. So where to get those files and how to prepare the security hardening on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008?
Apparently, the location for the security templates is already changed to C:\Windows\inf\ directory. You can refer to below security template in the directory mentioned above:
Defltbase.inf
(Security template for default security settings of your system)
Defltwk.inf
(Security template for Windows 7, inside this inf file contains the default recommended security settings for Windows 7)
Defltsv.inf
(Security template for Windows Server 2008)
Defltdc.inf
(Security template for domain controllers)
You can still make use of Security Configuration and Analysis console to analyze and configure your system using the security template listed above. You can use the console or you can make use of ‘secedit’ command to apply the security settings by just using the command prompt.
Secedit is a command line tool that exist since Windows 2000 for the purpose of imposing the security policy settings to all the system in the domain. In Windows 2000, the functionality of this command is similar to ‘gpupdate’. It enforces the group policy application to the workstation but the difference is, this command have to be ran at the domain controller in order to instruct the domain controller enforce the policy settings to apply immediately to all the machines that connected to the domain.
In order to make use of ‘secedit’ to analyze and configure your systems with security templates, you can refer to command lines below. The first command is basically to analyze your computer security settings by using the security template, and store the database into C:\Security folder. The second command is to apply the security settings onto your system. You will need to create a folder called Security under drive C:\, or else, the command will return ‘Invalid path – C:\Security’
The ping utility in Windows is really useful to determine if there is a connectivity between the source and destination computer. You need to run Ping in command prompt together with the options as it doesn’t come with a friendly graphical user interface. I remembered attending a MCSE (Microsoft Certified System Engineering) class about 8 years ago and there was an arrogant guy that talks like he knows everything but then he ran the ping directly from Run (Start > Run) and he had a blank look on his face thinking what went wrong when a black window appears for a second and then disappeared. Well the good thing about command line utilities is the flexibility so you can use it in batch or scripts but it requires you manually type the command switches instead of clicking with your computer mouse.
I am doing a research on something regarding IP addresses and the built-in PING utility in Windows is not powerful enough as I require time stamping. I need to know exactly when I am able to get a response on the destination IP address or when it times out.
As you can see from the screenshot above, the Windows ping does not show the date and time at the ping results. After searching on the Internet, I found a free third party ping utility called hrPING which offer more features with accurate results than Windows PING.
hrPING is also a command line utility, meaning you have to launch command prompt first then only run hrPING with the extra commands from there.
I need to ping with:
1. time stamp
2. loop ping until manually stopped
3. save the ping results to a text file
The command to use with hrPING is:
hrping.exe -t -T -F pingresult.txt 192.168.2.1
Do take note of the character capitalization in options because they are different. For example, -t is for ping loop and -T is for time stamp. Another hrPING’s default option is it pings once every half a second or 500 millisecond. If you find it too fast, simply add -s 1000 to the command line and it will only ping once every second. For more options, you can either run hrPING.exe without any options which will show you the list of options, or visit hrPING’s official website at the link below.
After finished installing Windows XP Home or Professional edition, you may have noticed that Windows Messsenger runs when Windows XP is started up. Windows Messenger is the Microsoft instant messaging program built into Windows XP that encourages the users to use it to chat and interact with other users that have a Hotmail or Live account. The success of the current Windows Live Messenger that is widely being used today is probably due in no small part to the embedding of Windows Messenger in Windows XP.
Windows Messenger is outdated today and is superseded by Windows Live Messenger. If you go to the Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel, you can’t find Windows Messenger listed under there for you to uninstall. To completely remove and uninstall Windows Messenger from Windows XP, you will need to use a more advanced method which is listed below. I have listed 3 solutions to remove Windows Messenger from Windows XP and you can use any method that you are comfortable with.
Didn’t find what you want? The links below could help:
Windows tooltips will appear whenever you hover your mouse cursor over an item without actually clicking on it, and a small box pops up with information regarding the item being hovered over. A number of examples are the time and tray icons located down in the bottom right of the desktop which usually give you information, and also the quick launch icons or open windows on the Task bar which mostly just give you their name and maybe a description.
Over the years, a very common problem that a lot of people have faced is when they move the mouse pointer over any icons anywhere across the taskbar, and the tooltips are hidden behind the taskbar itself, not in front like they should be. This problem has been around since Windows 95 and can be quite annoying when there’s information you might want to actually read.
This is a well known bug that causes the taskbar tooltips to lose their “topmost” window status and be covered up by the taskbar. Microsoft acknowledged this tooltip problem existed back in 2006 but didn’t get around to doing anything about it until 2008 when XP Service Pack 3 came out. This cured most of the problems, but even today there are still reports of XP SP3, Vista and even Windows 7 users experiencing this issue from time to time.
Didn’t find what you want? The links below could help:
It is common for people especially who are in the tech industry to have more than 1 computer at home with one laptop that they can bring in to their office and the other desktop for their family to use. Setting up a local area network with the computers connected to each other is really easy with a router. When the computers are connected, not only they can share the Internet connection and files, but they can also be managed remotely from one computer as there are many free third party networking tools that comes with remote features.
Some examples are ProduKey and USBDeview by Nir Sofer, USB History Viewer, USB Remote Drive Disabler and Enable Remote Desktop by IntelliAdmin and the excellent PsExec by Windows Sysinternals. Even the built-in Registry Editor (regedit) in Windows has the functionality of connecting to a network registry. As useful as the remote features are in the networking tools, the biggest problem is they don’t seem to work even if you entered the correct username and password. It is common to receive an error message that says “Access is denied” like the image below.
The access denied problem is actually caused by Windows default hardened security settings preventing the tools to work. If you would like to use the networking tools on remote computers, here are the configuration that must be made on the remote computer before you can connect to them. (more…)
Windows 10 has been out for a while now and it was offered as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users for the first year. Even after that Windows 7 is still by far the most widely used Windows operating system. Windows 7 is available in both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) editions and has Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise versions. Only the Starter edition of Windows 7 does not have a 64-bit version.
Both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the 5 available consumer Windows 7 versions all easily fit on a single layer DVD. Instead of doing that Microsoft released each version as a separate disk and each of those has a separate 32-bit and 64-bit DVD. That’s 9 different DVDs if you want all Windows 7 versions to hand. They are actually all on each DVD but hidden from view by the \Sources\ei.cfg file, delete that and everything with the same architecture becomes available, except Enterprise.
Windows 64-bit is the preferred option because it natively utilizes more than 4GB of memory and can help increase application performance with 64-bit specific versions, such as 64-bit web browsers. Although 32-bit versions of Windows are fading out these days, they are still very useful to install on low memory systems, lower end or old hardware and run perfectly fine as long as you don’t use memory intensive software.
Unlike Windows 10 which has a dual option x86 and x64 install disk available via the Media Creation Tool, Windows 7 has never officially had both 32-bit and 64-bit editions on the same disk. It’s quite possible to create one yourself and have all 9 consumer versions on the same DVD or USB flash drive. All you need is 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 ISO files and the software to do it. Here’s three ways to create your own all in one x86 and x64 Windows 7 install media. (more…)
When Windows 7 was released it came with several enhancements to the desktop interface, and one major areas of change was to the taskbar. Along came features such as the advanced preview window, a progress meter on a taskbar icon and Aero Peek to name a few. Something else to appear was an application’s icon on the taskbar also had the ability to display quick access options like some of the associate programs functions, recent history or favourites.
These options are available by right clicking on the icon on the taskbar or left clicking and dragging the icon upward. And if you didn’t already know, this useful feature is called a Jump list. The Jump list feature has proved to be quite popular because it provides convenient shortcuts to several different functions at the click of a mouse.
While Jump lists are being used to their full extent with a number of applications these days, there is still a lot which don’t take advantage of it effectively or even at all. This is where a handy piece of software called Jumplist Extender could prove to be useful because it can create a custom Jump list for just about any icon that gets pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar.
A standard Chrome Jump List
Jumplist Extender can perform a simple task of just opening a program with a command line argument such as opening a web browser with your favourite website as the argument. The program can also send keystrokes to the application window so you either enter simple commands or keyboard shortcuts to open the program and perform an action. And if that’s not enough, because Jumplist Extender is programmed using the AutoHotkey scripting language, it also supports the creation and running of AutoHotkey scripts, if you know how to use AutoHotkey of course.
Jumplist Extender is open source software so is completely free to use. Although it comes with a setup installer, I was able to extract the Jumplist Extender setup with Universal Extractor and run it via the T7EPreferences.exe. Although I was able to create a jump list successfully, I can’t guarantee it will work perfectly this way, so it’s your choice.
Something to note about this program is when you create a new jump list, any jump list already connected with the icon will be lost, and you can’t add to or edit an existing default jump list. In short, be careful about which icon you’re creating a new list for.
On running the program, the first window to pop up will ask what you want to do. Obviously, if you haven’t already set up or saved any lists you need to start a new jump list. A file requester will then ask you to select an executable or shortcut file which the jump list is going to be created for.
After that another window will ask to run the related application if it isn’t already open. When the program is open click on it and Jumplist Extender will recognise it’s the correct one. The next window is simply to verify the selection is correct, and if not you can try to reselect it. Click OK when you’re sure.
The main window is where the list is created and is split into two, the left for the jump list layout and the right to create the entry. Entries can be added, removed or moved up and down the list using the buttons provided.
To configure an entry, firstly give it a name and choose the icon if you want one. There are four different types of entry that can be created; Task, File/Folder Shortcut, Category and Separator. The File/Folder option will simply allow you to open a folder or execute an external file from the jump list. Category and Separator makes the list more readable if there are to be several entries.
The task option is the most powerful as it offers three actions; Send keystrokes to window, Run command line or program and the Run AutoHotkey script action. The keystroke action is useful for sending things like hotkey combinations or entering text into a text box etc. In the above window I’m sending ‘ipconfig /all’ to the command prompt window which will run ipconfig when I select the entry in the pinned icon’s jump list. There are a number of possibilities here as you could also send blocks of text into a text editor or set it up to ‘Ctrl+V’ and paste clipboard content straight into a program.
Custom Jump List for a Command Prompt pinned icon
The Run command line or program action allows the running of the connected application or a different one with command line options. For example executing a browser with a website as the argument will open the related webpage. Eg; ‘C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe’ Raymond.cc. When you have finished creating the jump list press Ctrl+S or go to File -> ‘Save and apply to Taskbar’ to apply the changes.
One minor gripe I have with the program is after a few hours of testing it popped up a nag asking to donate. Not too much of an issue if it only does it once, but every xx amount of hours would be a major pain in the neck. A workaround is to simply exit the application in the tray, it didn’t appear to affect the jump lists I had created although it might possibly cause problems with using custom scripts or something more advanced. A case of try it and see.
The right click context menu is obviously an important part of Windows and can be very useful for providing shortcuts and options to do numerous things. From scanning a file for a virus or adding something to a zip file, to running a program as administrator, the list of possibilities is huge. Sadly, a lot of software tends to leave behind data in the context menu as well, even when it’s been uninstalled and no longer on the system. A utility that did that exact thing to me recently was Winpatrol. Obviously, it didn’t take long to get rid of it with a tool like ShellExView.
But minor issues aside, the context menu is a great place to put things to save time and make life a bit easier. With the arrival of Windows 8 removing the Start Menu by default, and limited space on the Task Bar if you already have several programs pinned, a well organised and efficient context menu could be a real time saver. Trying to find what you want by putting an icon on your desktop for just about everything isn’t really a practical solution.
The good thing about using the context menu is although you need registry editing experience or a third party utility to create the entries in the registry for you, once you do that, no software needs to be running in the background. Here’s a couple of quick and easy ways to get useful and important entries into the context menu with the minimum of fuss.
A useful program to put some custom entries in to your context menu is Your Menu. This is an easy to use little tool that can add a single program entry in to the context menu, useful for a single application. Or you can create a cascading menu with several entries in a sub menu which makes the context menu cleaner and allow for more entries inside less space.
Your menu comes as both an installable version and portable executable which is under 100K.
Usage is easy, pressing the single radio button asks for a name which will be the text to display in the menu. Then click in the “Select a program” box and point to the executable file. Click ‘Generate Reg File’ which will generate the necessary files. Two registry files will be created, one to install the context menu, the other to remove it again.
A cascading menu is a similar process, click the radio button and enter a name to display in the menu. The Executable name is obviously the name of the entry inside the sub menu and the process is the same for selecting a program. ’Generate Reg File’ finishes the process and the registry files will be created.
The program does have a few quirks in that every time you click to create the reg files it adds extra back slashes to the entries, and to edit a path the select program window has to be opened and then closed again. Luckily, it only has to be used to create the registry files and doesn’t have to stay running in the background. An option to import menus for editing would have been a welcome addition.
This next utility is essentially a small collection of registry tweaks in the form of three .reg files to install, and another three to remove again. They are accompanied by a small frontend executable which will offer to create a restore point, but it’s not needed to use the tweaks as the registry files are located in the Tools folder. As it’s a zip file just extract to where you like and run the ContextMenu.exe to get to the frontend.
There are three different menus to enable, the first is the ‘Control Panel’ menu which will give you quick access to some of the common Control Panel options.
The second menu is ‘System’ which gives you quick access the things like the Event Viewer, Disk Cleanup and System Restore.
The third menu gives shortcuts to some common Windows 7 built in utilities like the Command Prompt, Notepad and Sticky Notes.
To uninstall the menus simply click the ‘Uninstall’ button of the menu you wish to remove in the frontend, or double click the relevant uninstall.reg file in the tools folder.
Obviously, IF you have sufficient knowledge of the registry, you can add extra options in or take them out yourself with either programs registry files. These options give some useful right click shortcuts to make some common Windows functions more quickly accessible. I would advise that if you have a context menu entry to a program that is no longer there, remove that entry as it could cause a lag with the context menu looking for programs it can’t find.
Didn’t find what you want? The links below could help:
Many people are confused about CMOS and BIOS thinking that they are the same. There is actually a huge difference between CMOS and BIOS, so you may want to get it right to prevent saying the wrong thing especially when you’re in an interview for a new job. BIOS is actually a chip on the motherboard containing a program that communicates with the CPU and other parts of the system. The BIOS program cannot be configured but can be updated through flashing the firmware provided by the manufacturer. As for CMOS, it is another chip that keeps the configurable information which is read by the BIOS. If you look carefully at the top of the screen after accessing the Setup by pressing F2/F10/F12/Del key, it actually says CMOS Setup Utility but not BIOS setup.
However the user and supervisor password that we can set to prevent unauthorized people from accessing the CMOS setup or to change the boot sequence is listed under BIOS Security Features according to AMI BIOS on my Dell computer. So I guess it is acceptable to say setting a BIOS password. Two of the most common and known old school methods to reset BIOS password is by switching the reset CMOS jumper or removing the battery from the motherboard. You can also reset BIOS password directly from Windows using a tool called CMOS De-Animator.
If you are unable to open the computer case because it is a laptop, don’t want to get your hands dirty, or for some weird reason CMOS De-Animator doesn’t work, here is another method to reset BIOS password which I am very sure that it would work because I have personally tested it.
Recently I came across two commands that claims to reset BIOS password when it is typed on the debug tool that is built-in to Windows.
o 70 2E o 71 FF
I ran the two commands above from debug.exe under Administrator rights in Windows 7 SP1 32-bit but sadly it does not work. After researching further about this method on the Internet, it seems to be widely posted but none have verified if it is truly working or if there are additional steps required. If you’ve been reading our articles, you would have realized that we normally take a step further to test and make sure that it is working rather than just for the sake of posting something on the blog.
After much testing, I found that it is possible to reset BIOS password by typing the two commands in debug tool if you first boot up the computer in FreeDOS. Here are the detailed step-by-step instructions.
1. Install FreeDOS in a USB flash drive using Rufus or UNetbootin.
2. Download the debug.exe tool and save it to the root of your USB flash drive.
3. Boot up the computer with your USB flash drive and type the following commands: (take note that the second and third command starts with the letter O and not the number zero.
debug o 70 2E o 71 FF quit
4. Restart your computer by simultaneously pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del and you would probably encounter error messages like CMOS checksum error which is normal. You can now access the CMOS setup without a password.
The above method seems to be a perfect solution but what if you cannot change the boot sequence to boot up the computer from USB flash drive and it is set to only boot from the hard drive? Obviously you cannot do anything about it since the BIOS is locked out and you cannot get in the CMOS Setup Utility to change the boot order. Well not really. With a third party boot manager called Plop which I have reviewed before, it does the impossible by booting up your computer through USB or CD/DVD even if the BIOS does not support it.
3. Extract the downloaded Plop Boot Manager, go to the Windows folder, right click on InstallToBootMenu.bat and select Run as administrator.
4. A command prompt window will open asking you to confirm adding the Plop Boot Manager to the Windows boot menu. Press the Y key and hit Enter. Then press any key to close the command prompt window. 5. Connect the USB flash drive containing the FreeDOS and debug.exe utility which you have created based on the previous step-by-step instructions.
6. Now restart your computer and select Plop Boot Manager from the Windows Boot Manager. 7. Select USB from the starfield screen and the computer will amazingly boot up FreeDOS from the USB flash drive.
Now go ahead and run the debug tool followed by the 2 commands to reset BIOS password. To remove Plop Boot Manager from the Windows Boot Manager after you have successfully reset BIOS password, simply download and install EasyBCD, run it, click the Edit Boot Menu button and delete Plop Boot Manager from the list by selecting it with your mouse and click the Delete button.
Your computer is always opening different types of files, whether they are images, music, text files, archives, documents, or executables. Each type of file in Windows needs to be told what it is so the appropriate action can be taken and the file can be opened or launched. The file extension, which is whatever text comes after the last period (.) in a filename tells the system what it is and what should be done with the file.
By default, Windows has dozens of types of file extension associated with specific actions so they can be recognized on double click. For instance, EXE launches the file as an executable whereas TXT opens the file in Notepad or REG tells Windows the file is a Registry Editor file. As you add more and more software to your system more file type extensions are added to handle the files required by the software.
It’s quite easy to associate a file not recognized by Windows to a specific file format. All you have to do is right click, select Open with and choose the program you want to open it. However, it’s more difficult to do the opposite and remove a known association from a file so it doesn’t launch or open in any program when double-clicked. (more…)
