Friday, September 10, 2010

Hidden drives

Want to hide drives with sensitive material on them from prying eyes? You can prevent any or all disk drives from being displayed in My Computer and Explorer.
It takes some Registry tweaks, which can be tricky. Check instructions at www.WE-Compute.com/registry.html if you are new to Registry editing.
In the Registry navigate to HKEY__USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. Right-click on Explorer and choose New and DWORD value. In the pane on the right, rename the new value NoDrives and double-click on it to open the Edit DWORD Value box. Click the Decimal option to select it, instead of the Hexidecimal option.
Now for the complicated part. To hide a drive or drives, a number that corresponds to the drive(s) must be entered. Enter the value listed below for the drive. If multiple drives are to be hidden, add the numbers for those drives together. For example, hiding drives D and E requires a value of 24, because you are adding the value for D (8) to the value for E (16), which equals 24.

How to Use Windows 7 Without Activation

Most of you might be aware of the fact that it is possible to use Windows 7 and Vista for 120 days without activation. This is actually possible using the slmgr -rearm command which will extend the grace period from 30 days to 120 days. However in this post I will show you a small trick using which it is possible to use Windows 7 without activation for approximately an year! Here is a way to do that.
1. Goto “Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories” . Right click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as Administrator“. If you are not the administrator then you are prompted to enter the password, or else you can proceed to step-2.
2. Now type the following command and hit enter
slmgr -rearm
3. You will be prompted to restart the computer. Once restarted the trial period will be once again reset to 30 days. You can use the above command for up to 3 times by which you can extend the trial period to 120 days without activation.
4. Now comes the actual trick by which you can extend the trial period for another 240 days. Open Registry Editor (type regedit in “Run” and hit Enter) and navigate to the following location

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform

5. In right-side pane, change value of SkipRearm to 1. 6. Now you will be able to use the slmgr -rearm command for another 8 times so that you can skip activation process for another 240 days. So you will get 120 + 240 = 360 days of free Windows 7 usage.
120 days using “slmgr -rearm” command before registry edit +                                                                                                                                                                
240 days using “slmgr -rearm” command after registry edit
 =      360 Days

Convert Any Document or Web Page to PDF

Convert Any Document or Web Page to PDF

Somebody just told you that you need to have Adobe Acrobat (Writer) to create a PDF file? Guess what, you can get away from that pricey piece of software if you just need to convert some documents to pdf, without a need of fancy editing the pdf document.
Here's how. Thanks to the BullZip, who provides a Free Pdf printer. With this free tool, you can simply "print out" your document or webpage to a pdf file, just about the same way as you print it out to a printer.

You can visit BullZip.com for more information about the software.
Here the direct link to BullZip downloads page: Downloads
  1. To get started, first follow the link above and download Free Pdf Printer from BullZip, then install it to your computer.
  2. Once you're done, you might need to close the program (or the web browser) which you're currently viewing the document. This helps refreshing the list of available printers on your computer.
  3. Once you get back to the document you want to convert, perform the same steps are you print out the document, i.e. File > Print ...
  4. When you see the Print window pop-up, select "Bullzip PDF Printer" under "Printers", then click "OK".
  5. BullZip PDF Printer will then start to analyze your document and display a new pop-up window, where you can direct it to the location you want to save the pdf file.
  6. Follow the pop-up windows and.. hola! The PDF document is created!