Zero Hour Sleep |
… because there’s nothing better to do. |
One of the best security practices is to regularly change your computer password, but sometimes you just forget the last password you have set! And it’s really buggy.
Here’s a good way to reset your administrator password on Windows XP. Use it wisely.
When you read about registry tricks such as our previous post, you often see the authors warning you to do the registry changes on your own risk, and they advice you to backup your registry prior working on it. But few authors have actually provided the way to do this backup.
It’s actually pretty easy, here’s how to do it.
We use a billing server in our workplace with Windows Server 2003 installed on it, and for some reason we control it using remote desktop connection.
By default, remote desktop for administration on Windows Server 2003 will allow two concurrent sessions. However, we need to limit the number of sessions to one only because we don’t want to run two processes of our billing software in two different session in order not to mess up our data.
Here’s how we did it.
This post goes to whoever doesn’t know the difference between Terminal Services and Remote Desktop. For a simple user they’re almost the same, however for a system administrator they’re totally different, knowing that they both use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
Anyway, how do Terminal Services and Remote Desktop differ?
Do you know that each time you access a file, one of its attributes is updated? That’s the “Last Accessed” attribute which is a timestamp that indicates when a file was last opened. This will of course slow down the accessing process a little bit, and if you don’t need that timestamp then it’s better to simply disable updating it each time a file is accessed on your computer.
Here’s how to do it.
By default, Windows will restart automatically after downloading and installing updates IF your Windows Update is set to “Install updates automatically”. We have noticed this behavior on Windows XP/2003/Vista, and it is annoying because sometimes you might be running some process and cannot afford stopping it to do a restart.
Here’s a workaround to keep on automatically downloading and installing updates without automatically restarting your computer or server.
Autorun allows Windows to automatically launch a software when a CD-ROM is inserted, and it is mostly used to install new programs, you insert the CD and the setup file will be launched automatically. But this is not always good as autorun can be exploited to install some bad programs on your computer without your knowledge.
Prior introducing Windows Vista, we were able to avoid autorun by simply holding down the “Shift” key while inserting the CD, and none of the programs will be run automatically then. This works in Windows 95 to XP, but not in Vista. However, there exists a workaround to disable autorun for good in Windows Vista.
We think you are aware by now that Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1 release candidates are out for the public to download and install from Microsoft.
However, some people might choose not to download these RC versions and choose to wait until the final packs are released. Because although these releases are official but you never know what might go wrong when using them. Luckily, Raymond provides a working way to disable downloading and installing Windows XP SP3, Vista SP1, and 2003 SP2 in Windows Automatic Update. We’re sharing it here in case you too do not want to download these service packs.
If you’re the kind of users who install lot of software on their systems, then we do imagine that you spend a good time waiting for your computer to startup.
Previously, and in order to speed up your Windows booting, people used to advice you to change the startup type of services that you don’t need from Automatic to Manual, some even advise to disable them!
Today we’re going to suggest something new for Windows Vista users, and we will not be denying any single service from launching at startup. Still, Vista will be starting much faster.
If you have worked on a wordpress installation under linux then you already know that when you update your permanent links structure, wordpress is supposed to automatically update the .htaccess file accordingly, however this behaviour might not happen if you are running Apache under Microsoft Windows.
