How to speed up Start Menu in XP

This one is an old but useful hack for making the Start menu appear as quickly as you click on it in Windows XP. By default,a delay value of 400 is associated with the registry key of MenuShowDelay(HKEY_CURRENT_USER Control Panel Desktop MenuShowDelay). To change this default value: 1.Open registry editor (Start>Run>regedt32) (Backup the registry first …

Demystifying the device manager in Windows XP

What you can’t see,you can’t troubleshoot that.The device manager suits this logic perfectly. Basically,all the devices present in Windows XP are listed in device manager,right? The answer is no.Along with the devices that are present,we can encounter two more types of devices : hidden and ghosts. Hidden devices are mostly the really old and legacy …

Making Command and Conquer older games work on Vista

Some computer games are very addictive,time flies and you keep on playing.Command and Conquers:Generals and it’s expansion pack Zero Hour is one of them for me. Recently,I tried to play one more older games of the Command and Conquer Red Alert series : Yuri’s Revenge.Running it on Vista from the Command and Conquer first decade …

Using itunes to remove artwork from ipod

Recently I had put in some new music albums in my ipod and along with that also appeared the artwork (the images that are displayed in background while accessing ipod menu). There is no suitable option from within the ipod to remove them,however itunes will be helpful in removing the unwanted album artwork. 1.Connect the …

How to configure Google calendar to send text messages

This is a non operating system/non technical related post after quite a few months. We live in a world of tightly integrated electronic communication.What we see as emails on our computers,we see them on our blackberries and other cellular devices. One very useful feature of Google calendar is it’s integration with your cell phone. Let’s …

Using gpresult to checkout group policies settings

In a domain based environment,Windows clients get their settings from a domain controller.These settings or policies are called group policy objects or GPOs. Whenever a new or modified GPO is applied to a client yet the client can’t seem to reflect those changes,gpupdate/force from command prompt is commonly used to refresh all GPOs on the …

How to disable Windows security center

Security in Windows family has always been a debatable topic.With the advent of long released SP2,there came the red shield like icon – Windows security center. Windows security center acts like a guard who checks your XP box for following three settings : 1.Firewall status 2.Antivirus software status 3.Windows updates status What if we have …