Shutdown Windows XP quickly from Task Manager

Want to shutdown your computer quickly and safely??? There is an easy way using Taskmanager.

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring task manager
Press the Ctrl key and select Shutdown>TurnOff
Keep the Ctrl key pressed for a few seconds, the System will turnoff and there is no harm done!!!

Hide entire hard drives c: or d: or f: without regedit

1. Go to Start > run > type "diskpart".
A DOS window will appear with following discription.
DISKPART>

2. Then type "list volume"

The result will look like : ------

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
--------------- --- -------- ---- ------ ---- ------ ----
Volume 0 F CD-ROM
Volume 1 C Window_XP NTFS Partition 7000MB Healthy System
Volume 2 D Softwares NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy
Volume 3 E Songs NTFS Partition 8000MB Healthy

3. Suppose u wanna hide drive E then type "select volume 3"

Then a message will appear in same winwods { Volume 3 is the selected volume}

4. Now type "remove letter E"
Now a message will come { Diskpart Removed the Drive letter }
sometime it requires the reboot the computer .

Diskpart will remove the letter .Windows XP is not having capabilty to identify the unkown volume.

Your Data is safe now from all unauthorised users.
To access the content of hidden Drive repeat the process mentioned above. But in 4th step replace " remove" to "assign"
i mean type "assign letter E"

source: here

Install Firefox Themes Offline

There are so many nice & beautiful firefox themes scattered all over
the internet. You install a firefox theme while you are online & later
loose everything when you have to reinstall your OS.

So you have to redownload those themes again. My purpose for starting this thread is to save & use those cool themes later when you have to reinstall your OS or your firefox & themes installation goes bad so that you donn't have redownload or reinstall those themes again.

Here We Go:

1. Download & save your desired themes (those are available in .jar files)
from firefox official website or any other website using opera, IE,
safari, Koqueror etc. (If U can use firefox to download & save those
theme ie .jar files no problem but donn't install)
Just remember download & save those files into your hard disk

2. Open the folder where U have downloaded those files & open Firefox. Go to
Tools > Addons > & click on Themes. now minimize firefox but keep the Addons window open.

3. Now keep open the folder on which you have downloaded those themes (if that folder
is not already opened) and the addon window side by side or keep maximize both.

4. Now drag and & drop your desired theme file into left pan of the theme manager. You will
be prompted to install that theme. Install that theme & restart firefox.

5. Now again go to Tools > Addon > Themes and on the left pan you should see your desired
theme. Select that & click use theme or double click on that theme.

6. Restart firefox & you are ready to go. ENJOY.

http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tutcb9.gif

Tested with firefox 2.0.0.4 on windows xp sp2

source: here

Axel, Super fast download manager for Linux

Tired by the speed of ordinary download managers?? Try axel. Lightweight , fast and efficient download manager. It is capable of juicing every bit of your available bandwidth and that means you don't have to wait too long to finish download. For more details click here

Batch download using wget

If I want to download all files in a directory of a website, i have to perform a long wget command, they is what I do at first:

wget -nd -r -l1 --no-parent http://www.foo.com/mp3/

This works fine, but sometimes it gives some silly index.@xx files that wish I do not want. To make your directory clean, if you knows the file format you want, you can do this:

wget -nd -r -l1 --no-parent -A.mp3 -A.wma http://www.foo.com/mp3/

I am going to explain briefly what is the meaning of the options I speficied.
-nd no directory, by default wget creates a dir
-r recursively download
-l1 (L one) level 1, download only of that particular folder, don’t go depth on it.
–no-parent I definately don’t want the parent’s files

Using wget through proxy servers

To use wget through proxies.
Set the environment variable using the following command
export http_proxy="http://proxy.example.com:8080"

Similarly or ftp
export ftp_proxy="http://proxy.example.com:8080"

For proxies that require authentication use --proxy-user=proxyusename --proxy-password=urpassword switch along with the wget command.
For example wget --proxy-user=name --proxy-password=password http://somelocation/index.html

For Details visit this site



wget: Download entire websites easy

wget is a nice tool for downloading resources from the internet. The basic usage is wget url:

wget http://linuxreviews.org/

Therefore, wget (manual page) + less (manual page) is all you need to surf the internet. The power of wget is that you may download sites recursive, meaning you also get all pages (and images and other data) linked on the front page:

wget -r http://linuxreviews.org/

But many sites do not want you to download their entire site. To prevent this, they check how browsers identify. Many sites refuses you to connect or sends a blank page if they detect you are not using a web-browser. You might get a message like:

Sorry, but the download manager you are using to view this site is not supported. We do not support use of such download managers as flashget, go!zilla, or getright

Wget has a very handy -U option for sites like this. Use -U My-browser to tell the site you are using some commonly accepted browser:

  wget  -r -p -U Mozilla http://www.stupidsite.com/restricedplace.html

The most important command line options are --limit-rate= and --wait=. You should add --wait=20 to pause 20 seconds between retrievals, this makes sure you are not manually added to a blacklist. --limit-rate defaults to bytes, add K to set KB/s. Example:

wget --wait=20 --limit-rate=20K -r -p -U Mozilla http://www.stupidsite.com/restricedplace.html

A web-site owner will probably get upset if you attempt to download his entire site using a simple wget http://foo.bar command. However, the web-site owner will not even notice you if you limit the download transfer rate and pause between fetching files.

Use --no-parent

--no-parent is a very handy option that guarantees wget will not download anything from the folders beneath the folder you want to acquire. Use this to make sure wget does not fetch more than it needs to if just just want to download the files in a folder.

Source: here

Password-less login with ssh

These instructions explain what to do in order to be able to use ssh for logging on a remote machine without entering your password. All our machines use ssh protocol 2, so please follow the corresponding instructions. However, for completeness, the instructions for protocol 1 are provided here as well. Please note that all instructions pertain to OpenSSH.

Protocol 2

On the originating machine, say

ssh-keygen -t rsa

Save the key in the default file (~/.ssh/id_rsa) and do not use a passphrase. This will create a file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. Add the contents of this file to the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 on the remote machine (i.e., the machine on which you want to log on). Whereas the id_rsa.pub file is world readable, the authorized_keys2 file should only be readable by you. Use chmod to set the permissions accordingly.

Protocol 1 (less secure, so consider this obsolete)

On the originating machine, say

ssh-keygen

Save the key in the default file (~/.ssh/identity) and do not use a passphrase. This will create a file ~/.ssh/identity.pub. Add the contents of this file to the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote machine (i।e., the machine on which you want to log on). Whereas the identity.pub file is world readable, the authorized_key file should only be readable by you. Use chmod to set the permissions accordingly.

Source : here

Add Your Favorite Application Shortcut in Desktop Context Menu in Vista

Today I was doing some R&D in Vista registry as usual and I found that MS ppl hv also included "Open Command Windows here" option in desktop context menu, which is displayed while pressing the key (bcoz of the extended key). They put this option in following registry key:

Code:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\cmd

Which was not present in XP or other versions of windows. So a wicked idea came in my little naughty mind.

I created another key under "shell" key and set its "command" value to WMP path and VOILLA, it worked. I got it in desktop context menu and it was working fine.



So here is the full tutorial to add any application shortcut in desktop context menu:

1. Open regedit and goto:

Code:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell

now under this key create another key with any name and in right-side pane set its value to the label, which you want to show in desktop context menu, like Media Player, Winamp, Firefox, anything else.

2. Now create another key under this newly created key with name command. and in right-side pane set its value to the exact path of application, like:

C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe
C:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe
etc...

3. Thats it. Now you can check your favorite application shortcut in desktop context menu.

4. You can create as many shortcut as you want. Simply create a separate key for all the applications.

5. Following is a ready-made code:

Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\WMP]
@="Windows Media Player"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\WMP\command]
@="C:\\Program Files\\Windows Media Player\\wmplayer.exe"
Just change the label and path to ur desired application and save with the name "vishal.reg" (including the quotes) and run it.

U can also set the application shortcut to show only when u press key by adding "Extended" String value in right-side pane of the newly created key:

Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\WMP]
@="Windows Media Player"
"Extended"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\WMP\command]
@="C:\\Program Files\\Windows Media Player\\wmplayer.exe"

Now thats another benefit to use Vista.
I hv checked this in XP but it wasnt working...

source : here

Vista Blinking cursor tweak

The blinking cursor in vista is really thin, and sometimes it can be very hard to find. In case you want it to be made a little more thicker, you can do it as follows Go to Control Panel>Ease of Access>Optimize visual display.towards the bottom of this page, you will see a "Make things on the screen easier to see". from here,you can make your cursor thicker. the default is 1. even making it '2' is good enough.

Source:http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56711