Formating USB Pen / Flash Drive with NTFS : A Guide

By default windows allows to format pen drive with fat or fat32 file system which can not store files larger than 4 GB. But nowadays we have larger USB drives as well as transfer files more than 4GB such as DVD or dual layer DVD image. NTFS does not have such issues, more reliable and can store files larger than 4 GB.

Follow the procedure stated below to format your pen drive with NTFS. Make sure you take backup of all your files before proceeding.

Plug in your pen drive.
Right click on My Computer.

Click on Properties > Hardware > Device Manager.

Expand Disk Drives & Click on your Pen Drive Name.

Now Right click on your pen drive name & select Properties.

Go to Polocies Tab & Select Optimize for Performance.

Click OK. Close device Manager.

Now open My Computer & Select Your USB / Pen Drive. Right click on it & select Format. Click on File system box. You see the NTFS option.
Now select NTFS & fromat your pen drive.

You can also convert your pen drive’s fat file system to ntfs as you use to convert fat partion to nfts.
Open command prompt and type the following command and press Enter Key.
convert x: /fs:ntfs
x is the drive letter of your USB Drive

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Recover / Reset Windows XP Administrator Password

Somtimes we forget our windows password. We don't have any way other than to install everything fresh, or do we have a few methods to recover or reset. Yes we do, follow the three process explained below ...

Process 1:
Whenever we install Windows, it automatically creates an account “Administrator” by default and sets its password to blank. So Start your system and press ctrl+alt+del keys together twice when you see Windows Welcome screen or Login screen, and it’ll show Classic Login box. Once the Logon box is displayed type Administrator in Username and leaving the Password field blank press Enter. You should be able to log in to Windows.
Now reset your account password from Start -> Control Panel -> User Accounts.

Process 2 :
Windows XP and next versions also allow another process to recover/reset forgotten password by using “Reset Disk“. always create a Password Reset Disk while installing windows or later in a convenient time. You can use that disk to reset the password. Please visit following links to know more ...

How to create and use a password reset disk for a computer in a domain in Windows XP

How to Log On to Windows XP If You Forget Your Password or Your Password Expires

If the two process mentioned above doesnot work the try the next process. It is a bit lengthy process but wothwhile if you can recover/reset your password without a complete fresh install.

Process 3:
If the above mentioned tricks doesnt work, then try following trick which is actually a loophole in Windows XP Setup and a big security hole:
1. Boot using Windows XP Setup CD and continue.
2. Accept and press “R” to run the repair when it asks to repair your existing Windows installation,
3. Setup will start repairing your Windows and will start copying files, etc. After a few minutes setup will restart your system.
4. Now it will start doing other tasks and will show a small progressbar with a few details in left side.
5. When it shows “Installing devices“, press Shift+F10 keys together in your keyboard.
6. It will open a Command Prompt window. Now type nusrmgr.cpl and press Enter.
7. It will open the same “User Accounts” window which you see in Control Panel. You can reset your password now.

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Seagate releases 1.5 TB Hard Disk Drive

The 7200.4, as the name suggests, targets the high-performance end of the magnetic drive market, and ships with 16MB of cache. As for the 7200.11, it'll slot in at the top of that product family. The main difference between the new 1.5TB drive and the 1TB ST31000340AS already available is their platter density. Both disks are four-platter designs, but the 1TB drive uses four 250GB platters, while the new 1.5TB is apparently using four 375GB platters. 375GB seems a bit odd for a platter size, Samsung's new 1TB Speedpoint F1 drives now use three 333GB platters instead of the original 4x250GB configuration the drive first shipped with. The Seagate Barracude 7200.11 will spin at 7,200RPM, and connects via the SATA I interface to achieve 3Gb/s transfer rate as well as a sustained data rate of up to 120MB/s.which is why Seagate has other choices for the budget conscious in the form of 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB, and 160GB varieties, accompanied by cache options of 32MB and 16MB.

Well, the Barracuda hard drive will target desktop users, so where does that leave us notebook totters? Thankfully Seagate engineers also have this group in mind, introducing a couple of 2.5 500GB hard drives under the Momentus line. These will be available in 5,400RPM and 7,200RPM variations, accompanied by 8MB of cache and 16MB of cache respectively. Both drives will feature free-fall sensor technology to prevent data damage when dropped by parking the heads off the disk whenever it detects any changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity, all within 3/10ths of a second.

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How to delete Internet Explorer browsing history ...

We often surf some of the unmentionable sites in our office computers or while using a friends / relatives computer which we do not want to let them know. In that situation we want to remove the History stored on the computer but do not know how to do that. The solution is elaborated below for Internet Explorer 7.
Step 1 : Click on the Tools menu or Tools Button on the toolbar or ALT+O and then click on Internet Options to invoke internet options dialogue box.

Step 2 : Now on the dialogue box click on Delete under Browsing History.

Step 3 : Now click on Delete History located under History section.

Step 4 : Now another dialogue box comes up for confirmation on which click on Yes to confirm.

You are done with your job. The history which appears on the address bar drop down list is deleted. You can do a lot more things like deleting Temporary internet files, cookies, saved passwords and form data using the same process.

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Change the logon background colour

1.Use a registry editing tool to navigate to the following tool:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors\Background

2. Change the following value:
Data Type:
REG_SZ
Value Name:
Background
Value:
Decimal RGB value for the colour you wish to set, for example:
Red: 255 0 0
Green: 0 255 0
Blue: 0 0 255
Black: 0 0 0
White: 255 255 255

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Manual steps to re-create the Show Desktop icon on the Quick Launch toolbar

Sometimes by mistake we delete the Show Desktop icon from the Quick Launch Toolbar. The Show Desktop icon is not an ordinary program shortcut. If the icon is deleted, the procedure for re-creating the icon is not obvious. To manually re-create the Show Desktop icon, follow these steps:

1. In Notepad, type the following text on individual lines:
[Shell]

Command=2

IconFile=explorer.exe,3

[Taskbar]

Command=ToggleDesktop
2. Save the file giving filename as Show Desktop.scf.

Note: Notepad automatically takes .txt as extension to the file name. write as "Show Desktop.scf" with the quotes to prevent notepad taking .txt as extension.
Now move the shortcut to the correct folder in the user profile to appear in the Quick Launch toolbar. To manually do this, use one of the following methods.

Method 1
1. Use the mouse to drag the Show Desktop.scf icon to the Quick Launch toolbar or another location where you want the shortcut to appear.
2. Click Move Here.

Method 2
1. Use Windows Explorer to locate the following folders:
Microsoft Windows 95/98 Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XPC:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
Note Username refers to the account name where you want to put the icon.
2. Use the mouse to drag the Show Desktop.scf file to the Quick Launch folder.
3. Click Move Here.

Alternately you can also press Windows Logo +D key to toggle between desktop.

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How To Make A Shutdown Timer !

Do you know that you can make your PC shutdown at a time u wish to? We all may have used software to shutdown / restart our PC at times. But we can do this without using any software. Three methods are explained below with which we can automate shutdown our PC.

METHOD 1
Step 1:
Right click on your desktop and choose "New=>shortcuts".
Step 2:
In the box that says "Type the location of the shortcut",type in "shutdown -s -t 3600" without the quotation marks and click next.
Note: 3600 are the amount of seconds before your computer shuts down. So , 60secs*60mins=3600secs.
Step 3:
Make up a name for the shortcut and you're done.You can change the icon by right clicking=>properities=>change icon=>browse.
To abort:
To make an abort key to stop the shutdown timer just create another shortcut and makethe "location of the shortcut" to " shutdown -a" without the quotes.

METHOD 2
Here is another trick to shutdown at a specific time, for example you wish to shutdown at 11:35am. Type this instart=>Run
Type Code: at 11:35 shutdown -s
to abort
Code:
shutdown -a
take note: all time are in 24hr, example u would like to shutdown at 8:30pm, you should type
"at 20:30 shutdown -s" without quote

METHOD 3
you can use a batch for that as well it makes it easier to usejust run the batch and enter the time you want it to shutdown
shutdown.bat

Type Code:

@echo off

title Scheduled Shutdown Batch Example by Cafe Digital

Color A

echo Enter Time To Shutdown (example 19:30)

set /p stime=

cls

at %stime% ""shutdown -s -t 00"" >nul

echo Your PC Will Auto Shutdown At %stime%

echo Press Any Key To Exit

pause >nul

exit

also you can add -c "desired message" at the end of the shutdown commandfor exampleshutdown -s -t 60 -c "Shutdown Pc"
using this command u can also schedule ur pc to restartfor exampleshutdown -r -t 60 -c "Restarting Pc"

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