Right click on an empty area of the desktop and choose ‘new‘ then ‘shortcut.’ The create shortcut wizard will open.

In the first text box, type:

%windir%\\System32\\rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

and then give your shortcut an appropriate name on the next page, and hit ‘finish’.

You will notice that the shortcut you created has a blank icon. To select a more appropriate one, right click on the shortcut and hit ‘properties.’ In the ‘shortcut’ tab, click the ‘change icon‘ button.

To lock you computer there is a keyboard shortcut as well. Press the “window key + L“  to lock your computer. But this desktop shortcut is definitely more convenient as you don’t have to move your hands away.

You can also use the following keyboard shortcuts with any Microsoft Standard Keyboard or any other compatible keyboard that includes the Windows logo key and the Application key.

The program lets you create a shortcut which is actually hidden by default and can be enabled by tweaking some registry settings. But using the simple program in few steps and easy to use UI you can do this in seconds.

When I first developed this program it had a little flaw – It couldn’t delete the created shortcut!

I redesigned it to give a complete new look and modified the code to include that feature in version 2. It can now remove the shortcut also and yeah… it has little transparency as well

The program is now made as a self contained single .exe file and doesn’t require any installation. But due to the development in .NET environment it requires .NET framework (2.0 or latest).

But remember it is designed to work only on Windows XP. I’m working on Windows 7 version of this and will come up soon with that.

If you’re on Windows XP then do check the program.

Waiting for your valuable comments.

Snippy is a tiny application that makes screen capturing a snap! Simply click on the little Snippy icon in the taskbar notification area, and mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy — that’s it, you’re done! The cut-out image will now be in your clipboard, and you can paste it in another application.

If you want to select a rectangular area, just hold down the Shift key while dragging. You can configure some things like the color of the border and so on by right-clicking on the Snippy icon in the taskbar.

The Best thing is, you don’t to install the application, Snippy is just a standalone .exe file which you can run from anywhere even from your desktop – you just have to extract the file from .zip

Note: Snippy is exclusively made for Windows XP and only works for this version of Windows.

Download Snippy | Visit Developer’s Website

To do this:

1. On Login screen, press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice in such a way that there should be a pause of about one second before your second press of CTRL+ALT+DEL.

Don’t do this quickly, give a little pause between the two combination!

2. You will see a login screen where, you’ll be asked to enter Administrator password.

3. Just press the Login button or Enter Key, leaving the password field blank!

You’ll be logged in your system with the Administrator account, which is not seen at normal login screen.

This is because mostly when windows is installed at home computers, administrators passwords are ignored and left blank during installation.

This quick demo will help you understand the trick:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF7uWe_FmmU]

When you enter this account, with this trick, you actually log into the actual administrator account of Windows, from where you easily go to:
control panel > user accounts, and change or remove any windows account’s password!

This small utility creates an additional shortcut in Windows XP’s start menu (under RUN) so I named it “XP Hidden Shortcut” :p

Although in Windows XP a new shortcut beneath RUN can be created by tweaking the registry. But for that one must has some knowledge of Registry Editing.

This little Program does the same but with help of simple GUI, a new shortcut under RUN can be created in a flash with no Registry knowledge required.

I used C# to create the application and it generates a .reg file (in a temporary folder) and executes it automatically after the shortcut file name and location is selected.

Installation is pretty simple and wizard-like as you normally see in Windows. (I used Smart Install Maker to create the setup package).

The interface is very simple and you’ll find usage instruction on hovering the mouse over controls on the interface.

REMEMBER: This works only in Windows XP and requires .Net Framework 2.0

Hope you’ll like it!

The other partitions on that hard drive didn’t have enough space to create backup for documents and limited space of his hard drive never allows him to store setups for the programs he installs in the system. So I also had to save all the programs installed (in “program files” folder). This leaves no other option except deletion of the folder in which Windows installs its system files (usually ‘WINDOWS’ folder).

The folder “WINDOWS” contains all the system files, information and settings regarding currently installed windows. Including themes, sounds, settings and most important of all – The Registry. Windows Registry holds all the information of the file types, paths and settings of each and every program installed on a hard drive which can be viewed through “Registry Editor”. So backing up complete windows registry is most important step if you want to save the entries and settings of all the programs installed. We’ll talk about this later in few moments.

So, Only deleting this (“WINDOWS”) folder means that you can not only save your user accounts/documents and installed programs (of “Program Files” folder) but can also install Windows from scratch.

This sounds easy but it’s not possible to delete the “WINDOWS” folder directly not even from safe mode or command prompt. This requires bootable setup CD of Windows XP.

But first don’t forget the most important step of all – Registry Backup.

To Create a backup of Windows Registry:

1. Click Start from the taskbar.
2. Open RUN.
3. Type regedit and press enter.
4. Click File menu of the main Registry editor window, and select “Export” and define the path where you want to save the backup.
(Don’t select the same partition in which windows is currently installed, choose some other).

Exporting will take only a few moments and size of the backup can be anywhere between 30-100 MB or more than this it totally depends upon the number of programs installed.

Now follow these steps to learn how to do fresh windows installation leaving users’ accounts their “Documents and Settings” and programs in “Program Files” folder intact.

1. After creating windows registry backup, Restart your system and Boot from Windows XP setup CD. (Make sure CD is bootable)

2. After all files are loaded you’ll see step by step setup asking you to choose one option on each screen.
Note down and carefully choose these options on each screen.

3. On First screen, press Enter to Continue to proceed with the setup. (Don’t press “R” to repair on this screen)

4. On License Agreement screen, press F8 to Agree and proceed.

5. On third screen setup will search for existing installation of windows. If it founds any you’ll be prompted to either repair the current installation (by pressing ‘R’) or don’t repair and continue (by pressing ‘Esc’ key).

6. Now Press “R” on this screen to repair the current installation of windows.

7. Setup will search and display you the current folder in which windows installation is found (usually “\WINDOWS” folder).

This is the second most important step that will only delete the folder in which setup founds the windows installation.

You’ll be given 2 options here:

Esc – to Choose different folder for new installation.
L – to delete the folder in which it found the existing installation.

Press “L” to delete the folder.

8. On Next screen Setup will show you the list of partitions of your hard drive, carefully select the same partition in which previous installation was found.

Select the partition and Press “Enter” to continue.

9. Just press “C” to continue with the setup process on the next screen.

10. Formatting options will be displayed on the very next screen.
Select last option “Leave the current partion” to skip the formatting by pressing “Enter”.

The rest of the setup will be totally automated and setup will copy the files to the hard drive and on the restart proper installation should start.

After Setup finishes the complete installation process. Login to the windows and check the partition where windows was previously installed.
You’ll see all the folders there inclusing same “WINDOWS” folder but this time this folder contains freshly installed windows system files from scratch.

“Documents and Settings”, “Program Files” and any other folder in the root of the directory are all there untouched. Now all you have to do is to restore the registry backup you created before installation to make your programs work same as before.

To restore a backup of Windows Registry:

1. Click Start from the taskbar.
2. Open RUN.
3. Type regedit and press enter.
4. Click File menu from the main Registry editor window, and select “Import” and browse the backup.

After restoration and a system reboot all your programs installed in “Program Files” folder should work fine now with the completely new windows installation.

This repair method saves a lot of time in backing and restoring up the documents if you chose the formatting strategy to install fresh windows.

Hope you found this helpful

Unfortunately it isn’t present in Windows XP, but if you’re on XP, you can still get the same navigation pleasure after installing a little addon for Windows Explorer.

If you use XP, and dont know about this feature, then you may need to give Explorer Breadcrumbs a try.
After installing this little addon for Windows XP Explorer you will get the exact same look and functionality of breadcrumbs Navigation as you see in Windows Vista.

Explorer Breadcrumbs contains a contextual series of buttons that allows you to quickly see and navigate through the entire folder hierarchy without leaving the current window.

You can jump to any folder or subfolder in the hierarchy of the folders that you have navigated through. To do this you can use the drop down menu beside each folder in the hierarchy to jump to that directory without opening the new explorer window.

Window Vista users know the benefit of this thing very well, but if you have decided to stick with XP, then this little addon is definitely handy and worth trying!

You can also move the toolbar. Just drag it from the left corner and drop anywhere you like in Explorer window. Like I placed it above the Explorer navigation button.

You can completely remove the default address bar and drag and drop the Explorer Breadcrumbs replacing the default one.

Download Explorer Breadcrumbs for XP [filesize:333 KB]

Visit Official Site

If you are XP user, you open the windows explorer, click search button, An annoying little animated character shows up asking “what do you want to search”, you select the required option, then type in the file name,hit the search button again.
Even if you have the Fastest PC of all, it takes a while to retrieve the files you search for!!
No doubt Its bit quicker in Windows Vista & onwards, but still, it takes few seconds!

But Now I’ve found “Everything”. A fantastic little searching utility to help you search the files or folders,as you type,with a single click, right from your desktop !!

Everything is a Freeware Desktop Searching utility, that locates files and folders by filenames instantly for Windows PC.
Unlike Windows search “Everything” displays every file and folder on your computer.

Yes, there are dozens of searching softwares available on net.
Like;
Google Desktop search.
Microsoft’s Windows Search (For Windows XP and earlier)
Copernic Desktop Search.
…and lot of others like these.

But Believe me I’ve used them all, and found none of them as impressive as “Everything”.

In “Features List” of above mentioned desktop searching tools,you will see everything except their “Indexing time” (the time they take to index all the files/folders of your system).
Let me tell you… they take several hours and even days, depending on the numbers of files and size of hard drive.

But believe it or not, “Everything” indexes all your file/folders as soon as you open it!
Yes It shocked me too!
It took about 6-8 seconds to index my 80 GB hard drive

Take a look at the size of its database file, it created on my PC.

This tiny desktop searcher takes very few space in memory.
In my 80 GB case,Its taking just 4MB!

After quick indexing, it places itself in taskbar from where it can be accessed with a double click.

And shows ALL of the files and folders on the main window, including the system files and the hidden files.

If you dont want the search results to be applied on the hidden or system files, simply goto the options>Exclude and Check the options to your needs.
User defined files/folder can also be added to the exclusion list.

You can also use Wild cards, just like in traditional windows searching.

Ok! Check out the complete FAQ Section of Everything’s Webpage, you will find lots of useful info about it.

After using and observing the features, I concluded these results:

Positives:
- Instant Single Click Searching.
- Very Low on Resources.
- Searches real time the files changing.
- Updates its database on every system restart.
- Supports all Windows Version, including Windows 7.
- Searching possible on Remote Systems.

Negatives:
- Unlike Google Desktop Search, it Searches only Files names, not the content of the files.
- Works only on NTFS Drives.

If your search results is showing nothing or excluding files of any of your partitions, then it means your whole hard drive or a specific partition is not on NTFS.
But Dont worry! you can change the file system to NTFS, without the loss of data with a simple command.

[+/-] Click Here to see how to do it.


To convert an existing FAT or FAT32 volume to NTFS, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, Click RUN, type cmd, press OK.

2. At the command prompt, type the following, where drive letter is the drive that you want to convert:
convert drive letter: /fs:ntfs

For example, type the following command to convert drive E to NTFS:

convert e: /fs:ntfs

Note: If the operating system is on the drive that you are converting, you will be prompted to schedule the task when you restart the computer because the conversion cannot be completed while the operating system is running. When you are prompted, click YES.

3. When you receive the following message at the command prompt, type the volume label of the drive that you are converting, and then press ENTER:

The type of the file system is FAT.
Enter the current volume label for drive drive letter:

4. When the conversion to NTFS is complete, you re
ceive the following message at the command prompt:
Conversion complete

5. Quit the command prompt.

After conversion to NTFS, you will have to manually include that partition(s) to “Everything’s” database.
Goto Options>Volumes>
Select the drive(s) that is recently converted to NTFS
and Check “Check media” & “Enable USN Journal Logging” check boxes.

Thats it!.. from now on, files on newly converted partition(s) will also be included in search results.

I’d recommend this to all of the Windows users, even if they are using Windows Vista or 7.
I am using it, and very satisfied the with its performance.

So! Spread the word, Share it with your friends !
They will definitely love it!

Have a good day.

This is an old trick, that I think most of the amateur Windows users or users who have played with windows registry before, must know.

This little trick actually increases Windows Start Menu appearance time.

Follow these steps:

1. Click Start Menu
2. Type “Regedit” (without quotes and hit enter)
3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
4. Find and Select MenuShowDelay from the right column.
5. Double Click it to open diaogue box that’ll actually change the appearance time of start menu.

6. Now decrease the value to only 150, its the perfect speed setting, so menus appear quick, but not so quick so that the un-wanted ones appear as you place cursor.
7. Reboot your computer.

If you find that 150 (speed) still slow or too fast to handle, you can repeat the steps and increase/decrease the value.
But don’t forget to restart the system to observe changes.

This little toggle will make a big difference in showing start menu without any annoying delays.

•  Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.
•  When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.
•  After Files Loading, once in the Windows XP setup menu, press the “R” key to repair Windows.
• Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. We have to copy these two files from the CD-ROM drive letter “X”. ( Change “X” to the drive letter of your CD Drive)
  

• Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot
• Your System will boot normally this time.