Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Rename XP When Dual Booting With Windows 7

You will need to run this command from within Windows 7:

bcdedit /set {ntldr} description "Windows XP"

Thats really it, there is nothing more complicated than that.

Pulled from here.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

How to Show/Hide the Administrator account on Windows Vista Welcome Screen



In Windows Vista, be default the Administrator account is disabled. However, if you use a password reset tool, there is a chance that you can enable this account and cause it to appear on the Welcome Screen. There is an easy way to fix this. From an elevated command prompt (right-click cmd and select "Run as Administrator"), type:

net user Administrator /active:no

If the forward-slash causes you problems, simply enter the same command without it. If you're successful some text should output indicating the command was issued successfully and the Administrator account should disappear form the Welcome Screen and return to its disabled state.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Narrator automatically starts up

OS: Vista

Go to control panel, then open ease of access, select use the computer without display, then uncheck turn on narrator.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Documents and desktop disappeared

Problem: Everything from the desktop and documents folders disappeared

Solution:
    In XP: Click start, click run, type in "CMD" then press enter. In the command window, type in cd \, then type in the command "attrib -h /s /d" Wait for this to complete. You should see all directories and files. If some are still hidden, such as the desktop contents. Restart the computer. Scan with your antivirus solution.
 
   In Vista: Open the windows globe, type in cmd, once it shows cmd (or command) right click on it and click run on administrator. In the command window, type in cd \, then type in the command "attrib -h /s /d" Wait for this to complete. You should see all directories and files. If some are still hidden, such as the desktop contents.  Restart the computer. Scan with your antivirus solution.

Some infections will hide the desktop. Make sure you scan with several good scanning utilities but not multiple antivirus products that scan the computer at the same time. This will cause you to not only slow down but to also potentially crash the computer.

Please comment if this post helped you.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Siverlight will not uninstall.

Original Problem: Silverlight updates would not install

Secondary Problem: Silverlight will not uninstall from Add/Remove programs in XP giving the error ""the installation source for this product is not available"

Fix: Run regedit. Use the search function to find anything containing silverlight and delete it. Restart the computer. Install the newest release of silverlight from here.

Please comment if this post helped you

Monday, May 23, 2011

.Net packages or .net service packs will not install

First step, restart the computer and try again. If that does not work the machine might need a .Net cleanup tool. This tool can be found on Microsoft's website. If you do not want to go there for the download you can get it from here or here. After the tool is done, restart. Re-run the tool. Restart again. Start all of your windows updates. This should fix the problem.

Windows Security Center will not recognize automatic updates are enabled

This applies to Windows XP at least, I do not know if it works on any other operating systems. This has fixed at least two systems that say windows update is not enabled but in the system properties -> automatic updates tab the system is enabled and has a time set to install automatic updates. This system can either be ran through batching or through manual command prompt entries. I use a single batch file for all 5 commands and it works flawlessly on systems that can be fixed with this tool. This is what my batch file looks like:


RegSvr32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\wuapi.dll

RegSvr32 c:\WINDOWS\system32\Wuaueng.dll

RegSvr32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\atl.dll

RegSvr32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\wucltui.dll

RegSvr32 C:\WINDOWS\system32\wups.dll

pause


The pause at the end is not necessary but it is useful to know when the system is complete. If you are running the commands manually do not enter the pause line. If you don't know how to make a batch file click here to learn how.

If this solution helped you or fixed your issue please comment