Windows XP Surgery

Adding and removing navigation icons

2008-07-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

Many icons on the new Start panel will help you navigate through Windows in a way you have never done before. All of the icons that are displayed can be customized to fit your needs so that you can have one-click access to several different parts of your computer. Icons such as My Computer, My Music, Network Connections, and many more are now placed right on the Start panel. Windows XP gives you the capability to add even more. Additionally, these icons can be transformed into pop-up menus that expand and show the details. For example, instead of just displaying the My Computer icon, when you move your mouse over the icon, it can pop up a menu that will display shortcuts to each of the separate drives on your computer.

These new features allow you to be much more efficient when working with your computer. You can save yourself a lot of time by enabling the auto-expanding pop-up menu feature on many of the utility icons such as Control Panel. This way, you can have access to all of your Control Panel applets with just one click on the Start Menu.

Windows XP makes it possible to edit most of the navigation icons right from within the user interface so you don’t have to worry about hacking the registry in this section. To get started, follow these steps:

FIGURE 2-4: How to view Start Menu properties by right-clicking the Start button.

Right-click the Start button and select Properties, as shown in Figure 2-4.
You should now see the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window. Next, click the top Customize button, and the Start Menu settings will load.
The Customize Start Menu is where you can change many aspects of the Start panel; for now, click the Advanced tab. You will learn about some of the items on the General tab in the next few sections.
Once you have the Advanced tab displayed, you will see the Start Menu items scroll box. In this box you will see a list of all of the different features for the icons that can be displayed on the Start panel. Table 2-2 lists in detail all of the different features and their separate options. For demonstration purposes, let’s make the My Computer icon expand automatically to show all of the drives. Scroll down in the box until you see the My Computer title.
Then select the Display as a Menu option, as shown in Figure 2-5, to enable the Auto Expand feature.
Click OK twice, and your change is now complete.

As you can see, making changes to the items on the Start panel is quite simple. Take a look at Table 2-2 for more information on all of the navigation icons that you can customize with the method just described.

Switching to small icons for frequently run apps

The new Start panel includes a neat little feature that will keep track of all of the programs that you run and will place the most frequently run programs directly on the Start panel. I use this list of programs on the Start panel even more often than I use the All Programs pop-up menu because it is just much faster. One way that I like to customize my Start panel is to decrease the size of the icons on the left so that you can fit more icons on the screen. This way, more frequently run programs can be displayed. Figure 2-6 shows the difference between a Start panel that has been switched to use small icons compared to the normal Start panel.

Table 2-2 Start Panel Features
Feature	Description
Control Panel	By default, the Control Panel shortcut is shown and is selected to Display As A Link. I like selecting the Display As A Menu option, because it turns on the auto-expanding menu feature that displays all of the Control Panel applets without even having to open up the Control Panel. Doing so saves me a lot of time and is well worth it. If you do not want the Control Panel to be displayed, just click the Don’t Display This Item option
Help and Support	There’s not a lot that you can do with this one. If you use Help and Support frequently, let this one be; otherwise, uncheck it to free up some space on your Start panel
My Computer	The My Computer icon is one of the best candidates to enable the Display as a Menu feature so that it automatically expands to show you all of your drives. If you do not have any drives on your computer, feel free to disable the My Computer icon by selecting Don’t Display This Item
My Documents	By default, the My Documents shortcut is displayed just as a link. I suggest that you leave this feature set this way if you have a lot of documents in your My Documents folder. Enabling the Display As A Menu option when you have a lot of documents is just not worth it, because it gets so hard to find what you want. If you do not like the My Documents menu on the Start panel, just click the Don’t Display This Item option
My Music	The My Music folder is great, but most of us that have music on our computers have a lot more than just a few songs. I recommend that you leave this one alone as well, because enabling the Display As A Menu feature is counterproductive when you have more than a few songs. If you are like me and do not use the My Music folder, then click the Don’t Display This Item option and you will have made some more room on your Start panel
My Network Places	This is the icon that you can use to browse your local area network if your computer is on any type of local area network (LAN). If you want to connect to a remote computer to view their shared files, you will want to have this option selected. If you do not have a network card, and just use a modem, then I suggest that you uncheck this item because you will never use it
My Pictures	My Pictures is a nice link if you use the My Pictures folder to store your photos. But forget about enabling Display As A Menu on this one. Doing so will just give you a list of file names. With today’s digital cameras’ number schemes, you will never find the photo you want unless you can see a thumbnail. If you don’t use the My Pictures folder, click Don’t Display This Item and the shortcut will be removed
Network Connections	The Network Connections item can be very useful. If you have a dialup connection or even if you have a network adapter and are on a LAN, the network connection shortcut, when set to Display As A Menu, will allow you to easily access all of your connections to view and set properties as well as connect right from the Start panel
Printers and Faxes	No Printer? Uncheck this box
Run Command	I recommend that you leave this box checked, as you will be using this button in various directions throughout this tutorial
Search	Search for files a lot? If not, get rid of this shortcut to save yourself some room
Set Program Access and Defaults	You all probably know about Microsoft’s antitrust problems with the government. Part of their settlement required Microsoft to provide users an easy way to switch between default applications on their computers such as the default Web browser and Mail Client. This shortcut is useful, but it does not deserve to be on your Start panel. Uncheck this box to free up some room. You can access this feature later from within the Add and Remove Programs Control Panel applet
System Administrative Tools	The System Admin tools are the most useful tools besides the Control Panel. I highly recommend that you include this item on your Start panel in both the All Programs menu and the Start Menu by selecting the middle, all-inclusive option

Changing the icons is very easy. You just need to change one setting within the Start Menu properties. To do so, follow these steps:

Move your mouse over the Start button and right-click it with your mouse and then click Properties.
This will bring up the Start Menu Properties menu that you used in the last section. Here, you will want to click the Customize button.
On the General tab, you will see two options under Select An Icon Size For Programs. This is where you can change the icon size. Select Small Icons and then click OK.
Click OK once more and you are finished.

Now you will have made some more room so that you can display more frequently run programs on the Start panel. When you click the Start Menu, you may notice that there aren’t any

FIGURE 2-5: Customizing the Start panel by enabling the Display as a Menu feature for the Computer icon.

more programs showing up. That is because you also have to adjust the number of programs that will appear. The next section will show you how to adjust how many program shortcuts are displayed.

CHAPTER II Increasing Your System’s Performance

2008-07-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

Customizing User Navigation

customizing user navigation is the next stop on the Windows XP customizing road trip. In the last chapter, with the help of some cool hacks, you were able to change and improve the boot and logon screens. i will pick up from where 1 left off and will show you how to customize and improve the visual navigation elements of Windows XP.

This part starts off with customizing the look and contents of the cool new Start panel. This new screen can show a lot more than just your recently run programs. If you do not like the new Start panel, you can find out how to get the old classic Start Menu back. Then, you will learn some cool hacks to improve and customize the classic Start Menu. You cannot customize the Start panel and then leave out customizing the program listings. I will show you some cool hacks that will customize this as well.

To finish this chapter up, you’ll learn how to customize the taskbar on the bottom of your screen. The taskbar is a very essential part of navigating your computer. I will show you how to customize and improve its features and will give you some new ideas on how you can use it that may dramatically improve your experiences with Windows XP.

Customizing the Start Panel

The Start panel is what I call the new replacement for the traditional Start Menu that we are all familiar with from using previous versions of Windows. I call this the Start panel because it is not just a menu anymore. It is now a collection of various links and features all thrown onto one panel that pops up. It offers many new features, such as a dynamic list that places your most frequently run programs on the panel so that you can easily access them without having to navigate throughout the entire program listings. Additionally, the Start panel has replaced all of the icons on the desktop except for the Recycle Bin so that your desktop will look much cleaner and uncluttered.

Different tools and hacks are available that will allow you to customize the Start panel. Almost everything on it is customizable. You can add and remove items that are displayed, and you can even change the way it looks. With the many different options available, you can customize the way that different parts of the panel works. For example, you can change the number of frequently run programs that are displayed.

When you have finished reading these next few sections, you will have transformed your Start panel into something that is even more useful for your everyday tasks.

Using Group Policy Editor to customize the Start panel

The Group Policy Editor is a great tool that makes customizing the Start panel a snap. It is a very powerful tool that was not originally designed to be a tool that can customize but a tool for workplace management. Group policies were originally designed so that administrators can limit what a user can do on their computer. Let’s say you are responsible for hundreds of Windows machines at work. Most likely, you will want to limit what users can do on their computers so that they don’t accidentally install a harmful program or change a system setting that renders their computer useless. Group policies make it possible to limit a user’s access to critical areas of the operating system.

The most common use of the Group Policy Editor is to edit policy information on a domain controller. The domain controller can be thought of as a computer on a corporate network that is in charge of security. It is like a database of usernames, passwords, and configuration information. The Group Policy Editor is used by administrators to modify the user configuration data. The next time a user logs onto their computer, new policy information is downloaded and applied. Now the user is limited in what they can do on their computer.

Although the Group Policy Editor is primarily used for computer management in a business, it can also be used to customize an individual computer running Windows XP Professional. Because Microsoft wanted to support both small and large businesses, they have included a copy of the Group Policy Editor with every copy of Windows XP Professional. With that inclusion, even if a company was not large enough to have a domain controller, they could still limit and fine-tune a user’s experience. Unfortunately, Windows XP Home does not come with a copy of the Group Policy Editor. This exclusion was not by accident. Microsoft chose not to include a copy of this utility with XP Home because the Group Policy Editor was designed to be a business utility. And, well, XP Home is meant for use in the home.

Think you can get the Group Policy Editor to work by copying over the program file to a computer running Windows XP Home? Sorry, but I tried doing so, and the program would not start. So, the discussion in this section will only apply to those working with Windows XP Professional. If you are running XP Home, you will not be missing out on too much; the next section about adding and removing the different navigation icons will be compatible with your version.

Now that you know all about the Group Policy Editor, it is time to learn how you can use it to customize the Start panel. The Editor will enable you to enable and disable various different features. First, you’re going to find out how to get the Editor up and running. Then, you can check out a list of all of the relevant features you can use to customize the Start panel.

To begin customizing, follow these steps:

Click the Start Menu and select Run. Then type gpedit.msc into the box and click OK. This will start up the Group Policy Editor. If you get an error, make sure that you have typed the name of the file correctly and that you are running Windows XP Pro.
Now that you have the Group Policy Editor up and running, you will want to navigate to the Start Menu and Taskbar settings. This can be done by expanding the User Configuration, Administrative Templates, and the Start Menu and Taskbar folder.
Once you have navigated through the Editor, you will see a list of all of the different features of the Policy Editor, as shown in Figure 2-1. A number of features listed will only apply to the taskbar. Table 2-1 lists all of the relevant features and provides a description of what they will do. For the sake of demonstrating how to use the Editor, let’s assume that you want to remove the username from appearing on the top of the Start panel. Use your mouse to locate Remove User Name from the Start Menu list. Right-click it and select Properties.
The Remove User Name from the Start Menu Properties window will load. Then, to turn the feature on, just click the circle (known as a radio button) next to Enabled, as shown in Figure 2-2. Then, just click OK and you are finished.

FIGURE 2-1: The Group Policy Editor displaying a list of all of the different features itprovides for customizing the Start panel.

Table 2-1 Group Policy Features to Customize the Start Panel
Feature Name	Description
Add Log Off to Start Menu	If you do not have the Log Off button on your Start panel, this feature will display it when you set it to Enable. Some installations of Windows XP do not have this feature enabled by default. With these, the only way to log off your computer when the button is not displayed is to first click the Shutdown button and then click the Log Off button from the Shutdown menu that pops up. It is much easier and faster to just click the Log Off button in the first place
Remove All Programs list from the Start Menu	This feature will take out the All Programs link that displays the list of all of the applications installed on your computer. This feature is useful if you want to limit the programs someone has access to on your computer, or if you just want to do away with the old menu altogether. Set this feature to Enable and say goodbye to your program list
Remove Logoff on the Start Menu	This feature will remove the Logoff button from the Start panel. If you are one of the lucky users and your installation of Windows XP includes the button to log off, you can enable this feature to get rid of the button, if you have no use for it
Remove pinned programs from the Start Menu	Pinned programs are the list of programs that appear in the top left corner of the Start panel. By default, programs such as Internet Explorer and either Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook are displayed in this area, which shows the list of frequently run programs. If you would like to remove these links to programs so that you will have more room to display frequently run programs, as shown in Figure 2-3, set this feature to Enable and you are set
Remove user name from Start Menu	You already have experience with this setting from the procedure I walked you through. If you do not want your username to be shown on the top of the Start panel, then enable this feature. This may seem like a useless hack at first, but it may be useful in a variety of cases (such as if you are concerned about the security of your computer). Anyone that clicks your Start button will be shown your username. If you operate an Internet café or manage public computers, you are strongly advised to enable this feature
Prevent changes to Taskbar and Start Menu Settings	Once you get your Start panel and taskbar (see Customizing the Taskbar) looking the way you want, a good way to lock in your changes is to enable this feature

FIGURE 2-2: Enabling Remove User Name from the Start Menu Properties feature.

If you want to get your username back, just repeat the above directions but select the Disable Radio Button instead and then click OK.

Table 2-1 shows a list of all of the great features that will help you customize your copy of Windows XP Pro.

Wait to enable the feature that allows you to prevent changes to the taskbar and Start Menu until you have finished reading Part 1 of this book. Otherwise, you may run into unexpected programs as you are customizing various parts of your computer.

FIGURE 2-3: The Start panel with the pinned programs removed from the left side of the panel

Summary

2008-07-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

The first step in the complete customization of every aspect of your Windows XP is dealt till now. It started from the very beginning with the boot screen and worked through the different logon methods and how to customize each one. Then, it showed you how to make your computer even better by using a few nifty features to make it look and act great.

From now on ill deal with the next part of customizing your computer. First, you will learn all about customizing the new Windows XP Start panel. It show you how to get the most out of this new feature. Then, it will show you how you can revert to the old Start menu style and customize that as well.

After you have customized the heck out of your Start menu, you will be shown many cool ways to customize and improve the taskbar. Changing the makeup of the taskbar and the text of the Start button are a few sample topics from this section.

Till now i was having a cake walk as i have all this part written in advance. From now on it will take a little time for me to post as i need to type the whole thing.

Hope you are enjoying this journey. Stay in touch with me by posting comments.I can help you to in the specific problems you face

Enable Num Lock to be turned on by default

2008-07-11T19:20:00.000-07:00

If you have a password that has both numbers and letters and you frequently use the number pad to enter in part of your password, this hack is for you. I cannot count the number of times that I started to type in my password and then was faced with a logon error screen telling me that my password was not correct. I would sit there staring at the screen for a second before I realized that my Num Lock on my keyboard was not on.

This is a great hack for every desktop computer with a full-size keyboard with a separate number pad. Turning on the Num Lock by default on a laptop may not be a very good idea, because usually most laptops do not have a separate number pad. Enabling this feature on a laptop will result in almost half of your keyboard to function as the number pad and you would just be much better off using the numbers above the letters.

Start up Registry Editor by clicking the Start menu and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the text box and click OK.
Once Registry Editor loads, navigate through HKEY_USERS, .DEFAULT, Control Panel, and Keyboard.
Next, locate the InitialKeyboardIndicators entry, right-click it, and select Modify. You can enter various codes into this property, but all of them except for the code for Num Lock are pointless. For example, would you want your computer to start up caps-lock, which is code 1? Of course not. To enable Num Lock, you will want to enter 2 into the box.

Then click OK to save the changes, and that’s it!

If you are on a laptop and you attempted to enable Num Lock even though I told you not to and need to fix your system, repeat the above directions but replace the value of InitialKeyboardIndicators to 0 to disable the feature.

Working with the screensaver

2008-07-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

If you do not sign on to your computer after a specific amount of time, it will turn on the screensaver. Changing the screensaver and modifying its settings is not as easy as changing the screensaver that is displayed when you are already logged on. You can not change the screensaver of the Logon/Welcome screen from within Display properties as you would normally change a screensaver. The only way to edit these settings is through registry hacks. Follow these steps to change the screensaver as well as the inactivity time before the screensaver is activated:

1.First, you will need to start up the Registry Editor. Click the Start button and select Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.

2.Once the Registry Editor starts up, navigate through HKEY_USERS, .DEFAULT, Control Panel, and Desktop.

3.First, change the amount of time the system waits after the last activity detected before starting the screensaver. To do this, right-click the ScreenSaveTimeOut entry and select Modify. The amount of time to wait is stored in seconds. By default, the system will wait 600 seconds (10 minutes) before starting up the screensaver. If you want to change this value to something shorter, such as 1 minute, then just enter in a new value, which for one minute would be 60. Next, click OK to save your changes.

4.Next, change the screensaver that is displayed. By default, the boring flat Windows XP logo screensaver is displayed. Try something a little more exciting, such as the 3D flying Windows logo. To change the screensaver that is displayed, you will want to modify the SCRNSAVE.EXE entry. Right-click this entry and select Modify. You will want to change the value of logon.scr to reflect the name of the file for the screensaver that you want to use that is located in the C:\Windows\System32 directory. Because I did not know the name of the file for the 3D Windows XP screensaver, I had to do a search for all of the files on my computer that had a .scr extension by using the search feature in the Start menu and searching for *.scr, as shown in Figure 1-20. The name of the .scr files are usually very descriptive, so you will have no problem finding the right file. If for some reason you do, just double-click each file to launch a preview of the screensaver. After the search, I identified that the file for the 3D Windows screensaver was named 3D Windows XP.scr. One you have the name of the screensaver that you want to use, just replace logon.scr from the value window with the name of the file you want to use, such as 3D Windows XP.scr.

5.Click OK to save your changes, and the next time that your computer boots up, your new screensaver will be shown.

You can also use other screensavers that you have downloaded from the Internet. If the .scr file for the screensaver is not located in the Windows or Windows\System32 directory, you will have to enter in the whole path to the screensaver file instead of just the name.e, so you will have no problem finding the right file. If for some reason you do, just double-click each file to launch a preview of the screensaver.

FIGURE 1-20: Using the search feature of Windows XP to find the filenames of the installed screensavers.

Clearing the last user logged on

2008-07-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

Every time a user logs into your computer, their username is stored, and that name is displayed the next time the classic logon screen is displayed. This can be a nice feature, but it also can be a feature that causes a security problem. Knowing a user’s username is half the battle of breaking into a computer. If you have sensitive information on your computer, I suggest that you follow these instructions to hide the last user logged on:

Start up the Registry Editor again by clicking the Start menu and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.
Navigate through HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, policies, and system. Locate the DontDisplayLastUserName entry.
Right-click the entry and select Modify. Then type in a 1 to activate the feature, as shown in Figure 1-19. Click OK, and you are finished.

If you ever want to reverse this hack, just repeat the instructions above and replace the 1 with a 0 for the value of DontDisplayLastUserName.

Global logon/Welcome settings

A few hacks can modify the system logon for users of both the Welcome screen and the classic logon interface. These features can improve the quality of the screens, turn on different key locks, and fine-tune other settings such as the screensaver.

Turn on clear type

Users of flat-panel LCD monitors as well as users of laptops can take advantage of a cool new feature in Windows XP called ClearType. This new technology is an advanced version of the font-smoothing technologies that existed in previous Windows versions. When this new font-smoothing technology is turned on, the entire screen will look significantly better.

Normally, this feature is only available after a user logs into the computer, but with the help of a cool registry hack, you can enable this feature to start up before a user logs in. Follow these steps to get started:

FIGURE 1-19: Making the computer clear the last user that logged on using the Registry Editor editing the DontDisplayLastUserName entry.

Start up the Registry Editor by clicking the Start menu and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.
Once Registry Editor starts up, navigate through HKEY_USERS, .DEFAULT, Control Panel, and Desktop.
Locate the ForegroundFlashCount entry and right-click it and select Modify. There are three different options for the value of this property. 0 indicates that font smoothing will be disabled, 1 indicates to use standard font smoothing, and 2 indicates to use ClearType font smoothing.
Replace the value of the property with 2 to enable ClearType and then click OK to save the change.

That’s it—you are finished. You will notice that your logon screen is now much smoother than before. Some users do not like this new smooth look, so if you are one of those that miss the extra-crispy look, repeat the preceding instructions but replace the 2 with a 1 to set it back to the default settings.

Users of CRT monitors (the once-standard cathode ray tube-based monitors) can attempt to use this tweak, but ClearType was designed especially for LCD monitors, so if you are using a CRT monitor, you will not see much improvement, if any. But it doesn’t hurt to try! Working with the screensaver

First, you will need to start up the Registry Editor. Click the Start button and select Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.
Once the Registry Editor starts up, navigate through HKEY_USERS, .DEFAULT, Control Panel, and Desktop.
First, change the amount of time the system waits after the last activity detected before starting the screensaver. To do this, right-click the ScreenSaveTimeOut entry and select Modify. The amount of time to wait is stored in seconds. By default, the system will wait 600 seconds (10 minutes) before starting up the screensaver. If you want to change this value to something shorter, such as 1 minute, then just enter in a new value, which for one minute would be 60. Next, click OK to save your changes.
Next, change the screensaver that is displayed. By default, the boring flat Windows XP logo screensaver is displayed. Try something a little more exciting, such as the 3D flying Windows logo. To change the screensaver that is displayed, you will want to modify the SCRNSAVE.EXE entry. Right-click this entry and select Modify. You will want to change the value of logon.scr to reflect the name of the file for the screensaver that you want to use that is located in the C:\Windows\System32 directory. Because I did not know the name of the file for the 3D Windows XP screensaver, I had to do a search for all of the files on my computer that had a .scr extension by using the search feature in the Start menu and searching for *.scr, as shown in Figure 1-20. The name of the .scr files are usually very descriptivUsers of CRT monitors (the once-standard cathode ray tube-based monitors) can attempt to use this tweak, but ClearType was designed especially for LCD monitors, so if you are using a CRT monitor, you will not see much improvement, if any. But it doesn’t hurt to try!

Using LogonStudio to change the Welcome screen

2008-07-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

LogonStudio is a software app that was developed by Stardock. This application is similar to the BootSkin application, discussed previously, in that it does not modify the system files. Although this method is very simple to use, the Welcome screens must be designed to work with LogonStudio. This is not a big deal, because there are hundreds of Welcome screens that people already made for this program, but users will find that they will not be able to use any of the thousands of Welcome screens made from hacked system files. Depending on what Welcome screen you like, you may or may not be able to use it with this program.

Although you have to give up a little flexibility in the screens that you can use, you will have added safety and ease of use. Because you will not be working with hacked system files, you don’t have to worry about getting the correct version and the possible problems that running an older version could cause. Also, using LogonStudio is very easy. You can change your Welcome screen with just a few clicks.

To get started, you will need to download a copy of LogonStudio at Stardock’s Web site: www.stardock.com/products/logonstudio/download.html. Once you have the app downloaded and installed, most likely you will want to download a cool Welcome screen to use with it. You can download hundreds of Welcome screens from the following sites:

WinCustomize: www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=26

SkinPlanet : www.skinplant.com/library.cfm?lib=5

DeviantArt : www.skins.deviantart.com/windows/xplogon/

Skinbase: www.skinbase.org/section.php?sections=logonstudio

Once you have downloaded a few screens, you can install them by just double-clicking them if they have a .logonxp file extension, which will open them up. If the files that you download do not have a .logonxp file extension and instead just have a .zip file extension, rename the files to .logonxp so that you can easily import them into LogonStudio. LogonStudio will then be started automatically and will display the new Welcome screen in the preview box, as shown in Figure 1-12, when the files are double-clicked.

If for some reason the Welcome screen that you download does not have a .logonxp file extension, and is just a .zip file with a folder containing several bitmap image and configuration files, you can still install the Welcome screen. If you have a Welcome screen that fits that description, then you will just have to manually copy the folder with the Welcome screen files to the LogonStudio folder that is normally located at C:\ProgramFiles\WinCustomize\ LogonStudio.

FIGURE 1-12: LogonStudio showing new Welcome screen installed

When you browse to the LogonStudio folder, you will notice that each Welcome screen has its own folder with the files for the Welcome screen inside. If you ever want to delete a Welcome screen, just delete the folder with the corresponding name.

Changing the Welcome screen with LogonStudio is very easy to do. Just click the name of the screen from the available logons list. A preview will show up in the preview box, and if you like it, click Apply or OK and you are finished.

Depending on your computer setup, you may experience problems when using some Welcome screens with monitors that are set at a large resolution. If you experience a problem like this with a specific Welcome screen, you are out of luck. Try finding a different version of the Welcome screen that was made for higher resolutions. This can be very difficult because resolution data is usually not posted with the Welcome screens.

If you ever want to revert to the original system Welcome screen, just click the Restore Default XP Logon button and it will uninstall the LogonStudio app and prevent it from taking over the Welcome screen. You will also have to do this if you are using LogonStudio to display a Welcome screen and then want to use a hacked system file Welcome screen. First, you will have to start up

LogonStudio and click the Restore Default button, and then you can edit the registry to point to the new Welcome screen. If you do not click the Restore button in LogonStudio, then you will never see your new hacked system file because LogonStudio will still be active and will automatically replace it.

Creating your own Welcome screen from a hacked system file

When users first started to change their Welcome screen, they used the same approach that was used with the boot screens. Resource-hacking tools such as Resource Hacker were used to replace the bitmaps that are stored inside the logonui.exe file. Then, they would adjust the string values within the file with the same tool to change the layout of the screen. Although there are now apps that were built to make Welcome screens easier, I still believe that the best way to create a Welcome screen by hacking your system file is to use Resource Hacker. I have had problems with other tools that attempt to automate the process of hacking the system file resources because the programs will usually only work with one version of the system file. If you have a newer system file than the program was designed to work with, then you won’t see the Welcome screen.

As I stated earlier, the best way to create a Welcome screen from a hacked system file is to do it manually using a cool app called Resource Hacker (www.users.on.net/johnson/ resourcehacker), written by Angus Johnson. This method will allow you the greatest amount of flexibility because you are not limited to the features of a Welcome screen editor.

Although this method is a little complex, it is the best way to create a high-quality and unique Welcome screen.

I am going to show you the basics of how to get started, but I am not going to go into great detail on all of the great things that you can do because there are just too many. Instead, at the end, I will tell you about some great Web sites that I use as references when I want to make a Welcome screen from scratch.

The first step is to make a copy of your logonui.exe file. This file can be found in the System32 directory inside the Windows directory. The exact path is usually C:\WINDOWS\system32. Copy the file to a new folder, maybe your Welcomescreen folder. Also, feel free to rename the file at this time. You can name it anything you want, because when you want to install it, you just have to enter the path and the file name in the registry as you did above when installing a custom hacked system file Welcome screen.
Next, you can start editing the bitmaps in the file. To do this, I recommend using Resource Hacker. You can download a copy of Resource Hacker by visiting www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker. Once you get a copy up and running, open up the logonui file that you just copied. You can do this by clicking the file menu bar item and selecting the file from your drive.
Once the file loads in Resource Hacker, you will see an interface similar to Windows Explorer. You will have four folders: UIFILE, Bitmap, String Table, and Version Info. To get started, expand the Bitmap folder. You will then see several more folders that are numbered. Every numbered folder contains a different image. Expand the numbered folder for a preview of the image that is stored inside it.

FIGURE 1-13: Using Resource Hacker to replace bitmaps in the logonui.exe Welcome screen file.

Now let’s assume that you want to extract one image out of Resource Hacker so that you can modify it using your favorite paint program and then replace the old image with your modified one. To extract an image, make sure that the image you want is selected and displayed in the preview pane and then click the Actions item from the menu and select Save [Bitmap : XXX : XXXX ], where the X’s are numbers. Once you have an image modified, or if you want to completely replace an existing image, click the Action menu bar item again. Select Replace Bitmap. This will bring up a new screen that will list all of the bitmaps in the file. Click the Open File With New Bitmap button and select the image you want to import. Make sure it is a Windows Bitmap file, as JPEGs and GIFs will not work! Next, scroll through the list, as shown in Figure 1-13, and select the image that you want to replace. Click the Replace button and you are finished.
Once you get all of the bitmap images swapped out with ones you made yourself, you can move on to editing some of the strings in the string table folder. This is where all of the font names and text that appear on the Welcome screen is stored. You can edit the text just like using a text editor. Just be careful that you do not accidentally delete a quote from the ends of the strings. Also, do not change the index numbers or you will run into problems. Once you are finished editing a specific string table, just click the Compile script button and you are finished with the strings.
The next part allows you to be really creative but it also can be really complex. The UIFILE folder stores all of the detailed configuration information for the screen. Items such as transparency levels and font sizes are stored here. When you first view the UIFILE 1033 resource, you may not see anything at all. Just scroll down and you will begin to see the script. Just like the string table, when you are finished editing it, click the Compile Script button.
The last step is to save your changes to the file by clicking the File menu bar item again and just click Save. Now, you can edit the registry to test out your new screen.

It will probably take you a little while to finally get the screen the way you want it. One site that I use as a reference is called Windows XP Logon Screen Secrets, written by Paul Andrews, which is located at webpages.charter.net/joolsie/LogonScreens.htm. This is a great site that will tell you all of the details on how to modify the UIFILE so that you can get the most out of your Welcome screen.

Creating a Welcome screen with LogonStudio

LogonStudio is not only a great program to change your Welcome screen with, but it also is a good program to create it with too. If you do not want to waste a few hours manually perfecting your Welcome screen and do not desire the flexibility the manual approach offers, then using LogonStudio is the app for you.

Creating a Welcome screen with LogonStudio is very simple. Also, you can easily edit welcome screens that you downloaded by clicking the Edit button from within LogonStudio when you have selected a screen. However, some of the screens will not be able to be edited because significant changes have been made to Logon Studio recently that make some of the earlier Welcome screens incompatible with the editor.

To create a new Welcome screen from scratch, follow these steps:

First, if LogonStudio is not already started, start it up from the Start menu’s All Programs menu in the WinCustomize folder. Once it is started, click the New button, as shown in Figure 1-14. This will bring up a new window that will ask you for details on the new Welcome screen, such as the name and the author’s information. Fill it out, and then click the Create button.
Next, the editor will show up and you will see what looks like the default Windows XP Welcome screen. The best way to get started is to just start playing around with different features. When working in the editor, there are two different ways to select an item to work on. You can just click most items, but if you want to get to an item faster, or an item that you cannot click, use the Elements browser. Using the editor is a lot like

FIGURE 1-14: Using LogonStudio to create a new Welcome screen

programming in Microsoft’s Visual Basic. When you click an element, you will see a list of properties appear in the Properties browser.

For example, let’s assume that you want to change the background color. To do this, you can click the blue background, or you can select the Center Panel from the Elements browser. Once the Center Panel is selected, you will see several properties appear in the property browser. The ones that you will be interested in working with to change the background color are Firstcolor and Lastcolor. To change the color, just click the color boxes in the Property browser and select a new color, as shown in Figure 1-15.
Working with images is also very easy with the editor. If you want to set a photo or an image you made as the background for the Welcome screen, you can just select the [Bitmap] property of the picture properties item from the Center Panel element browser. Once you select your bitmap and it is displayed, you may want to change how it is displayed such as if it is a pattern and you want it titled or if you want it stretched across the screen. To do that, just click the Style properties drop-down box and select the style you want.
Replacing the images for the different buttons is also very easy. Just use your mouse to select the image that you want to change, and then one property, called [Bitmap], will appear in the Properties browser. Just click the three dotted icon in the Properties browser. A new dialog box will pop up, giving you the option to edit or browse. If you click Edit, the image will open up in MS Paint for you to edit it. If you already have a new image that you want to use, then just click Browse and select the replacement

FIGURE 1-15: LogonStudio Editor showing how to change the color.

When you are creating graphics for your Welcome screen and want parts of the image to be transparent, such as the background around a button you made, just paint the background with the light pink color (Red: 255, Green: 0, Blue: 255). This is the default color for transparency in Windows.

You will not always want some elements in the Welcome screen. For example, you probably won’t want the dividers that appear in the center of the screen and the dividers at the top and bottom sections. These dividers are just images. One easy way to get rid of them is to click the center divider line to bring up the Dividers property browser, then just click the three dotted icons and uncheck the Use Picture box when the dialog box pops up.
Editing the text of the Welcome screen is just like editing the text in any word processing program. Just click the text, and you will see all of the properties in the Property browser for the font, size, and color. You can even change what the text says by modifying the Caption property.
The area that displays the users account, known as the User Account element, may take the most time to get it looking the way you want. Dozens of different properties are in this area, one of which specifies the location of the user’s accounts on the Welcome screen. This property is called the Account property. It shows a number that signifies a region on the screen. Click the button to the right of the number and you will get a visual map of the different locations. Select a location by clicking it. Another type of property in this section is the Alpha properties, which has three subproperties. These have to do with how visible the accounts are at different stages. 0 is not visible at all and 255 is completely visible. The Alpha Mouse subproperty is used to adjust the Alpha levels when the mouse is hovering over the name block. Alpha Selected is when the user has clicked the name and Alpha Normal is when the name has not been selected and the mouse is not hovering over it. BackColor is the name of another property in the section as well, which sets the background color for the account. When using this part of the editor, I discovered a small bug in the preview window. For some reason, the preview does not show the back color of the user’s account. Instead, it just displays the blue gradation bitmap from the default Welcome screen. Don’t worry too much about this bug, because it is only in the preview screen and will not affect your Welcome screen when it is in use. Once you change the color, the color change is saved, just not displayed.
You now know about all of the different parts of the editor and the basics of how to make a good-looking Welcome screen. Once you are finished, click the Save button (the two disks) and you are finished. If you want to save and view the Welcome screen at the same time, click the Logon menu bar item and select Save and Apply.

You now know the ins and outs of creating your own Welcome screen using LogonStudio. I personally use the method to create and manage my Welcome screens. It is just easier than using the resource hacker and I can live without the added flexibility that the resource hacker provides.

LogonStudio also has a feature that allows you to import hacked system file Welcome screens that you used in the first section on changing the Welcome screen. Although this feature makes it a little easier to convert the Welcome screen to the new format by extracting the images, usually the layout and all of the strings are messed up and require adjustment. If you have a lot of free time, try experimenting with this feature. I have not yet been able to get it to work 100 percent of the time.

Working with the classic logon screen

The classic logon screen, also known as the Windows 2000 style screen, has many benefits over the new Welcome screen for some users. Users that are concerned about the security of their system often do not want a list of all of the user’s accounts to be displayed when they turn on the computer.

In corporate environments, the classic logon screen provides the capability to log into domains (Windows network security servers), although the Welcome screen does not have this capability. Additionally, some people just do not like change that much and they do not like the new welcome screen. Also, if you are a minimalist and like to keep things simple and uncluttered, you may like the classic logon screen better because it is very simple and only takes up a small amount of your screen.

This next section is dedicated to showing you how to turn on the classic logon screen as well as customize it a bit.

Switching to classic logon

The classic logon can always be reached on the Welcome screen by pressing Ctrl Alt Delete two times. If you want to completely get rid of the Welcome screen, doing so is very simple. Before you disable the Welcome screen, you should also be aware that doing so will disable Fast User Switching. Fast User Switching gives you the ability to switch between accounts on your computer without having to log out of one account to log on to another. Most users never use this feature, so having it disabled will not change anything. Follow these steps to kill the new Welcome screen:

Click the Start menu and select Run. Then type nusrmgr.cpl in the box and click OK. This will start up the User Accounts control panel applet.
Once you see the User Accounts app, click Change The Way Users Log On Or Off. Then, uncheck the box next to Use The Welcome Screen, as shown in Figure 1-16, and click Apply Options.
Now, you will no longer see the Welcome screen. If you ever want to use the Welcome screen again, just go back into the User Accounts control panel applet and check the box for the Use The Welcome Screen.

Now that you have the classic logon screen activated, there are a few things that you can do to make it look a little better and unique.

Changing the logon screen background color as well as the visual style and color scheme of the logon screen are all examples of ways you can hack the classic logon screen to make it unique.

Changing the Logon Background

Ever want to change the background color of the classic logon screen from light blue to some new color? Windows makes this difficult, because there are no options anywhere in graphical user interfaces of Windows to change it. However, with the help of the Registry Editor, you can easily change the color of the logon screen. To get started, follow these steps:

First, you will want to start up the Registry Editor by clicking the Start menu and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.
Once the Registry Editor starts up, you will want to expand HKEY_USERS, DEFAULT, Control Panel, and then Colors.

FIGURE 1-16: Disabling the Welcome screen using the User Accounts Control Panel applet.

Once you have expanded the Colors key, you will see all of the different default user settings. These are all of the settings that are used on the logon screen. The entry that you will be interested in is called Background. You will notice that the background entry has a value that contains three different numbers. Each of these numbers represents a different color makeup in the RGB color format. The first number is red, the second is green, and the third is blue. The numbers can range from 0 to 255. A RGB Value of “255 255 255” is white; “0 0 0” is black. Changing the color is not as simple as replacing the numbers with the word red; first you have to convert the color that you want to use to the correct RGB numbers.

An easy way to convert a color to a RGB number value is to use Microsoft Paint, which can be found in the Start menu under Accessories. Once you have Paint up and running, double-click one of the colors in the color palette; this will bring up the Edit Colors window. Next, click the Define Custom Colors button. This will expand the window and will show you the Red, Green, and Blue values for any color you select. Click the boxes in the Basic Colors section to see their RGB values or if you do not see a color you like, use your mouse to click around on the color image to the right to get a custom color. Once you have found a color you like, just write down the number of Red, Green, and Blue. These values can be found in the lower-right corner of the screen.

FIGURE 1-17: Changing the background color of the logon screen with the system Registry Editor

When you have found the color that you want to use as the background and have also converted it to the Red, Green, and Blue format, you are ready to edit the entry. Right click the entry, as shown in Figure 1-17, and select Modify.
In the Edit String box, replace the numbers so that the first number is the number of red, followed by a space. Then, repeat that format for the other two colors so that your entry looks something like this entry for orange, “255 128 0”. Click OK when you are finished to save the change.

Once you change the color, the next time you reboot and the classic logon screen is displayed,you will see your new background color.

If you ever want to revert your computer back to the default blue color, repeat the steps above to change the color and set the value of the background entry to “0 78 152”.

Setting a background image for the logon screen

If you do not want to change the color of the screen, perhaps you have an image that you would like to set as the background to appear behind the logon window. Once again, the only way to set this is to use the Registry Editor to hack the default user settings which are displayed on the logon screen. To get started, follow these steps:

Click the Start menu and select Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK. This will start up the Registry Editor.
Once the Registry Editor has loaded, you will want to expand HKEY_USERS, DEFAULT, Control Panel, and the Desktop key. Next, you should see all of the different entries for desktop properties. The entries that you will be interested in are Wallpaper and WallpaperStyle.
Right-click the Wallpaper entry and select Modify. Then type in the full path to the image that you want to use on your computer. Let’s assume that you want to set the nice grassy hills photo as your background. This file is located at C:\WINDOWS\Web\ Wallpaper. The name of the file is bliss.bmp. Therefore, the full path of the image file is C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper\bliss.bmp.
Once you have the path to the file set, you can click the OK button to save the change. Now you can change the WallpaperStyle entry if you want to change how the wall paper will be displayed. You have three different options: 0 centered, 1 tiled, 2 stretched to full screen. If you want to change the way it is displayed, just right-click the WallpaperStyle entry and select Modify, then enter the corresponding number value for the style you want to use. Click OK to save, and you are finished!

Now you have worked with customizing the look of the background, let’s move on to changing the way the sign-in box looks.

Changing the visual style and color scheme

Changing the visual style and color scheme can greatly increase the visual appeal of the classic logon screen. Instead of using the default blue Windows XP style on the screen, you can specify any style that is installed on your computer as well as the different color schemes that some styles have. This hack works great in combination with setting a background image. You can create a nice clean look that still looks good without using the Welcome screen.

To get started, you will be using the Registry Editor again. Also, before you can change the visual style, you should be aware that you will need to apply a patch to your system so that you can run Visual styles that other people have made for Windows XP. More on this will come in future posts, where you will find out where to get Visual styles from and how to install them. Just be aware that you will not be able to change the visual style of the classic logon window until you have read those things. So be patient for that. If you attempt to change it now, on an unpatched system, you will run into problems. However, if you just want to change the color scheme of the default Windows XP style, then you will have no problems right now at all. Now that I have warned you about the possible problems you may encounter, let’s get started:

Click the Start menu and select Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.
Once the Registry Editor is open, navigate through HKEY_USERS, .DEFAULT, Software, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, and ThemeManager. You will now see all of the theme properties for the logon screen. The two entries that you will be working with are ColorName and DllName. ColorName specifies the color scheme of the current visual style that is specified in the DllName property.
First, let’s change the color scheme of the default Windows XP style. You have three different choices for the ColorName value: NormalColor (default blue look), Metallic(silver), Homestead (olive green look). To change this property, just right-click it and select Modify. Then change the value to the corresponding value for the color scheme you want to use, such as Homestead, as shown in Figure 1-18. For example, if you want to use the olive green look on the classic logon screen, you will want to set the ColorName value to Homestead.

FIGURE 1-18: Modifying the color scheme of the default Windows XP visual style with the Once you reboot or log out, you will see the changes that you made.

If you are having display problems after you install a new visual style, make sure that you have properly patched your computer. Remember, you have to patch your computer, not just install a program like Style XP.

My 3 solutions to open orkut if its blocked in your college

2008-07-10T00:25:00.000-07:00

This is a bit off topic. I am posting this as some of my friends have stated that they are unable to open some secured sites. This is a refresher for them and who have same kind of probs.

FIRST

The easiest way to bypass internet restrictions that are implemented by your school/work/any other facility is through a proxy.

For example:
www.safeforwork.net
www.hideus.com

Simply put, through a proxy site you will be able to access orkut.com and any other site without being stopped in your tracks

SECOND

Sometimes, you can bypass the firewall without a proxy:
If you have windows os or similar, go to start>run, to open command prompt, and type: ping , and type that ip address into the browser rather than a specific url, and it may work.

Otherwise, a proxy might work.

THIRD

orkut can'nt be opened when using a winproxy or when ip based filters are used but u can cope up with it by following following steps. :

goto : "www.calculatepie.com" and enter the address "www.orkut.com" in the textbox below it

uncheck 'show this form' and 'show url entry form' and 'block ads' check boxes and click "BEGIN BROWSING" button

now even the toughest cases should cope up without problem...
hoping a good time !:-)

The Above are the steps to follaw if its blocked. Keep changing proxies so that you can become extramely unpredictable. The below is the description of what happens or how this actually help you browse those sites in a secure network
What are proxies or how do I protect my anonymity?

From the Latin word "proximus" which means "close". A proxy is actually a server which helps you have anonymity on the Internet. It is like a wall between you and the net. When you use a proxy, the webpage on the other side won't be able to see you, but just the wall (proxy), thus making you anonymous.

When you want to use a proxy all you need is the Internet address of that proxy (an IP) and the port through which you can use it. The advantages of proxies versus other methods are many. First of all almost all programs these days which can connect to the internet, can use proxies, so this makes them a very popular protection method. Another positive element of a proxy can be that it sometimes removes cookies, banners, ads thus making your web surfing much faster.

Of course it can have downsides, like the fact that most public proxies are not very reliable, and that the proxy administrator can spy on your traffic.

If you want to get a proxy address try this page http://www.aliveproxy.com, and look for highly anonymous proxies. The transparent proxies and the anonymous proxies can still give out informations about you.

proxy server

A server that sits between a client application, such as a Web browser, and a real server. It intercepts all requests to the real server to see if it can fulfill the requests itself. If not, it forwards the request to the real server.

Proxy servers have two main purposes:

Improve Performance: Proxy servers can dramatically improve performance for groups of users. This is because it saves the results of all requests for a certain amount of time. Consider the case where both user X and user Y access the World Wide Web through a proxy server. First user X requests a certain Web page, which we'll call Page 1. Sometime later, user Y requests the same page. Instead of forwarding the request to the Web server where Page 1 resides, which can be a time-consuming operation, the proxy server simply returns the Page 1 that it already fetched for user X. Since the proxy server is often on the same network as the user, this is a much faster operation. Real proxy servers support hundreds or thousands of users. The major online services such as America Online, MSN and Yahoo, for example, employ an array of proxy servers.

Filter Requests: Proxy servers can also be used to filter requests. For example, a company might use a proxy server to prevent its employees from accessing a specific set of Web sites.

What is a Proxy Server?

A proxy server is a computer that offers a computer network service to allow clients to make indirect network connections to other network services. A client connects to the proxy server, then requests a connection, file, or other resource available on a different server. The proxy provides the resource either by connecting to the specified server or by serving it from a cache. In some cases, the proxy may alter the client's request or the server's response for various purposes.
Web proxies

A common proxy application is a caching Web proxy. This provides a nearby cache of Web pages and files available on remote Web servers, allowing local network clients to access them more quickly or reliably.

When it receives a request for a Web resource (specified by a URL), a caching proxy looks for the resulting URL in its local cache. If found, it returns the document immediately. Otherwise it fetches it from the remote server, returns it to the requester and saves a copy in the cache. The cache usually uses an expiry algorithm to remove documents from the cache, according to their age, size, and access history. Two simple cache algorithms are Least Recently Used (LRU) and Least Frequently Used (LFU). LRU removes the least-recently used documents, and LFU removes the least-frequently used documents.

Web proxies can also filter the content of Web pages served. Some censorware applications — which attempt to block offensive Web content — are implemented as Web proxies. Other web proxies reformat web pages for a specific purpose or audience; for example, Skweezer reformats web pages for cell phones and PDAs. Network operators can also deploy proxies to intercept computer viruses and other hostile content served from remote Web pages.

A special case of web proxies are "CGI proxies." These are web sites which allow a user to access a site through them. They generally use PHP or CGI to implement the proxying functionality. CGI proxies are frequently used to gain access to web sites blocked by corporate or school proxies. Since they also hide the user's own IP address from the web sites they access through the proxy, they are sometimes also used to gain a degree of anonymity.

You may see references to four different types of proxy servers:

Transparent Proxy - This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server and also makes the original IP address available through the http headers. These are generally used for their ability to cache websites and do not effectively provide any anonymity to those who use them. However, the use of a transparent proxy will get you around simple IP bans. They are transparent in the terms that your IP address is exposed, not transparent in the terms that you do not know that you are using it (your system is not specifically configured to use it.)

Anonymous Proxy - This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server, but does not make the original IP address available. This type of proxy server is detectable, but provides reasonable anonymity for most users.

Distorting Proxy - This type of proxy server identifies itself as a proxy server, but make an incorrect original IP address available through the http headers.

High Anonymity Proxy - This type of proxy server does not identify itself as a proxy server and does not make available the original IP address

Customizing the Logon Screen

2008-07-09T23:29:00.000-07:00

Windows XP has introduced a great new way to log on to your computer, known as the welcome screen. The new Welcome screen provides a refined method to log on compared to the old boring Windows 2000 logon screen. Not only does the new screen look good, but users can now see all of the users set up on the machine and can easily log on by clicking the user’s name.

This Welcome screen has provided a nice alternative to the old logon method, but some people just don’t like change and want the old logon method back. If you are one of the users that wants to say goodbye to the Welcome screen, then this section will not only help you get it back, but it also will show you some neat tricks to make it a little more visually appealing. If you thought the new logon screen is cool, you will love this next section about making the welcome screen even cooler.

Working with the Welcome screen

The Welcome screen is one of the most versatile parts of the whole operating system. It is possible to customize the heck out of this screen. You can completely change the way it looks, the locations of all of the buttons and images, and much more. You can even restrict what is displayed on it. The Welcome screen is great for users that want to customize their boxes.

Changing a users icon on the Welcome screen

Each user that is set up on your computer can associate an image that appears next to his or her name on the Welcome screen, as shown in Figure 1-8. By default, Windows will randomly

FIGURE 1-8: The new Windows Welcome screen with an image next to the user’s name.

select an image for you, but this selection can easily be changed. If you do not like the images that Windows has to offer, you can select any other image.

The process of changing a user’s image is very simple. Just perform the following steps and you

will have it changed in no time:

Open up the user manager by clicking the Start menu and selecting Run. Then type in nusrmgr.cpl and click OK. This is a shortcut to User Accounts that will save you time going to Control Panel and then clicking the User Accounts icon.
This will start up the New User Accounts Manager. To change a user’s picture, just click the user name.
Then, click Change My Picture text and you will see a screen with all of the different images that are built into Windows XP.
If you see one you like, just select it by clicking it and then click the Change Picture but ton. If you do not like any of them, click the Browse for More Pictures option, as shown in Figure 1-9.

FIGURE 1-9: User Accounts’ change image screen showing the option to select additional images for a user’s picture.

This will pop up a Browse dialog box. Browse though your files and select the image that you want to use, and click Open. Any image that you select will automatically be resized to fit. If you want to make a image that will take up all of the space, the correct aspect ratio is 1 to 1, as the size of the square that is displayed is 48 48 pixels.

Now you have changed a user’s Welcome screen image and also the image that is displayed in

that user’s Start panel.

Removing a user from the Welcome screen

One of the unfortunate side effects of the Welcome screen is the listing of all of the user accounts on the computer. What if there is an account that you do not want the whole world to see? Using the same feature that Microsoft uses to hide system accounts from the Welcome screen, you can hide user accounts as well.

Hiding user accounts can be done by a simple hack in the registry. Hidden away in the local system settings is a list of accounts that Microsoft does not want to appear on the Welcome screen. These accounts are primarily system accounts under which different processes that run in the background use to execute.

To hide a user from the Welcome screen, all you have to do is create an entry on the list for the user you want to hide. Follow these steps to find out how to add a user to the list:

Click the Start button and select Run, then type regedit in the box and click OK.
This will start up the system Registry Editor. You are going to want to expand the fol lowing keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Microsoft, Windows NT, CurrentVersion, Winlogon, SpecialAccounts, and UserList.
You should now see the list of the account names, and parts of account names, that the sys tem will look for and will hide. To add a name to the list, just right-click and select New1 DWORD value, as shown in Figure 1-10. A DWORD is a specific data type of an entry in the system registry. In short, the DWORD data type allows an integer value to be stored.
When the new key is created, enter in the name of the user’s account as the name of the key. Once you have done this, you can close regedit.

After log off and back on or reboot, the user will not be displayed on the Welcome screen. If you ever want to log into the account that you hid from the Welcome screen, just press Ctrl Alt Delete on your keyboard once, twice, and you will be able to type in the name of the user under which you want to log in. This way, you can hide an account from your family or friends but can still log into it.

If you ever change your mind and want the account to be displayed on the Welcome screen again, just delete the entry that you made in the list in the System Registry and everything will be back the way it was.

Changing the Welcome screen

The new blue Welcome screen looks great, but after a while, a change would be nice. Also, modifying the Welcome screen is another way you can customize your computer and make it

FIGURE 1-10: Using the Registry Editor to add another DWORD value for the name of a user that will be hidden on the Welcome screen.

more unique. You can change the Welcome screen by two different methods using different tools. As with the methods to change the boot screens, there are different advantages to each. The first way to change the Welcome screen will be a manual approach that may not be the easiest method available but will allow you to use any of the thousands of hacked logon screens on the Web. The other method will be much easier, but it will be limited to only using welcome screens that were made especially for the program.

Manually changing the Welcome screen

Changing the Welcome screen manually is not as complicated as you would think. A value in the registry needs to be changed to point to the Welcome screen you want to use. Once you do that, you are finished.

To get started, you are going to want to download a few Welcome screens (also referred to as logon screens) from the Web. The following are two sites from which you can download thousands of Welcome screens:

ThemeXP: www.themexp.org/cat_login.php

Belchfire: www.belchfire.net/showgallery-6.html

Visit both of these sites and download some different logon screens and then experiment with them. When selecting a boot screen, you need to find one that will look good with your screen’s current resolution. If you have a very large monitor (19-inch and greater) and are using a large resolution (1280 1024 or greater), you may have difficulty finding Welcome screens that were made for your computer’s high resolution. If you are an owner of a large monitor or resolution, the only workaround or solution to the problem would be to create a logon screen of your own or write the author of the screen asking them to release a version for your specific resolution. Additionally, you will need to make sure the Welcome screens are compatible with your computer’s operating system version.

Just like the hacked system files for the boot screens, these Welcome screens are just another hacked system file, so you still have to watch out for version conflicts. Although if you accidentally downloaded a Welcome screen that is the wrong version, then you will have a far less serious problem than if you downloaded the wrong version of a boot screen.

You will find that a lot of the Welcome screens that you download do not have a version marked. To find what version you are selecting, just extract the ZIP file or self extracting archive, right-click it, and select Properties. Doing so will bring up the properties, and you will be able to see the version. If the version says 6.0.2600.0, then you have a Welcome screen file from the very first version of XP. On a computer with Windows XP Service Pack 1 installed, the logonui.exe file has a version number of 6.0.2800.1106. If the version is not similar to 6.0.2XXX.X then you may not have downloaded a valid file. In theory, if you replace a file with an earlier version, you might run into some problems.

I replaced my newer Service Pack 1 Welcome screen with a Welcome screen that was made with a system file from the original version of Windows. I did not experience any problems, but I cannot guarantee that if you do the same you also will be problem-free. Also, security fixes or other enhancements might appear in the later version of the code, so if you replace the latest code with old code, you might be missing out on important updates. Experiment with caution and be aware of the risks.

Now that you know what to watch out for, you are ready to start replacing the Welcome screen manually. To do so, follow these steps:

Click the Start button and select Run. Then type regedit in the box and click the OK button. This will start up the Registry Editor.
Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Microsoft, Windows NT, CurrentVersion, and lastly Winlogon. Now you will see several different values on the right side of the screen for many different logon properties. The property that we are interested in is named UIHost.
The UIHost property specifies the path to the Welcome screen that will be loaded and displayed. Right-click UIHost from the list and select Modify, as shown in Figure 1-11.

FIGURE 1-11: Registry Editor modifying the UIHost property.

Next, just type in the full path to the logonui.exe file or whatever you named your new Welcome screen. One thing to keep in mind: avoid storing your Welcome screens in a directory path that has spaces in the names of the directories. I suggest you create a folder on your hard drive called WelcomeScreens. So you will be changing the value of UIHost to C:\WelcomeScreens\CoolNewLogonUI.exe.
Once you make the change, it will go into effect immediately. If you click the Windows key L at the same time, this will lock your computer and will bring up the new Welcome screen.

If you ever want to revert to the default Windows XP Welcome screen, just change the UIHost property back to logonui.exe. (You may have to change the C to the correct drive letter on which you installed Windows.)

There must be a better way to change your screen than doing it manually, right? Well, yes and no. A few programs are available on the Web that will automate the editing of the system registry. One of the most popular programs is called Logon Loader, by Daniel Milner. Logon Loader allows you to easily change the Welcome screen by only clicking a few buttons.

Making your own boot screens for BootSkin

2008-07-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

Now that you know how to convert boot screens, making your own boot screen will be a snap. The most difficult part of the process would be creating your image file. To get started, you first need to know the basics.

If you have not already noticed, boot screens are a 640 480 resolution image. These images are limited to only 16 colors (4 bits). This limitation makes the ability to create a cool-looking screen a little difficult. The help of a nice graphics converter utility makes the image look much better when you have to convert it to only 16 colors. A good utility that I use is the free version of Stardock’s Skin Studio. This is a program that was designed to make Visual styles for their Windows Blinds application, but it also has a good graphics converter that was made especially for BootSkin within it. Download a copy of this utility from www.stardock.com/ products/skinstudio/downloads.asp. Once you have it downloaded and installed,

you can start the application from the Object Desktop folder in the Start menu. Follow these

steps to convert your images:

The first time that you run Stardock’s SkinStudio, you will be greeted with a registration screen. If you do not want to register, just click the Register Later option and the pro gram will load. Now that you have Stardock’s SkinStudio started, you will want to click the Close button on the Welcome screen that asks you what you want to do, because what you want to do is not listed there.
Next, click the Tools menu bar item and expand BootSkin and then select Prepare Image.
This will bring up the Boot Screen Image Prepare window. Click the Browse button and select the image that you want to convert on your computer.
Then, you will see a preview of your image converted by a method known as dithering. This process allows the image to look better by using the same technique that newspa pers use to print color and photographs on paper. Most newspapers are printed with only three colors. Dithering makes it possible for the massive newspaper presses to print an image that appears to include thousands of colors from only three basic colors. How is this possible? It is all a trick with your eyes. All images in a newspaper are made up of thousands of tiny dots. Each of the dots is one of the three printing colors. The place ment of the dots and combination of one or more colors is what gives the illusion of color. For example, if you want to print something in a color such as orange, then print a grid of red and yellow dots next to each other. There are various methods to dither the image built-in so that you can play around and see which one makes your image look best using the drop-down box next to the dither image check box, as shown in Figure 1-7.
Once you have the image looking the best that you can get it, just click the Save button

and you are set!

If you do not want to use the boot screen preparer and do not know how to use Adobe Photoshop or any other robust image editor, I suggest you visit the Belchfire.net Web site that automatically converts and resizes background photos for you: http://server1.belch fire.net/Inno_Resize/. Just click the Browse button and select your image file, then click the Convert button, and sit back for a few minutes and your converted image should come up eventually. I have found that the site does not work well with files other than bitmaps, so it might be a good idea to convert your image to a bitmap first and then let the converter resize the image and decrease the colors automatically.

If you would like to make your computer’s boot screen more attractive and alive, an animated progress bar is for you. To add a moving progress bar to your boot screen, just make a bitmap image that is saved in 16 colors that has a resolution of 22 x 9 pixels . Don’t worry about trying to animate it; that small image will be moved around automatically by the program displaying the screen.

Once you have your image files in 16 colors and at the right sizes, just create a new folder in the BootSkin skin folder (C:\Program Files\Stardock\WinCustomize\BootSkin\ skins) and copy in your image files. Load up BootSkin to preview your new skin and, if it looks good, you are ready to roll. If you reboot to see your new boot screen in action and you notice that the boot screen does not show up correctly or at all, the problem may be caused by the bitmap file being in a format other than 16-colors/4-bit options available. Make sure that your file is converted correctly and is saved in only 16 colors. With the correct configuations in place, everything should work properly.

FIGURE 1-7: Stardock’s Skin Studio Boot image preparer, showing the dithering methods available to make your image look its best when converted to 16 colors.

Contined from where i left yesterday

2008-07-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

How to safely change your boot screen

Check out the following ways to change your boot screen by using special tools that will allow you to do it safely.

Several different boot-screen-changing programs are available on the Web. Some of these programs are shareware and others are freeware. I have used them all. Not all of them have been user-friendly, and some of them have been an out-and-out pain. The one I prefer to use is BootSkin by Stardock, which also happens to be free. This program is by far the easiest and safest one to use to change the boot screen. Instead of replacing the system file, it just installs a special driver that skins the boot. This arrangement does not impact system performance and is a nice alternative to having to deal with system files.

The BootSkin app is a great piece of software, but it does not do everything. Currently, it does not allow you to use the thousands of boot screens already made that are posted all over the Web. It will only allow you to run boot screens that were made especially for the program. True, hundreds of boot screens are available for this application, but thousands of hacked system files are out there.

Because of this limitation, I have decided to show you all how to convert these hacked system file boot screens into safe BootSkin files. But first, let’s get started using the app.

Using BootSkin to change your boot screen

Once you have the BootSkin application installed, start it up by using the link in the Start menu under WinCustomize and perform the following steps:

Once you have the application running, changing the boot screen is very simple. Just navigate through the list of boot screens by using the scrollbar arrows, as shown in Figure 1-1.
Once you find the boot screen that you like, click the item and then click the Preview button to see a full-screen animated preview of what the boot screen will look like.
Click a button on the mouse again to exit the full-screen preview. If you like the boot screen, then click the Apply button. That’s it!

Once you reboot, your new boot screen will be displayed every time. If you would like to change your boot screen back to the default Windows XP boot screen, reopen the BootSkin program and select the default system boot screen from the top of the list; click Apply.

Where to get more boot screens for BootSkin

Want more boot screens that will work with BootSkin? The following are two sites where you can find more skins that are already compatible with the program.

Win Customize: www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=32

Skinbase: www.skinbase.org/section.php?sections=BootSkin

FIGURE 1-1: Stardock’s BootSkin browsing through the available screens installed on the computer. This figure includes some boot screens that were downloaded and installed as shown in the next section.

Another advantage of using the Bootskin app, besides the safety it provides, is the small size of the skin files. Instead of having to download a hacked system file that can be quite large, BootSkin files are a fraction of that size.

Once you have downloaded the boot screens that ...you want, Just... double-click them and they should automatically be loaded into the BootSkin program and be available for selection if the file has the .bootskin file extension. If that is not the case, then you will have to do a little work to get the file into the right format. Some boot skins that you will find from other sites such as Skinbase could be in a ZIP archive. A BootSkin file is just a ZIP archive that was renamed.To make ZIP archive skins work, just rename the .zip to .BootSkin and you will be able to import the skin by double-clicking the file. Once you have clicked the BootSkin file, it should show up in the list and you will be able to select it as your boot screen.

How to convert boot screens to work with BootSkin

Because BootSkin will only allow you to use boot screens that are in the BootSkin format, if you would like to use all of the boot screens that are floating around the Web, you will need to convert them into the BootSkin format. Doing so will involve a lot of steps, but after a short while you will be flying through them in no time.

First, I recommend that you browse around the Web and download some boot screens.

Following is a list of a few good sites from which to get boot screens:

ThemeXP: www.themexp.org/view.php?type=boot
Belchfire: www.belchfire.net/showgallery-8.html
XP Theme: www.xptheme.info/resources_view.cfm/hurl/restype_id=4/
Z Skins : www.ezskins.com/product.phtml?xpBootScreens

Make sure that when you download the screens you save them all in one place. I made a folder on my desktop called Boot Screens in which to store mine.

Now that you have some boot screens downloaded on your computer, you are ready to start onverting them to use with BootSkin. Follow these steps to get started:

First, extract the image files from the boot files you downloaded. You could do this with a resource hacking tool, but then you would have to worry about converting the image with an image editing program with the special boot color palette; this is just not the easiest way. Instead, I recommend you use a program that was originally designed to change the boot screens to extract the image files. It is a free application called LogonUI & Boot Randomizer by User XP.

You download a copy of LogonUI & Boot Randomizer fromwww.belchfire.net/~userxp/indexlbr.htm

The LogonUI & Boot Randomizer application has the capability to change the boot screen with any existing hacked system file boot screen. However, I do not recommend you use it for that purpose because of problems that I have experienced using the program and because I do not like the fact that it patches the kernel system file. Because of that, every time you apply a new system update that modifies your kernel system file, you will have to download a new version of the application so that it will work with the new kernel file and will not automatically revert your system file to the older version.

Now that you have the file for the app extracted and ready to use, launch the app by double-clicking LogonUIBootRandomizer.exe. The first time you run this application, it will want you to set it up so that it can change your boot screen. If you see the multiboot screen, click OK, as that is your only option. Then when the NTFS Detected screen, as shown in Figure 1-2, appears, click the Close button.

FIGURE 1-2: LogonUI NTFS Detected screen, which asks you to add another line to the boot.ini file so that your system will be set up for LogonUI to change your boot screens.

If you get an error the first time that you run LogonUI saying that the comctl32.ocx component cannot be found, download this file from the following URL, or any other site, and put it in the same folder as your application: www.belchfire.net/~userxp/comctl32.zip

Next, you may be prompted with a third configuration screen if you are running Windows XP Service Pack 1. The screen will say that it has detected Service Pack 1 installed and wants to know if you want LogonUI to work with older (nonService Pack 1) boot skins. Click Yes on this screen. When the application has started up, you are going to see the final configuration screen asking you where the folders on your computer are for your boot screens. This step is important, as you will need to specify the folder on your computer to where you download all of the boot screens. Click the three dotted button on the right of the text boxes (...) to specify the path easily. Click OK, when you are done. You are now finished with the LogonUI app.
If you still see the configuration screen, click OK once more. Now you should see a list of your boot screens in the upper-left window. Click one of the screens to see a preview, as shown in Figure 1-3. If you receive a message asking if you want it to locate the progress bar automatically, click OK, wait a few seconds, and you will then see a preview.

FIGURE 1-3: LogonUI displaying available boot screens.

Select the boot screen from the list that you want to convert so that it shows up in the preview area. Then, right-click the Preview of the boot screen, and select See Bitmaps in File, as shown in Figure 1-4.
The background of your screen will go gray and you will see some numbers in it. Each of the numbers in the box represents an image file stored in this system file. Click number 1, and you will see a preview of the image. Then click the Save button and the save Picture dialog box will show up, as shown in Figure 1-5.
At this point, you will want to change the file format to a bitmap. This can be done by clicking the Format drop-down box and selecting .bmp from the list because Stardock’s BootSkin app can only read bmp files.
Next, you should change the location and name of the file to a new folder named after the name of the boot skin so that identifying and finding the image file will be easier later. It is best to place this folder inside of a master boot skins folder such as my boot screens folder I mentioned earlier to keep things organized and simplify the conversion process. You can do so by clicking the button with three dots on the bottom of the dialog box. Once you get the file name and folder set, click the Save button.

FIGURE 1-4: LogonUI See Bitmaps in File pop-up menu.

FIGURE 1-5: Save Picture dialog box.

Now, you are almost finished with the extraction portion of converting the boot screen. If the boot screen that you are converting also has a progress bar (the active bar moving left to right on the screen), then you have to do one more step. (If the boot screen does not have a progress bar, skip to the next step.) After you have clicked the Save button in the last step, return to the screen that shows all of the different numbers for the different bitmaps stored inside the file. The progress bar is stored in bitmap number 4. Select the number 4 item from the list and click the Save button. Then repeat step 8 to save the bitmap file.
You are now finished with the LogonUI app portion of the conversion and are getting close to completion. The next step is to create a BootSkin configuration file. The format of the configuration file is simple, as shown in Figure 1-6.

Open up a copy of Notepad from the Accessories menu in the Start panel to create your own configuration file. The first line of the file should contain [BootSkin] to indicate that this is a configuration file to the BootSkin application. Type in Type 0 in the

FIGURE 1-6: A BootSkin boot screen configuration file

second line to tell BootSkin what type of screen this is. Next, you will need to include some identification information in the file. Type Name “Name of your screen” on the next line. Do the same for author and description, as shown in Figure 1-6. Now you will have to specify which bitmaps you want to use for the progress bar. Type in ProgressBar ImageName.bmp. Next, you will have to specify where the progress bar will be displayed because BootSkin makes it possible to display the progress bar anywhere on the screen. The location of the progress bar will be determined by the coordinates that you enter in the configuration file. Type in ProgressX 265 and ProgressY 383 on the next two lines. Feel free to replace 265 and 383 with any numbers you like. Keep in mind that the resolution of the boot screen is 640 480, which limits the maximum x value to 640 and the y value to 480. The width/length of the progress bar must also be specified. Type in ProgressBarWidth 118 to do this. If the boot screen that you are converting does not have a progress bar, then just omit the four lines involving the progress bar. The last part of the configuration file is where you specify what you want the background image to be. Type in Screen BackgroundImage.bmp to set this. When you are finished typing in all of the configuration data, save the configuration file in the folder that you named and extracted all of the bitmaps to in step 8.

The last step of the process is to copy your newly created files to the BootSkin skin directory. If you installed BootSkin to the default location, it is located at c:\Program Files\Stardock\WinCustomize\BootSkin\skins\. Create a new folder in this directory that is the same as the name that you entered in the configuration file in the last step. Then, copy the two image files (one if you have no progress bar) and the bootskin.ini file to this folder. The next time you start up BootSkin, you should see your new boot screen.

Although performing these steps might seem (and be) a little time-consuming at first, once you have converted a boot screen, any conversions thereafter should take you a minute or less. As mentioned previously, the process I just described to change your boot screen is the safest possible way to do so. You will not have to get caught up in the mess of looking for compatible boot screens for your version of Windows and you also will not be limited to any number of available boot screens if you use my conversion tips.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Customizing the Look of the Startup

2008-07-08T03:04:00.000-07:00

Windows XP has a great new look, but after a while, the new look can get old. With the help of some cool tools and tricks, you can change many parts of Windows XP.

   This post will guide you through customizing two parts of your computer, the boot screen and the Welcome/logon screen. You will see how to replace the boring boot screen with premade screes and even how to make some of your own.

Customizing the Windows Welcome Screen XP Boot Screen

     Every time I turn on my computer, I am forced to stare at the boring Windows XP boot screen. Although, I must admit, I found the moving blue bars very amusing at first, after a few months, I became bored and wanted something different. Although changing the boot screen is not a feature that the Windows XP team at Microsoft has built into Windows, doing so is still possible.

Changing the boot screen

     The image that is displayed during the boot is hidden away in a system file called ntoskrnl.exe. This system file is loaded during the system boot and is what displays the boot image and animation.

     When users first started to make their own boot screens, they would use resource hacking tools to hack into the file and replace the old Windows XP bitmap image file with one that they made. Then, they would swap the old system file with the hacked version of the system file so that the new boot screen would be displayed.
      The majority of users do not start off by making their own boot screen. Instead, they download one that someone else made from the Web. Unfortunately, the only way to distribute a boot screen is to share the system file that the author has hacked from his or her system. This method of distributing boot screens works for some people, but it may cause serious problems for the majority of users.

The problems of changing the boot screen

      If you download a hacked system file with a new boot screen and replace the old file on your computer, after you restart, you may find that your computer will not start and will give you a nice error message. “C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe is missing or corrupt.” Missing or corrupt? Uh-oh. This is the most common problem that users experience when trying to change their boot screen using the file swap technique.

     Users that get this message, or any similar error message, are receiving it because they replaced their system file with a file that is not compatible with their version of Windows XP.

      Windows XP was released in many different languages for different parts of the world. Each language version of XP has a slightly different version of code. Additionally, Microsoft continuously releases software update patches to update the code of the system files such as the monthly security updates and almost yearly service packs. All of these factors result in several different versions of the boot screen system file floating around on the Web.

      You could find a boot screen file that was made from a hacked system file from the German version of Windows XP. Or more commonly, you could find a boot screen that was made from a hacked file from the original version of Windows XP. When you try to install that boot screen on a computer that, for example, has Service Pack 2 installed on the English version of XP, you will have problems.

      Windows XP will only work with a specific version of the system file that contains the boot screen. This arrangement complicates the change of the boot screen with the common file swap technique. It will do so because users will have difficulty telling on what version of Windows XP a particular boot screen that is distributed on the Web will work.

       Users have to be aware of more than just the version problem. Because you are downloading a hacked version of a critical system file that is executed during the boot sequence, you could possibly download a version that someone modified and in which he or she put some variation of malicious code that could harm your computer. Read the next section to find out how to change your boot screen safely.

TO BE CONTINUED........

Introduction

2008-07-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

Windows XP is a great operating system. It is faster and more secure than any other version of Windows. However, for some, it is not fast and secure enough. This blog will guide you through all of the steps of customizing, optimizing for performance, and securing Windows XP. I am not talking about minor little tweaks but to show you how to conduct major surgery on your Windows XP box.

Visually, Windows XP is superior to all other Windows versions. No other version of Windows has ever looked this good. So how could you make it look better? Customize it! Impress your friends and refresh your dull desktop with a cool new look. I am going to show you how to completely change the way Windows XP looks during all stages of its operation.

Performance-wise, Windows XP has made great advances. However, for some computer users of older hardware, running Windows XP can be like trying to pull a 100-foot yacht behind a tiny import car. Although Windows XP will not bust your CPU quite so much as a yacht would, it can slow down the operation of your computer because there are so many new features. To help you out, I am going to show you how to get the new features under control; I’ll also tell you about some tricks that I have found to speed up the operation of Windows XP. If you already have the V12 4 x 4 of computers, and you have no problem pulling the 100-foot yacht, then you will still benefit from the performance tips.

Windows XP is a lot more secure than prior Windows operating systems. However, as we all

know from recent history, it has not been doing very well. This book is going to show you how to use some of the new features of Windows XP Service Pack 2, as well as many other cool security tips, to make Windows XP much securer. Your computer will be in better shape than ever in no time!

Before going further i would suggest you to create a restore point for the system. Although all of the hacks and tips mentioned in this book have been tested, if a step is accidentally missed or a typo made, your computer could experience severe problems. To make sure that your computer is protected, I highly recommend that you use the Windows XP system restore feature. it is a good idea to create a restore point before every computer modification. Use the search box for finding the wat to create a restore point if you are not aware of how to do it.