Windows 7, and Vista have a cool feature. Press shift while right clicking on any folder, and some new menu options are shown:

One of them allows you to open a command prompt that is rooted right in that folder. This is a convenient option, since you don’t have to launch a command line, and then work your way back to that folder.

Unfortunately it does not exist in 2000, 2003, or XP – But I found an easy way to add it.

Create a new file on your desktop and call it “Command.reg”. Right click on it and edit it with notepad.

Add the following lines:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd]
@="Open Command Line Here"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\cmd\command]
@="cmd /k \"cd %L\""


Save it, and then double click on it to add it to the registry. When it asks you to confirm.

Just say yes.

And now, when you right click on a folder in XP/2000/2003 (No shift needed) you get the same option:

For years now I have been able to share my Verizon wireless connection with friends and family using my Apple running OSX. Linux can do this too.

It has not been possible with Windows until now. Microsoft has added some features to 7 that allow a wireless card to be put into promiscuous mode and turned into a true wireless AP.

From my testing I can see that it does not work for all wireless cards. I would imagine the driver and hardware needs to support it. You will have to experiment and see if it works for you.

There are two ways to do this. First, you can go the easy route and use a free tool called Connectify. It makes this process very simple.

Just visit http://www.connectify.me/ and download the latest version of their software.

Once you install it, you can pick the wireless card you are going to use, the SSID, and the password:

Hit the “Start hotspot” button and you are ready to go. Best of all this software is free….this is right from their website:

The alternative to using Connectify is to make some calls to netsh from the command line. Open a command line as an administrator (Right click and pick ‘run as administrator’).

Type this:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=[ssid] key=[key]

Replace the [ssid] with the ssid of your choice, and [key] with the WPA2 key that you want to use.

Next you will need to turn on internet connection sharing. You will need to go to the properties of the network card that is providing internet access. This is kind of buried in Windows 7, so I will walk you through.

First go to the control panel, and click on “Network and Internet”:

When the next window shows, click on “Network and Sharing Center”:

A new window will show. Look to the left, and click on the text that says “Change Adapter Settings”:

Now you can simply right click and go to the properties of the network card that provides internet access:

Go to the sharing tab and enable internet connecting sharing:

Click OK, and now you are set. You can start using your Windows 7 machine as an access point

Just one detail for both methods – you are forced to use WPA2 encryption for the connection, so you may have trouble with older devices, and operating systems that do not support it.

From time to time I will have a folder that I need to clean out. Usually with a large number of files. The problem is that I want to select only specific files or folders:

This is easy to do by holding down the CTRL key, but I always find that halfway through my selection process I fat finger it and then I have to start over again.

I found a new feature in Windows 7 that allows you to select in a totally different way. Using checkboxes. You can simply check the files or folders you want to select by checking them off – no CTRL key needed.

To turn it on, open any folder in explorer, and hold down ALT, then T to get the menu to show up. Go to tools then options. Go to the view tab and find the option that says:

“Use check boxes to select items”

When you want to select an item, you can hover over it and a checkbox will show up. Simply check the ones you want to select:

Now there is no need to worry about pressing the wrong button and losing your entire selection.

Now this is a cool little time saver tip. Unfortunately this only works in XP, and 2000.

Lets say you got lots of windows open, and you have a file or folder you want to quickly get to the recycle bin

Just drag your file or folder to an empty spot on the task bar (Don’t let go!)

And bam! All your windows will minimize

Now you can easily reach the recycle bin only using your mouse.

If you have been using Windows 7 you may have noticed that the quick launch bar is missing.

The quick launch bar was available in Vista, XP, and Windows 2000.

Here it is a shot of it under Windows XP:

There is probably a good reason for them to remove it. With the complete redesign of the explorer interface, there are probably better ways of accomplishing the same thing.

I am stuck in my ways, and I like the quick launch. I found a way to get it back in Windows 7.

Right click on the task bar. Go to toolbars, and then click on new toolbar:

It will popup a folder selection box. The folder you select will become the source for your quick launch. In my case, I created a folder under my user profile called “Quick Launch”:

Now…we need to make some changes. First unlock the task bar by right clicking it and unchecking that option:

Then right click on the new tool bar and uncheck show text, and show title:

Now, you have a quick launch. Move it over to the left (You can since you unlocked the task bar) Just drop shortcuts into the folder you selected, and they will show up:

Lock the task bar again, and you have a quick launch bar in Windows 7.

I have been hearing lots of chatter about this hidden feature in Windows 7. Everyone is calling it “God Mode”

You will see why it is called that in a minute, but essentially it is a hidden control panel that gives you easy access to just about every setting in Windows 7.

To get to it, simply create a new folder on your desktop:

Then rename it to this:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

After you finish renaming the folder, the icon will change:

Double click on it, and you will be shown a huge (That is not even the right word) number of options:

(Click to see all the options – it is a big image!)

Now with the warning – It works great in Windows 7, and Vista. But! If you have the 64 bit version of Vista do not try this…it will crash every time explorer is loaded. The only way out is to use a command line recovery or safe mode from another account.

Here is a simple tip that I just started using myself. Do you have a folder that you constantly need to open throughout the day?

Well, I do. While developing software I always need to get to the distribution folder to check on files and make sure our daily compiles are running smoothly.

Here is how it works. You create a short-cut to your favorite folder, and then in the properties you can assign a hot key.

That way, instead of clicking forever, you can simply hit a key combination and the folder will appear.

Let me walk you through it. First, I am going to create a shortcut to the folder on my desktop:

Right click on it, and go to properties. A window will pop up. Click on the edit box that is titled “Shortcut key”

Now that it is selected…press the key you would like as your ‘hotkey’.

Then, when you want that folder…simply presss CTRL-ALT + your hotkey, and the folder will be there in seconds.

The worst thing about a format and reload is that sometimes, it is impossible to find all of your drivers.

Usually I have lost the driver disks. If it is a “White Box Special” that I built from NewEgg…well I will have no idea what components I put into it.

I have found an excellent solution – a free tool called “Unknown Devices”

Zip on over to Halfdone Development and download a free copy. Don’t let the old build date fool you – the program still works quite well…even on Windows 7 and Vista systems.

When you download it, make sure you extract the exe *and* the zip file…and they remain in the same folder. I made a mistake of thinking the zip file was not necessary. It contains all of the driver lookup information.

A good example is a white box that I built a year or two ago. I formatted it, and could not even remember who made the motheboard.

A peek at the device manager shows the unknown devices:

Easily found by this cool little utility. Run it, and bam – it shows me a list:

After that, I was able to right click on them and do a search on google. Within 30 minutes I was able to get all of my drivers downloaded and installed.

Give it a spin, it will save you a ton of time when trying to find the drivers after a rebuild – and it beats tearing the machine open to read model numbers.

No matter what company I have worked for, there is always a Windows service that crashes once in a while – like clock work.

The problem: The service that crashes is important, does real time processing, and must always be active.

I came up with a quick and easy way of getting notified when your favorite service crashes.

First, you will need a copy of the free tool called blat. You can get a copy of it here:

Blat command line emailer

Download it, and copy it to a place on the server that is easy for your batch files to find.

Next, we will need to set up a batch file that will create and send out our email with blat. For my example, I am going to get a notification each time the print spooler crashes (Because of a buggy print driver)…so I want my email to tell me that the print spooler crashed.

Here is what the batch file would look like:

blat -subject "Spooler Crashed again" -body "Go fix the printer...the spooler crashed again!" -to support@intelliadmin.com -from alert@intelliadmin.com


This email will have a subject of “Spooler Crashed again” and a body of “Go fix the printer…the spooler crashed again!”. Some of you wise guys may be saying, “just set that service to restart, and you don’t even have to touch it!”

Unfortunately when the spooler crashes, a helper process is still stuck in the background…and it will crash the spooler until you kill it.

Save the batch file in a place you can easily find it. I am going to call mine “scnotify.bat”. Run it from the command line once and make sure it is working properly.

Now, go into the service list (Click start then run, and type services.msc..and hit OK). Find your ‘problem’ service, and right click on it – go to properties.

A window will show. Move over to the recovery tab, and select the drop down for the first failure. Pick the “run a program” option:

Once you do that, the options for the application will become enabled. Select your batch file that you created before:

That is all there is to it. Now when that critical service crashes, you will know right away.

While digging around, I found this very cool utility included with Windows 7. It is called “Problem Steps Recorder”.

The program allows you to record a set of actions, and then save it as a zip file, and allow someone else to see what you did.

This is perfect when trying to troubleshoot an issue, but you don’t have the ability to use remote control, or have access to the computer.

If you want someone to record their steps, you have them simply type the letters ‘psr’ in the start menu search:

See the psr.exe at the top, run that, and you can start recording. Make sure you right click and run it as administrator if you have any applications you want to show that also run as administrator

Once you are ready to start recording your steps, hit the record button

In my little test, I launched the Remote Desktop Client, and tried to connect to a problem server. When I had the error I even wrote a little note.

When I was finished, I stopped the recorder, and it saved the entire session as a zip file

It is pretty good at keeping that file small. The file could be emailed, and opened. Inside the zip is a ‘mht’ file that can be viewed with Internet Explorer.

You can see with my test record below, it shows screen shots for each click, and descriptions:

Even better, it provides a text description below all of the shots, with any notes that were added during the record.

Here is an excerpt of mine:

...
Problem Step 7: User Comment: "See - this is where I cannot connect!"
Program:
UI Elements:
...


In short, it is an awesome little utility built into Windows 7. It can save you tons of time when trying to diagnose something from far away, and the person using it does not even need to know how to take a screen shot.