Back Again Computer Tips and Tricks

WindowsXP Tips Forgotten Admin or User's Password
You do not need to reinstall if you forgot the admin password.

There is a boot disk you can download at:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/
<http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/>

that will let you reset the password of any account on NT4, Windows2000
or XP.

Just follow all the default settings which are for the admin account.
Used it many
times with great success.

They also have a bootable CD image you can download.
Stopping the Messenger Service
To remove the ability for anyone in the world to pop up messages on your
computer,
you can disable the Messenger service.

1. Click Start->Settings ->Control Panel 2. Click Performance and
Maintenance 3. Click Administrative Tools 4. Double click
Services 5. Scroll down and highlight "Messenger" 6. Right-click
the highlighted line and choose Properties 7. Click the STOP button
8. Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar Click OK
Not Displaying Logon, Logoff, Startup and Shutdown Status Messages
To turn these off:

1. Start Regedit 2. Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\sy\
stem 3. If it is not already there, create a DWORD value named
DisableStatusMessages 4. Give it a value of 1
Hiding the Last User Logged On
If you use the standard NT style of login and want to hide the last
user:

1. Start the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) 2. Go to Computer
Configuration / Windows Settings / Security Settings / Local Policies /
Security Options 3. Scroll down to Interactive logon: Do not display
last user name 4. Set it to Enable

Creating a Boot Floppy

To create a bootable floppy from within WindowsXP:

1. Insert a floppy into the A: drive 2. Open the Explorer 3.
Right click on the A: Drive 4. Select Format 5. Check Create an
MS-DOS startup disk 6. Click on the Start button 7. This will
create a Millennium boot disk

Renaming the Start Button

To rename the start button, you will need a hex editor.
My preference is UltraEdit

1. Copy the \windows\explore.exe file to a new name (e.g.
explorer_1.exe) 2. With the hex editor, open that file and go to
offset 412b6 3. You will see the word start with blanks between each
letter 4. Edit it be any 5 characters or less 5. Save the file
6. Boot to DOS 7. Copy the existing c:\windows\explorer.exe to
explorer.org 8. Copy explorer_1.exe to explorer.exe 9. You will
also need to replace the explorer.exe in the
c:\windows\system32\dllcache file as well with the new one.

Note: If the partition is NTFS and you can't access the files from DOS:

1. Start Regedit 2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \
Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Winlogon. 3. Change the
value of Shell from Explorer.exe to explorer_1.exe