Top 5 Windows 7 Hacks

There are plenty of hidden features in Windows 7. We have compiled top 5 windows 7 hacks that are not only completely safe but also are easy to perform.

Here are the top 5 windows 7 hacks:

Enabling Aero User Interface

Aero is a very cool and beautiful user interface of Windows 7. To run Aero, you need a PC with specs like 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB system memory and 128MB of video RAM. If your system is low on specs, you won’t be able to use Aero. Here is a workaround for enabling Aero on systems that have low specs.

1. Launch Windows Registry Editor by typing Regedit in Start Menu

2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

3. Right-click on the right-hand pane and create the following three DWORD entries and set value for each one:

Animations – set value to 0.

Blur – set value to 0.

UseMachineCheck – set value to 0.

4. Close the Registry Editor

5. Go to the Start Menu, enter “cmd” and press Enter to open the Command Prompt.

6. Type the following commands:

Net Stop uxsms and then press Enter

Net Start uxsms and then press Enter

7. The last step is to right-click on your desktop and choose: Personalize/Windows Colors.

Windows 7 GodMode

The Windows GodMode features lets you view all the control panels in a single folder. All you need to do is create a new folder by the following name: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}. After it is done, the icon of the folder will change to the control panel icon and when you open the folder, you will see all the control panel options inside it.

Fix Taskbar Preview Delay Time

Windows 7 users know that thumbnail preview of taskbar items is a very cool feature. You can view the thumbnail by hovering the mouse over the respective taskbar item. However, you may notice that sometimes, the previews do not appear quickly. Here is a hack to fix the taskbar preview delay time.

1. Launch Windows Registry Editor by typing regedit in Start Menu

2. Navigate toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

3. Right click in the right-hand pane of Windows Registry and select New -> DWORD Value.

4. You need to name the new DWORD as “ExtendedUIHoverTime”

5. Double-click on the created DWORD to open it.

6. Select “Decimal” under “Base” and enter the delay time (in milliseconds) in the “Value data” field.

7. Click OK

Putting a New Windows 7 Login Screen

If you do not like the Windows 7 login screen, you can change it by trying this simple hack. Here is how you can do it.

1. Launch the Windows Registry Editor by typing Regedit in Start Menu

2. Go to‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background‘.

3. Double-click the DWORD value called ‘OEM Background’ to open it and enter 1 in the Value data field.

Note: If the DWORD ‘OEM Background’ is not there, you need to make it.

4. Browse to the background image that you would like use on the log-in screen. A JPEG file that is less than 245 kb in size can only be used here.

5. Copy the image you want to use into the ‘%windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds‘ folder. If the folder is not present, you need to create it.

6. Rename the image to backgroundDefault.jpg

7. Restart your computer to check the new login background screen.

Enabling Quick Launch

Quick Launch is a place where you can add set of icons that you frequently use. This feature can be found in Windows XP and Windows Vista, however it is not present on Windows 7. You can enable it by doing the following hack:

1. Right click on the taskbar and then select New Toolbar.

2. You need to put the following location %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch in the new window that appears.

3. Next, click on ‘Select Folder’.

4. Quick Launch will appear on the taskbar but will contain text of the respective icon. To hide it, click on the dotted lines and uncheck ‘Show Title’ and ‘Show Text’

Windows 7 Hack : Add Folder To “Send To” Menu

In this post I’ll show you simple windows 7 hack that will save you lot of time you spend sending and organizing files in windows 7 . This hack allows you so send files to any folder directly fromright click menu .

STEP 1

Create a shortcut for folder that want to ass to “Send To” Menu

STEP 2

Copy/Paste your shortcut to :

C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

AppData is a hidden folder . To unhide go to Organize -> Folder and search options -> View (tab) > check “Show hidden files, folder, drives”

and that is it!

How To Speed Up Windows 7 Startup

Want to speed up your windows 7 ? Here is simple tutorial that explains how to speed up yourwindows 7 startup (boot).

1) Click on the Start button and type msconfig in the search box and open it.

2) Select the Startup tab and uncheck the programs you don’t want to start during startup. Click on Apply , then OK .

How To Make your Computer Talks

In this post I’m going to show you cool windows trick that will make your computer talks what you type . This would be fun to do on someone else’s computer as a joke.

1. Open Notepad
2. Paste the following code

Dim Message, Speak
Message=InputBox("Enter Text to Talk o","Speak")
Set Speak=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice")
Speak.Speak Message

3. Save the file, give it any name, but make sure you also type .VBS after the name. Also, for the Save as type box, choose All files instead of the default Text Documents.

4. Now double click the .vbs file and you should see the window as show below

5. Type what ever you want and click on OK . That’s it , your computer will speak what ever you typed in the default voice

If you want to make your computer repeat the words then add a loop. Here is the code :

Dim message, sapi

message=InputBox("Enter the text you want spoken","speak this")

set sapi=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice")

For i=1 to 10

sapi. Speak message

Next

It will repeat the same word a ten times

How To Use Windows Default Software To Take Screenshot

You might have gone through some situation where you needed to take the screenshot of what you have did.Consider an example.You are the representative of a company helping people to solve problems on computer working totally online.And just consider that you had a situation in which a sequence of actions is to be done.Your clent doesnot understand you by words and he asks for screenshot explanation.Then only you came to know that there is no software to take screenshot or video of the activities you have to do.So what to do?Your client is also waiting…………………..But there is a solution “Problem Steps Recorder”.Which is a defaultfunction in windows 7(might be available in lower or upper versions)But the joke is that this facility is not really meant for taking screen shot but is meant for the purpose for remote assistance for troubleshooting purpose if you have any problem in your pc.It will automatically takes the snapshot of the activities.the main advantage is that the screenshots will be having the correct steps in word such as “click left mouse button””click start” etc….so it can be send to any person who have only basic knowledge so that he can just read,see and understand the whole sequence.Also the file is saved as MHTML and as a ZIP file.So space is saved. Also a complete review of what is done will be also added at the end.(you need a browser to view this .mhtml file)
To use the “Problem Steps Recorder”

1)Go to “control panel”

2)Expand “all control panel items”

3)Click on “Troubleshooting” menu

4)Then “Get help from a friend” on the left side of the screen

5)At the bottom select “Problem Steps Recorder”

6)Then you can see a popup window having options for “start record”,”stop record” etc…..

7)When you stop record a popup window will open asking you to save that recorded piece of file

8)Save the file in any name anywhere
The recorded item will be saved as MHTML with a name starting with problem followed by a serial number inside a ZIP file.so totally the space is saved and you can have recording of as manyactions as you want at a strectch.

You will also get brief description of every action you did above each image (including time,date etc)and a additional summary at last.

How To Improve The Probability Of Getting A Like On Facebook Page

1) Go to wildfireapp.com and install iframe app

2) Allow Wildfire’s iFrames for Pages

3)Click on Add Wildfire’s iFrames for Pages

4)Register your app by filling in your personal information and clicking “Submit“.

5) You can upload image or put html code for Fan and Non-fan visitors.

If you know how to use html and css you can make very cool facebook page, for example:

Html Code:

<div style=”background-color: #eee; width: 490px; padding:15px;”>

<a href=”http://www.wildfireapp.com” target=”_parent”><img src=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/wildfireapp/wildfire/iframe_hero.jpg?2” style=”border: none;” height=”565″ width=”490″ /></a>

<h1 style=”color: #770495″>Learn about Wildfire’s iFrame App <a href=”http://wildfireapp.zendesk.com/entries/20003303-acceptable-html-and…” target=”_parent”>here</a>.</h1>

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<h2>You Wont Believe These Deals</h2>

<img src=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/wildfireapp/wildfire/iframe_secondary.jpg?2” width=”124″ height=”124″ style=”float: left; margin:0 15px 15px 0;” />

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</div>

How To Create Fake Facebook Conversations

1) Go to fakeconvos.com
2) Click on create a new convo

3)Type name of commenter, select your upload picture, type what ever you want to say and click on add stream
you can add as many people to the stream as you want, you can even login to the facebook and add your actual friends to the stream

4)Type descriptive title and save it

5)Now you can right click and save your picture and send it to your friend

Profile Photo Hack

With the Facebook’s new profile page you can divide your profile photo into 6 parts(1 profile pic and a photo strip of 5 recent photos in which you were tagged). There are some applications which allows you to write some funky text in the photo strip but dividing your own picture will be much cooler. Look at picture below to know what you can do with this trick.

How to do it
1) You need a photo of at least 692 pixels wide and 540 pixels high and a photo editor. I did it with Photoshop CS3.
2)To get your profile pic make a crop that’s 180 pixels wide and 540 pixels high.
Note: Start the crop from the left most corner.
3)Now to get the photo strip, crop a 492 X 68 pixels strip. Start the crop from 20 pixels below from right-top corner of the image.
Note: Google’s top searches say it should be 20 pixels but I took around 30 pixels to get it right.
4)Now, you have to divide the strip into 5 parts. The photos in the strips of Facebook have a gap of 2 pixels. 492 – 8 (4 * 2 pixels) = 484 and 484 / 5 = 96.8. So, you have to cut 5 photos of 96.8 X 68 leaving a gap of 2 pixels. As, Photoshop didn’t allowed me to crop the image in points I took it as 97 X 68 and the widened the last image as it was 1(.2 px * 5) pixels short.
5)The difficult part has been completed till now. Just upload all the 6 images on Facebook. First, set your profile pic which we made in the 2nd step.
6)Now, to make the strip, you have to tag yourself in the reverse order. This means, the photo which will be in the right most corner of the strip should be tagged first and the left most photo should be tagged last.
7) You’re done, just tell your friends to visit your profile.

Hack the passwords

Can you recheck your first php program which you have done with database backend support. Is there any password storing field in that ?.

If so you might saved your password as its plain text format without any encryption or hashing , right ? If not, you are very genius programmer by birth. What would happen if your database is leaked or somebody hacked your database, after you hosted your website and a lots of user registered or submitted their account with password. You are trapped. The hacker can access the user account by acquiring the password (saved without any encryption). The user can sue you for publishing his password open. So beware of this password saving while doing big project which is being hosted for a huge public usage.

Then what are the mechanism for saving password in database ?

One is you can save password after digesting or hashing , and and while rechecking the account or login you can compared the hash of password entered with the password stored in database. For that in php you can use this function:

$hash_password = sha1($password); ?>

Is this method all enough for full security. No , Never. For example, if you already know somebody’s password, say Sanjay’s password is : access, and you got the database and you will get the hash encoded string of the password: access. Suppose “XYZ123#@!” is the hash password got from database. Then you can reverse compare whether there any other user having hash text with “XYZ123#@!”, and thus you can get the password of that particular user. Hacked Again !!!

How to avoid this. Yes solution is Salting. Add some salt(random string) to current password and hash the whole password and save in database. Remember to save the salt value too in another field of the table , for rechecking the account login. Then for same password say”accesss”, you will get different hash digests. Thus the reverse caparison from know password can be avoided.

$salt = rand(1000,99999);
$hash_password = sha1($password . $salt ); ?>

Is this all enough for full security. Need not to think about the same salt for same password while creating random salt value. The probability for that is .00000….followed by 1000000 zeros …1 . Means Never.

But we are not taking risk. Add some more information to the password before hashing it. Generate a global constant string that only know to the programmer say : &555$34E$ and call it Global pattern . Append this string also with password+salt string before hashing. This will create more secured digest for your password. Remember , never forgot or miss this Global pattern, otherwise you can never check the login password later. (And it is not like the salt, the value of salt is there in database table) .

$hash_password = sha1($password . $salt . auth::GlobalPattern()); ?>

Enough … No one can hack your password now, even though he get your database. Okay .

(Saving encrypted password also helps to avoid sql injection)

Okay, enjoy programming.