Search For Hidden Or System Files In Windows XP

The Search companion in Windows XP searches for hidden and system files differently than in earlier versions of Windows. This guide describes how to search for hidden or system files in Windows XP.


Search for Hidden or System Files By default, the Search companion does not search for hidden or system files. Because of this, you may be unable to find files, even though they exist on the drive

To search for hidden or system files in Windows XP:
Click Start, click Search, click All files and folders, and then click More advanced options.

Click to select the Search system folders and Search hidden files and folders check boxes.

NOTE: You do not need to configure your computer to show hidden files in the Folder Options dialog box in Windows Explorer to find files with either the hidden or system attributes, but you need to configure your computer not to hide protected operating system files to find files with both the hidden and system attributes. Search Companion shares the Hide protected operating system files option (which hides files with both the system and hidden attributes) with the Folder Options dialog box Windows Explorer.

How to Speed up your PC by this simple RAM tweak

Well this is a little tut or in other terms a simple hack or a tweak for the techs. SO… Faster PC , first of all why a faster PC ?? Well its not a question of a faster PC but this is more a question of when. If you’ve been running a large application (or several large applications, maybe a game, Photoshop, something like that) the RAM can get taken up quickly. Even when you close down these programs, RAM can still be eaten-up.

You’ll notice this effect at the end of the day. When you first power-up your PC it’s running smoothly, by the end of the day it gets sluggish. Yes, you can get various softwares to solve this. May of which costs but when free things matters, heres how a simple trick can work (in both XP and Vista)

1. Open up Notepad (I use Notepad++, review coming soon)
2. Type in MYSTRING=(80000000)
3. Save the file as MEMORY.VBE (or RAM.VBE if you like…just remember the .VBE)
4. Make sure you save the file to your DESKTOP.
5. Just double-click the newly created file on your desktop whenever your PC seems sluggish. It will give your RAM a much needed boost.

Not that if you have less than 128mb of RAM (do you really? If so then Oh! wake up you need an upgrade) change the 80000000 to 160000000 and it should work the same.

RAM Defrag is another nice freeware utility that frees up your RAM however it clears of all the injected DLL’s and the cache so the computer may get more sluggish for a while a Defrag.
You can Download Ram Defrag from this website.
Note that told above is version 2.71 of Ram Defrag which is a freeware, a newer version 2.84 is also available here which is Shareware available here.I am not aware of the working of the version 2.84

Speedup Folder Browsing.

You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

1. Open My Computer
2. Click on Tools menu
3. Click on Folder Options
4. Click on the View tab.
5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6. Click Apply
7. Click Ok
8. Reboot your computer

How to remove Virus from USB Drives

One of the ways by which a virus can infect your PC is through USB/Pen drives. Common viruses such as ’Ravmon’ , ‘New Folder.exe’, ‘Orkut is banned’ etc are spreading through USB drives. Most anti virus programs are unable to detect them and even if they do, in most cases they are unable to delete the file, only quarantine it. Here are the things which you can do if you want to remove such viruses from your USB Drive

Whenever you plug a USB drive in your system, a window will appear similar to the one shown below

Don’t click on Ok , just choose ‘Cancel’. Open the Command Prompt by typing ‘cmd‘ in the run box. In the command prompt type the drive letter: and press enter . Now type dir /w/a and press enter.

This will display a list of the files in the pen drive. Check whether the following files are there or not

• Autorun.inf
• Ravmon.exe
• New Folder.exe
• svchost.exe
• Heap41a
• or any other exe file which may be suspicious.

If any of the above files are there, then probably the USB drive is infected. In command prompt type attrib -r -a -s -h *.* and press enter. This will remove the Read Only, Archive, System and hidden file attribute from all the files. Now just delete the files using the command del filename. example del Ravmon.exe. Delete all the files that are suspicious. To be on a safer side, just scan the USB drive with an anti virus program to check whether it is free of virus or not. Now remove the drive and plug it again. In most of the cases, the real culprit turns out to be the “Autorun.inf” file which mostly gets executed when someone clicks Ok in the dialog window which appears above. Thus the infections can spread

Security Tip

Disable the Autoplay feature of USB drives. If you disable the Autoplay feature of USB drives, then there are lesser chances of the virus spreading. A tool which can perform such a function is Tweak UI. Download it from here install it.

Run the program. Now you can disable the Autoplay feature of the removable drives as shown above. By following the above steps, you can keep your USB drives clean.

Update: Tweak UI is a freeware software you can download it here: http://www.filehippo.com/download_tweakui/

Save Google Presentations as (.PPT) Powerpoint Files

The issue that concerns users the most when adopting trends of cloud computing is the compatibility of web applications with desktop sofwares. Google Docs today added a new feature to Google Presentations that will allow users to save Google Presentations as (.PPT) Powerpoint Files thus adding backward compatibility.

To save a Google Presentation as a (.PPT) Powerpoint File open the File menu in Google Docs and click on the new option that says “Save as PPT”. This new feature will now allow you to edit your Google Presentation on Microsoft Powerpoint and vice versa so you can work on it anywhere, anytime even offline.