Few Tweaks for Windows & IE !!!!

Fix Broken and Slow Tab Issues in Internet Explorer 8

Some users that upgraded to Internet Explorer 8 experience issues with tabs not working properly or taking a very long time to load.  It seems for most users the issue can be attributed to a problem with actxprxy.dll not installing properly during the upgrade.  If you have a similar problem with IE8, fixing the issue is as simple as a running one command.

Just open up an administrative level command prompt and type in regsvr32 actxprxy.dll and hit Enter. Reboot your computer and your tab issue should be resolved.

Fed up of IE in windows, Want to remove it. Here you go!

For the first time since 1997 it is possible to uninstall Internet Explorer from Windows. Now full time Firefox, Chrome and Opera users can remove Internet Explorer for good. Best of all, removing IE will not break any of the thousands of applications that depend on the Internet Explorer rendering engine. Over the years many applications including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, Google Talk, LimeWire, MS Office and more use components of the IE rendering engine. When Internet Explorer is removed the shared rendering engine components will remain to make sure the thousands of applications that depend on the IE rendering engine continue to run.

While the rendering engine will remain for compatibility reasons the IE executables, shortcuts and settings will be removed. To uninstall IE on your computer, follow these steps:

Click on the Start Button and type in Turn Windows features on or off and hit Enter.

Then, scroll through the list and remove the check from Internet Explorer 8.

Click OK and IE will be removed.

Pin Recycle Bin on the Task bar

The new taskbar in Windows 7 does not allow you to pin anything directly on the taskbar by default. If you tried to pin Recycle Bin already you would have noticed that it is pinned under the Windows Explorer program instead of a separate icon. In order to pin it directly on the taskbar you have to know a few tricks. In the end, your will have a dedicated Recycle Bin shortcut pinned directly on the taskbar as shown below.

The secret is creating a special shortcut that you can pin to the taskbar that points to the recycle bin:

1. Right click anywhere on your desktop and select New and then shortcut.
   
2. In the location of the item box type in:
   
   %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder
   
3. Click Next.
4. For the name type in Recycle Bin.
   
5. Then click Finish. 
6. Now your shortcut will be created but it will not have the right icon. Right click on the shortcut, select Properties.  Then, click Change Icon as shown below.
   
   
7. Change the icon file to:
   
   %SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll
   
   Hit Enter and select the Recycle Bin Icon and click OK.
   
   
   
8. Finally, drag the new shortcut onto the taskbar and it will be pinned directly.  Once the shortcut is pinned, you can delete the original on the desktop.

Unlock Hidden Windows 7 Themes

There are a number of regional themes with multiple unique background images hidden from Windows 7 users.  On a Windows 7 install with United States regional settings only the United States theme is shown but there are actually four more themes hidden from view.  Below are all the regional themes included in Windows 7:

          

     

Accessing all the themes is easy to do once you know where to find them.  The trick is to navigate to the C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT directory.  The MCT directory within the Globalization directory is super hidden so it will not display even if show hidden files and folders is enabled.  Just click on the address bar of any folder and manually type in or copy and paste in C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and hit Enter.

Once you have reached the MCT folder you will see five directories as listed below:

• MCT-AU
• MCT-CA
• MCT-GB
• MCT-US
• MCT-ZA

To view and use the theme for each region just navigate into each MCT-Region directory, enter the Theme sub-directory and double click the theme file.

Kill Processes from Command Prompt ( interesting one )

I'm sure you are familiar with the traditional way to kill or end a process in Windows using Task Manager.  This method is effective but not nearly as fun as killing a process in Command Prompt.  Additionally, killing processes in Command Prompt provides much more control and the ability to end multiple processes at once.

All of this is possible with the TaskKill command. First, let's cover the basics.  You can kill a process by the process ID (PID) or by image name (EXE filename).

Open up an Administrative level Command Prompt and run tasklist to see all of the running processes:

C:\>tasklist

Image Name                     PID Session Name        Mem Usage
========================= ======== ================ ============
firefox.exe                  26356 Console             139,352 K
regedit.exe                  24244 Console               9,768 K
cmd.exe                      18664 Console               2,380 K
conhost.exe                   2528 Console               7,852 K
notepad.exe                  17364 Console               7,892 K
notepad.exe                  24696 Console              22,028 K
notepad.exe                  25304 Console               5,852 K
explorer.exe                  2864 Console              72,232 K

In the example above you can see the image name and the PID for each process. If you want to kill the firefox process run:

C:\>Taskkill /IM firefox.exe /F

 or

C:\>Taskkill /PID 26356 /F

The /f flag is kills the process forcefully.  Failure to use the /F flag will result in nothing happening in some cases.  One example is whenever I want to kill the explorer.exe process I have to use the /F flag or else the process just does not terminate.

If you have multiple instances of an image open such as multiple firefox.exe processes, running the taskkill /IM firefox.exe command will kill all instances. When you specify the PID only the specific instane of firefox will be terminated.

The real power of taskkill are the filtering options that allow you to use the following variables and operators.

Variables:

• STATUS
• IMAGENAME
• PID
• SESSION
• CPUTIME
• MEMUSAGE
• USERNAME
• MODULES
• SERVICES
• WINDOWTITLE

Operators:

• eq (equals)
• ne (not equal)
• gt (greater than)
• lt (less than)
• ge (greater than or equal)
• le (less than or equal)

"*" is the wildcard.

You can use the variables and operators with the /FI filtering flag.  For example, let's say you want to end all processes that have a window title that starts with "Internet":

C:\>taskkill /FI "WINDOWTITLE eq Internet*" /F

How about killing all processes running under the Steve account:

C:\>taskkill /FI "USERNAME eq Steve" /F

It is also possible to kill a process running on a remote computer with taskkill.  Just run the following to kill notepad.exe on a remote computer called SteveDesktop:

C:\>taskkill /S SteveDesktop /U RemoteAccountName /P RemoteAccountPassword /IM notepad.exe /F

To learn more about taskkill run it with the /? command just like any other Windows command. 

looking forward your views !!!