Fortunately though there is an alternative and it’s in every version of the operating system (XP, Vista and Windows 7).  This is called “Safe Boot” and you can find it in the MSConfig panel.  To open this type msconfig into the Start Menu search box in Vista or Windows 7, or run msconfig from the run option in XP.

Under the Boot tab in the MSConfig window you’ll see the Safe Boot option as a tick box.  Turning this on will make Windows use the Safe Boot option every time thereafter.  When you want to stop using Safe Boot and return to starting Windows normally you’ll need to return to the MSConfig panel and untick this option.  There are also several other options here including Minimal Boot, which will take you into the full Safe Mode, but the standard option will normally be enough for most people.

The Safe Boot screen, as you can see here is a half-way house between the full Windows desktop and Safe Mode.  What you will find though is that most of your hardware drivers will be installed and working though your startup software will still be disabled.

So when might you want to use Safe Boot?  Occasionally you will encounter a problem in Windows that you will need to go into Safe Mode to repair.  As I mentioned earlier however Safe Mode won’t allow you to perform some Windows tasks, and this is where the Safe Boot mode is useful.  You may also suspect that your problems aren’t being caused by a hardware driver, but by software instead.  This diagnostic mode enables you to have a full Windows desktop where nothing loads at startup and where you can run and check programs individually to see what effect they are having on your system.

As I have already mentioned Safe Mode is extremely limiting, not just in the very low screen resolution that it gives you.  If you need to run full diagnostics on your copy of Windows, to see what’s going on under the hood, or if you need to test individual software packages in a safe environment where they will be able to run properly then Windows Safe Boot is the way to do it.

Remember though that you will need to turn off Safe Boot when you are done, or else Windows will start permanently in this mode.  I have found this to be a very useful diagnostic tool in Windows and it’s extremely underused because, frankly, many people simply do not know that it exists.  Hopefully you will find it useful too.

So how do you back up the drivers in your Windows installation and how can you use these?  In all versions of Windows the drivers are stored in the C:\Windows\System32 folder in the sub-folders Drivers, DriverStore and if your installation has one, DRVSTORE.  These folders contain all the hardware drivers for your operating system.  In the folder location, C represents the drive on which you have Windows installed, this may be a different letter on your system.

You can simply copy these folders out to seperate storage (DO NOT MOVE THEM) such as an external USB drive or Pen Drive.  When time comes to reinstall the drivers you can copy the folders back.

Now there are a couple of ways to reinstall the drivers.  The easiest way is to simply restart the PC when the driver folders have been copied back to see if Windows automatically detects drivers for uninstalled hardware.  This is possible, but won’t be the case for all your hardware.

To install drivers for the missing hardware you need to open the Device Manager.  You can do this by typing Device Manager into the search box in the Start Menu.  You will see all your uninstalled drivers highlighted with a small yellow warning triangle icon.  You need to Right-Click on each one and select Update Driver.  Because the correct drivers are already in the drivers folders on your computer, telling Windows to find the drivers automatically should always install the correct one.  You may however, in some cases, have to tell the Device Manager which folder to look for.  You can either point it directly to one of the two drivers folders, or just at the System32 folder; making sure you tick the box “include subfolders”.

There is an important caveat with this.  The drivers for 64 bit (x64) and 32 bit (x86) versions of Windows are usually different.  This means that if you copy x86 drivers into an x64 copy of Windows; or vice-versa, they will not install.  Windows will recognise them as being incorrect.  You cannot use this method therefore when migrating your system from the 32-bit version of Windows to the 64-bit version when, for example, adding more memory to your PC.

You CAN use this method to migrate drivers between Windows Vista and Windows 7 (and back again) as both operating system share the same driver model, but again not between x86 and x64 builds.  You CAN’T use this to migrate Windows XP drivers to Vista or Windows 7 however as Windows XP uses an older driver model and the hardware drivers for XP are not compatible with the newer versions of Windows.

I’m singling Microsoft out in this article because the other major desktop operating systems don’t seem to suffer from this problem. Apple have a clear policy of only supporting older versions of OS X for so long and, because these (so far at least) haven’t been susceptible to malware in the way Windows has, there has been very little in the way of support that Apple has had to offer.

GNU/Linux, especially Ubuntu the most common name in Linux, changes so regularly that there’s no need to support older versions at all and indeed legacy support almost never happens. Each new version will run happily on the hardware of an older version so people are simply encouraged to upgrade for free.

So where does this leave Microsoft? This company has a bigger problem. Not only is it the market leader with millions more computers around the world running its operating systems, it also faces two other major problems. The first of these is big business, Microsoft’s largest customer group, who traditionally leave it at least a year or two after a new version of Windows is released to upgrade and many of whom are still using Windows XP today, despite Windows 7 having more than proven itself in terms of reliability, security and performance.

Businesses don’t like upgrading very often. They tend to approach these things in an “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” manner because they have all types of bespoke desktop software and intranet services that still require the devil’s browser, Internet Explorer 6 to work, and it’s expensive and time-consuming to bring these up to date. In short, they’d all rather not bother.

Microsoft introduced XP Mode, a fully licenced copy of XP running in a virtual machine for Windows 7, to address this problem but it doesn’t seem to have helped. Businesses just won’t shift in great-enough numbers.

Then we have the developing market for whom computers are an expensive luxury and where running Windows 7 is just something the old 386, 486 and Pentium computers they’re still using won’t run it, at least not well. Many of these people are stuck on XP both because of performance and price. These people simply can’t afford to upgrade despite Microsoft long ago having made available a special version of Windows just for them.

The official policy of Microsoft for product support is that…

Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer. Microsoft will also provide Extended Support for the 5 years following Mainstream support or for 2 years after the second successor product (N+2) is released, whichever is longer.

This puts Windows XP support ending on April 8th 2014, a massive 13 years after it first went on sale and Windows Vista on April 11th 2017. Many people argue this is simply far too long.

So why is it too long and what are the reasons for forcing people to upgrade sooner? Apple seem to have the right idea on cost. It’s just too expensive to maintain support for these older operating systems. Microsoft could too save money by cutting support for XP earlier and they’d have some increased revenue for those people who are forced to upgrade (business customers on their Software Assurance programme will have already paid for Windows 7 depsite not using it).

It would be better for the man on the street too, knowing that his operating system would be more secure because he simply wouldn’t be using XP… or would it?

The question remains that if Microsoft pulled all support for XP would people actually stop using it? There would certainly be a proportion of people who would upgrade but a great many more, for whom XP is also as comfortable as an old shoe, wouldn’t even necessarily know that support had ended and would carry on using it anyway.

This scenario could create a security nightmare for the world with not only these individuals having their PCs being targeted by virus and malware writers, but also with the huge potential for these machines to be hijacked by botnets to attack larger targets.

It could also be argued that Windows versions would be much cheaper, maybe even approaching OS X levels of pricing ($90 over three years), if many years of additional support staffing didn’t have to be factored into the overall cost.

We can’t say though that we, as a consequence of this being a possibility, all have a responsibility to continue to support XP. Education is needed here for consumers, direct intervention in the form of financial help is needed for the developing world and big business needs a firm kick up the backside. It was big business who forced an extension of the support life for XP after all, and these people have a lot to answer for.

So should Microsoft drop support for a product that’s older than four years in the way Apple do? The answer in my mind is a definitive yes, but with the pressures Microsoft are under we can probably still expect to see computers running Windows XP for many years to come.

The vulnerability afcects all versions of Windows including XP and Windows 7.   On Windows 7 the exploit can bypass the operating system’s security as it does not require administrative privileges to run.

In a statement Microsoft said…

Microsoft is investigating reports of limited, targeted attacks exploiting a vulnerability in Windows Shell, a component of Microsoft Windows. This advisory contains information about which versions of Windows are vulnerable as well as workarounds and mitigations for this issue.

The vulnerability exists because Windows incorrectly parses shortcuts in such a way that malicious code may be executed when the user clicks the displayed icon of a specially crafted shortcut. This vulnerability is most likely to be exploited through removable drives. For systems that have AutoPlay disabled, customers would need to manually browse to the root folder of the removable disk in order for the vulnerability to be exploited. For Windows 7 systems, AutoPlay functionality for removable disks is automatically disabled.

The exploit requires removable-media, such as a USB flash drive, and with auto-play enabled or with the user browsing manually to removable media. 

Affected Software

Windows XP Service Pack 3

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2003 with SP2 for Itanium-based Systems

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2

Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 1 and Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems and Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems and Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems and Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems Service Pack 2

Windows 7 for 32-bit Systems

Windows 7 for x64-based Systems

Windows Server 2008 R2 for x64-based Systems

Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based Systems

NeoWin have a video demonstrating the vulnerability which can be viewed here.

Microsoft has reported it’s seen more than 10,000 PCs hit by the attack so far and it’s still not been able to find a fix for the problem.

The effect of the vulnerability can give hackers complete control over a PC.  It initially came about when a Google Engineer discovered it was possible to exploit Windows XP’s ability to send and receive remote help from another computer.

Initially, Microsoft said it only saw “innocuous” attacks by a few researchers but now hi-tech criminals are exploiting it as well.

Writing on the Microsoft Security Centre blog, Holly Stewart said it had started seeing “seemingly-automated, randomly-generated” web pages that host the exploit.

A senior security researcher at Trend Micro, Rik Ferguson, said  ”It’s certainly very serious and is now being actively exploited by what appears to be several different groups as you can see form the multiple payloads being delivered.” and Carole Thierault, senior security consultant as security firm Sophos has described the attacks as a “nightmare”.

Microsoft is still working on a fix for the problem but Engadget have reported that…

Microsoft says the only current work around to the issue is to Unregister the HCP Protocol which disables hcp:// style links

The vulnerability does not affect Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users can read the following guide to find out how to protect their system from the attack: Windows XP And Windows Server 2003 Zero-Day Vulnerability

I really can’t see Microsoft adding it into Windows itself, not even for Windows 7, so I’ll have to keep looking around for decent freeware alternatives.

The annoying thing is that as of yet, I haven’t really found any decent desktop managers which are simple, stable and perform well.

Today however, I found one which I really liked the look of on CodePlex.

Multiple Desktops for XP and Vista is a alpha quality desktop manager which you can try out here, but is pretty unusable right now. What I liked about it is the simplicity, ease-of-use and generally good design. Using the new Windows Vista live thumbnails it can give “give you a full screen preview of all of your desktops.”

At the moment however it’s slow and buggy, but I shall be keeping an eye on it for upcoming versions.

The full set of features includes:

• An infinite number of desktops only limited by the amount of memory in your computer
• A full screen desktop/window manager/switcher
• Live Vista thumbnails of all of your windows
• An alpha-blended indicator window to provide a visual indicator when you switch between desktops
• Hotkeys for up to 9 desktops using your numpad keys along with "send window to desktop" hotkeys
• A system tray icon to access a menu containing items for every desktop, no matter how many
• Multiple-monitor support
• Arrow key hotkeys
• One system tray icon per desktop (optional)
• Window-specific menus
• Sticky windows to exclude windows from the virtual desktop manager
• Per-desktop backgrounds
• XP support
• Thumbnail window tool
• Show all windows hotkey
• Show mini-preview at cursor hotkey
• Program rules for locking programs onto desktops
• Command line arguments for launching programs onto desktops, switching desktops, and showing the switcher

You can check it out here.

Now I realise that many of the things I said where good about Vista can be backported or substituted into XP. There are freeware alternatives to everything really, and Microsoft has allowed many things intended for Vista alone to be installed into Vista.

While this is true, I don’t think it makes for a killer argument on why we should stick with XP. As Thinker said:

“BTW, one thing to say: Many says, that all that stuff in Vista can be downloaded for XP too. I assure you, that when you try your to load all those application into XP it will work terribly slow. I checked it”

Okay, again, I know that depends on your set-up etc, but I’m thinking of this from the point of view of 90% of users across the world. Yes, personally I use Media Monkey instead of Windows Media Player, but most people will use the supplied applications.

Just imagine clean-installing Windows XP SP2.

Its good, its clean, its fast. But It’s also pretty dated in terms of a modern Operating System being 7 years old and all. That’s okay because you can of course give it all the functionality you want by installing additional software and updates.

If you really want to spend you time removing out of date software, updating new software, finding freeware etc then go for it. I’m guessing most people will not.

Paul Thurrott makes the strongest case I have seen for why XP is good, but not good enough:

“Aside from obvious look and feel issues, the most striking thing about downgrading from Windows Vista to XP is the sheer number of things that need to be installed and configured in order to bring the older OS up to speed with its more recent stablemate.”

Amongst these he describes the following:

• Hardware Drivers, XP is distinctly lacking
• Out of date software applications including MSN Explorer, Outlook Express, and Windows Messenger, IE6 and WMP9.
• Missing applications, such as all many new applications I mentioned yesterday
• Microsoft Update, a crappy web-based version. You’ll have to find and download the new Microsoft Update software.
• Start Menu, It likes to shuffle programs randomly. See if you like it after trying the Vista start menu.
• Hidden applications,
• ClearType, disabled by default in XP.
• Windows Search, download and install Windows Search or suffer with the default.
• Networking, Rarst mentioned XP having vastly improved networking making it worth upgrading. Vista has even more improved. “In XP, you have to enter the WPA network key TWICE to initially configure wireless networking. There are repeated "Now connected" pop-up balloons: Yeah, we get it, you’re connected. And then there are those annoying disconnected network adapter icons in the tray.” Oh well, I guess there are some handy registry hacks for that aren’t there? =P
• Power management, Manually enable the power management icon and hibernation
• Backup, XP has none of this
• User interface, dated, ugly and lurid.
• Disk Defrag, doesn’t happen automatically
• Hibernation and Sleep modes, good luck with getting these to work

“I know, I know. You’re looking at this list and you’re thinking big deal. Remember, however, that this isn’t a list of unique Vista features–a list that would include such technologies as BitLocker, Media Center, and Windows Calendar, among many others. This is a list of things that impact me, as an individual, on a regular basis. A list that should be combined with the list of issues from the previous section to provide a wider overall picture of the real world day to day differences between using each system. In this light, the advantages of Windows Vista are very real. Very real indeed.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I think it is easy to look at Vista and say, “so what?” but the reality is once you have actually become accustomed to using it, going back to XP feels like stepping into the 90s.

No I don’t want to make this too serious and I hope I don’t seem like I’m ranting, I just felt that since Rarst’s views are probably shared by a few of you we could open up the discussion even more.

“In my opinion Vista has bad reputation for a number of reasons… And they better fix those reasons, not reputation”

I think that Microsoft has fairly clearly been doing this, by first spending 2 years working on Vista fixes, compatibility issues with partners and finally releasing SP1 this year. Now it’s time to work on reputation, which brings us back to the new Microsoft campaign.

“[Vista] IS slower. It can’t be faster by design. All people saying it is faster are either comparing it to really crappy XP install or are using self-hypnosis.”

I really think this is purely a perceptional thing now. There are plenty of third party tests which have grudgingly shown Vista to be equal or superior to XP on identical hardware. This can only improve with time as well. Here is Ed Bott’s view:

“If you bought a bottom-of-the-line, loss leader system in 2004, you may find it unacceptably slow. But any mainstream system purchased after early 2004 should be just fine with Windows Vista.”

“Tons of internal DRM crap that slows some critical tasks like file copying to a crawl.
Crappy performance on notebooks (on normal notebooks, not upper-class that pack more hardware than average desktop). High system requirements (if it could work on XP-level hardware adoption process could be way more smooth)…”

I’m pretty sure these are some of those Vista myths that where circulating around a year or so ago. You know that DRM is completely optional right? And I have personally encountered it only twice in 7 months. While Vista did require higher system requirements when it came out, so did Windows 95 AND Windows XP. A few years later and the hardware has caught up, everyone’s forgotten about it and we’re ready to complain over the next resource-hogging eye candy OS.

Btw on the DRM thing again, again, Ed says:

“Much of the DRM code in Windows Vista is a a straightforward upgrade of the infrastructure introduced in Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10.”

“I keep hearing complains that Vista puts priority on internal tasks and freezes user out (especially on relatively underpowered stuff like notebooks). It is supposed to work in idle, doesn’t mean it always does. And some stuff like DRM crap runs realtime by definition”

Vista does put programs into non-responsive mode far more rapidly then XP, but it also recovers from this significantly better. I rarely ever have whole system crashes like I did with XP.

“I am not Vista hater for the sake of it. But I am greatly disappointed with it. It is boring upgrade stuffed with crappy features, slower and with higher system requirements. Not something I want to replace my XP with”

I understand upgrading to Vista may not seem worth it, but if you are purchasing a new computer what possible reason could you have for not simply getting the vastly superior OS? I also think this shows a little lack of foresight as Vista provided the necessary architectural changes to create far greater Windows versions in the future. Increasingly we are seeing Longhorn concepts being incorporated back into Windows.

Rarst also requested some specific examples of Vista’s improvements over XP, here is what I can think of off the top of my head:

• Streamlined and improved start menu including Windows Search
• Integrated search in Windows Explorer
• Windows Media Player 11 and Windows Media Center
• New and improved applications including:
  • Windows Mail
  • Windows Photo Gallery
  • Snipping Tool
  • Media Encoder
  • Windows Calendar
  • Movie Maker
  • DVD Maker
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Windows Contacts
  • Windows Meeting Space
  • Windows Defender
• Windows Aero of course, and some improved customizations options
• Security improvements:
  • Windows Defender
    • Start-up blocker
  • Windows Firewall
  • UAC (perhaps a little over the top, but still a good thing!)
• Improved Control Panel navigation
• New Parental controls including
  • Account permissions (blocking specific programs)
  • Time tracking, limits and reports
  • Games rating controls
• Administration and troubleshooting Tools
  • Error tracking and reporting
  • Event log
  • Reliability and Performance monitor
  • System health report
• System maintenance tools
  • Regular Background defragmenting
  • File backup and restore
  • Improved Hard Drive partitioning
• Improved audio, now individual programs can be adjusted, for example low volume system sounds and high volume media player
• ReadyBoost
• Improved sharing capabilities
• Improved wireless connection (I’ve been seeing XP users have far more trouble connecting to Wireless then I ever have)
• Better performance management for laptops

And that’s about enough for now.

Vista is certainly not perfect, there are still plenty of annoying things, but it definitely is an improvement over XP. Some things I cannot forgive with Vista however include painfully slow right click context menus, the locking of files so they cannot be deleted and the removal of the progress bar in the defragmenter. Thanks to Rarst himself I discovered Unlocker which can fix the deletion problem, so thanks! =P

Windows itself provides this feature with the Run As command in the right-click context menu for instance. But what about the command line, run dialog or task manager ? That’s where Advanced Run [via Shell City] comes into play. It replaces the windows run as dialog and adds itself to the File > New Task menu in Taskmanager and Windows R shortcut.

The advanced run box provides several advanced features that make it a good addition to your operating system. It does have a history function which means that you can quickly issue a command that you have given in the past without having to type it in manually or finding the executable in Windows Explorer.

The user can be easily switched with the arrow keys provided, every user account known to the system can be selected this way. Advanced Run is compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista. A system restart after installation is required before the application can be fully used.

For a 2 Gigabyte system it would mean between 2 and 6 Gigabyte of virtual memory preferably taken from a secondary hard drive and not the system partition. The Virtual Memory to low warning pops up if the RAM and virtual memory are not able to store all the data needed and there are basically two solutions for this.

The first one would be to install more RAM. If you run Windows Vista with 512 Megabyte you will have an overall experience of slowness and might experience the virtual memory to low warning quite often even if you set that value to 1.5 or 2 Gigabytes. I would suggest to increase the RAM to 2 Gigabyte (or 4 Gigabyte) if you have the budget.

Ram is not that expensive currently and you can get 4 Gigabytes for as low as $75 plus shipping at Newegg currently. (make sure your computer is compatible and read the reviews).

If adding more RAM is not an option you can try to raise the virtual memory itself and move it to another hard drive if one is available. Depending on the settings already in place I would choose a value of at least twice the RAM amount and at least 2 Gigabytes.

You can check the virtual memory setting by pressing the [Windows Pause] keys which should open System Properties. Click on the Advanced tab and there on settings under Performance.

Click again on the Advanced tab and you will see the Virtual Memory setting at the bottom. Reducing background applications could also help getting rid of the Virtual Memory too low warning message.

The choice of the free application is limited to one of the following: Windows Vista Ultimate, Office Ultimate 2007, Money Plus Premium, Streets and Trips 2008 or Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008. This does come at a price though. Microsoft wants to monitor your user behavior for the period of three months and asks you to fill out an occasional survey as well.

Cautious users will stop reading here and I can fully understand that they do not wish that their usage data is send to Microsoft. Lets see what Microsoft has to say about the type of data that gets collected:

• Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) –
• Office Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)
• Additional data collection

The Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) collects the following data:

• Configuration, such as how many processors are in your computer, how many network connections you use, which version of Windows is running, and if some features such as Bluetooth wireless technology or high-speed USB connections are turned on.
• Performance and reliability, such as how quickly a program responds when you click a button, how many problems you experience with a program or a device, and how quickly information is sent or received over a network connection.
• Program use, such as the features that you use the most often, how often you use the Help and Support Center, and how many folders you typically create on your desktop.

It’s hard to say what the Office Customer Experience Improvement Program does, Microsoft explains in greater detail the Additional Data Gathering:

• Windows settings and usage, such as the number of user accounts on the computer and the view settings for Control Panel (that is, if you use the default Category view or the Classic view to display Control Panel).
• Details about your computer hardware, such as processor type and speed (as well as the number of processors), system memory, video memory, and other hardware configuration information.
• File and folder information, such as the number of files and folders located in common places (for example, in Documents).
• Which programs you open (for example, which application you use to read your e-mail).
• Changes you make to your hardware or software.
• Problems you encounter, such as application crashes.

This is a lot of data that is collected and I personally would never ever allow a program to collect that kind of data – and probably more without my knowledge – and send that data to Microsoft who use a unique identifier to keep track of the data.

But here is an idea. Do you have another computer that you do not use that much, a laptop maybe or an older one running Windows XP or Windows Vista ? Why don’t you use those for the program and use them occasionally only ? Microsoft is also offering a way to opt out of the program by simply sending an email to winpanel@microsoft.com with the word remove in the subject line without consequences.

That sounds like you can keep the software, does not it ? I don’t feel like analyzing all those Terms of Use and Privacy Statement documents but this could be a loophole to get a free Microsoft application.

Shock Sticker is an old application. You can see that if you try to install it, the installation menu looks like Windows 95 but it works fine. Once installed a small icon in your system tray appears which creates a new sticker when left-clicking it. A right-click displays a menu with additional options such as to display all created stickers, creating or changing the password or saving everything that has been created.

Newly created stickers have a title bar and a text area. You can write as much text as you want into the text area but for the sake of quickly looking notes up I would suggest to keep it as short as possible. Basic text editing possibilities can be used, those include changing the font and the color of the font.

The title of the sticker can be modified by hitting F2 or left-clicking the upper-left icon which opens a menu with the option to do so. All notes can be made sticky which means that they will always be on top.

Clicking the minimize icon shrinks the note so that only the title is shown. Another click changes the size to the default one again. Setting a password might be a good idea if you write down personal notes. If no password is set everyone can read all the notes that you have created with Shock Sticker.

If a password is set the password has to be entered before a note can be viewed or edited.

Shock Sticker is a good but basic way of keeping notes in a Post-It like format on your PC.

Read More:

Shock Sticker
via Freeware Genius

This however does not work for folders. One of my friend wanted his folders there which is why I researched the matter and found a way to add the pin to Start Menu right-click option for folders as well. This tweak requires that you open the registry and add a new key to it, make sure you back it up before you continue.

Open the registry by using run in Windows XP or the Search in Windows XP. Type in regedit32 and hit enter. Navigate to the following key in the registry and right-click choosing New > Key there.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Folder \ shellex \ ContextMenuHandlers

Name that key {a2a9545d-a0c2-42b4-9708-a0b2badd77c8} and close the registry again. If you right-click a folder now while pressing the shift key you should see the option to pin that folder to the Windows Start Menu.

To reverse it you simply delete the key in the registry. Changes will take effect immediately, no reboot required.

via Thinktechno

Windows XP users who love the Vista looks can easily change their XP theme to one that looks pretty much like Windows Vista. A software called VistaMizer does that automatically. VistaMizer replaces more than 380 files in Windows XP, mostly icons and graphics, and the result looks astonishingly well.

Below are two screenshots of how a Windows XP system looks like after using VistaMizer. Click on the image to get a bigger screenshot.

Please keep in mind that your language is not changed during the transformation which means that the above screenshots are from a German XP, an English XP would of course have English menus and such.

VistaMizer has a size of more than 22 Megabytes and can only be downloaded using Bittorrent.

Read More:

VistaMizer

The software XP Keep Per User Display Settings steps in and provides a way so that every user can work with his own display settings. This is achieved by running the application in the background. It automatically keeps a log of all user settings and activities applying and saving display settings whenever a user logs in, logs off or switches accounts.

The information are stored in the registry where they are loaded and saved when the need arises.

Read More:

XP Keep Per User Display Settings
XP User Display Settings (similar software but without support for Fast User Switching)

You might be interested in which Windows editions are effected and which are not. It would also be nice to know if your browsers and e-mail clients are vulnerable and can be used to exploit the system. Vulnerable are Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000 SP4. Several other Microsoft operating systems are affected as well like Windows Server 2003 but I think the first three cover most Windows editions that my readers use. Exploitation happens completely silently.

Take a look at the demonstration video below. It shows how Windows Vista enters a endless Crash-Restart loop caused by a malicious ani file which was dropped on the desktop. Attacks will most likely occur over the Internet.

A security company has released a temporary fix for the solution until an official Microsoft patch gets released.

The shutdown is almost immediate which means it is much faster than the shutdown with the usual registry tweaks that can be applied to reduce the timeout delay for processes. The freeware runs fine on Windows Vista and XP, you should just be aware that Superfast Shutdown ignores everything that is still open and running. This could mean that you loose data that has not been saved. Make sure you save everything important before you activate the shutdown option.

Installing the freeware adds two shortcuts to your desktop. The first is called superfast shutdown and the second superfast reboot. Both options are great if you think that the normal shutdown and reboot procedure takes to long. Again, make sure that everything important is saved before you click on the shortcuts.

Each device contains information about the manufacturer, OEM name, device type, device model and even the name of the device. It is therefor easy to identify the device and right-click the device to search for drivers for the device or contact the vendor using the program itself.

It would not be a problem however to use a normal search engine to find a driver instead of the build in search. The biggest problem that I see is that a lot of devices are shown and it could be quite complicated to find the correct one that corresponds to the yellow icon in the device manager.

The first and one of the most important steps would be to download and install the latest security fixes and services packs. I sometimes have to talk to users in my job (which is somewhat security related as well) and discover that they run Windows XP with the same settings that the pc was shipped with. No updates, outdated anti-virus definitions and the like. You do get the latest patches and fixes for your operating system at windowsupdates.

Make sure you have a valid license otherwise you will not be able to download the updates. A different way would be to use autopatcher which can be downloaded in a version that includes all the updates and fixes already.

The next step would be to turn off unnecessary services and programs that you won’t use. Why should the remote service be active if you never use it ? This reduces the chance of an attacker to get into the system. There are currently 19 services running on my system, if you never tinkered with them before you have probably double that size or even more.

Read the article about turning unnecessary services off, it explains the basics. It is a good idea to turn of the following services if you do not need them

• Telnet
• Universal Plug and Play Device Host
• IIS (not installed by default)
• Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
• Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
• Remote Registry
• Routing & Remote Access
• SSDP Discovery Service

Talking about software. It is wise to not use the default Microsoft products like Outlook Express or Internet Explorer. Those are attacked the most because most of the users use them. (besides offering great ways of attacking them) Alternatives would be Firefox or Opera for Internet Explorer and Thunderbird for Outlook Express.

You should install a anti-virus solution. I do use Antivir but others should be fine as well. The most important aspect is that you keep the definition files up to date. If the software offers automatic updates I suggest you make it update the files once a day.

Firewalls. I do not use them. Well, not a software based firewall that is. I do have a hardware firewall which is all I need. I think that firewalls give the user a false sense of security. They are highly complex and require lots of attention to secure the system. It is not enough to simply install one and click on accept / deny every time a program wants to connect to the internet.

To secure the system you have to add all the tools that should have internet access to the firewall rules with exactly the ports they need. You should close every other port that is not needed by those applications. A good freeware that displays the list of currently open ports is currports.

I think those are the most important steps. If you have more let me know them.

An easier method would be to run selected programs using a reduced privilege level to reduce the possibility that malicious software can infect the computer. The script that is able to do this is called Drop my Rights and was developed by Michael Howard for Microsoft.

The software is command line driven but you can easily create shortcuts to the programs that you want to run with reduced privileges. The most likely candidate for this is of course the web browser that you are using, especially the Internet Explorer.

To create a shortcut to a program on your computer do the following. Create a shortcut for the program and right-click it afterwards. Select Properties from the menu and click on the shortcut tab if it is not the active tab already. The target entry contains the link to the application that is started when you double-click the shortcut.

All that needs to be done is to add the link to the drop my rights executable before that initial entry and add the privilege level behind that entry. Let me explain it with an example:

“C:\dropmyrights.exe” “c:\something.exe” C

Privilege levels can be N for normal users, C for Constrained users and U for untrusted users. Please note that many programs do not work if you run them as an untrusted user and that some applications do not work for constrained users. Securityfocus conducted a series of tests to show the differences between constrained and normal users and I took the liberty to quote the important results.

Administrator:

During the testing a number of unrecognized applications were installed. Changes were made to the GUI of Internet Explorer including the addition of various buttons and search-bars. Phantom windows would appear and disappear at random, and there were numerous popups. The virtual machine itself was running noticeably slower as well. Although an online virus scan was initiated, it didn’t complete successfully. In fact the scan died with an error before it actually completed. It found 7 infections, however, before it finally died.

Normal User:

The only observation of note during the experiment is that pop-ups still occurred. There were no phantom windows or unexplained applications installed. However the virus scan still turned up 4 viruses. Since the author recommends the “C” parameter while surfing more questionable sites, the next portion of the experiment did exactly that.

Constrained User:

During this final experiment the only oddity observed was that the Internet Explorer window would maximize if it wasn’t already. There were no pop-ups, pop-unders, or any of the other effects previously observed, and this time the virus scan turned up zero viruses.

All tests were performed using the Internet Explorer to visit unfriendly sites. It should be noted that this does not mean that you are 100% secure if you run your programs with constrained users privileges but it adds to the security and this is what really counts.