November, 2004 Archive

What’s Gpotool?

Gpotool (gpotool.exe) is an advanced Group Policy troubleshooting tool that’s included in the Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server resource kits. You can find information about the Windows 2003 version of Gpotool in the resource kit and at Microsoft Web site. You can download the Win2K Server version of Gpotool at Microsoft Web site. […]

How can I mark my USB storage devices as read-only?

Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) introduces a new registry subkey that lets you mark USB-based storage devices such as memory sticks as read-only devices. This is a useful security capability that can prevent users from copying data from their systems and taking that data offsite via a USB device. To enable the USB write […]

Suppress the Windows Tour Prompt in Windows XP

XP displays the Windows Tour balloon prompt the first 3 times you logon to XP. If you want to suppress the XP Tour, use the following XP registry hack: Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Key: SoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionAppletsTour Name: RunCount Type: REG_DWORD Value: 0 Setting RunCount = 0 will disable the balloon prompt for all users.

Speed opening folders with large numbers of AVI files

Opening a folder containing a large number of AVI file can open quite slowly because the OS has to open each AVI file and extract info from AVIs. If you have a large collection, you can speedup XP’s folder access to blocking it from automatically extracting this info. Doesn’t hurt anything, the OS will read […]

VMware authorization service makes hang system when installing vmware 4.5.x

Symptom: When installing VMware 4.5.1, my system has hung during installing VMware Authorization service. No way but to reset the system. But, this leads to failure of uninstallation. If you try a clean install of 4.0.x it works fine on the same system. The fix appears to be that you must have a swap file […]