How to Change the ICON of an EXECUTABLE file

 Posted by Nishanth Singamala

Some times it becomes necessary to change the icon of an executable file so that the file gets a new appearance. Many of the tools such as TuneUP Winstyler does this job by adjusting the Windows to display a custom icon to the user. But, in reality if the file is carried to a different computer, then it shows its original icon itself.

This means that in order to permanently change the icon, it is necessary to modify the executable file and embed the icon inside the file itself. When this is done the executable file’s icon is changed permanently, so that even if you take file to a different computer it show’s a new icon.

For this purpose I have found a nice tool which will modidify the executable file and embed the icon of your choice into the file itself. ie: The tool changes the icon of the executable file permanently.

How to Change the Executable File Icon?

Here is a step-by-step instruction on how to use this tool to change the icon of any EXE file:

1. Go to www.shelllabs.com and download the trial version of IconChanger and install it (Works on XP, Vista and Win 7).
2. Run the IconChanger program from Start -> All Programs and you should see an interface as shown below:
   
3. Now you will see a window stating that “Choose an object whose icon you want to change”. Click on the “OK” button.
4. Now select the executable file for which you wish to change the icon.
5. Icon changer will automatically search for all the icons on your “C:\ drive” so that you can select any one of those. If your desired icon is not shown in the window, you may paste the path of your icon file in the field which says “Search icons in” so that your desired icon gets displayed.
6. Select the ICON of your choice and click on Set button.
7. Now a popup window will appear and ask you to select from either of these two options.
   • Change embeded icon.
   • Adjust Windows to display custom icon.
8. Select the first option (Change embedded icon). You are done. The icon gets changed.

I hope you like this post. Pass your comments in case if you have any queries or clarifications.

How to Hack Windows Vista Base Score

 Posted by Nishanth Singamala

If you are a Windows Vista user then you are very likely to be familiar with the concept of Base Score. This score is calculated based on the computer’s hardware and software configuration. This score act’s as a rating to your PC. If you have a too low base score then don’t worry. Hacking Windows Vista’s so called Base Scoreis very easy. It is possible to hack this score in just a few minutes. Here are the snapshots of my own system. Actually my system’s base score is 3.7. But I have brought it up to 9.5 with this small hack. This can be done for your computer too!

Here is a step-by-step instruction to hack the base score of Windows Vista:

1. Type the following command in the “Run” dialog box:
   %systemroot%\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore
2. You should see a .xml file with Assessment (Formal).WinSAT as filename.
3. Right-click it and select open with ‘Wordpad’ (Not notepad!)
4. On line 12, you should see something like the following:
   <SystemScore>9.5</SystemScore>
   <MemoryScore>9.5</MemoryScore>
   <CpuScore>9.5</CpuScore>
   <CPUSubAggScore>9.5</CPUSubAggScore>
   <VideoEncodeScore>5.5</VideoEncodeScore>
   <GraphicsScore>9.5</GraphicsScore>
   <GamingScore>9.5</GamingScore>
   <DiskScore>9.5</DiskScore>
5. You can enter any number in the place where I have written 9.5. But the number should be less than 10.
6. Once you have entered the number of your choice save the file and close it.
7. That’s it. You have successfully altered your Windows Vista base score. No restart is required.

Please note that this trick will neither improve the performance of your system nor will make your PC compatible to run Windows Aero UI. This is just a hack to display a bigger base score.

How to Completely Erase a Hard Disk Drive

 Posted by Nishanth Singamala

A new year has begun and perhaps you have decided to perform a system upgrade or get rid of your old computer system and purchase a new one. But, before you sell or donate your old computer, it is very much necessary tocompletely erase your hard disk drive.

Yes, every one of us are aware of this fact and so, we delete the contents of the hard disk either by using the DELETE key on our keyboard or by Formatting the hard disk.

Deleting and Formatting – Just Not Secure Enough!

But the fact is, the data will still be on the hard disk even after deleting it or formatting the hard disk. Using the delete key on your keyboard will only remove the shortcuts to the files making them invisible to users. Deleted files still reside on the hard drive and a quick Google search will show many options for system recovery software will allow anyone to reinstate that data.

Formatting the hard drive is a bit more secure way to erase the hard disk. Formatting a disk will not erase the actual data on the disk but only the address tables pointing to the data are dropped. It makes it much more difficult to recover the files. However, a computer specialist would be able to recover most or all the data that was on the disk before the reformat. For those who accidentally reformat a hard disk, being able to recover most or all the data that was on the disk is a good thing. However, if you’re preparing a system for retirement to charity or any other organization, this obviously makes you more vulnerable to data theft.

Completely Erase the Hard Disk through Disk Wiping:

So it is necessary for us to use a 100 percent secure way to erase the data from the hard disk drive. This way of securely erasing the data is called Disk Wiping. Disk wiping is a secure method of ensuring that data, including company and individually licensed software on your computer and storage devices is irrecoverably deleted before recycling or donating the equipment. Because previously stored data can be brought back with the right software and applications, the disk wiping process will actually overwrite your entire hard drive with data, several times. Once you format you’ll find it all but impossible to retrieve the data which was on the drive before the overwrite. The more times the disk is overwritten and formatted the more secure the disk wipe is.

There are a variety of disk wiping products available that you can purchase, or freely downloaded online to perform more secure disk wipes. One of my favorite disk wiping software is:

WipeDrive/ WipeDrive Professional

You have to use this tool by burning the iso image file onto a CD or by using a floppy disk. After burning this tool you have to boot your PC and follow the screen instructions to completely wipe out the data from your hard disk drive.

Display Legal Notice on Windows Startup

 Posted by Nishanth Singamala

If your PC has multiple users or you have your PC on a public place, then you can nowdisplay legal notice to every user before they log in to your PC. This legal notice will be displayed on the Logon screen at every startup just before the Desktop is loaded.

Using this way, you can tell your friends or give a warning to the users about the DO’s and DON’ts in your computer when they use it in your absence. You can do this pretty easily just by using a small registry hack.

Steps to Display Legal Notice on Startup:

1. Go to Start -> Run, type regedit and hit ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
3. On the right side pane look for “legalnoticecaption“, double click on it and enter the desired Legal Notice Caption.
   Next below this look for “legalnoticetext” and enter the desired Legal Notice Text. The legal notice text can be up to a page in its size so that it can include a set of do’s and dont’s for your computer.
4. After you do this just restart your computer and upon the next startup you can see the legal notice information for your computer. This trick works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 as well.

I hope you enjoy this post! Pass your comments.

How to Make An Invisible Password Protected Folder

 Posted by Nishanth Singamala

Do you want to password protect your folder? Do you want to make it invisible so that it remains unnoticed by other users of your PC? Well, here is a way to do that.

In this post, I will show you how to make an invisible password protected folder in Windows without using any additional software.

How to Create a Password Protected Folder?

Here is is step-by-step procedure to do this:

Step-1: Create a new folder (Right-click -> New -> Folder) and give it any name of your choice. For instance I name it as ABC.

Step-2: Now, in this folder place all the important files, documents or any folders that you want to password protect.

Step-3: Right-click on this folder (ABC) and select the option Send To -> Compressed (zipped) Folder.

Step-4: Now a new compressed zipped folder gets created next this folder (ABC) with the same name.

Step-5: Double-click on this compressed zipped folder and you should see your original folder (ABC) here.

Step-6: Now go to the File menu and select the option Add a password (File -> Add a password)

Now a small window will pop up and here you can set your desired password. Once the password is set, the folder will ask for the password every time it is opened. Thus ,you have now created the password protected folder.

How to Make the Folder Invisible?

Step-1: Right-click on this password protected folder and select Properties.

Step-2: At the bottom select the option Hidden and press OK. Now your folder gets invisible (hidden).

Step-3: In order to unhide this folder, go to My Computer -> Tools -> Folder options. Switch to View tab, scroll down and under Hidden files and folders you’ll see the following two options:

• Do not show hidden files and folders.
• Show hidden files and folders.

Select the second option and press OK. Now the invisible folder becomes visible in its location. To access it you need the password. To make it invisible again, repeat step -1 through step-3 and select the first option and click OK. Now, the folder becomes invisible once again.

I hope that you’ve now understood how to create an invisible password protected folder in Windows. If you like this post, pass your comments! Cheers 

How to Repair Windows Registry the Easy Way

 Posted by Nishanth Singamala

This article explains how to inspect and repair the registry errors in your Windows PC so as to improve its overall performance. If you are a Windows user, you are most likely to be aware of the fact that the Windows registry gets corrupted over time resulting in an overall decreased performance of the computer.

At times, registry errors can also make your PC to freeze down and hang up every now and then causing a serious annoyance to the users. At this point, the registry needs a serious repair to bring the PC back to its life. Well, before I tell you how to repair the registry, lets see what causes the registry to get corrupted.

Registry errors may occur due to installing too many applications/software programs from time to time without verifying the publishers. This may create invalid entries in the registry hive leading to the errors. With the Internet boom and the era of freeware with free downloads, people often install programs from untrusted sources which results in a serious damage to the registry. Since the registry is a crucial component of the Windows operating system, damage to this can cause the system performance to drop down significantly.

Repairing the Corrupt Windows Registry: The Easy Way

The best and the easiest way to do this is by using a Registry Repair Tool (Registry Cleaner). This program will automatically scan the registry of your PC to find invalid entries and will fix them by removing the errors with in no time. A registry cleaner is the simple and safest solution to fix registry errors without the need to re-install the Windows.

Which Registry Cleaner is the Best?

Well, today there exists hundreds of Registry repair tools on the market and as a result, people often get confused at which one to go far. Hence, when it comes to the choice of Registry repair tool, we must be very selective since not all of them are the same.

On the Internet, there exists many such tools which are simply useless and doesn’t apply any significant fixes to the Windows registry. After trying many such useless products on my PC, I finally found one good product which actually made a magic to my PC performance. It is:

RegCure Pro – Boost Your PC Speed

RegCure Pro is one of the best and award winning registry cleaner tool that repairs registry to avoid PC errors such as unwanted shutdown, freezing, crashing and more. This tool will:

• Repair the registry and increases your PC performance by upto 70%
• Fix DLL errors and invalid shortcuts
• Free up virtual memory to avoid error messages
• Performs Defragmentation and Compression of the registry
• Fix blue screen errors, system crashes, startup errors and more…

RegCure Pro is not just a Registry cleaner, rather it is a complete Optimization Toolkit for your PC. For more information on this program, you can visit the RegCure Pro Homepage.

Can I Manually Repair the Registry?

Windows registry has a very complex structure with hundreds of thousands of entries embedded in it. A corrupt registry may contain thousands of invalid entries and errors in it as a result of which, it is impractical and almost impossible to manually inspect, find and repair those errors. Also, manual registry repair involves serious risk and can lead to a total system breakdown if done improperly. Except you are a highly experienced Windows user or a Windows expert, you are not encouraged to tamper with the registry.

Hence, using a Repair tool is the safest and the easiest way to repair the registry errors and improve the overall performance of your PC. It is recommended that you periodically (daily or weekly) perform registry scans using these tools to repair the errors as and when they come up so that, you can keep your PC’s health at its best. Just repairing the Windows registry can make your PC blazing fast like never before!

How to Alter Windows Product ID

 Posted by Nishanth Singamala

If you are running a Microsoft Windows operating system on your computer, then you are most likely aware of the fact that your PC will have a Product ID. This Product ID is a system specific alphanumeric code which is derived/calculated based on the Windows product key you use and the hardware configuration of your Computer. In simple words, Product ID is the alphanumeric code that you see when you right-click on the My Computer icon and select the Properties option.

Ever wondered how to alter the Windows Product ID?

It is possible to alter the Windows Product ID and change it to what ever you like. For example, you can change the Product ID and put your nickname in place of the formal Product ID displayed by the Operating System. This hack is too easy and can be done within minutes. The screenshot showing the altered Product ID is given below:

Windows 7 PC showing Original PID:

Windows 7 PC showing Altered PID:

As you can see from the above screenshot it is simple and easy to make your Windows display what ever you want in the place of the real Product ID. Here is a step-by-step procedure to alter your Windows Product ID (works on Windows XP, Vista and 7):

1. Go to Start -> Run and type regedit in the Run dialog box
2. After you open the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key:
   HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version
3. On the right hand side, you can see an entry by name ProductID listed under the heading Name.
4. Double-Click on ProductID, a dialog box will pop-up showing your Windows PID. Now you can delete the original PID and enter anything of your choice.
5. Once you are done, just click on OK and close the Registry Editor. Now you can see the altered Product ID in the Windows Properties window.

NOTE: The above trick will let you change only the Product ID that is being displayed on Windows Properties window and not the actual product ID stored in the registry. In order to change the actual product ID, you will have to change the Windows product key used.

You can change the Windows product key as follows:

For Vista and Windows 7:

In the “Run” dialog box type SLUI 3 and hit Enter. You should see a pop-up window where in you can enter the new product key. Just follow the screen instructions to complete the procedure.

For Windows XP:

1. Open the Registry editor (Type regedit in Run and hit Enter)
2. In the Registry editor, Navigate to the following location:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\Current Version\WPAEvents
3. In the right side pane, locate OOBETimer, right-click on it and choose the option Modify.
4. Change at least one entry in the Value data text box and click OK.
5. In the Run dialog box, type the following command and hit Enter:
   %systemroot%\system32\oobe\msoobe.exe /a
6. You will now see a pop-up window saying “Let’s Activate Windows”. Choose the option “Yes, I want to telephone a customer service representative to activate Window”s and then click Next.
7. You should now see an option to change your product key. Type a new valid Windows product key in the field and click on the “Update” button.

This should change the product key of your Windows there by resulting in a new Product ID. I hope you like this trick. Pass your comments. Cheers!