I put a DVD in my drive and only the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folder appeared. It didn’t Autorun the DVD. Sure, I could just go to Start > Programs > Windows Media Player and play it there. But I’m lazy and I want it to Auto Play.

To make a video DVD automatically play when you insert it into the drive, you can perform the following steps:

1. Open My Computer/Computer.

2. Right click on the DVD drive.

3. Select Properites.

4. Click the AutoPlay tab.

5. In the dropdown, select DVD movie.

6. Select the radio button for Select an action to perform.

7. Select Play DVD movie using Windows Media Player.

8. Click OK.

Using a simple command you can quickly view all of the folders that are shared on your computer over the network. Just go to a command prompt and type:

net share

You will then get a list with the name of the share and where on your hard drive the resource is located.

A friend contacted me wanting to know how to find out where the login.bat file is in Windows Server 2008. Although I am not all that familiar with Server 2008, I knew the old path used with Windows 2000 and 2003 used to be:

C:\windows\sysvol\sysvol\<domain name>\scripts

You can also find out this information by typing the following command:

net share netlogon

You will then get the path of where your scripts directory is located.

You may encounter a problem in Windows XP or Windows 2000 where you canot open Help (HLP) files. When you try, you get an error:

Cannot open the file: mk:@MSITStore:<help file path>

To solve this issue, perform the following steps:

1. Click Start > Run

2. Type regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\hhctrl.ocx itss.dll and click OK.

The files should register sucessfully, and you should be able to open help files.

If you have to search for certain registry keys by keyword using REGEDIT, it can take forever. Luckily there are tools available that do it faster.

For the past few years, I have used Registry Crawler. You get a 30 day trial, then you will have to pay for it.

If you have a problem with paying for software, RegAlyzer does a nice job. I don’t like the interface in RegAlyzer as much as with Registry Crawler, but it does the job just the same.

Is the Send To > Mail Recipient missing when you right-click on a JPG image file.

To fix it, some changes in the registry need to be made:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg]
@=”jpegfile”
“PerceivedType”=”image”
“Content Type”=”image/jpeg”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg\OpenWithProgids]
“jpegfile”=hex(0):

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg\PersistentHandler]
@=”{098f2470-bae0-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jpg\UndoClass]
@=”jpegfile”

To import these settings into your Windows registry, download and open this file.

Make a shortcut that you can double-click on to send a chat to a GoogleTalk contact.

1. Right-click on the desktop and select New > Shortcut.

2. For Type the location of the item, type:

gtalk:chat?jid=username@gmail.com

3. Click Next, and give the shortcut a name. Click Finish when done.

See also: Google Talk Contact Shortcuts

A co-worker of mine didn’t know how to take a screenshot of their screen using Windows. Even some techies never learn how. Here are the steps:

1. Position the screen as desired.

2. If you want to capture the entire screen, press the Print Screen button, usually located toward the upper-right corner of the keyboard. If you want to capture just what is in a window or single program, click once on that window, then hold down ALT while pressing Print Screen.

3. Flip over to the application where you would like to use your captured screen. You can go to Edit and Paste the image into a document or email.

If you wish to just save it as an image, open the Paint program or other image editing software. You can then Paste the image there and save the image.

If you wish to get a screen shot of a portion of the screen, there are third party programs that do this like Snagit or Greenshot.

You may need the MAC Address of your network card to connect to a network secured using MAC Address Filtering. Here’s how to find it using DOS commands.

1. Hold down the Windows Key and press R.

2. Type CMD and press Enter.

3. Type IPCONFIG /ALL and press Enter.

4. The Physical Address is listed, that is the MAC Address of your network card.

I recently had software that was stuck at a point where it was trying to install the Microsoft .NET Framework during the installation. It failed over and over because the installer wasn’t able to remove and reinstall the files it needed to. Luckily I was able to manually remove the .NET Framework 2.0 so that I could reinstall it using these steps:

These steps were written for Windows XP users but will work in other versions of Windows.

1. Hold down the Windows Key and press R to bring up the Run box.

2. Type installer in the Open box, then click OK.

3. Click View > Details.

4. Right-click the Name column header, and then click Comments.

5. Right-click and choose Uninstall on any file that says Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 RTL x86 under the Comments column.

6. Close the Installer folder.

Read more… »

While using Windows XP, I had a window that had somehow fallen completely off of my screen. Right-clicking the window in the Taskbar and selecting Maximize brought it back, but there was no way I could get the window restored to where I could move it around my screen with my mouse.

Luckily, I found an article on how to Bring Misplaced Off-Screen Windows Back to Your Desktop

You just right-click the item in the task-bar and select Move. Then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move it around. Once you press one of the arrow keys though, your mouse can take it over and you can then easily drag and drop the window back to the screen.

Sometimes the little things escape me. I would’ve probably never thought of these steps. I mean, who ever  uses the Move option?

A PRN file is a type of file that can be read by printers. It’s basically a generic output file that printers can understand. Sometimes you will end up with one of these files and you will need to print it.

You used to be able to print these files to your local printer by using the command COPY /B C:\FILENAME.PRN LPT1:. These days, printers are not attached to LPT1 anymore. USB cables are used instead. So you have to use the network method in order to print the file. Here’s how to do this in Windows.

1. Share the printer on the network. If the printer you are using is already on a network such as your company network, skip this step.

2. Now we have to find the network path to your printer. If the printer you wish to print to is a company shared network printer that is not attached to your computer, it should have the server name and printer name under your list of Printers. It will say something like printername on serverp or LaserJet on printserver. So the path to these printers would be \\serverp\printername and \\printserver\LaserJet respectively.

If the printer is attached to your PC, the path will be the computer name and then the name of the printer. You can find your computer name by right-clicking My Computer and selecting Properties under the Computer Name tab. The name of the printer can be found under Printers in Windows by right clicking on the printer and selecting Properties. The printername is in the top field. So if my computer name is TP123 and the printer name is LaserJet, the path would be \\TP123\LaserJet.

3. Armed with this information, we can then go to Start > Run and use this command to copy the file to the printer. This command assumes the PRN file is located on the root of the C drive:

COPY /B C:\FILENAME.PRN \\TP123\LaserJet

The printer should then print out the contents of the PRN file.

When you boot up your computer, you get the following error:

The instruction at 0×745f2780 referenced memory at 0×00000000. The memory could not be read.

To try to solve this issue, try the following steps:

1. Hold down the Windows Key on your keyboard and press R.

2. Type regsvr32 wuapi.dll /s and click OK.

3. Repeat step 2, but substitute wuapi.dll with the following filenames instead:

atl.dll
wuaueng.dll
wuaueng1.dll
wucltui.dll
wups.dll
wups2.dll
wuweb.dll

4. Hold down the Windows Key on your keyboard and press R.

5. Type net stop WuAuServ and click OK.

6. Hold down the Windows Key on your keyboard and press R.

7. Type %windir% and click OK.

8. Right-click the folder SoftwareDistribution and select Rename. Rename it to SDold.

9. Hold down the Windows Key on your keyboard and press R.

10. Type net start WuAuServ and click OK.

You’re done! Hopefully this error doesn’t bother you anymore when you start your computer.

When you open a file in Windows XP that has a corrupted video, image files, HTML pages, or MP3 file, Windows Explorer crashes.

You will need to somehow access this folder so that you can delete the offensive file. You will need to unregister 2 DLL’s to prevent the Windows from previewing the file, which is what is actually causing Windows Explorer to crash.

1. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll and click OK.

2. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll and click OK.

3. Delete the file that is corrupted.

4. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 shimgvw.dll and click OK.

5. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 shmedia.dll and click OK.

Do you delete the My Music, My Documents or My Pictures folders only to find they have returned to Windows later? Delete them forever with these steps.

1. Hold down the Windows Key and press R.

2. Type regsvr32 /u mydocs.dll and click OK.

3. Now try deleting the folders. They should stay gone as long as that DLL isn’t registered again.

Please be aware that many applications may use these folders. Removing them may cause problems.

To undo this change, use the command regsvr32 mydocs.dll.

Ending a process in Windows using a command can be handy if you’re writing a batch file. You can accomplish this by using the TSKILL command. Let’s try this command out by ending the Notepad process.

1. Open Notepad by clicking Start > Run or hold down the Windows Key and press R.

2. Type notepad and click OK.

3. Click Start > Run or Hold down the Windows Key and press R.

4. Type CMD and click OK to bring up a DOS command box.

5. At the command prompt, type TSKILL notepad.

6. The Notepad application should close.

You can also use wildcards:

Typing TSKILL note* will close all processes that start with note.

You can also kill the process by the ID:

Type TSKILL 15203

See also:

Tskill Usage

HOW TO: Use the TSKILL Command to End Processes in Windows 2000 Terminal Services

In Windows XP and Windows 2000, you may have a problem opening the Computer icon in Component Services (Dcomcnfg). When trying to open it, instead nothing happens and it automatically closes the entire window and disappears.

Try the following things to solve this issue.

1. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 ole32.dll and click OK.

Try it now. If it doesn’t work, go to step 2.

2. Click Start > Run and type regedit and click OK.

3. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\COM3

4. Delete the COM3 folder. Close the registry editor.

5. Open Start > Settings > Control Panel.

6. Open Add/Remove Programs.

7. Click Add/Remove Windows Components.

8. Click Next through the wizard. No need to check anything first. You may be prompted for a Windows Installation CD.

9. Restart the computer and try Component Services again.

If that doesn’t work, you may want to explore certain programs that may have corrupted this option. Some have reported that uninstalling McAfee or Nero products have fixed the issue.

See Also:

PRB: Cannot Expand “My Computer” in Component Services MMC Snap-In

McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i Update Problems

Try these steps if you are unable to open Add/Remove Programs in the Windows 2000 Control Panel.

1. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 mshtml.dll

2. When you receive the message that the DLL has been registered, click OK and perform the same steps for each of the following commands one by one under Start > Run:

regsvr32 shdocvw.dll -i
regsvr32 shell32.dll -i

Are you getting “Error Deleting File or Folder” when deleting a file or a folder?

The best solution is a free download called Unlocker. It works even better than Sysinternals tool available from Microsoft.

When installing a program, you may get the following error:

Error 2739. Could not access Javascript runtime action

This error is usually appears because the jscript.dll is not registered in Windows. To register it, perform the following steps:

1. Click Start > Run or hold down the Windows Key and press R.

2. Type regsvr32 jscript.dll.

3. Click OK when the message appears about the registration succeeding. If you receive an error instead, ensure you are logged into Windows as an Administrator.