Stay Safe: Back Up by Bot

The backup tools built into many editions of Windows XP and Vista let you schedule and perform automatic backups. Unfortunately, only XP Pro and Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate include these tools by default. XP Home users, however, will find a backup program on their Windows CD: navigate in Explorer to the valueadd\msft\ntbackup folder, right-click the Ntbackup file, and choose Install.

If you use Vista Home Premium, you’ll have to find a backup program elsewhere; go to the ‘Make Image Backups’ section of ‘Give Home Premium Vista Ultimate Features’ for more on backing up Home Premium.
In XP, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Backup. If it’s already set to start in Advanced mode, choose Tools, Switch to Wizard Mode. Step through the wizard, specifying what to back up and where. At the ‘Completing the Backup or Restore Wizard’ screen, click Advanced. Specify the type of backup (such as Incremental, which is good for regular, automated backups) and click Next. Set other options on the subsequent screens, and click Next for each.

At ‘When to Back up,’ check Later, type a name for the backup, and then click Set Schedule. Use the settings listed under the Schedule and Settings tabs in the Schedule Job dialog box to customise when and how often to back up, and click OK. Enter your log-in name and password twice, and then click OK again. Click Next, enter your password two more times, and click OK and Finish. If you need to modify the backup schedule, reopen Scheduled Tasks and double-click the icon for the backup job.

In Vista, choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Backup Status and Configuration. Click Set up automatic file backup and confirm at the User Account Control prompt. Follow the prompts to set what, where, and when to back up (see the image here). To make changes later on, return to this utility and click Change backup settings or Turn off to modify or disable your backup bot.

Tweak your Right-Click Menu to Manage Files

You can invoke a prompt that asks for the destination folder by adding ‘Copy to Folder’ and ‘Move to Folder’ commands to your right-click menu.

First, create a Registry backup by setting a new restore point in System Restore.  Open Notepad, click the Format menu, and make sure ‘Word Wrap’ is unchecked. Type (or cut and paste) these three lines:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\
ContextMenuHandlers\{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\
ContextMenuHandlers\{C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}]

The file should have only three lines even if they are wrapped on your screen here. Line 1 starts with “Windows…”. Lines 2 & 3 each start with “[HKEY…”

Save the file to a convenient location such as the Desktop, and give it a name like CopyToMoveTo.reg (be sure to include the .reg extension) and exit Notepad. Now right-click the file and choose Merge. Confirm at any prompts you may receive.

The next time you right-click a file, you’ll see two new commands: ‘Copy to Folder’ and ‘Move to Folder’. Choose one of these commands to open a dialog box for selecting where your files should go.

Now you can delete the .reg file you created, or save it as a guide to which Registry keys to delete in case you decide later to remove these commands.

Quick Launch Items With Key Assignments

In XP, you can assign keyboard shortcuts either to items on your Desktop or to entries on your Start menu. The latter is a cleaner solution, so right-click the Start button and choose either Open or Explore. Double-click the Programs folder. We’ll use a method to keep things organized, so right-click in that window and choose New, Folder. Name the folder something like Keyboard shortcuts, and press Enter. Now double-click that folder, right-click and drag items from the Quick Launch bar into this folder one at a time, and choose Copy Here. Right-click each newly copied shortcut and select Properties. Click the ‘Shortcut key’ box and press the keys that you’ll use to launch the program; they must begin with Ctrl-Alt, Ctrl-Shift, Shift-Alt, Ctrl-Shift-Alt, or a function key (F1 through F12 on most keyboards) plus a letter or number. Click OK.

In Vista, the system automatically assigns Windows-key shortcuts to Quick Launch items based on their order in the toolbar. Launch the first item by pressing Windows+1, the second by pressing Windows+2, and so on. Unfortunately, to change the keyboard shortcut for an item, you have to drag it within the toolbar to change the order in which it appears.

Need to run a program everytime you shutdown the computer?

Windows conveniently provides a Startup group so that you can run applications automatically each time you log in. But why not add something that runs programs whenever you log out? For example, you could set it to make backups of the day’s work files, or to scan for viruses. LastChance is a PC World utility that lets you do just that. The program intercepts shutdown commands and runs your chosen apps before your computer calls it quits. You can also set the utility to run programs when a resource (such as a network drive) becomes available, and to schedule shutdowns to occur automatically.

Got XP Home and want to do backups?

So you’ve got XP Home and you’d like to do system backups? Unfortunately, only XP Pro and Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate include backup tools by default. For XP Home users there is a backup program on the Windows CD: navigate in Explorer to the valueadd\msft\ntbackup folder, right-click the Ntbackup file, and choose Install.

If you use Vista Home Premium, you’ll have to find a backup program elsewhere; go to the ‘Make Image Backups’ section of ‘Give Home Premium Vista Ultimate Features’ for more on backing up Home Premium.

Tweak your system protection to save CPU cycles

Vista’s Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate Editions include Shadow Copies, or backup copies, which let you recover a file’s older version. Vista Home Basic and Home Premium lack this feature but save the data anyway, wasting CPU cycles and disk space. To stop the waste and thereby speed up your system, put all of your documents and other files on a drive or partition other than your Windows system drive.

Then click Start, type SystemPropertiesProtection, and press Enter. In the list of disks, uncheck the one that contains personal data. Click Turn System Protection Off when prompted, and click

to close System Properties. Note that having your data on a separate partition also speeds up backups by allowing you to copy only your own files rather than your programs, which change much less often and thus need fewer backups.

Speed up your computer – Automate Disk Checking (chkdsk)

Computers run quicker when the hard drive(s) are running well. Over time, things happen to the hard drive to slow it down and someone has to initiate the actions that will put everything back in order. CHKDSK is one of those little tasks that we tend to forget to do. The smart thing to do is to schedule a task to handle this chore automatically at regular intervals and it takes only a few minutes to set it up.

First, to check your disk manually, click Start, Run (or press Windows-R) to open the command line, type cmd.exe /c echo y|chkdsk c: /f /x, and press Enter. ‘Cmd.exe’ is the command processor, which opens a command-prompt window in Windows.

The ‘/c’ switch tells the command prompt to run the commands that follow, including the all-important chkdsk utility, which examines your drive for errors. (Change ‘/c’ to /k if you want the command-prompt window to remain open so you can see any screen messages that might appear.) In this example, we are checking the C: drive with the fix (/f) function and telling it to lock out the disk (/x) if necessary while the scan takes place. (Your drive letter and switches may differ; type chkdsk /? at a command prompt to see all your choices.) If you’re checking the Windows drive, the command won’t work while Windows is running but will schedule a check for the next time you restart your system. That’s where the ‘echo y|’ portion comes in: it sends a “yes” answer to approve this option.

To automate disk checking in XP, choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks. Double-click Add Scheduled Task to start the Scheduled Task Wizard, and click Next. In the Application list, select Command Prompt and click Next. If you don’t see an entry for Command Prompt in the list, click Browse, find and select the file ‘cmd.exe’ in Windows’ System32 folder, and click Open.

Choose a time interval (Monthly is a good choice) and click Next. Specify the time, day, and months, and click Next again. Enter the account name and password that you use for logging in, and click Next once more.

Check Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish, and then click Finish. With the Task tab selected, edit the text in the Run box so that it reads: c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /c echo y|chkdsk c: /f /x (your path and options may differ).

Click OK, and enter your account name and password again. Finally, click OK one more time (you may be asked to confirm your log-in ID and password once more).

To automate disk checking in Vista, choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Task Scheduler. Click Continue in the User Account Control prompt. In the Actions pane on the right, click Create Task. Use the appropriate boxes to type a name for the task and, if you want, a description. Check Run with highest privileges and any other settings you wish. Select the Triggers tab and click the New button.

Set the interval for checking your drive: For example, choose Monthly, Select all months in the Months drop-down menu, click On, and select First in the first drop-down to the right of the button and Monday in the second drop-down. Specify the time and other settings if you wish, and click OK. Select the Actions tab and click the New button. For ‘Program/script’, type cmd.exe. For ‘Add arguments (optional)’, type /c echo y|chkdsk c: /f /x (your options may differ). Click OK. Finally, click the Conditions and Settings tabs to see if either of those dialog boxes has any other circumstances you want to specify.

When you’ve completed these steps, click OK. If you need to edit the settings later, select Task Scheduler Library in the left pane of the Task Scheduler to see your tasks in the top centre pane. Either edit the settings in the bottom center pane, or double-click the task name to reopen the dialog box.

Make Windows (XP or Vista) shutdown quickly

The fastest way to shut down Windows is to press the power button. Not a good idea, of course,  but it is quick. When that method gives you a wake-up call by the suddon loss of data, you might want to consider another alternative. One good solution is to reprogram your system’s power button to exit Windows, without any prompts (except to save unsaved work, as needed) and then shutdown. To do this:

In XP, open Control Panel. In the ‘Performance and Maintenance‘ section, pick Power Options. Click the Advanced tab. Under ‘When I press the power button on my computer’, select Shut down. Then click OK.

In Vista, click the Start button, type power options, and press Enter. In the upper left, click Choose what the power buttons do. Next to ‘When I press the power button’, select Shut down. You could also leave the setting at the default Sleep option, which can save you time when you power the PC on. Finally, click Save Changes.

If, like me, you use the “classic start menu” since Vista makes no sense, then click Start, Settings, Control Panel, and then Power Options. That will put you at the same screen to access the “When I press the power button” settings.

Now you can enjoy your faster shutdown.

Speed up Windows boot – Solution #3

Have you ever seen a list of what loads each time you start Windows? It’s shocking. Check out the free Autoruns program from Microsoft-owned Sysinternals. You’ll not only see what’s loading, but you’ll be able to disable or remove those things you don’t need. Each deletion from the list (do a system restore point before you start just in case) will free some system memory and recover processor cycles by clearing out the clutter that is left from old programs – and you may even discover some malware in the process.

How do you distinguish the useful startup programs from the useless ones? You can consult Autoruns’ built-in research tools, or you can visit Paul Collins’s Startup Applications List. This searchable and downloadable list of common startup items provides a description and rating for each one, indicating how likely the item is to be required on a typical system.

This simple exercise will get Windows moving quicker when you start it up or log on.

Speed up Windows boot – Solution #2

Once you have mapped a network drive to a letter on your computer, Windows will automatically restore that connection whenever you log on. Since resuming network connections takes time, you can speed your startups by dropping the network connections you don’t need.

Press Windows-E to launch Windows Explorer, and type Alt-T, D to open the Disconnect Network Drives dialog box. Pick the drives to disconnect, and click OK.

In the future, use the Tools, Map Network Drive command in Explorer and make sure to uncheck Reconnect at logon before you click Finish.