tips

[How To] Disable Access To Control Panel In Windows 7

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control panel restriction

If your computer is used by many of your friends or family members etc., you might want to restrict access to Control Panel of your Windows 7 (or Windows Vista) so that they won’t mess up with it. Disabling access to control panel means that they won’t be able to modify the default settings of the programs installed and other settings as well.

Here is the step-by-step by guide to disable Control Panel from your Windows 7. It not only disables access to the Control Panel, it’ll also remove shortcuts present for Control Panel in places like Start Menu etc. I’m going to discuss two ways in which you can do it. While the first method only works for Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate editions of Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

Method-I: Using Group Policy Editor

1. Open start menu and type “gpedit.msc” in the search box and open the Group Policy Editor from the results:

Gpedit start menu

2. In the Group policy editor, expand “User Configuration” and find “Control Panel” under “Administrative Templates” as shown in the screenshot below:

Local Group Policy Editor

3. Find the “Prohibit access to the Control Panel” entry in the right hand side of the window. Either double click on it or right-click and choose “Edit”.

Control panel in Gpedit

4. Choose the option “Enabled” under “Prohibit access to Control Panel” as shown here.

prohibit access to control panel

Click “Apply” and then choose “OK” to close the window.

5. Now your Control Panel will get disabled and you can’t even find the link for the same in the Start Menu. Check it yourself:

control panel missing from the start menu

When you try to open it by searching it in start menu, you will get an error:

This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.

Control panel start menu

control panel restriction error

Method- II: Using Registry Editor:

This method works on all versions of Windows 7 & Windows Vista. But this involves a bit of editing the values in registry editor. If you are not acquainted with the Registry Editor much, we strongly advise not to implement this.

1. Press Start + R to open the run command. Type “regedit” and click OK.

regedit run command

2. First take a backup of the registry editor just to be on the safe side. Go to File > Export and save a backup on your computer.

Regedit export backup

3. Now navigate to the following path in the registry editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows> Current Version> Policies> Explorer

Regedit explorer

4. Right click on the right hand pane and select “New > DWORD (32-bit) Value”

Regedit_explorer_new_key

Give it a value “NoControlPanel”.

NoControlPanel

Right-click on the new value NoControlPanel and choose “Modify”.

NoControlPanel modify value

Change the Value Data filed value to “1” from “0” and click OK.

Edit dword value

Close the registry editor and restart your computer and check back. When you check back after rebooting your PC, you will find that the Control Panel is disabled and also is not listed in the Start Menu as shown in the first method.

If you want to enable the Control Panel again, just choose ‘Disabled" (third option) in the step 4 of the first step. In case of the second method, just delete the "NoControlPanel" DWORD Value and the Control would be back once your reboot your system.

Disabling Control Panel is just not enough to restrict users using your PC, If you want to setup advanced controls on your computer, read how to setup parental controls in Windows 7 .

[Tip] Remove Username From Windows 7 Start Menu

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User name in the start menu

Windows users might be knowing well that the Start Menu in Windows shows a username of the user currently logged on to the computer, now matter how many user accounts your Windows has. For some reasons, if you want to remain anonymous by removing your username from the Start Menu, here is the step-by-step guide of what you need to do if you are using either Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

Steps:

1. Right click on the taskbar and select “Properties”.

Taskbar right click menu

2. “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties” window opens up. Go to the “Start Menu” tab in the window. Click on the “Customize” button.

Taskbar and start menu properties

3. Another window “Customize Start Menu” opens up. Scroll the window down until you see “Personal folder” section. By default, “Display as a link” option would be selected. Now as you want to remove your username from the Start Menu, select the last option “Don’t display this item”, Click OK to save the settings.

Customize start menu

4. Click on the Apply button on the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties and click “OK” to close the window. Now your username will be delisted from the Start Menu as shown here:

No username on the start menu

You are done. Just check “Display as a link” whenever you want to revert back to the default settings to show your user account name back on the Start Menu.

[Tip] Change Default Download Location In IE9

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IE9 downloads

As promised earlier, we have come up with another tip for the new Internet Explorer 9 users. Internet Explorer 9 (as it is only compatible on Windows 7 and Vista) by default stores the files downloaded to %windir%/Users/Username/Downloads (C: > Users> Username> Downloads is the most common path). But you might want to keep all the downloads through Internet Explorer to a different folder other than the default “Downloads” folder. Follow the steps given below to get this done:

1. Open Internet Explorer 9 and hit Ctrl + J to launch the “View Downloads” window. Alternatively, you can open the same via Alt > Tools > View Downloads from the Tools menu.

Tools menu options in IE9

2. In the View Downloads window, click on “Options”.

View Downloads in IE9

3. In the “Download Options“ window, change the default folder by browsing and selecting a custom folder. Click OK once you have chosen the desired folder.

Download options in IE9

Select download folder for IE9

4. Click OK and close the “Download Options” window and “View Download” window.

[How To] Clean Up Context Menu In Internet Explorer

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IE context menu mess up

We have earlier covered how to clean up unwanted items in context menu in Windows Explorer and for Firefox. Now in this tutorial let me take you through the process of removing items from right click context menu in Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer is by far the most widely used browser in the world. And the IE lovers worldwide are excited by the release of new beta version of IE9. So we thought this might be the right time to post some tips on tweaking Internet Explorer.

Context menu in Internet Explorer consists of two sections:

1) Accelerators (only for IE8 & IE9)

2) Menu extensions

1) Accelerators:

Accelerators are webpage specific and they will have their own action set up based on the webpage data. These have become a part of IE since the release of Internet Explorer 8. Some examples for Accelerators in IE8 & IE9:

  • Blog with Blogger
  • Email with Windows Live
  • Define with Google Dictionary
  • Translate with Windows Live

Accelerators in Internet Explorer

If you don’t use these Accelerators much, follow the steps outlined below to disable them:

1. Go to Tool > Select Manage Add-ons

Tools menu in Internet Explorer

2. Under the “Add-on Types”, click on Accelerators tab on the left hand side pane. You will the full list of Accelerators available.

3. Right click on the Accelerator that you want to disable and choose “Disable”.

disable accelerator in IE

You may also want to disable or remove other unneeded toolbars and add-ons by clicking on “Toolbars and Extensions”.

2) Menu Extensions:

Menu extensions are stored in the Windows registry and these are present in all versions of Internet Explorer, not just IE8 & IE9.

Examples for Menu Extensions many include:

  • Download with IDM
  • Send to OneNote
  • Send page to Bluetooth Device..

To disable unnecessary Menu Extensions, follow these steps:

1. Press Start button + R to open the run command bar. Type “regedit” and press OK.

regedit run command

2. Navigate to the following path in the registry editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER> Software> Microsoft> Internet Explorer> MenuExt

HKCU in regedit

HKCU expanded in regedit

3. Right click on MenuExt folder and choose “Export” and save a copy as the backup, to be on the safe side in case something goes wrong.

MenuExt export

4. Collapse the “MenuExt” folder and start deleting the items that you don’t need:

MenuExt items

5. Close the registry editor and restart the Internet Explorer to see the changes.

That is it. If you wonder “why do I need to mess up with registry editor? Isn’t there any freeware available?” ; Yes, there’s a freeware (actually IE add-on) called ToolbarCop which will remove the unnecessary items from the IE context menu with a few clicks.

[Tip] Find Facebook Last Login Time & Location Details

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facebook logo

Facebook is undoubtedly the no#1 fastest growing websites in the world and no wonder it has made to the top 3 websites in terms of number of daily visits worldwide. It has evolved as such a nice platform for social networking, connecting with friends, sharing with friends and with those wonderful apps, the ease of using the site is just growing in a phenomenal manner. Popularity always brings envies too. The result: increasing number of phishing attacks on Facebook to get your login details. The only way you can save your account from being exploited is to never share Facebook account details on any where else. Even if you does this regularly, you would still be doubtful if someone else finds your login details without your knowledge and gain access to your profile. The only way you can sense a suspicious activity on your account is to monitor your account to see if there’s an unauthorised access from any where and from any device which might not have used by you.  Here’s the tutorial on how to check your last login time and location on Facebook.

Find last accessed time & location of Facebook account:

1. Login to Facebook and click on “Account” dropdown menu on the top right corner of your screen. Click on “Account Settings”.

Facebook account settings

2. You will be taken to the Facebook “My account” page, where you will a number of tabs, each account for settings for different sections of Facebook. Click on Settings tab.

Facebook my account

3. Find the “Account Security tab “under settings, you will have the account activity details listed under “Most Recent Activity”

Facebook most recent acitvity

You can find the last accessed time, location and the device from where your account has been accessed. You can even enable SMS or email notifications whenever your account is accessed from a new computer or mobile device, just select “On” radio button under “Login Notifications” and click Save button.

You might also want to read how to disable Facebook notification emails.

[Tip] Remove Unnecessary Items In Firefox Right-Click Context Menu

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Firefox context menu

One main reason for Mozilla Firefox to get popularity among the internet audience is the comfort ability of adding our favorite add-ons from a host of add-ons available at Mozilla add-ons gallery. But sometimes when you install an add-on, they also add some items to your context menu in Firefox. When you go on installing more add-ons, the number of context menu (which appears when you right-click on any webpage inside the browser) items will become so huge that you can’t even spot the correct menu item at the first sight.

Wouldn’t it be good if we have a control over this context menu items and customize it and remove the unnecessary items from the context menu ? You can actually do it for yourself in two ways. The first and easy option would be to grab an add-on that lets you manage your context menu items. The second way of working around this needs a more of your effort and time. I’m here briefing both the methods, but I strongly suggest you to use the first method, second method is only for those enthusiasts out there who don’t like simple solutions Smile

Method-1:

1. Download Menu Editor Firefox add-on (currently works with Firefox 2 &3) , click “Add to Firefox” and allow it to be installed on your Firefox and restart the browser.

Add to firefox

2. Hit Ctrl + Shift + S button to open the Menu Editor options dialog.

Menu editor options

3. Change the items in the menu editor options as you wish (you can click “Hide” button to remove it from the context menu). Alternatively you can rearrange the items to change their order. You can make use of this to Chrome-like options menu for context menu. In Chrome as you know, “Open link in new tab” comes ahead of “Open link in new window” option (reverse in case  of Firefox). You can use this add-on to change your Firefox context menu look similar to that of Chrome and other browsers.

Firefox new tab optionsFirefox new tab options after using addon

4. Click Apply to apply the changes and click OK to close the dialog box.

You will see the changes once you restart your Firefox.

Method-2:

1. Press Start button + R to open “Run” command window and key in %Appdata% in the field and press Enter.

Run command

2. A new window will open containing a lot of folders. Navigate to Mozilla > Firefox > Profiles > <default profile folder> > chrome folder.

userChrome.css examples

3. Create a new file called userChrome.css (notice the uppercase ‘C’)inside the chrome folder.

userChrome.css file

4. Open the file userChrome.css in any text editor and add the following lines to it:

#id1, #id2 { display:none !important; }

5. Replace each of the identifiers #id1, #id2,.. with one of the selectors from this Firefox context menus list.

For instance, if you want to disable “View Page Source” and “View Page Info” items from your context menu, you should use the following code:

#context-viewsource,
#context-sep-viewinfo {
  display: none !important;
}

Similarly if you want to remove “Set As Wallpaper…” and “Set as Desktop Background…” menu item in the context menu, that appears when you hover on any image on a webpage, you should use the following code:

#context-setWallpaper,
#context-setDesktopBackground {
  display: none !important;
}

To remove the “Open Link in New Window” menu item, use:

#context-openlink {
  display: none !important;
}

And you can use your custom based on the selectors from the Firefox context menus list.

If something goes wrong just close the browser and delete the userChrome.css file from the chrome folder.

[How To] Change Network Cards(Wired/Wireless) Priority Order In Windows

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change network interface card priority

Consider this scenario: You have both wireless network and wired LAN network available at your place and assume that you have enabled your wireless card and connected to the wired LAN network as well. Which one do you think your Windows will choose? Have you ever thought about it?

If you haven’t, here’s what you should know: There is a default priority order (or network binding order) that would be set for each of your network cards. You might not be knowing about this because it’s so hidden in the windows. You can only see it via a “netstat” command or through some advanced settings in the network connections.

Note: All the following operations are done in Windows 7 and they should also work in Windows Vista as well.

Checking Your Network Cards Priority:

Go to Start menu and type “cmd” in the search box and open cmd.exe from the programs list to open the command prompt.

cmd.exe from start menu

And then type the following command in the window and press enter:

 netstat -rn | more

Nestat command in command prompt

You will now see “Interface List” in the results as shown (click on the image to view the bigger image):

Network interface metrics list in cmd

I tried to represent the above result that I got in the command prompt in a text format below:

Interface List

14...00 xx xx xx xx xx ......Bluetooth Device (Personal Area Network)

12...xx xx xx xx xx xx ......Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN

11...00 xx xx xx xx xx ......Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller

1...........................Software Loopback Interface 1

17...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft ISATAP Adapter

19...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #2

15...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft 6to4 Adapter

18...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #3

16...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft 6to4 Adapter #2

22...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface

As you can see in the above screenshot (highlighted in red), the numbers against the network card interfaces (called “interface metrics”)represent the priority of that network according to Windows. The lower the number, the higher is the priority. In my case Software Loopback 1 (representing Microsoft Loopback adapter) is assigned the highest priority (lowest number #1), followed by Realtek Ethernet adapter (number #11), Wireless LAN adapter (number #12).

So to sum up, my wired network card has been set a higher priority than my wireless network card by Windows. Now let’s assume that my wireless network gives me a faster internet access than what my ISP through the wired network card does. So I’d be keen to connect to the ISP via wireless network card that is offering a faster internet access. But if you are connected to both the wired network & the wireless network, according to the priority assigned, Windows will gives you access to the internet via wired network card by default. So we need to find a way to instruct Windows to let you access the network via wireless network by default, when you are connected to both the wired and wireless networks at the same time. Read on to find out how to do this:

–Warning-: You may not want to change the default priority order unless you see some real problem with how Windows is prioritizing the network interface cards.

Changing Network Cards Priority in Windows:

You can change the network card priority in two ways in Windows:

Method #1:

To start with, I’ll introduce you the easier method first:

1. Go to Control Panel > Network and Internet (View network status and tasks)> Change adapter settings and now you will now be in “Network Connections” window.

network connections in windows 7

2. Now press Alt button and a hidden menu will appear beneath the location bar.

hidden menu

3. Under the Advanced menu, click “Advanced Settings”.

advanced settings in network connections

4. You can now see the order of preference in which the connections are accessed by network services.

advanced settings for network priority

Use “Up” and “Down” buttons to move a network connection either up or down and thus changing the order of priority of connections.

Method #2:

And now let me introduce you the second alternative method, which is a bit laborious when compared to the first one:

1. Go to the “Network Connections” window by following the step 1 as detailed in the above step.

2. Right-click on the network connections for which you want to change the priority order and choose “Properties”. In my case, I wanted to change the interface metric for my wireless network card and hence I will proceed with the changing priority order for Wireless Network Connection under my network connections.

Context menu on network connection

3. Now choose “Internet protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)” and click on “Properties” button.

Wireless network connection properties

IPv4 properties

Click on “Advanced..” button in the IPv4 properties window.

4. Look for the “Automatic metric” option in the advanced TCP/IP settings window.

Advanced tcp/ip settings

5. Uncheck against the “Automatic metric” option and enter some value other than 1 in the filed against “Interface metric” (as 1 will always be assigned to Microsoft Loopback adapter always) as shown:

Automatic metric/interface metric value

Click OK and close all the windows.

You have now changed the priority of your network card interfaces.

[How To] Uninstall Internet Explorer 9

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Internet Explorer 9

Recently I have downloaded and installed Internet Explorer 9 beta on my laptop to see what Microsoft is up to with their new browser. But since then I had problem while opening some programs like Windows Live Writer (it is the older version of WLW of course), which was getting crashed even before it could start. I was quite sure that the IE 9 could be the culprit and in fact an article at Windows support knowledge base suggested me that I was right. Ok, all I need to do is to uninstall the Internet Explorer 9 from my PC. I followed the usual routine: Control Panel > Programs> and clicked Turn Windows features on or off.

But I was rather surprised to see that there’s no Internet Explorer in the list !

IE 9 missing in Windows features

The fact is that when you choose to install Internet Explorer 9 beta, it’s going to be installed as an windows update. So if you want to uninstall this program, you need to uninstall from the installed windows updates list.

Steps:

1. Go to Control Panel > Programs > Click “Uninstall a program”.

Uninstall program in control panel

2. And yes, you don’t find it under the installed programs list. Click on “View installed updates” link.

Programs and features and installed updates

3. Now search for “internet explorer” in the installed updates list.

ie 9 uninstall

4. Just right-click and choose “uninstall” and accept the confirmation.

IE9_uninstall_confirm

Just restart the computer once the uninstallation is over and there you go, you have Internet Explorer 8 back on your PC instead of Internet Explorer 9.

This marks our 500th post at Techrena.net. To receive the updates from our site subscribe to Techrena’s RSS feeds via email.

[Tip] Paste Text Minus Formatting In Google Chrome

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This might have happened to all of us- You are writing an email and you want to quote something from a webpage, you try to copy text and paste it in the email editor, you will see the original fonts, colors, spacing and styling attached to it, but you are just concerned about the plain text and you don’t want any sort of styling attached to it.

When the traditional Ctrl + V command just pastes the text with all formatting, Google Chrome team has developed an easy shortcut Ctrl + Shift + V command (Command + Shift + Option + V on Mac OS) to just “paste as plain text”.

Ctrl shift v chrome

Take a look at the following screenshot which highlights the advantage of this particular shortcut while writing an email in Google Chrome.

Chrome Shortcut for pasting text without formatting

You can use this keyboard shortcut for any rich editor like Gmail’s compose mode, or even in editing documents in Google docs etc. to remove all the unwanted formatting and styling from the text from webpages.

Via Google Chrome blog

[How To] Change The Favicon In Blogger

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Change default favicon in Blogger

If you have landed here while searching for changing the favicon in blogger, this itself is a indication that you know something about the favicons. Even though I assume that you know a bit about favicons, let me quickly introduce the concept of “favicon” :

Favicon (pronounced fav-eye-con) is the short name for “favorites icon” and is otherwise called as a shortcut icon. It is a 16×16 (most common) or 32×32 pixel square icon that is shown next to the URL of any webpage in a browser that supports tabs like Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera or Internet Explorer 7/8 etc. It is also shown in bookmarks or favorites, when you bookmark (in Firefox, Chrome or Opera) or when you add a site to favorites (in Internet Explorer). Many websites use well designed favicons as branding for their site and it also enables their site to be distinguished from other sites easily.

Wikipedia Favicon

If you are using Blogger blog, you might have already noticed that Blogger shows default favicon Blogger faviconnext to the URL of your blog as shown here:

blogger favicon example

Usually if you want to change the favicon of a website, you need to upload the new favicon file to the root folder of the website and the new favicon appears in your website immediately. But it’s not the same case with Blogger. As the user doesn’t have control over the files hosted on Blogger, the only way you can change the favicon in a Blogger blog is to upload that favicon to a free image host that supports uploading of .ico formats and then tell the Blogger to use this favicon instead , by specifying it in a short code inside the HTML source code of your blog template. Let’s look into the step-by-step guide on how to get this done.

Steps:

1. Design an attractive favicon for your site using many online favicon generators online. I’m quoting a few such tools here:

favicon.cc

favicon.co.uk

antifavicon.com

iconj.com

2. Once you have designed and downloaded the favicon on to your desktop, you need to upload it to a host site where you have access to upload the favicon file and retrieve it later. I suggest you try some image hosting sites that allow the uploading of .ico files. Iconj.com mentioned in the above list supports uploading and hosting your .ico files as well.

3. Now note down the URL of the file located on the image host.

4. Login to blogger.com and go to your dashboard. Click on the “Design” tab under your dashboard.

design link in blogger dashboard

5. Now click on “Edit HTML” tab found under the “Design” tab.

Edit Html under design in blogger

6. Find the <head> and </head> lines in the HTML code.

7. Copy the following code:

 <link href='http://www.your-icon-url' rel='shortcut icon' /> 
 <link href='http://www.your-icon-url' rel='icon' />

Replace “www.your-icon-url” in the above code with the actual URL pointing to the new favicon file of your site. Example:

<link href='http://www.techrena.net/favicon.ico’ rel='shortcut icon'/>
<link href='http://www.techrena.net/favicon.ico’rel='icon'/>

8. Paste the modified code anywhere in the HTML code, but it should be placed after the <head> and before </head> section [Tip: Use Ctrl + F to find these lines] in the HTML code. Click “Save Template” to save the changes to the code.

favicon code in blogger html design

9. The new favicon may take some time to appear in your browser. You may not see it until your browser clears its local cache. To see the new favicon instantly, try Ctrl + F5. If it doesn’t show up, try opening your blog in another browser and you will see the change

New favicon

If you liked this post, you might also want to read our earlier exclusive posts about Blogger : How to verify Blogger blog in Webmaster tools, Blogger title tweaks for SEO and swapping Blogger blog title and post title.