Delete hiberfil.sys hibernation file in Vista

File is as large as your physical memory which is very large.
Can easily do this is in XP by disabling hibernation however Vista it is more difficult. Do it via command line: powercfg -h off

batch file to backup and encrypt to disk

There are times when backing up files to a USB drive is the only method that a client has chosen to perform their backups on their Windows machines. The best way to ensure that that USB is not stolen or lost, and then read, is to encrypt the files. Anyone who knows me knows that I love creating my own scripts and using open software to avoid high priced vendor solutions. Here is a quick process to give the backups some decent security.

Download and install Truecrypt (Excellent open source on-the-fly encryption tool).
Create encrypted volume inside USB (call it "backups" for this exercise)
Make sure you use strong password and remember it or keep it somewhere you can access it again
Download Robocopy (or Rsync)
Batch script:

"c:\program files\truecrypt\truecrypt.exe" /q /s /v e:\backups /lj /a /p password
robocopy C:\Users\Administrator\Documents j:\ *.doc
"c:\program files\truecrypt\truecrypt.exe" /q /dj

(here I create volume j, using weak password called "password" silent mode, don't show GUI, automount volume, then call robocopy to do the backup of .doc files in the Documents directory to the encrypted volume, then unmount volume)

There you have it, a USB thumbdrive with your encrypted files out of view.

Cannot copy file access is denied windows XP

Came across this one today; bought 4 new Dell computers and was setting them up. Ok first thing I have to do is copy a directory over from the old computer to thenew machine, half way through the copy and I get cannot copy access is denied.
I try everything, I disable file sharing, turn off firewall and a few other things. I notice that at every reboot Norton asks me to sign up for their trial. Being a new computer and I won't be using it, I just click on "remind me later". Well, could it possibly be Norton stopping this file (I notice it is a .exe file); this could be possible but why since I have told it I don't want to install it.
So I click to uninstall Norton trial offer (which I never accepted) and now everything works. I guess I don't know why Dell puts this on yet it indicates that it is not installed and you have the option to install it when you want. I guess this is incorrect.

Simple way to prevent printing of web page

Basically, there is no way to prevent a user who really wants to print a web page out, it is a simple as them hitting their "Print Screen" button, etc...

But for intranet purposes, letting your users know that some pages are not to be printed, you can add the following code to the head section:

{{Code is changed slightly by removing "<" in front of tags for display here:}}

head>
style type="text/css" media="print">
body { visibility: hidden; display: none }
/style>
/head>

This will only print out a blank page when the user goes to "file"--> "print" (print conventionally)

A user can still print out by unconventional methods but, by doing so, is understanding the company does not want it printed, and he is behaving improperly.

Enable thumbnail view and photo editor in Windows Server 2008

When trying to use Server 2008 more like a desktop, you will find some options need to be enabled so that it behaves more like a workstation.

Two things that come to mind are thumnail view which is disabled and Microsoft Windows Photo and Fax viewer (so that you can view the pictures with something other than "Paint")

For Thumbnails:
Click on "start" --> "run", then type in "SystemPropertiesPerformance" Check off "show thumbnails instead of icons and then "OK"

For "Photo and Fax viewer", you need to enable the "Desktop Experience" in the Server Manager, go to "Features" --> "Add Features" and choose "Desktop Experience". the Windows Photo and Fax viewer will then be enabled.

Sharing HP Deskjet 5600 series (HPA) on Windows 7

Just finished sharing my HP 5850 printer on my home network in Windows 7 with my Windows XP machine. Sounds easy yes?. Well it took me a while to do this, here is what I went through.

USB connection to the 5850 from Windows 7 machine, whoops, no real driver for this so you need the 5600 Series (HPA) driver for it to function. Ok now sharing it out, well you have to enable sharing for people who do not have an account on that machine; (hey, this is a home network) another step. now to add additional drivers (like, for XP but nope, can't do that cause it asks for .inf file and I can't find it 0k didn't really investigate if it was there, but i am fairly sure the lay-person won't find it)

Now, going to the XP machine I point to the windows 7 machine and low and behold it says "driver is not installed on that machine, so browse to it on your own machine", but then it is nowhere to be found on the machine (or I couldn't find the driver as I checked every $win inf$ file there was)...and also guess what, you won't find that HPA driver anywhere at HP.com either.

So... I installed a 5800 series printer on my xp machine, pointed it to the local port and said just install the driver even though the it cannot find the printer. Then I went to the newly created printer and changed the port; created new port and called it \\(windows7machine)\(sharedprintername)

Now I can print to the shared printer on the Windows 7 machine.

Anybody got a better way?

Remove User Account Control warning from Windows Vista

Vista allows you to turn off the UAC via -->Control Panel -->User Accounts -->"Turn off User Account Control" but then creates an annoying "warning User Account Control Turned off" pop-up balloon which you then can't shut off. I'd like to someday create a poll on which is more annoying....the User account control or the warning that it is turned off.

Anyway, turn it off in the registry by HKey_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SecurityCenter
Add this value:
Data Type: DWORD
ValueName: UACDisableNotify
Value: 1 (dec)

Restart