Phr33x Tw33x #30

Take some time to think about all the stuff you’ve ever tweaked, tweakified and tweakibroked. While you desperately try to plug the flood of geared-up gizmos and failed fans that cascade into your brain, we’ll throw some more tweaky tips your way. But only cause we love ya.

Don't 'Start' with me.

After more than eight years, the Start button is looking somewhat passé. It's about time we modded it. Let's do it.

There are various ways of doing the deed. You could jump into your favourite hex editor and change the value. You'll be limited to five characters though. Which is lame, because 'Atomic', just for example, has six characters. So we need to find a different way.

Yes, hex editing is hardcore and l337 to some kiddies, but better results can be achieved if you get yourself a copy of 'Resource Hacker' from www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker. When you have downloaded it (only 538KB) extract, install and run it.

The file we are interested in is C:/Windows/explorer.exe. Before you start, make a backup up of the file. It is kind of important you do this if you want to see your Windows desktop ever again. For this project, the best and safest way to do this is to copy the explorer.exe file into the same directory, and rename it something like newexplorer.exe or similar. Then through your registry, change the value of the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon] 'Shell' key to reflect your new explorer.exe filename (see picture).

Start Resource Hacker and open newexplorer.exe, or whatever you named it. Browse through the directory on the left until you find the string table for the 'Start' button text. When you have it, jump in and change it to something cool. Then, compile the script, save, and reboot. See, you don't need a stinking hex editor for this!

Now, if it all goes to crap, and your new Start button has screwed with your Desktop, jump back into regedit, and change back to your original explorer.exe. Although, if you killz0red your Desktop completely -- as I managed to do by not carefully typing in file names -- you can still get to regedit by doing the Ctrl+Alt+Del combo to get to Task Manager. Start a new task (File -> New Task -> regedit) then change the setting back to your original explorer.exe. Lucky you backed it up, right?

Registry tidying up0ring

Over time, as applications are installed and uninstalled, your registry can become fragmented and cluttered with redundant keys, making it a whole lot larger than it needs to be. This results in increased boot times and slower system performance.

The defrag utility won't help you, because the fragmentation is internal to the DAT files which make up the registry. There are third-party utilities, which do a great job of defragmenting the registry and removing clutter and errors. But here are some steps you can take which should help bring about some order to those pesky registry files.

First, download and run regclean to fix errors in the registry. If you don't have regclean, it's a free download from http://download.com

Restart into Safe mode with command prompt and make copies of system.dat and user.dat (your registry files) into a different folder. While you are here, remove the hidden, system and read-only attributes from the system.dat and user.dat files, then type  'regedit /c oldreg.txt', (depending on stuff like system speed, size of your registry etc, this could take a while). When it's done, reboot.

If you have problems after this, then go back to Safe mode with command prompt and replace the registry files with the ones you backed up.

Changing your 'Outlook' on life

'Drexxle' sent us this handy tip to control the way Outlook opens.
Create a shortcut on your desktop for your Outlook.exe file, which should be found in C:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office. Right click on the shortcut and open its Properties page. In the target box, leave the path intact, but put a space at the end and use one of the following parameters: (make sure you include quotations if applicable)
select C”/folder name” (open with folder name as the default folder)
/c ipm.note (to create new email)
/c ipm.post (to create new post)
/c ipm.appointment (to create new appointment)
/c ipm.task (to create new task)
/c ipm.contact (to create new contact)
/c ipm.note (to create new sticky note)
/c ipm.activity (to create new journal entry)
/checkclient (to prompt for default manager)
/a “path/file name” (create an item with the specified file as an attachment)

Phr33x quickie

Here's a quick and nasty one that lets you turn 'Control Panel' into a cascading menu off your new and improved Start button.
Right click on the Start button and then click 'Explore'. In the right pane, right click and create a new folder. Name the folder 'Control Panel {21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}'. That's it.