How to Customize Start Menu Button in Windows 7

Have you ever wondered how to customize the start menu button in Windows 7? Well it is possible to spice up your copy of Windows 7 by giving a new look to the start menu button. Here is a detailed tutorial on how to do it. The following images shows a preview of how your start menu would look like before and after the customization process is done.

 

Default Start Menu Button

 

Customized Start Menu Button

 

Tools That You Need:

1. Resource Hacker
2. Custom Start Menu icons (images). It mush be of the size 54×162 with a .bmp extension. which looks something as follows

They must be in the following order:
1st Image - When the button is not in use
2nd Image - When the mouse pointer is over the button
3rd Image - When the button is clicked
I have created a few customized buttons which are ready to use. You can download them from the following link.
Start Menu Buttons Download

 

Once you have all those resources ready, you can start the customization process as follows…
1. Take the ownership of the file “explorer.exe“ which is located in the Windows Folder (Most likely in C:\Windows).
2. Open the Resource Hacker Tool.
3. Go to File menu and click on Open. Now load the file “explorer.exe” into the Resource Hacker.
4. Expand Bitmap branch in the left pane.
5. Now expand 6801 option, right-click on 1033 and select Replace Resource option.
6. A new window appears. Click on Open file with new bitmap button.
7. Navigate to the customized (.bmp) image, open it and click on Replace button.
8.  Repeat steps 4 to 7 above for the options 6805 and 6809 as well.

9. Now click on Save option (File->Save). Resource Hacker will automatically create a backup file called explorer_original.exe so that you can restore it in the future if needed.

10. Log Off and Log On to see the changes in effect.

NOTE: If you are running 64-bit edition of Windows 7, then you need to use Resource Hacker version 3.5.2 beta which is 64-bit compatible. It is available from the same link provided above.

I hope you enjoy this trick. Pass your comments and share your experience.

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Take Ownership of Files and Folders in Windows 7 – An Easy Way

If you are a Windows 7 user, then you are most likely be aware of the fact that you need to TAKE OWNERSHIP of files and folders before you can make any changes to them. This feature was introduced in order to prevent any unauthorized changes from being made to the system files. However it can be little annoying to follow a long list of procedure every time you want to take ownership of a certain file or folder. So to make this job simpler, I have found a nice tool called Take Ownership Shell Extension which adds the “Take Ownership” option to the Windows context menu. This makes taking ownership too simple and requires no more than a click.

Just run the portable tool kit and click on the “Install” button. This will add the “Take Ownership” option onto the context menu. To take ownership all you need to do is, just right-click on any of the desired file or folder and click the option “Take Ownership“.

In case if you wish to uninstall this tool at any time, you can just run the tool again and click on the ”Uninstall” button. I hope you like this tool. This works on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista. You can download it from the following link.

Download Take Ownership Shell Extention

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How to Create Your Own Customized Run Commands

The Run command on Microsoft Windows operating system allows you to directly open an application or document with just a single command instead of navigating to it’s location and double-clicking the executable icon. However, it only works for some of the inbuilt Windows programs such as Command prompt (cmd), Calculator (calc) etc. So, have you ever wondered how to create your own customized Run commands for accessing your favorite programs, files and folders? Well, read on to find out the answer.

Creating the Customized Run Command

 

Let me take up an example of how to create a customized run command for opening the Internet explorer. Once you create this command, you should be able to open the Internet explorer just by typing “ie” (without quotes) in the Run dialog box. Here is how you can do that.

1. Right click on your Desktop and select New -> Shortcut.

2. You will see a “Create Shortcut” Dialog box as shown below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Click on “Browse”, navigate to: Program Files -> Internet Explorer from your Root drive (usually C:\) and select “iexplore” as shown in the above figure and click on “OK”.

4. Now click on “Next” and type any name for your shortcut. You can choose any name as per your choice; this will be your customized “Run command”. In this case I name my shortcut as “ie”. Click on “Finish”.

5. You will see a shortcut named “ie” on your desktop. All you need to do is just copy this shortcut and paste it in your Windows folder (usually “C:/Windows”). Once you have copied the shortcut onto your Windows folder, you can delete the one on your Desktop.

6. That’s it! From now on, just open the Run dialog box, type ie and hit Enter to open the Internet Explorer.

In this way you can create customized Run commands for any program of your choice. Say “ff” for Firefox, “ym” for Yahoo messenger, “wmp” for Windows media player and so on.

To do this, when you click on “Browse” in the Step-3, just select the target program’s main executable (.exe) file which will usually be located in the C:\Program Files folder. Give a simple and short name for this shortcut as per your choice and copy the shortcut file onto the Windows folder as usual. Now just type this short name in the Run dialog box to open the program.

I hope you like this post! Pass your comments.

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How to Install Windows 7 From a USB Drive

Installing Windows from a USB flash drive has several advantages – First of all, the overall speed of the installation process will increase significantly, carrying a USB stick is much more convenient than a DVD, and finally it becomes possible to install the OS even on those systems that do not have a DVD drive, such as a netbook.

In this post, I will show you how to load the Windows installation on to your USB flash drive and make it bootable just like the DVD.

Tools Required:

1. USB flash drive with a minimum capacity of 4 GB.

2. Windows 7 set-up DVD.

Step-1: Plug-in your USB flash drive and backup all the existing data in it.

Step-2: Open the command prompt. If you are using Windows 7/Vista then open it with administrator rights*.

* Goto Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Right-click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run as Administrator”.

Step 3: In the command prompt, type in the following command:

DISKPART

This will start the Microsoft DiskPart utility as shown below:
Now issue the following command:

LIST DISK

This will show you a list of  available disks on your system. Disk 0 is usually the hard disk. In my case, Disk 5 is the USB drive (this can be a different one in your case). Now issue the command as shown below:

SELECT DISK 5

NOTE: In the above command, 5 is the USB drive number on my system. If you have a different number on your system, then you need to replace 5 with that number.

Step-4: Now issue the following list of commands one by one as shown below:

CLEAN

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

SELECT PARTITION 1

ACTIVE

FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK

ASSIGN

EXIT

Minimize the command prompt and proceed to the next step.

Step 5: Insert the Windows 7/Vista installation disc and note down the “drive letter” of your DVD drive. In my case, it is “H:”. Now type the following list of commands as shown below:

H: CD BOOT


CD BOOT


BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 M:(NOTE: M: is your USB drive letter)


EXIT

Step-6: Copy the contents of your Windows 7/Vista installation disk into the USB flash drive.

That’s it! Your USB stick is now ready to boot and install the OS for you. Don’t forget to enable the “USB Boot” option and change the “boot priority to USB device from hard disk” in your BIOS settings.

I hope you like this post. Pass your comments to express your opinion.

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How to Hack Windows Administrator Password

This hack will show you how to reset Windows administrator password (for Win 2000, XP, Vista and Win 7) at times when you forget it or when you want to gain access to a computer for which you do not know the password.

Most of us have experienced a situation where in we need to gain access to a computer which is password protected or at times we may forget the administrator password without which it becomes impossible to login to the computer. So here is an excellent hack using which you can reset the password or make the password empty (remove the password) so that you can gain administrator access to the computer. You can do this with a small tool called  Offline NT Password & Registry Editor. This utility works offline, that means you need to shut down your computer and boot off your using a floppy disk, CD or USB device (such as pen drive). The tool has the following features.

• You do not need to know the old password to set a new one
• Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts!
• There is also a registry editor and other registry utilities that works under linux/unix, and can be used for other things than password editing.

 

How it works?

 

Most Windows operating systems stores the login passwords and other encrypted passwords in a file called sam (Security Accounts Manager). This file can be usually found in \windows\system32\config. This file is a part of Windows registry and remains inaccessible as long as the OS is active. Hence it is necessary that you need to boot off your computer and access this sam file via boot. This tool intelligently gains access to this file and will reset/remove the password associated with administrator or any other account.

The download link for both CD and floppy drives along with the complete instructions is given below
Offline NT Password & Reg Editor Download

It is recommended that you download the CD version of the tool since floppy drive is outdated and doesn’t exist in today’s computer. Once you download you’ll get a bootable image which you need to burn it onto your CD. Now boot your computer from this CD and follow the screen instructions to reset the password.

 

Another simple way to reset non-administrator account passwords

 

Here is another simple way through which you can reset the password of any non-administrator accounts. The only requirement for this is that you need to have administrator privileges. Here is a step-by-step instruction to accomplish this task.

1. Open the command prompt (Start->Run->type cmd->Enter)
2. Now type net user and hit Enter
3. Now the system will show you a list of user accounts on the computer. Say for example you need to reset the password of the account by name John, then do as follows
4. Type net user John * and hit Enter. Now the system will ask you to enter the new password for the account. That’s it. Now you’ve successfully reset the password for John without knowing his old password.
So in this way you can reset the password of any Windows account at times when you forget it so that you need not re-install your OS for any reason. I hope this helps.

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