Category: Geek Stuff

For years, Microsoft has offered several tools to system administrators and power users that make Windows XP easier to install. “Slipstreaming”, for example, lets a system administrator apply a service pack to XP’s installation media. So if your company’s IT guy has a Windows XP installation CD with SP1 integrated to it, he can “slipstream” SP2 into the SP1 files. So the next time he installs XP on a computer, it will already have SP2 installed. “Automated installation” is another tool that Microsoft offers. With this, the administrator or power user creates a text file called an “answer file” that has all of the “answers” to questions XP setup asks. So you can enter your CD key, user name and password, time zone, network setup information, etc. into the text file, and XP setup won’t ask you for them when its doing its thing.

The only drawback to these tools is that they’re just not very user-friendly. Slipstreaming is pretty easy to do, but Microsoft doesn’t provide a GUI tool to do it, and the instructions on Microsoft’s web site are pretty spartan. On the other hand, MS provides tons of information about automated installations, but it’s almost overwhelming at first. It’s really easy to skip a step or put some data in the wrong place and end up with a screwed-up installation disc.

Thankfully, the Windows user community has come through again, this time with a tool called nLite. nLite combines many of Microsoft’s automation tools into one handy GUI tool. nLite can slipstream service packs to an installation disc; add hotfixes, patches, or upgraded components to the installation disc; remove most components and\or services from the installation; run batch files after XP setup is finished; and tweak various aspects and behaviors of XP’s user interface (a-la Tweak UI).

Continue reading “Simplify XP Installs With nLite”

OK, so this might be the lamest Geek Stuff tip ever, but I found out about it last night and thought it was neat, so I’ll share. If you’re a big MySpace user, and if you have some other web presence – your own website, or a HTML-capable signature on a message board or your email client – it’s really easy to add a “Add Me To Your MySpace Friends” link:

1) Go to your MySpace profile and right-click on the “Add To Friends” link on your profile. Select “Copy Link Location” or “Copy Shortcut”.

2) Open Notepad and paste the link into the editor. The link should look something like this:

http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=invite.addfriend_
verify&friendID=123456&MyToken=1a2b3c4d5e6f7g8h

3) Delete the “&MyToken=” part, and everything to the right of it, so that your link ends with “&friendID=123456″:

http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=invite.addfriend_
verify&friendID=123456

4) Use this as your link. In basic HMTL, you can add a link like this:

<a href=”http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm…”>The Text You Want Displayed</a>

Many Firefox users are familiar with IE Tab – a free extension that lets you use the Internet Explorer rendering engine within Firefox. This is helpful for the few sites that require Internet Explorer, like online banking, most other financial websites, and most corporate web-based applications (like Outlook Web Access, for example).

Normally you use IE Tab by clicking a browser icon in Firefox’s status bar. So for online banking, you’d type your bank’s address into the address bar, let the page load, then click the IE Tab browser icon to switch to Internet Explorer. The page is then manually reloaded in Firefox using IE’s rendering engine.

But did you know that with one simple tweak you can have Firefox always open a bookmarked site with IE Tab? Just bookmark the page using Firefox’s standard “Add Bookmark” procedure, then edit the bookmark by putting the following text at the beginning of the URL:

chrome://ietab/content/reloaded.html?url=

For example, if your bank’s bookmark is:

http://www.bank.com

Change it to:

chrome://ietab/content/reloaded.html?url=http://www.bank.com

Presto! The site will always open in IE via IE Tab. Thanks to the gang at Lifehacker for this tip!

One feature that Unix-based operating systems have had for years (but Windows hasn’t) is virtual desktops. When you boot up most flavors of Linux, for example, you’ll see an odd feature on the taskbar: a grid, usually with four “buttons” on it. These four buttons represent four virtual desktops. You just click on a button to switch to a different desktop; you can even move windows back and forth between the virtual desktops.

Why would you want a feature like this? Because it allows you to organize your desktops in any way you see fit. Perhaps you’d like one desktop with all of your web applications (web browser, email client, etc.) and another desktop with all your local applications (Word, Excel, etc.). Perhaps you’re working on a couple of projects at once; you can use one desktop for all the windows for one project, another desktop for another project, and another one for your email and web browsing. Or maybe you just want to be lazy at work: virtual desktops mean that you can have one desktop with a browser open to an online poker site, and another desktop open with some Excel documents, so it looks like you’re working. That way, if the boss comes around you can look productive with a single mouse click!

Continue reading “Virtual Desktops”

For the past couple of years, I’ve put together my own version of Madonna’s Ray Of Light album. It included the full album, as well as a few B-sides and outtakes from that era.

Recently though, I downloaded a disc of Ray Of Light demo tapes. I decided to create Ray Of Light: The Ultimate Collectors Edition. The thing was, I wanted something special for this new 3-disc set… something distinctive. So I decided to change the artwork.

The original album art:

My version:

“Tinting” a picture like this in Photoshop is amazingly easy and only takes a couple of minutes. To do it yourself, just follow these simple instructions:

Continue reading “Photoshop Basics: “Tinting” Photographs”

IT folks – ever needed to log in as someone else, but didn’t want to reboot (or log out of) the computer you’re working on? Maybe you’re working on someone’s computer and need to access a shared drive that only admins like you can access. Maybe you’re just lazy and don’t want to wait for an actual logoff.

Whatever the case may be, you can easily accomplish this using Task Manager and the command prompt:

1) Open a command-prompt window.
2) Open Task Manager (if you use CTRL+SHIFT+ESC you’ll need only one hand!)
3) Kill the EXPLORER.EXE process.
4) At the command prompt, type the following:

runas /user:RESOURCE\USERNAME explorer.exe

5) You will be prompted to enter the password for the user. Do so, and Explorer will reopen under that user’s account.

So – for example, you could enter

runas /user:DOMAIN\Administrator explorer.exe

 

or

runas /user:LOCALMACHINE\Administrator explorer.exe

 

to run Explorer as a domain or local administrator.

Remember that this is not a full logoff\login procedure, so the desktop\icons\installed program list won’t change as it would with a standard logoff\login.

One of the neatest features of Outlook 2007 is the ability to share a calendar with anyone. All you have to do is open a new email, enter the recipient and title, then click in the main message box and click Insert > Calendar. If you have more than one calendar, you will be prompted to choose one. You then choose which dates you’d like the calendar to be; you can choose pre-defined terms like “Next Two Weeks” or “Next 30 Days”, or you can choose specific dates. You the choose how much detail you want to include with the Calendar (“Availability Only”, “Limited Details” or “Full Details”). You can then click “Advanced” if you’d like and choose other features, like “Show Private Appointments” (which are hidden by default). You finally click “OK” and Outlook will go to work. Within a few minutes, you’ll see something like this in your email:

Outlook will also attach the calendar as an ICS file that can be imported into many calendaring programs. Even better, if the recipient also has Outlook 2007, he or she can simply click a line in the email’s header to automatically import it as a separate calendar in Outlook itself – no manual importing necessary! You can even use the Overlay view to view the two calendars as one! Niiiiiiiiiccccee!