Monday, September 9, 2002		Tips & Tricks

Cookies and other junk

A trick with which your computer will check for all stored cookies, temporary files and history folders and will delete them in a safe way without even letting you know. This will happen every time your computer boots up because this trick works through autoexec.bat file. Locate your autoexec.bat file (it will be in c:\ ) >right click>edit >read the options. There will be some information about anti virus (if you are using it) and the full path for your start up applications. Now just write these three lines, as it is, anywhere in autoexec.bat file.

deltree /Y c:\ windows\ history\

deltree /Y c:\ windows\ cookies\

deltree /Y c:\ windows\ tempor~1\

Save that file as it is and with the same name (autoexec.bat) and at the same location. Just restart the computer and you will be amused to know how many junk files the computer has. This trick will delete them all during booting. And you will be able to free some space.

Please make necessary back ups before attempting this trick.

Start >run>regedit.exe >click HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Policies>Explorer > In the right frame look for NoClose key. If it’s not there create it by right clicking there >new >String value >Name it NoCloseKey >right click on this key>modify >type 1 in the value data box>done. Now press F5 (refresh) to implement this trick > restart your computer. You will see that there’s no shutdown button. In Win ’98 shutdown will be disabled but in Win ’95 it will show a message: "This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator." You can enable the shut down option by changing the value of NoCloseKey to 0 or simply deleting the particular entry i.e. deleting NoCloseKey.

To display a banner, which can contain any message you want to display just before a user is going to log on, go to the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>WinLogon

Now create a new string Value in the right pane named LegalNoticeCaption and enter the value that you want to see in the Menu Bar. Now create yet another new string value and name it: LegalNoticeText. Modify it and insert the message you want to display each time Windows boots. This can be effectively used to display the company's private policy each time the user logs on to his NT box.