Cognoscis

1. Go to Start Menu
2. Click on RUN
3. Type “notepad”
4. Press enter.
5. Notepad will appear.
6. Copy and Paste the code given below. Replace the highlighted “TYPE YOUR PASSWORD HERE” With your Password (like: monkeyhead)
7. Save as “locker.bat” (without quotes)
8. Close the notepad and run the file. Type the password, A folder will appear. Store anything you want. Open locker.bat AGAIN and type “y” (without quotes)
9. VOILA! Folder Disappears.
10. Below is the code.

—- START OF CODE—-

cls

@ECHO OFF
title Folder Locker
if EXIST “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” goto UNLOCK
if NOT EXIST Locker goto MDLOCKER
:CONFIRM
echo Are you sure u want to Lock the folder(Y/N)
set/p “cho=>”
if %cho%==Y goto LOCK
if %cho%==y goto LOCK
if %cho%==n goto END
if %cho%==N goto END
echo Invalid choice.
goto CONFIRM
:LOCK
ren Locker “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
attrib +h +s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
echo Folder locked
goto End
:UNLOCK
echo Enter password to Unlock folder
set/p “pass=>”
if NOT %pass%==type your password here goto FAIL
attrib -h -s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
ren “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” Locker
echo Folder Unlocked successfully
goto End
:FAIL
echo Invalid password
goto end
:MDLOCKER
md Locker
echo Locker created successfully
goto End
:End

—-END OF CODE—-

FAQ

Q1. What to do if someone deletes my .bat file?

Ans. Fortunately, I found a solution for it. Make another .bat file like this using this code. Run that file and the folder will again appear with all your files intact.

Q2. What to do if I FORGET my password?

Ans. Once again i found a soln. Delete the old .bat file. Make new file with a new password. Run that. Your folder will appear again with your files intact. AND, for this reason alone, you should choose your “locked folder” destination wisely. Because if your younger brother happens to make a locked folder by same procedure at the same destination, your files are no longer safe.

TIP: Delete your .bat file after locking your folder again. This way, the person from which you want to hide the files will not see the locker.bat. And he will have no reason to suspect. It will just like a locked invisible folder. Make a .bat file using the code above evrytime you want to access your files. Lengthy procedure, but SAFE.

If you have any problems understanding this folder lock’s working, email me at abhijit@delhirocks.com.

Many people are really irritated with their PC’s performance. But it’s not the PC’s fault. It’s their fault. Had they maintained there PC from the start or even in the middle… they would have their PCs running great…sometimes even better than ones which are only a few months old. Don’t worry though. Here are some simple yet effective steps you can optimize your PC to it’s maximum.

1. Softwares: First things first. Don’t install everything you find on the net into your PC. If you don’t like it, you remove it. And when you remove it, files get fragmented. When files get fragmented, your PC runs slow. You know how hard it is to find things at the right time in a cluttered place (like your room)? So choose your softwares with careful research. And AVOID BETA VERSIONS. They really have a tendency to fragment.
2. Defragment your PC atleast once a month. To do this, go to Start Menu> Programs> Accessories> System Tools> Disk Defragmenter.
3. Themes: Never use heavy themes (like Vista theme in XP) unless you have ATLEAST 1 GB RAM.
4. Devices: Make sure only those devices are connected which you are using.
5. Don’t run any program after your computer starts until your Hard Drive comes to a complete stop.
6. Virus scans are very important. Don’t wait for the Virus or Worm to crawl in your PC and get access to your system files, ruin your PC and then you start the scan…. NO! Scan ATLEAST once in 2 weeks. It is tiresome but rewarding. Keep your Antivirus up-to-date. Use Avira Antivir (Free Version available). It’s fast and effective.
7. Disk Checkup: Check your Drives for error regularly. To do this, go to your My Computer> Right click on the drive> Properties>Tools. Check Now. Use Disk Cleanup to clean unneccessary files.
8. Format (reboot) your PC when it gets really slow. it is healthy in the long run too and really boosts up your PC. Don’t do it yourself if you have no experience with it. Call a proffessional or experienced person.
9. Startup Trick: To make your WINDOWS XP startup faster, there are 2 things you can do. One, Remove your Welcome screen. To do this, follow these steps. Go to Start> Control Panel> User Accounts> Change the way users log in or log out> Uncheck “Use the welcome screen”>Apply Options. But you cannot have your programs running in your user account while the other user is working with this setting (Fast User Switiching).
10. Startup Trick 2: Remove all icons (that we can) to make startup faster. Run “msconfig” (without quotes)> Startup Tab> Disable All> Apply.

There is a really great software that I found for PC maintainance. And don’t worry. They didn’t pay me for this.

Glary Utilities: This is a simple software which you can use to really help your PC. It’s features are:-

• It’s Free of cost.
• It fixes and cleans invalid registeries.
• Removes Spyware and Adware.
• Cleans up dangerous Startup Entries
• Monitors andempties free RAM in PC.
• Comes with inbuilt Disk Cleaner, Registry Cleaner, Program Uninstaller, File Shredder and File Undelete too.

Okay, pretty soon windows 7 will be out I hope it will be better than Vista, but I will not let go of XP as yet. Its very stable and a lot of apps are compatible and so are a lot of games. Really I find no reason to upgrade to higher “glossier” versions when I can apply themes to do that by my self. Anyway, in this post I include applications that I find really helpful and which are freely available. Hope you find them useful too

1. Web Browser

The first place to start is to get a good browser. I personally prefer Firefox as it is fast and has many many useful add-ons. You can download it for free here. There are thousands of ways to customize your browser and the cool add-ons will help you do that. You can download add-ons here. Apart from Firefox, there is Google’s Chrome which is very sleek and fast and available for free download here. Though there not many add-ons, you can expect them in the near future. Opera is also a very good browser that can be downloaded for free here.

2. Antivirus

This is the most essential thing for your computer. Personally i recommend Avira Antivir which is free and has a very good and provides excellent protection from virus, worms, trojans, backdoor programs, etc. Regular updates will keep your system protected from the threats. Download it here

AVG Anti-virus Free Edition would be my next recommendation. Although I have personally found Avira to perform better than AVG, but still AVG also is very good compared to other solutions on the net. Free download from here

3. Text editor

Of course there is notepad to edit your text, but I find it not up to the par. notepad++ is not just text editor, it can be used for syntax highlight for C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, VHDL, pascal, pearl, lisp, CSS, ADA, Python, MATLAB, Verilog and many more. It has tabbed view allowing to open multiple documents in the same window and also has multi-language support, drag and drop and macro recording and playbacking. It can be downloaded for free from here

4. Media Player

Time to watch movies. Ideally, VideoLAN VLC media player is the one that can play almost all the formats. I recommend you download it from here. It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks. Basically you can listen to internet radio using this and view podcasts from various streaming sites.

Another very powerful tool is Media Player Classic along with its CODEC pack. Download the K-lite codec pack from here which of course is free. While installing it select the options “lots of stuff with player” to install all the CODECs and Media Player Classic. This will be able to play 99% of the movies available online including flash, .mkv (MP4 or H264) and many more. The same site lists a lot of CODECs that can be used in case you come across any format not supported by MPC.

5. MP3 Player

Although the above mentioned media players can play all the audio formats, I use winamp to play my MP3 songs. I find winamp to be the best in terms of handling my media library and creating playlists. It also has auto-generated playlists that I find really useful. Its interface is also very user friendly and it has a lot of skins which can be downloded from their website. download winamp here. Choose the free version which includes all the features that you will ever require

6. File and folder compression

7-zip is your best choice for compressing files and folder. It supports unpacking of ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z formats and can compress your files and folders to 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR format. This free app can be downloaded here

To compress your files and folder to RAR format, you can use winRAR. This is not a free application and hence you will need to buy it. winRAR also is very powerful and supports almost all the formats mentioned above. Even though it is not free, still it can be used along with the minor inconvenience of a pop up screen every time you run it. You can get winRAR here

7. Download Manager

This will let you download at higher speeds than your browser and will help you organize your downloads properly. Orbit download manager is a free app that will let you download streams from popular site such as youtube and also has pause and resume option. This is a stand alone app that can be found here

Firefox users can get an extension called Downthemall from here which will pretty much do the same thing as orbit.

8. CCleaner

CCleaner is a free system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. Download it from here.

9. PDF reader

Apart from the adobe reader, you can use Foxit PDF reader. Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer, with incredible small size, breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set. Foxit Reader allows you to draw graphics, highlight text, type text and make notes on a PDF document and then print out or save the annotated document. Download the free version here.

10. Torrent client

For all your movies, games, apps, songs downloads use torrents. µTorrent is the world’s most popular BitTorrent client. Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in µTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, µTorrent supports the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0 and above, BitComet 0.63 and above) and peer exchange. Schedule and queue your downloads or limit their speed so that you can browse while they download. Download it for free from here. There are many popular torrent sites such as isohunt.com or thepiratebay.com where you can search for torrents

11. Search engines

Google desktop search is a free app from google that allows you to search for any file on your system. Not only file names, but also the content itself. Very useful and much better and much FASTER than the windows search. It also comes with a side bar which I dont like much. Anyway, you can use it if you like or disable it. Download it from here

Launchy is a very useful lite app that basically searches your program menu. Highly useful to launch any application quickly from the cluttered programs menu. Get it for free here. Use the .exe file for windows XP.

12. image editor

Picasa is a free and powerful app to edit and manage your images and share them on the web. It lets you manage all your photos from a single place and allows you to eliminate scratches & blemishes, fix red-eye, crop and more. Turn photos into movies, collages, slideshows and more and share them by uploading them on the web with the picasa web albums. Download picasa from here

13. Dictionary

WordWeb is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows that can look up words in almost ANY program. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia. A really helpful and must have app. Get the free version here

Note: Please comment for any help and suggestion. Please report any broken links and it will be fixed

Problem: When you switch on the computer, your system starts the boot process normally. You will also get the logon screen and when you do log into your account, you get your beautiful background picture and… thats it. Nothing else loads.

Solution: Lots of sites gave a lot of solution of scanning with antivirus and all. I did all that and realised that there is no virus in my system at all. Then finally I thought of this one.

• When you log into your system, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to start the task manager
• Then in the Application tab, press new task..
• In the new window that opens up type “msconfig” without the quotes and press enter
• In the new window that opens up, in the General tab under the startup selection select the option that says Normal startup.
• Press Apply >> OK. It will ask if it may reboot. Say yes to that.

This is what solved my problem. Hope this helps you as well

Problem Details :

In windows XP, suddenly one sweet afternoon you try to open your project folder and suddenly you get a message saying “file can not be accesed acces is denied”. I know it can be REAL frustrating. This happens when, due to some strange mysterious reasons, the owner of that folder has changed and its no longer you.

Solution :

Turn off Simple File Sharing:

• Click Start, and then click My Computer.
   
• On the Tools menu, click Folder Options, and then click the View tab.
   
• Under Advanced Settings, click to clear the Use simple file sharing (Recommended) check box, and then click OK.
   
• Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
   
• Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message, if one appears.
   
• Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
   
• In the Name list, click your user name, Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group.
   
• If you want to take ownership of the contents of that folder, click to select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
   
• Click OK. You may receive the following error message, where Folder is the name of the folder that you want to take ownership of:

  You do not have permission to read the contents of directory Folder. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control? All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes.
   

• Click Yes.
   
• Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and the folder contents.