This is fine, but may lead to problems when you are working in your office and do not want to reveal the user who is currently logged in. Here is a simple registry trick which will hide the username from the Start menu in Windows.

Before going further, it’s recommended to backup Windows registry to be on the safe side. Following are the steps involved:

1. Click Start menu and select the “Run” dialog box. Type “regedit” (without quotes) to open the Registry editor.

2. You will see two panes in the registry editor – left and right. In the left pane, navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer

3. In the right pane, right click on an empty area and select “New > Dword Value”

4. Name the value as NoUserNameInStartMenu.

5.  Double click the Dword item and set the value as 1.

6. You are all done. Log off from the user account and log back in to see the changes. The username will be gone from the start menu as shown below:

How easy was that? Do share your favorite registry tricks in the comments section.

Snippet is a short tip/trick or just a quick fix for a certain issue that we discover from time to time. Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for more up to date tutorials/tips/tricks.

Take a tour to the  video demo to know actually what Mojopack is.

Mojopack Installing Procedure:

Download Mojopack from here and install it in USB drive. At the time of installing it will ask you about installation location. Just click on the select option, right side of the top address bar and select the USB drive from a drop down list. Then click on “Next” to continue.

Now it will start to install the Mojopack in your USB drive and take several minutes.

After the complete installation click on “Finish” button at the bottom. Now the software will automatically run itself and it will personalize the default settings with several minutes. As the first time opening it will take much times. At the time of opening  it will access all supporting files from your USB drive so don’t plug off it.

Now after the initialization, the Mojopack operating system will run and looks like the same of your Windows XP operating system. You can install your useful software like Microsoft Office, Nero 8, VLC media player etc from here. Game installation will also be possible. The installed files will be kept securely in USB drive where the operating system is pre-installed. Now go away and don’t forget to carry the USB drive in your pocket because now it is an entire OS.

Now plug-in your USB drive and look the icon of your removable USB drive has changed into Mojopack icon. Double click on it to run.

The Mojopack desktop will be shown in a glamorous and charming interface. Don’t waste time and start your job here. You must require a Windows XP environment to run Mojopack because it will use some windows files as resources.

The vital applications provided by Mojopack are desktop icons, start menu, internet explorer, background wallpaper and my documents. When you install programs it will be added to Mojo-control Panel. At the top of the Mojopack window you will see the Mojobar which would facilitate you to switch over between host and guest computer. The only drawback  is it is very slow to run.

Have you tried Mojopack?

The administrator account provides you the full right to access your computer. Any guest account is a limited account and you could not access administrator right from this account like changing or removing administrator password, registry editing, group policy editing, etc. So it is not possible to retrieve administrator account password from here. That’s why you have to do it from boot option.

Remove or Change Administrator Account Password by Windows XP CD:

1. Insert a Windows XP disc into CD/DVD drive and reboot your computer.

2. Wait for the message “Press any key to Boot from CD or DVD”. Now press any key.

3. It will start to load the windows files from CD or DVD to your computer and after a short time there will appear  three options. Press enter to select the first option.

4. Now the Windows XP Licensing Agreement screen will be appeared. Press F8 to accept the agreement.

5. Again you will be asked whether you want to repair Windows XP or not. Press R to repair. Now your hard disk will be checked and then setup will start to copy the windows files. It can take several minutes. Just after the copying  your computer will reboot automatically. Don’t press any key after rebooting. It will automatically continue the process.

6. Watch at the left side of the screen. When the “Installing Windows” is highlighted, press Shift + F10 to open DOS prompt.

Type NUSRMGR.CPL and press Enter. It allows you to access your user account.

7. Enter into your administrator account and change or remove admin password within a second. It’s not required to put the previous password. From here you can create a new user account also.

Now after the repair is done, log on into your system with the newly created password. This procedure will work with all the versions of Windows XP.

If your CD/DVD drive does not work properly, you can also create a bootable Windows XP USB drive and do a boot from USB drive. Note that you have to change the startup setting in the BIOS to boot from USB drive. Once the Windows installer boots up, you can then follow the steps 3-7 to remove/change your administrator password.

The following free tool is created by one of the AskVG.com readers created exclusively for the sake of the site. This free tool is coined as A Bootable USB (ABUSB) and it allows you to easily create a bootable USB drive for the purpose of Windows 7 or Vista or Server 2008 installation.

Now let us proceed to the steps to create a bootable USB Drive with Windows 7 or Vista or Server 2008 installation files on it.

Requirements to use this tool :

1. A USB Drive or simply a pendrive with at least 4GB in free space.
2. A Windows 7 or Vista or Server 2008 (whichever you are trying to install) bootable DVD Disc or ISO Image.
3. A PC that has Windows 7 or Vista or Server 2008 already installed. You can borrow one from your friends or use the other one (if you own another) that has a DVD drive. This app is designed to work on these platforms only.

NOTE : Though this utility lets you create a bootable USB, your PC must be able to support booting from USB for this to work. You can check the BIOS settings and set the USB drive to select primary boot device as USB Drive.

Now after making sure you have fulfilled all the three necessities mentioned above start with the steps below

Steps to create a Bootable USB Drive :

1. Download A Bootable USB from the following link onto the PC mentioned in the 3rd step in the requirements section.

• Download Bootable USB Drive Creator from Skydrive.

2. Load the OS DVD onto the DVD Drive or mount the ISO Image file onto a virtual drive of the same PC.

3. Its a portable utility and hence don’t need installation. Simply run it. Check the option “I have read and accepted the following License Agreement“. Now click on OK button to launch the main application. The app looks somewhat like below.

4. The app will then carry out the following 4 steps:

• Check USB drive (To check whether your USB drive is attached or not)
• Format USB drive
• Choose DVD or ISO image (To copy the required files to USB drive)
• Start the process to create bootable USB drive

By now I’m sure you have figured out that this great tool will now end all worries for those really looking forward to experience Windows 7 but unable to do so due to the lack of a DVD drive.  Hope this small trick solve your problem. Fee free to ask questions.

Trick 1 :

Follow the steps below to tweak your Windows XP :

1. Go to START -> RUN, Or simply press Windows key + R.

2. Type in “cmd” in the RUN window.

3. In the Command Prompt type “gpedit.msc” & hit enter.

4. Now the Group Policy window will open.

5. In the left pane, select the Administrative Templates under User Configuration.

6. Now in the right pane, double-click the Windows Components & then Windows Explorer.

7. Now in the list of content that opens find & right-click on “Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin”.

8. Now select Properties. And in the resulting check the “Enabled” radio button and click Apply. In the Explain tab you can read what Microsoft says about this tweak.

Now you have your windows tweaked not to send a copy of the deleted file/folder to the Recycle Bin instead delete it completely.

Trick 2 :

This trick works fine for both XP & Vista as well

In case we want to delete a file directly bypassing the Recycle Bin we can use Shift+Delete. but this can also be done pressing Delete button only. Follow the steps to get your job done.

1. Right-click the Recycle bin icon on Desktop.

2. Click the Properties.

3. In the resulting window, change the settings as shown in the screenshot.

4. Now every time we try to delete a file to the recycle bin or totally, we get a confirmation message. This message can also be bypassed by changing the settings as shown in the screenshot above.

You may need to reboot the computer to set the changes. And sorry to say sometimes like all other tricks it may not work for you at all. But do not doubt the tweak, as you can check what Microsoft says about this (step 8 for trick 1). Well that’s all for now.

It is nice to know that Microsoft has been listening all this while and promises that Windows 7 will be much better than Vista both in terms of resource utilization and general useability. That and the fact that Microsoft has decided to withdraw support for Windows XP, will see a lot of people migrating to Windows XP from Windows 7.

The only problem is that Microsoft has not provided a direct upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7, so there are only two options for people who want to migrate up from Windows XP.

The first one is to upgrade to Vista and then upgrade to Windows 7 but that’s not really recommended for obvious reasons. The other solution is to do a clean installation of Windows 7 (which would wipe out your Windows XP). This option is the one that Microsoft recommends.

If you have a lot of data in Windows XP, now is the time to make a backup of it while we hand-hold you through the recommended upgrade procedure from Windows XP.

Make sure that you have the Windows 7 installation disk, either the retail version (when it comes out) or a disk burned from the ISOs that Microsoft made available for download.

Backing up your data

Insert the disk in the CD/DVD drive and when windows autorun prompts you to run the Windows 7 installer, don’t run it and instead select the option to browse/open the DVD.

In the DVD, under the support folder, there will be a folder named migwiz.

Run the program named, migsetup.exe. This is the Windows Easy Transfer tool. Microsoft wrote Windows Easy Transfer to help you transfer all your data and settings to a new machine when upgrading to a newer operating system.

As you can see, with this tool, you will be able to migrate all user accounts, email, user data and pretty much everything else from Windows XP to Windows 7.

The only thing that the Easy Transfer tool cannot take care of are the third party programs that you have installed, so you’ll need to reinstall them again. This is a limitation imposed by Microsoft and it is, currently, not possible to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 and while keeping all the third party programs as it is.

Click Next at the welcome screen and you’ll be asked to chose one of three choices for the location where you want to store all the data that the tool will save.

I chose the “External Hard disk or USB flash drive” option and I recommend that you do the same since it sounds the easiest one. If your XP machine is connected to a network and you have a network share that you can use, feel free to select that option, and click on the Next button.

The next option is pretty self explanatory and is actually the only option on the screen so select “This is my old computer” and move on.

The easy transfer tool will then scan the various user accounts for all the data that it can migrate.

Click Next and select a password for the archive. This password will be later used on Windows 7 to complete the migrartion of your settings and data. And the last step of the process is to chose the location where the Easy transfer file will be saved. Connect an external hard disc to the machine, if you haven’t done so already, and select it.

That’s it.

Now, run the Windows 7 installation program and install Windows 7 normally.

Since Windows XP cannot be upgraded to Windows 7 directly, you’ll have to choose the “Custom Option” to install Windows 7.

Proceed with the installation as you normally would.

Once Windows 7 is installed and running on your machine, attach the external hard disc that you used to take the backup, to the machine, browse over to it and double click on the backup file that you’d created earlier.

The Windows Easy Transfer utility will then start, ask for the password that you’d set earlier and migrate all your XP settings and data to Windows 7.

Taskbar

In Windows 7, the new taskbar features big icons for you to access your favorite application easily. In Windows XP/Vista, this can be easily achieved with Windows 7 Taskbar Iconizer. This is a simple program that you can use to switch the taskbar interface. There is no installation required and you can easily switch back to the original looks.

Download Windows 7 Taskbar Iconizer.

Double click the application to run.

Click on the image to the right to “iconized” your taskbar. Restart your computer for it to take effect.

AeroPeek for Windows XP/Vista

Windows 7 comes with this AeroPeek feature that allows you to view thumbnails of opened windows, take a peek of the desktop when mouse hover on the right-bottom corner and also highlight the active window and make the other windows transparent.

To achieve these effects, we will use a combination of AeroPeek utility and Visual Task Tips.

Download and install AeroPeek and Visual Task Tips. The AeroPeek application requires .NET framework 3.5 to run. If you have not installed, download it here.

Restart your computer. Run the AeroPeek and Visual Task tips via the Start menu. You should be able to achieve the transparent windows and thumbnails effects.

AeroSnap for Windows XP/Vista

The AeroSnap feature automatically resize the window to half the screen size and snap itself to the side when you drag the window to the side (either left or right). When you drag the window to the top of the screen, the Window maximize to full screen.

In Windows XP/Vista, this can be achieved using AeroSnap.

Download and install AeroSnap.

Run AeroSnap via the Start menu. Now drag your window to the side and release and see it miraculously resize and snap itself to the side. You can also drag the window to the top of the screen to maximize it.

It is difficult to show the full effect of the AeroSnap in screenshot. You should try it out yourself.

AeroShake for Windows XP/Vista

AeroShake is another feature in Windows 7 that allows you to minimize all windows, except for the active one by shaking the window with your mouse.  In Windows XP/Vista, an AeroShake application was developed using AutoHotKeys scripts.

Download Aeroshake. There is no installation required. Simply double click the downloaded application to run. Drag your active window with the mouse and give it a few big shake. You should see all other windows minimize to the taskbar.

That’s it!

Note: If you are looking to transform your XP/Vista to Windows 7, AskVG has written a very good guide to transform your Windows to Windows 7 without using transformation pack.

Transform Windows XP into Windows 7 without using Customization Pack

Transform Windows Vista into Windows 7 without using Customization Pack

Enter Defraggler, a powerful and easy-to-use defragmentation tool for your Windows managed hard drives.  This defrag tool really sets itself apart from it’s competitors by being a quality product with the perfect price tag – free.  This tutorial will give you a nice overview of the Defraggler tool, as well as provide you with the necessary knowledge to use it effectively on your home computer.

First off, lets get to the meat and potatoes.  Why do you need to defrag?  Simply put, your Windows file system frequently fragments it’s file system by placing pieces of each file that it writes to disk into the first available spots.

The result is an increase in the time it takes to access a file, because the file can be cut into pieces and spread about the physical disk.  By defragging your disks, files are relocated so that all of the pieces are in the correct order and placed next to one another.  Defragging can easily extend the live or your hard disks and improve system performance.

Install Defraggler

You can get started by downloading and installing the latest edition of Defraggler.  I won’t bore you with the details of the installation, because it is incredibly straight forward.  I strongly encourage you to keep all of the default settings when you install the application, it will make things a whole lot easier.

Launch Defraggler

You can launch Defraggler from the desktop icon or the Start Menu.  Once open, you’ll be presented with the main window, as shown below.

Analyze

As you can see, it’s very straight-forward.  Start by selecting the disk you want to perform maintenance on in the upper portion of the window.  Next, click the Analyze button to have Defraggler assess the current condition of the file system on the selected drive.

This shouldn’t take very long to process.  Once complete, you’ll see a report similar to the following screenshot.

Defrag

You can click the View Files button, if you are interested in seeing which files are actually strewn about the drive.  That step is only for interest sake and has no impact on the defrag process.  To start the process, click on the Defrag button.

Depending on the size of your drive, the amount stored on it, and the amount of time since the last defrag, this process could take a considerable amount of time to complete.  It’s also resource intensive, so don’t start this task while you have a lot of work to do.

Save it for when you might have some downtime and can afford to be away from the computer for an hour or more.  Mine didn’t take very long to complete, only about 15 – 20 minutes.  Here’s a sample of the report you can expect to see once the job is done.

That’s it.  Pretty simple stuff.

You should repeat this process for each drive on your system.  You can even defragment your portable USB drives.  Even though you have done a great service for your PC, you’re not done yet.  Performing a defrag is a great step in the right direction, but to properly manage your system you need to defrag on a regular basis.  Defraggler can help!

Scheduled Maintenance

Clicking on the Settings menu, then Options, will open up the main Options dialog box.  Click the Schedule tab to set up a schedule that works for you.

Select the drive that you want to schedule maintenance for via the Drive dropdown list.  A good place to start is Local Disk (C:).  Next place a checkmark in the checkbox labelled Schedule defragmentation for chosen volume.  This will activate the lower options, allowing you to specify an interval.  This part is personal preference, but I prefer to defrag my drives on a weekly basis.  For most users, this will be acceptable.

Now you just have to pick a starting date and time.  Do yourself a favor and select a time when the system will not be in high demand from it’s user(s).  If you have more than one drive, repeat the process by selecting a different drive from the dropdown list and follow the steps you followed for the first drive.

As you can see in the pictures below, I staggered the days that my drives are defragmented, mainly because of the resource requirements to get the job done.

Just click Ok and your system will do the rest.

There are some advanced components that come with Defraggler and one of them is to check the drive for errors.  You can access this utility via the Action menu.

Checking for errors can take a significant amount of time.  In fact, I’ve seen it take a couple of hours to actually finish, so don’t start this task unless you have plenty of time to kill.

Summary

Defraggler is an important addition to your PC toolkit.  The benefits of learning to use this tool will definitely be seen through extended hard drive life and improved file access performance.  It’s easy to use, free to download, and you can set it and forget it.

If you run into any problems, Piriform provides a great support forum that represents a community of help resources.

(This tutorial was tested using a iPod Touch 1st generation. I have not tested iPod Touch 2nd Gen, iPhone 2G/3G, but I guess they should work as well.)

Install Virtualbox

(skip this step if you have already installed Virtualbox in your system)

Add the Virtualbox repository to your Apt list. In your terminal:

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line to the end of the file. Save and close.

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian intrepid non-free

Add the gpg key

wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Update the repository and install Virtualbox

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.0

During the installation, you will receive a prompt to ask you to add users to vboxusers group.

click OK to continue.

You will then receive the next prompt to recompile the kernel for vboxdrv

click OK to continue, follow by Yes to compile the vboxdrv kernel.

When installation is completed, you need to add yourself to the vboxusr group.

Go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups

Press the Unlock button. Enter your password and Authenticate.

Press Manage Groups.

Scroll down until you see the vboxusers. Highlight it and click Properties.

Check your username and click OK. Close everything.

Remember the Group ID (in this case, the group ID is 127). You will need to use it later.

Back in the terminal,

echo “vboxdrv” | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

to start the vboxdrv module during bootup.

Configuring the USB support

The following is to configure the Virtualbox to detect any USB devices that are plugged into your system.

gksu gedit /etc/fstab

Add the following line to the end of the file

#usbfs for virtualbox
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=GROUP_ID,devmode=664 0 0

Replace the GROUP_ID by the group ID that you have recorded just now.

Recompile the kernel USB support

In the terminal, type

uname -r

You should see something like this

Next, using the kernel information you just obtained, install the source code of the kernel

sudo apt-get build-dep linux-source-2.6.27
sudo apt-get install linux-source-2.6.27 build-essential

Once it is done, type the following to the terminal, line by line

tar -jxvf /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.27.tar.bz2
cd linux-source-2.6.27/drivers/usb/core
perl -pi.bak -e 's/16384/131072/' devio.c
make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/ M=`pwd` modules
strip --strip-debug usbcore.ko
sudo install -m644 -b usbcore.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/usb/core
sudo depmod -ae
sudo update-initramfs -u

Reboot the computer.

Install Windows XP in your Virtualbox. (skip this step if you have already done so).

Connecting iPod Touch to Windows XP VM

Plug in your iPod Touch using the USB cable.

Ubuntu will detect it and ask if you want to open it with F-spot manager. Click Unmount

Next, open your Virtualbox and boot up the Windows XP VM.

Install iTunes in your Win XP VM.

Activate the iPod Touch by  going to Devices -> USB Devices -> Apple Inc. iPod

The WinXP VM should recognize the USB device and configure it for usage.

Open your iTunes. You should be able to sync it like you do in a native Mac or Windows environment.

That’s it.

Note: I have tested this with a iPod Touch 1st Generation. I have not tested this with iPod Touch 2G and iPhone, but they should work as well.

[Reference: Ubuntu Forums]

Here is the tutorial to create a dual boot Vista/XP system. It is divided into 3 scenarios: Installing XP/Vista on a blank unformatted hard disk, installing Vista with XP pre-installed, installing XP with Vista preinstalled.  You will find yourself in one of these scenarios.

Installing windows XP and Vista on a blank unformatted hard disk

Step 1: Insert in the WinXP installer CD and boot up the computer into the blue WinXP installer screen.

Press Enter, follow by F8 to reach the hard disk selection screen.

Press C to create a partition. Enter the partition size for WinXP. Press Enter

It will prompt you again to allocate partition size for the remaining space. This time, enter the partition size for Vista and press Enter. Vista will need at least 15 GB of hard disk space.

Once done, the installer will bring you back to the hard disk selection screen, now with two partitioned hard disk.

Select the partition that you going to install WinXP and press Enter.

When it prompts you for partition format, select “Format the partition using the NTFS file system“.

Proceed with the Win XP installation.

Step 2: When you have completed the WinXP installation, insert in the Vista installer CD and reboot the computer into the Vista installer mode.

Follow the instruction on the screen until you reach the point where it asks you to select the partition. Choose the partition that you created for Vista.

Proceed with the installation.

When it is done, it will reboot and you will be able to choose if you want to boot up Win XP (Earlier version of Windows) or Vista.

Dual boot Vista with Win XP pre-installed

Let’s say your hard disk is already installed with Win XP and you want to create a dual boot between your existing Win XP and a new installation of Vista, here’s how you do it.

Follow the instruction here to create a new partition for your Vista installation.

Once you have created a new partition, follow the Step 2 above to install your Vista (make sure you select the correct partition when installing Vista, else you will erase all the data in the WinXP partition).

Dual boot WinXP with Vista pre-installed

If you have bought a new system that comes with Vista pre-installed and you want to create a dual boot between the existing Vista and a new installation of Win XP, here’s how you do it:

Follow the instruction here to create a new partition for your WinXP installation. (Alternatively you can use the Disk management in Vista to resize and create the partition).

Once you have created a new partition, follow the Step 1 above to install your WinXP (make sure you select the correct partition when installing WinXP, else you will erase all the data in the Vista partition).

After you have installed WinXP, you will find that it has erased the bootloader and you can’t boot into your Vista anymore. To fix this, put in your Vista CD and boot the computer into the installer screen.

Choose Repair your computer

Highlight the Vista partition and click Next

Click on Startup Repair from the list of option

The installer will now restore your Vista bootloader. When it is done, it will prompt you to restart your system. Click Finish to restart.

It should boot back to Vista now.

In your Vista, download and install EasyBCD

Launch the application.

On the left pane, select Add/Remove Entries. On the right pane in the Add an Entry section under the Windows tab, select Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3 under the Type dropdown bar. Name it Windows XP and click Add Entry.

Close the EasyBCD application and restart your system. You should be able to select to boot into Windows Vista or XP now.

That’s it!

nLite and vlite are two useful tools that allows you to customize your Windows XP or Vista installation CD and add/remove extra components of your choice. You can use it to deploy additional software packages including drivers, service packs or to remove miscellaneous Windows components that you have no use for it.

Here’s how you can integrate additional packages to Windows XP with nlite.

Customize Your Windows XP Bootable ISO Image

1) Create a folder on your hard disk and label it XP_Source

2) Copy the full content of the XP distribution CD into this folder.

3) Start nLite. The welcome screen shows you which version of nLite you are running and allows you to choose an alternate language. To continue click on ‘Next‘.

4) Click Browse and locate the XP_Source folder that you have created just now

5) nLite recognizes the language and version of your Windows installation files and displays the information. Click Next to proceed.

6) You can save your current presets for future use or load presets from the last time you used nLite. Click Next to proceed.

7) Choose your customization

- To Integrate a Service Pack, first download the correct pack for your operating system and save it to your hard drive.

- Click on the ‘Select‘ tab and integrate the service pack.

8) Next we arrive at the option to integrate drivers that Windows does not install by default. These can be drivers for almost any type of hardware as long as you use the correct driver. Click on the ‘Insert‘ button to search for drivers to install, make sure that you open .inf files only

To change the time to 24 hour time format, this is what you have to do:

Go to Control Panel (Start->Control Panel) and select Regional and Language Option.

Under the Regional Options tab, click on the Customize button, follow by the Time tab.

Under the Time format field, click on the dropdown box and select “H:mm:ss”. If you want it to display leading zero, select “HH:mm:ss”.

Click OK to close all the windows. That’s it. Your clock should be in 24 hour time format now.