What if you were downloading something late night, but you are feeling sleepy? Most probably, you’ll leave your PC turned on all night and spend more on your power bill. Fortunately, Firefox has a nifty add-on which automatically turns off your PC when you finish downloading, saving both power bill and environment.

The extension adds a checkbox to the download manger and an icon to the status bar. Clicking on the icon or checkbox will turn the auto turn off feature. It doesn’t turn off as soon as all downloads are completed, but instead it has a one minute countdown. However, some dialogues and windows which prompt unsaved document might prevent your PC from turning off. (more…)

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If you are one of those who refuse spending money on upgrading to Vista, but still want some Vista goodies on their old XP machine, then you should probably check out Visual Task Tip. It’s a tiny shell enhancement Utility which displays thumbnail preview of open windows when the mouse is hovered over taskbar.

What is Visual Task Tips?
Visual Task Tips is a lightweight shell enhancement utility. It provides thumbnail preview image for each task in the Windows Taskbar, as seen in the Microsoft Windows Vista. (more…)

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Consider the following scenario. You have a file server that is running Windows Server 2003. Some clients that have Trend Micro OfficeScan installed connect to this file server. In this scenario, the following symptoms may occur on the file server:

Symptoms

• CPU utilization for the System process increases to 100 percent.
• If you disconnect the file server’s network adapter, CPU utilization decreases to the standard level.
• If you use the Network Monitor tool to trace network traffic, you discover that many packets that are sent from the file server contain a “STATUS_NO_SUCH_FILE” error message. For example, these packets contain an error message that resembles the following:
  172.31.28.228 SMB SMB: R; Transact2, Open2 - NT Status: System - Error, Code = (15) STATUS_NO_SUCH_FILE
• If you run Process Explorer, you see that the Srv.sys file has a continuous instance that uses excessive system resources.

  To download Process Explorer, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx

Cause

The problem is caused by the Pccntmon.exe file on the client. If you have Trend Micro OfficeScan installed, the operating system queries for the files in folders that do not exist. The Pccntmon.exe file is located in the following folder on the client:

drive:\program files\trend micro\officescan

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Server Message Block (SMB) traffic is an application-level network protocol typically used for file and print sharing. Microsoft implements SMB in Windows operating systems through the Workstation and Server services; the client and server components respectively. Although our Networking team supports and troubleshoots issues dealing with SMB itself and the Server and Workstation services, we work with customers on many issues relating to the behavior of Windows Explorer and the Shell.

By default, Windows Explorer generates a lot of SMB traffic - which can result in poor file server performance in some circumstances. However, some of this traffic is superfluous and can be reduced - for example:

• Searches for Desktop.ini files used for folder customization
• Periodic refreshes of folder contents
• Searches for supporting library (.dll) files
• Individual file details and attributes pulled for each file
• Thumbnail extraction

There are some registry changes you can implement to optimize the SMB traffic being generated. Import the settings below on client machines. Terminal Servers running in Application Mode should be considered client machines in this scenario.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer]
“UseDesktopIniCache”=dword:00000001
“NoRemoteRecursiveEvents”=dword:00000001
“NoRemoteChangeNotify”=dword:00000001
“StartRunNoHOMEPATH”=dword:00000001
“NoRecentDocsNetHood”=dword:00000001
“NoDetailsThumbnailOnNetwork”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MRXSmb\Parameters]
“InfoCacheLevel”=dword:00000010
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\CryptoSignMenu]
“SuppressionPolicy”=dword:00100000
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\{3EA48300-8CF6-101B-84FB-666CCB9BCD32}]
“SuppressionPolicy”=dword:00100000
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\{883373C3-BF89-11D1-BE35-080036B11A03}]
“SuppressionPolicy”=dword:00100000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\SCAPI]
“Flags”=dword:00100c02
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager]
“SafeDllSearchMode”=dword:00000001
“SafeProcessSearchMode”=dword:00000001

Not all of

…

One of the lesser-known button styles is BS_PUSHLIKE . Makes a button (such as a check box, three-state check box, or radio button)
look and act like a push button.
The button looks raised when it isn’t pushed or checked,
and sunken when it is pushed Read More……(read more)

Now to set the ball rolling.. What is Superfetch?

According to Microsoft

SuperFetch

Windows SuperFetch enables programs and files to load much faster than they would on Windows XP–based PCs.

When you’re not actively using your computer, background tasks—including automatic backup programs and antivirus scans—run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take up system memory space that your programs had been using. On Windows XP–based PCs, this can slow progress to a crawl when you attempt to resume work.

SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they’ll be ready when you need them. Windows Vista also runs background programs, like disk defragmenting and Windows Defender, at low priority so that they can do their job but your work always comes first.

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