Spiga

Remove the Lock Icon from a Folder in Windows 7

If you’ve been playing around with folder sharing or security options, then you might have ended up with an unsightly lock icon on a folder. We’ll show you how to get rid of that icon without over-sharing it.


The lock icon in Windows 7 indicates that the file or folder can only be accessed by you, and not any other user on your computer. If this is desired, then the lock icon is a good way to ensure that those settings are in place. If this isn’t your intention, then it’s an eyesore.
To remove the lock icon, we have to change the security settings on the folder to allow the Users group to, at the very least, read from the folder.
Right-click on the folder with the lock icon and select Properties. Switch to the Security tab, and then press the Edit… button.
 A list of groups and users that have access to the folder appears. Missing from the list will be the “Users” group. Click the Add… button.
 The next window is a bit confusing, but all you need to do is enter “Users” into the text field near the bottom of the window. Click the Check Names button.
 “Users” will change to the location of the Users group on your particular computer. In our case, this is PHOENIX\Users (PHOENIX is the name of our test machine). Click OK.
 The Users group should now appear in the list of Groups and Users with access to the folder. You can modify the specific permissions that the Users group has if you’d like – at the minimum, it must have Read access. Click OK.
 Keep clicking OK until you’re back at the Explorer window. You should now see that the lock icon is gone from your folder!
 It may be a small aesthetic nuance, but having that one folder stick out in a group of other folders is needlessly distracting. Fortunately, the fix is quick and easy, and does not compromise the security of the folder! Read more...

SpiceWorks – Windows 7 Network Monitor Tool

Network admins, hardware techs, and power users always have a need for good tools to watch over their hardware or network. Spiceworks is just such a tool, and it is free. Here are some of the tools it provides. For starters, there is help desk, and network management software, plus PC inventory tools, and IT reporting solutions designed to manage different components involving IT in both small and medium sized businesses.

 Besides the tool set, the web sites has a variety of forums that users can obtain information from. For example in the community how-to’s forum there is a discussion on “A tool for checking to see if a Blackberry will work correctly with Blackberry Server; or Using WMI Filters to apply Group Policy to a target operating system.” In other words, the users of SpiceWorks are engaged with other users to provide technical assistance for a variety of different product, software tools, or other questions.
There are also contributor that write technical articles about different topics. One such topic was “Network Inventory – How IT Can Simplify Your Job and Where to Find the Right Solution.” The user groups that work in the Spiceworks system add a great deal to the software. This is not just a program to monitor networks, it is a program to network with other similar minded users.
SpiceWorksTV is a new tool that they have to show users how to work with the different elements of SpiceWorks. There are six channels. These include It Training, IT Webinars, Spiceworks Sessions, IT Product Reviews, IT Comedy, and Vendor Resources.
The user support venue is widespread with users located in many different locations. It is a world wide product with support for 19 languages, and 20 countries. There are 14 user groups in the US alone.
Here is the SpiceWorks Installation Process
Read more...

Clean Out Old Entries From Your Boot Menu

I’m sure many of you like to boot multiple OS’s on your PC. You may have Windows XP, Vista or any flavour of Linux appearing in the start up boot menu. However you may no longer have these OS’s installed but they continue to appear. So how do you go about removing them? Well this guide will show you how to do just that.
I actually came across a version of this guide over on How To Geek, but it was much more complicated than it needed to be. There method involves going into command prompt and everything, they way I know is much easier.
1. Firstly go to start and type in msconfig and hit enter
2. Now the MSCONFIG windows will open up for you

 You want to select the boot menu from the tabs on top.
3. You will then see the list of operating systems that are showing up in the boot menu. Simply select the operating system that you want to delete (you can’t select the default one) and then click delete
4. Next you want to select the Make all boot settings permanent box and then apply and ok
 5. Click yes on the box that pops up asking you to confirm the changes and then restart using the window that pops up prompting you to after.
And it’s as simple as that!
Read more...

How To Restart Explorer.exe When Your Desktop Doesn’t Auto-Refresh


Windows 7 is a great OS, hands down it’s the best I’ve ever used and to date I’ve had no problems with it, until now…… For some reason beyond me, every so often my laptop decides to be stubborn and just refuses to auto-refresh the desktop.
Now what do I mean by this? Well say I have a folder on my desktop, I delete it, but it remains there. The folder itself is actually deleted, but the folder icon is still there. It’s the same story when I go into my documents when I rename files or add new ones etc… it does actually change, but you can’t see the change.
This has really been irritating me as of late and in the past I had to do a full restart to fix the problem. After scouring the web to see if there was a solution for this, and finding nothing but dead ends, i’ve decided to develop my own solution.
What it involves is stopping the “explorer.exe” process, and then restarting it again.
Before I go into how to do this, can I just point out that this isn’t a permanent solution, it just prevents you from doing a full restart to fix it when it happens.
So first off we need to kill the explorer.exe process, now this can be done via the task manager, or what I like to do is the following
  1. Open the start menu
  2. Hold down Shift and Ctrl
  3. Right click on a blank area of the taskbar
  4. A new window will pop up, then select exit explorer



Now this will kill the explorer.exe process and you will see your taskbar disappear, don’t panic, it will be back in a minute.
Now to restart it we need to access the task manager by going Ctrl+Alt+Delete
Next go to File -> New Task and then enter explorer.exe into the box that appears and hit enter.


Read more...

Clear Your Recent Items In Windows 7 Jumplists

Microsoft has introduced so called jumplists in Windows 7. These jumplists are part of the Windows 7 taskbar and appear when the user right-clicks an item in the taskbar. They usually display the most recent items that have been opened and can also contain shortcut links to program functions. One example of this would be a jumplist for an email program that contains links to tasks such as writing emails or checking for new mails.
The recent items that are displayed can be a security and privacy risk. Even more so as there are no obvious means to delete and manage them effectively. The only option that a user has is to right-click specific recent items in the jumplist for options to delete that item.
There is no option to delete all items or to exclude items from being displayed in the jumplist.


What most Windows 7 users do not know is that Microsoft is storing the recent items list in a super-hidden directory that cannot be accessed directly in Windows Explorer. One of the options to access that directory is to copy and paste the following path into the Windows Explorer address bar.
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations
This will display a list of encoded file. Each file contains the information of a specific jumplist. It is however not easy to link those files to a jumplist. The only viable way to do that is to open the items in that folder in a text editor and search for recent items that are in the jumplist currently.

An easier way is to delete all files in the directory which will remove all recent items in every jumplist. This process can be automated with the command
del %appdata%\microsoft\windows\recent\automaticdestinations\* Read more...

Color coding Windows 7 folders for easy identification

Many a times you just need to identify a particular folder regularly and urgently. How often has it happened that you find your eyes running over all the folder names and yet not being able to find that particular one!?
Well to distinguish your oft-used folder, you can always customize it and give it a special icon as follows:
Right click on folder > Properties > Customize > Change Icon
Else you can also try giving your folders a different color.


Rainbow Folders is a nice program that allows you to change the color of folders right from the context menu.
This is a versatile program and can be used in so many ways. For example you might denote all of your work folders with a red color to visually differentiate them from other folders.
In short, with this program you can colorize your folders and speed up your navigation among the hundreds of folders located on your hard drive.
Rather than offer you a limited number of colors, it lets you use a hue to make an unlimited number of shades. Read more...

34 Favorite Windows 7 Tips

I arranged 34 my favorite windows 7 tips for you. These tips are exclusive and enhance your user experience to use windows 7 efficiently. The tips detail is as below.

34 Favorite Windows 7 Tips

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 1

  • Access to hidden international topics, simply type C: Windows Globalization MCT in the search field and type. You will see a folder other topics countries.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 2

  • Disk repair system immediately after install only if you have problems booting Win7 later. Just go to Start, maintenance, creating a system repair disk, and then Windows 7 will build a bootable emergency disk.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 3

  • Windows 7 WordPad is a new format, you can save and open, now you can save or open a Word2007. Docx and Open Document. ODT format.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 4

  • Use BitLocker To Go to encrypt data on USB memory stick or other removable media, with a digital certificate or a password for access.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 5

  • Right-click an empty part of the desktop in Windows 7, and, instead of needing to pass through the monitor setup, you will find the menu to set the screen resolution.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 6

  • Install the best free antivirus / Security Suite for Windows 7. Just install Microsoft’s own Security Essentials, free, fast and does a good job.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 7

  • Make wallpapers slideshow, Once you have selected as your desktop background image just hold down the CTRL key and select as many images as you want. Then choose how to delay the changes, and even select the shuffle, and enjoy.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 8

  • Right click the Explorer icon on the taskbar to get quick access to the folder Windows, documents and photographs.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 9

  • Install Win7 on a netbook with a USB stick. Take a 4GB USB 2.0 Flash / thumb drive and format it in FAT32, then just copy an ISO image to the flash drive with xcopy d: e: / d / e (where d: is the DVD drive, E: is the usb drive space).

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 10

  • Windows logo + G appears in front of other windows gadgets

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 11

  • Windows 7 includes a major task preview feature was, is, if you roll over open programs’icon in the taskbar, the preview comes up and where you can switch to, or even close the program. By default, you have to mouse over the icon for a short time (400milliseconds) for it to appear. I want it a bit faster and you can make it through a registry change. Just get into regedit and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Mouse. Double-click Mouse Hover Time, and set the value in milliseconds (say, 200) for what you want. Click OK and exit and restart.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 12

  • Windows logo + zoom +

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 13

  • Change the power switch. Windows 7 appears to exclude the button from the Start menu, but change it into something else just right-click the Start Orb, select Properties, and then boot off of what you want.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 14

  • ALT + P Show or hide the preview pane of Explorer

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 15

  • Windows-logo + – Loitonna

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 16

  • You Don’t need a separate burner to burn the ISO images any more, Windows 7 now supports this. Just right click the ISO file and click Burn Disc Image, and easier to just double-click the ISO.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 17

  • Calibrate your screen by typing dccw in the Start menu. The steps you through the adjustment of gamma, brightness, contrast and color of your screen.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 18

  • Show hidden stations. Win7 will no longer appear stations (eg, mem cards), if they’re currently empty. If you want to see them go to Explorer, Tools, Folder Options, Show and Hide empty floppy drive in your computer folder.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 19

  • You’ve already got an app open on your desktop and you want to copy half run, just Shift-click the icon in the taskbar and it opens a new one. Another way (and easier), the middle-click the taskbar icon.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 20

  • Cttune.exe run to tune the Clear Type font display. You get the text looking perfect on your screen.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 21

  • If you are often the same folder, right-click in Explorer Favorites on the left menu, and choose Bookmark. It seems at the bottom of your Favorites list for quick access.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 22

  • You can reorder the system tray icons, just drag them into the order you want on the tray, or you can even move out (and back) the tray.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 23

  • Windows 7 will automatically reduce screen brightness after a period of inactivity (a bit like mobile phones do), but Windows 7 adapted to your business. For example, if the screen is dampened after 30 seconds and you move the mouse once to illuminate the screen, Windows 7 will wait 60 seconds before dimming the screen again. Well when you look at the video – actually, I am sure my Vista makes it.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 24

  • If you have Windows Live Messenger from the toolbar and back into the system tray where it should be shut down Windows Live Messenger and edit the shortcut properties by choosing to run in Windows Vista Compatibility Mode.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 25

  • For Windows 7 Start Menu is the default power option, a simple down and that’s what I want. Bit, if you want something else, you can easily change the default to switch users, log off, lock, restart, or sleep. All you do is right-click the Start button, Properties, Start Menu tab, select the Power button action you want. Much better than how to change the shutter button in Vista

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 26

  • Add videos to the Start menu by simply right-click the Start button, select Properties and then click Customize. Select Display as a link in the Videos section near the bottom.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 27

  • Rearrange the taskbar by dragging them into whatever order you want. And you can start the first five icons with a button: just press the Windows-1, window 2, etc.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 28

  • With this windows 7 tips you disable / remove IE8 in Windows 7. Click on the Start menu and go to Control Panel and find Programs and Features. Click the Windows features on or off link on the left and remove the checkmark next to Internet Explorer 8.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 29

  • Turn Your Laptop Into Windows 7 Wi-Fi hotspots. Microsoft’s Windows 7 has something called Virtual WiFi, which makes a wireless card to act as several separate one. Just go and use free software Connectify and make you the notebook / laptop / netbook in a Wi-Fi hotspot for free.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 30

  • Control Panel has a new tool that allows you to save your username and password, the name is Credential Manager. These identities are stored in a vault, which can be backed up.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 31

  • Install Windows 7 on your Netbook. Use ImgBurn Setup convert DVD to an ISO. Copy the ISO to a USB flash drive using Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool. Restart the netbook and boot from the USB mem button and follow the instructions to install.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 32

  • You can move windows between multiple monitors, but to minimize or shrink the window first.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 33

  • Shake off Aero in Windows 7. Run regedit.exe and find the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Policies Microsoft Windows, right-click the Windows key and create a new key called Explorer, right-click on the right and create a new 32 — bit DWORD with this data Name: No shortcuts minimize window, Value: 1.

 

  • Pin Up the folders you use most on your taskbar. Hold your mouse over the folder, click and drag it to the taskbar. Windows 7 pins automatically to the Explorer Jump List.

Favorite Windows 7 Tips # 34

 34 Favorite Windows 7 Tips

Read more...

Remove Ubuntu or XP from the Windows 7 Boot Menu

If you’ve ever used a dual-boot system and then removed one of the operating systems, it can still show up in Windows 7’s boot menu. We’ll show you how to get rid of old entries and speed up the boot process.
Note: If you’re still rocking Windows XP, you can remove items from the boot menu there too.


To edit the boot menu, we will use a program called bcdedit that’s included with Windows 7. There are some third-party graphical applications that will edit the menu, but we prefer to use built-in applications when we can.
First, we need to open a command prompt with Administrator privileges.
Open the start menu and type cmd into the search box. Right click on the cmd program that shows up, and select Run as administrator.
 Alternatively, if you’ve disabled the search box, you can find the command prompt in All Programs > Accessories.
 In the command prompt, type in bcdedit and press enter. A list of the boot menu entries will appear.

Find the entry that you would like to delete – in our case, this is the last one, with the description of “Ubuntu”. What we need is the long sequence of characters marked as the identifier. Rather than type it out, we will copy it to be pasted later.
Right-click somewhere in the command prompt window and select Mark.
 By clicking the left mouse button and dragging over the appropriate text, select the identifier for the entry you want to delete, including the left and right curly braces on either end.

Press the Enter button. This will copy the text to the clipboard.
In the command prompt, type in: (make sure to put a space at the end)
bcdedit /delete
and then right-click somewhere in the command prompt window and select Paste.

Press Enter to input the now completed command. The boot menu entry will now be deleted.
Type in bcdedit again to confirm that the offending entry is now gone from the list.
 If you reboot your machine now, you will notice that the boot menu does not even come up, because there is only one entry in the list (unless you had more than two entries to begin with).

You’ve shaved a few seconds off of the boot process! Not to mention the added effort of pressing the enter button.
There’s a lot more that you can do with bcdedit, like change the description of boot menu entries, create new entries, and much more. For a list of what you can do with bcdedit, type the following into the Command Window.
bcdedit /help
While there are third-party GUI solutions for accomplishing the same thing, using this method will save you time by not having to go through the extra steps of installing an extra program. Read more...

Restore Previous Versions of Files in Every Edition of Windows 7

Have you ever accidently deleted a file, or removed a crucial part of a document only to realize it no longer makes sense?  Windows 7 is smart enough to protect you from yourself, and here we’ll see how you can restore files in any edition of Windows 7.
How does this work?
The Previous Versions features is a part of the volume shadow copy service, which creates restore points to help roll back changes to your computer in the event of a problem.  It is also the backend for the surprisingly good image based backup in Windows 7.  By default, shadow copy will save a copy of your files once a day, or when activated explicitly such as when installing an update or new program.
The Previous Versions feature was actually a new feature in Windows Vista, but was not directly available in the Home editions of Vista.  However, the volume shadow copy service was still present, allowing even users of Home editions of Vista to access previous versions of their files.  The default method is much simpler, so thankfully it is now included in every edition of Windows 7.
How do I access Previous Versions?
It is simple to access previous versions of any file or folder on your Windows 7 computer.  Simply open any Explorer window, right-click on a file or folder you wish to restore, and select “Restore Previous Versions.”  For instance, if you accidently deleted a file from a folder in My Documents, browse to that folder and open previous versions from it.  Please note that this will only appear on files and folders, not drives or Libraries.


 This dialog shows all the previous copies of this folder that are available.  Here we see that there is a copy of my folder e-books from yesterday, 3 days earlier this week, and some from the week before that.  Click on the time you wish to restore from.
 You can choose to either Open, Copy, or Restore the folder.  If you click Restore, you can restore the full contents of the folder as it appeared at some time in the past.
 Choose copy to copy the entire contents of the folder as it appeared at that time to another location.  For instance, you could copy it to a flash drive for safe keeping.
 Or, choose Open to browse the contents of the folder as it appeared at that time.  You can open, copy, or do anything you choose with the file from here.  For instance, if I deleted the Audio Books folder accidently today, I could click copy, and then past it into my normal e-books folder in my Documents folder.
 When in this mode, you are directly browsing the shadow copy of your hard drive.  The path to the folder shows the date and time of the copy.
 And, the great thing is, this feature is available in all editions of Windows 7, including the low-cost Starter edition often preinstalled in netbooks.

Change Shadow Copy Settings
By default, the shadow copies of your files will use up to 5% of your hard drive space.  You can change this by typing “Shadow Copy” into your Start Menu search.  Click the “Create a restore point” link.
 Here you can restore your system with a restore point, create a new restore point, or configure the settings.  Click Configure to manage Shadow Copy.
 You can choose to save both system settings and previous versions of files, only previous versions of files, or to turn this feature off entirely (which we do not recommend at all).  You can also choose how much space will be dedicated to these files.  The default is 5% of your hard drive, but you can choose more or less if you wish.  Finally, you can also remove all previous restore points, including the previous versions of all your files.

Summary
The Previous Versions feature is definitely a lifesaver. You can actually retrieve deleted files using Shadow Copy in Server 2003.  It has saved us many times when we accidently deleted a file or removed important information from a document only to realize what we had done minutes later. For these and many other reasons, don’t panic and just check Previous Versions if you ever lose a file. Read more...

Vista print Error 0x00000866

Situation: Vista receives print Error 0x00000866

Resolution: 1. Add a Local Printer and then create a new port pointing to the shared printer.
2. Map the shared printer to local printer port.

From a DOS prompt (Type command in the "start search" section of the start menu) type this:

net use LPT# \\server\printer /persistent:yes

for me this was

net use LPT1 \\hppav\BROTHER_1240 / persistent:yes

substituting for #, server, and printer as appropriate for your network. Read more...

Vista "Windows\system32\spooler" folder can't be a

You printer is not working. Also, no printers are listed in Control
Panel. In addition, we cannot add new printers and the
"Windows\system32\spooler" folder cannot be accessed.

This issue can be caused by corrupt printer components. Based on the
current situation, I suggest we perform the following steps to troubleshoot
the issue.

Step 1:
=====
1. Restart your computer and start pressing the F8 key on your keyboard. On
a computer that is configured for booting to multiple operating systems,
you can press the F8 key when you see the boot menu.

2. When the Windows Advanced Options menu appears, select Safe Mode, and
then press Enter.

3. Log onto Windows by using the Administrator account or any user account
with the Administrator privileges.

NOTE: In Safe Mode, your system display and Desktop will look and perform
differently than in Normal Mode. This is only temporary. To return the
system back to Normal Mode, we can simply restart the computer.

4. Go to Control Panel\Programs and Features, uninstall all printer related
software

Step 2
======
Start Windows Explorer, and then rename all files and folders in the
following two folders:

c:\windows\system32\spool\printers
c:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86

To rename a file, we can right click the file and select Rename.

Step 3
======
1. Click Start, type REGEDIT in the Start Search Bar, and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to and then click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environment\Window
s NT x86

View the list of subkeys. There should be only the following subkeys:

Drivers
Print Processors

If there are any keys other than those listed above, follow these steps:

a. On the File menu, click Export.
b. In the File Name box, type a descriptive name for this key -- for
example, type WindowsNTx86regkey -- and then click Save to save it to your
local Desktop.

We can use this backup of the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environment\Window
s NT x86 registry key to restore the key if you experience any problems
after you complete this procedure.

c. Delete all keys other than Drivers and Print Processors.

Step 4
======
Navigate to and click the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors registry
key. View the list of subkeys. There should be only the following subkeys:

BJ Language Monitor
Local Port
Microsoft Document Imaging Writer Monitor
Microsoft Shared Fax Monitor
Standard TCP/IP Port
USB Monitor
WSD Port

If there are any keys other than those listed in above, follow these steps
to delete them:

a. On the File menu, click Export.
b. In the File Name box, type a descriptive name for this key -- for
example, type Monitorsregkey -- and then click Save to save it to your
local Desktop.

We can use this backup of the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors registry
key to restore the key if you experience any problems after you complete
this procedure.

c. Delete all keys other than the 5 listed above.

Step 5. Disconnect the printer cable from the computer, and then restart
the computer.

Step 6. Reconnect the printer cable to the computer, install the printer
according to the manufacturer's installation instructions, and then check
if the issue persists. Read more...

Step by step troubleshooting VISTA sharing

Q: After reading post after post of people that can not get simple file
and printer sharing working I am left wondering just what the hell
does MS test??????????????

Clearly not a simple home LAN with a Vista PC and a XP PC or two. Did
they really think that people would replace XP on all their machines
at once?

The most common network configuration in the home has got to be a
router with a few PCs and a printer. Nothing special, so why can't MS
get the installation of a Vista upgrade into that environment right?

Holy smokes.

A:

1. Make sure you can see each other, for example ping.
2. Make sure you enable file sharing.
3. Make sure they are in the same workgroup.
4. If they would like to access each by using the netbios name, make sure enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP.
5. Make sure no firewall/security software block sharing.
6. It is easy and safe to use Public sharing.
7. Create the same username and password on all shared computers.
8. You may try to disable Password protection sharing.
9. Disable the IPv6 from the property page of the NIC.
10. Make sure you have assigned permissions in the Security tab in the Properties of the shared folder.
12. Reset Network Security LAN Manager Authentication Level from the default setting (NTLMv2 only) to Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session if negotiated.
13. It is no recommended to leave the blank password fro the remote access.
14. If you run Network Map on a Vista, computers that are running XP do not appear on the network diagram, you may want to download the Windows XP package (LLTD): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922120

These troubleshooting may help, Read more...

Common Problems with 802.11 Wireless

1. Inability to Connect and the wireless doesn’t receive the single.

1) It could be the Wireless adapter driver issue. Upgrade the latest driver. Or use Microsoft Wireless Zero Configuration service.
2) You may need to update the software or firmware in your wireless router or access point.
3) Changing wireless networking channels.
4) Incorrect configuration. The mismatch might be in the form of different authentication settings, incompatible equipment, or other configuration issues.
5) Check access control (MAC) address filtering.
6) The wireless AP and wireless network adapter are not using the same 802.11 standard (for example, you are using an 802.11b network adapter and a 802.11a wireless AP)
7) The wireless radio button on the computer might be in the off position

2. Intermittent Connectivity and the most common scenario is an automatic disconnect about every 3 minutes.
1) 802.1X authentication is enabled for wireless network that does not support 802.1X authentication. You may disable 802.1X authentication.
2) The computer is running Microsoft wireless software and wireless manufacturer software.
3) Disable IPv6.
4) Disable NIC power management
5) Re-set NIC speed.
6) Radio frequency (RF) interference from nearby devices such as cordless phone and Bluetooth devices
7) Outdated wireless network adapter driver Read more...

Restrict Access to Programs with AppLocker in Windows 7

If you share a computer and don’t want other users accessing certain applications, there is a new feature in Windows 7 that allows you to block them. Today we take a quick look at restricting what programs other users can access using AppLocker.
Note: AppLocker is only available in Ultimate and Enterprise versions of Windows 7.
Using AppLocker
To access Group Policy Editor and create rules in AppLocker you’ll need to be logged in as Administrator. Click on Start and type gpedit.msc into the search box and hit Enter.

 Under Local Computer Policy go to Computer Configuration \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Application Control Policies \ AppLocker.
 Under Local Computer Policy go to Computer Configuration \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Application Control Policies \ AppLocker.
 Under Configure Rule Enforcement click on the Configure rule enforcement link.
 Now under AppLocker Properties check the boxes next to Configured under Executable rules then click Ok.

Blocking Apps from Running
In this scenario, Jack wastes time playing games like Minesweeper and Solitaire when he should be doing his homework, so we are going to block all of the games. After completing the steps above, under the Overview section click on Executable Rules.
 Since this is your first time accessing AppLocker, there will be no rules listed. Right-click and select Create New Rule…
 This opens up the Create Executable Rules wizard and you can select not to show the introduction screen at start up for the next time you access it.
 Select Permissions under Action select Deny.
 Add the user you want to block, in this case it’s Jack.
 After you’ve selected the deny action and selected the user continue to the next step.
 In Conditions you can select from Publisher, Path or File hash. We don’t want Jack to have access to any of the games. so we will select Path.
 Click on Browse Folders and select the Microsoft Games folder.
 In the next screen you could add Exceptions like allowing certain files, but because we are blocking the entire games directory we’ll skip to the next screen.
 Here you can add a description to the rule so you can keep track of them is there are several rules configured. When everything looks right click on Create.
 A message pops up saying default rules haven’t been created yet. It is important to make sure they are created so click Yes to this message.
 Now you will see the default rules and the new one you created showing Jack is denied access to the Microsoft Games directory.
 After creating the rule make sure and go into services and make Application Identification is started and that it’s set to automatically start as well otherwise the rules won’t work. By default this service is not started so you will need to enable it.
 Now, when Jack logs into his user account and tries to access the games he will only see the following message. Only an Administrator can go in and change the rule.

Conclusion
Use caution when configuring the rules and only start the Application Identity service after everything looks right. Otherwise you have the potential of locking yourself out of all applications including AppLocker.AppLocker is a powerful feature included in Windows 7 and we showed you a basic rule so you can get an idea of how it works. In the future we’ll take a look at more complex tasks to accomplish and gain tight control over what programs each user is able to access. Read more...

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