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Preventing Bad Sector in Your Hard Disk

1. Do not bump your hard disk at all. The HDD may be mostly made of  metal but you have to handle them like eggs;

2. If you dont want bad sectors, never move your PC while it is onNever. Shutdown. Shutoff. Move the PC. Then turn it on.

3. Do not put anything on top of your HDD. If your gonna store it, make  sure they are in proper packaging (anti-static bags and clamshells o styro boxes).

4. Only hold or handle your HDDs by their edges, never touch the printed circuit boards or electronic parts.

5. If you have to put the HDD down on, lay it down on an anti-static bag

6. When mounting HDDs use the proper screws (coarse thread and shorter screw) as opposed to the screws for CDROM drives and Floppy Drives which are fine thread, and the case screws which are coarse thread but longer.

7. Use as many screws to mount your HDD as possible, usually 4, some techs will use only 3, I have seen HDDs mounted using only 1 screw. Why? The 4 screws will ensure proper heat transfer from the HDD to the case and will handle the vibration properly.

8. Tighten but not over tighten the screws. Your screws are steel, the HDD case is aluminum, you endanger or damaging the thread in youHDD if you over tighten.

9. You may mount the HDD in any way (level, un-level, upwards, downwards, vertical) whatever it takes to make it fit your casing. There will be no problem performance-wise.But keep in mind, in the, future say 2 years, you have to unmount and reinstall the HDD in a configuration different to what it has been accustomed to, the HDD might die on you just like that. Example ? vertically mounted for 2 years, then i-reinstall mo horizontally. Probably on the startup, your hdd possibly die. It happened to me 3X already. Perfectly working HDD, then remounted in a different way, then my hard disk just gave up . Most probably the bearings have gotten used to the old mounting and seize up when mounted differently.

10. Keep your HDDs cool. Blow fans on them, use coolers. At the very least make sure your casing is properly ventilated. Heat shortens the life of HDDs. But Choose carefully on what fans you will use, choose the fan which produce less vibration.

11. Cables? Make sure your cables are good and connected correctly. It may cause damage to the HDD

12. Power Supply? Make sure your power supply is up to snuff. This is where most HDDs fail after serving you for a long time. Low 12-volt rails kill HDD motors. Bad 5V kill HDD electronics.

13. Power connectors. Make sure your power connectors (those white plugs with yellow, black and red wires) fit well. Loose connectors provide bad power. After running your PC for a while, say 15-30 minutes, touch your connectors, if they are hot, then there?s something loose, replace with a spare connector and label the bad connector. If you do system checkups, it is good to take note of heat discoloration on power connectors and replace those bad ones;

14. Black outs do not just kill lights, they kill HDDs. Black outs are sometimes accompanied by bad power spikes and deadly voltage fluctuations. If you can afford a good UPS, buy one.

15. When transferring HDDs between systems don't just take one and install into another and fire it up just like that. Please make sure you get into BIOS first and make sure that your new system is set to auto. If your old system detected the HDD using manual or non-standard parameters, then duplicate the parameters first in BIOS in the new system before booting up. You might scramble all your data if younew system tries to read the HDD using wrong parameters.

16. If you use your PC a lot, defrag your partitions once a month. If not, defrag once every 3 months will be fine. For those of you who think that defragmention speeds up your HDDs death, may I give a small explanation. If your partition is quite fragmented, your HDD will be doing a lot of unnecessary work by default, its head going back and forth trying to get to the different parts of your files scattered all oveyour disk. Besides with a defragmented disk, you will have a more responsive PC.

17. Install enough RAM. You don't want your HDD swapping files back and forth from system RAM and the swap file. Lots of work for the HDD, slow PC.

18. Partition your HDD. At least 2 partitions. One partition for you Operating System. The other one for your data. This way if your OS gets corrupted (and it happens) you don't have to perform PC acrobatics to get your data back. You can reformat your OS partition and be assured that your data is safe in a separate partition.
(In case your hard disk had a bad sector, use HDD Regenerator by dposoft. It Can Recover Damaged Sectors. I prefer it than Spinrite.)

How to Restrict Some Options in Windows Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and 7

Following is a list of some interesting restrictions, which can be made in Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and 7.
Like you can restrict Display properties, taskbar properties, folder options, etc.
So I'll tell the key name and the value, that you have to create for the restriction.
If the key is not present, then simply create it.

NOTE: If you want to remove the restriction, then simply delete the DWORD value or set its value to 0

So here we start:

1.) Restrict Display Properties:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\System

create DWORD value NoDispCPL and set its value to 1

2.) Restrict Taskbar Properties:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoSetTaskbar and set its value to 1

3.) Restrict Folder Options:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoFolderOptions and set its value to 1

4.) Restrict Locking/Unlocking the taskbar:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value LockTaskbar and set its value to 1

5.) Restrict Active Desktop:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoActiveDesktop and set its value to 1

6.) Restrict adding/deleting items from Toolbars:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoToolbarCustomize and set its value to 1

7.) Restrict adding/deleting toolbars:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoBandCustomize and set its value to 1

8.) Restrict right-click in Start Menu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoChangeStartMenu and set its value to 1

9.) Restrict Desktop Cleanup Wizard:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoDesktopCleanupWizard and set its value to 1

10.) Restrict notification at low disk space:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoLowDiskSpaceChecks and set its value to 1

11.) Restrict Taskbar Context Menu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

create DWORD value NoTrayContextMenu and set its value to 1

12.) Restrict Programs to run:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer\DisallowRun

create String value with any name, like 1 and set its value to the program's EXE file.

e.g., If you want to restrict msconfig, then create a String value 1 and set its value to msconfig.exe. If you want to restrict more programs, then simply create more String values with names 2, 3 and so on and set their values to the program's exe.

13.) Restrict Registry Editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\System

create DWORD value DisableRegistryTools and set its value to 1

14.) Restrict Task Manager:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\System

create DWORD value DisableTaskMgr and set its value to 1

15.) Restrict Writing to USB Drives:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current Control Set\Control\StorageDevicePolicies

Create DWORD value WriteProtect and set its value to 1

16.) Restrict New option in context menu:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\Con textMenu Handlers\New

And delete the value of Default, e.g., empty it.

17.) Restrict Send To in context menu:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\Con textMenu Handlers\Send To

And delete the value of Default, e.g., empty it.

18.) Restrict Balloon Tips:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Explorer\Advanced

Create DWORD value EnableBalloonTips and set its value to 0

19.) Restrict Users to enable New XP StartMenu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

Create DWORD value NoSimpleStartMenu and set its value to 1

20.) Restrict Command Prompt:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Wind ows\System

Create DWORD value DisableCMD and set its value to 2

21.) Restrict Drives in My Computer:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

In right-side pane, create a new DWORD value NoViewOnDrive and change its value as following:

3 : To Restrict A and B drives only.
4 : To Restrict C drive only.
7 : To Restrict A, B, and C drives only.
8 : To Restrict D drive only.
F : To Restrict A, B, C, and D drives only.
03FFFFFF : To Restrict all drives.

And if you want more specific restrictions, like you want to restrict a combination of other drives, then you can use decimal no. instead of hexadecimal no. Following is a list for all drives decimal no.:

A: 1
B: 2
C: 4
D: 8
E: 16
F: 32
G: 64
H: 128
I: 256
J: 512
K: 1024
L: 2048
M: 4096
N: 8192
O: 16384
P: 32768
Q: 65536
R: 131072
S: 262144
T: 524288
U: 1048576
V: 2097152
W: 4194304
X: 8388608
Y: 16777216
Z: 33554432
ALL: 67108863

So if you want to disable a combination of drives, just sum their numbers and give the same value to NoViewOnDrive. e.g., for restricting C, D, E and F drives, give the value: 4+8+16+32 = 60

NOTE: You can also hide the drives using NoDrives DWORD value. The location and its value remain same as the above trick.

22.) Restrict RUN in New XP StartMenu:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

Create DWORD value NoRun and set its value to 1

23.) Restrict Control Panel:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre nt Version\Policies\Explorer

Create DWORD value NoControlPanel and set its value to 1


Note:

All tricks are based on Registry editing.

To start Regedit.exe
Click Start, and then click Run.
Type Regedit, and then click OK.

How To Back Up your Files Using Drive C

Does fear of losing your important data haunts you? If yes, you must read and follow this post.
You can take a backup of important documents on a regular basis. This is also helpful in case there is some need of carrying your data from one computer to another.
The windows backup utility is simple to use. Lets see a hands on how to take the backup for your important data.
Step 1. Open My Computer. Right Click on C drive and click properties. Go to tools tab and click Backup now, this will open Backup Utility.
Step 2. Click the Backup tab, set the Backup destination path for Backup file by pressing the Browse button at the left bottom.
Step 3. Select the files and folders which you want to backup.
Step 4. Press button Start Backup.
Step 5. After finish of backup go to the Backup destination path which you select in Step 2. There you can see a backup file "backup.bkf" (without the quote)
Done!
You can use this file to extract the backed up data on the same computer or other computer in case of data loss. Store your backup file in some external media and keep it safe. Hope it will give you some peace of mind!
You might be thinking as of how to restore the backup data in case you need it right? Then follow this steps to restore your backup data.
Step 1. Double click on the Backup.bkf file, it will launch the Backup Utility.
Step 2. Select Restore and Manage Media tab.
Step 3. Select the file from which you want to extract the backup. Also select the path at which you want to restore the data.
Step 4. Press Start Restore. It will show a pop-up screen to Confirm restore. Press Ok. This will initiate the restore, wait for it to complete the restore and Press Close when its done.
That's it! Done! Now simply go to the Restore path you have selected in step 3 and verify that all the backup files are restored correctly. I hope this somehow helped you.

Fixing Disabled Task Manager

My task manager has a "task manager has been disabled by the administrator" message. How did this happen and how can I correct this?


Why: if you didn't do it yourself, the news isn't good.

How to fix it: there are a couple of ways.

Let's look at this more closely.


The situation's pretty simple. If you right click on the clock in the Windows taskbar, the Task Manager item is grayed out:

Or, if you try to run taskmgr.exe manually, you get this message:

So, how did this happen?

As we'll see in a moment, there are settings you can access as an administrator that would allow you to disable and enable Task Manager in this way.

You didn't do that, you say?

Then a virus probably did.

Disabling Task Manager is one way viruses try to make it harder for you to deal with their infections. Before proceeding any further, you should run a complete and up-to-date anti-virus scan of your machine. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that you've been infected.

Once you come back virus-free, you can proceed with the fix.


If you have Windows XP Pro, there's a nifty user interface to directly edit the setting you want to repair. Click Start, then click Run and type in gpedit.msc:

And press OK. This runs the Group Policy Editor.

Once in the Group Policy Editor, expand in turn:

User Configuration

Administrative Templates

System

Ctrl+Alt+Del Options

You should see something much like this:

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 732x453.

Double click on Remove Task Manager to change its setting:

It should be enough to click on Not Configured and then OK and Task Manager is available once again.

If you don't have Windows XP Pro, then you'll need to edit the registry manually.

Click Start, then click Run, type in regedit, and click on OK.

Expand these registry keys in turn:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER

• Software

• Microsoft

• Windows

• CurrentVersion

• Policies

• System


You should see something similar to this:

Right Click on the DisableTaskMgr item:

Click on Delete, confirm that you want to delete, and Task Manager should be available once again.