Recently, John and I have been doing a lot of database work using MySQL and have had to connect to several large databases and manage them correctly. This can be a daunting task without a tool to easily do so. This is where Heidi SQL comes in. This tutorial will walk you through downloading, installing, and configuring Heidi SQL to use against your MySQL databases.

Let’s begin by going to Heidi’s download page and downloading the installer.

Once the site loads, you will see the link to download the installer as shown above. Click on that link and save the file somewhere on your computer so that you can install it.

This is what the downloaded installer should look like. Double-click on it to start the installation process.

This is the welcome screen. Click on Next.

Read the agreement and check the radial button to accept the terms and then click on next. Click on Next.

This is where to install the files for the application. Leave this default if you are unsure of where to put them. Click on Next.

This is where you can pick what it names the start folder in the Start Menu where the application shortcuts will be located. Click on Next.

This screen will allow you to select the additional options you would like such as desktop and quick launch icons. Click on Next.

This is the final screen before installation will occur. Review the settings and ensure they are all correct. Click on next to start the installation.

You will see the above screen while the installation completes. It should only take a few seconds.

Once installation is complete, you will get the screen. Keep the box checked to launch as soon as you hit finish.

This is the connection manager. You can add several databases to the application and manage them by selecting them here. You can also enter the information for a one time connection. To create a connection that you will save, click on New at the top of the screen.

This box will pop up asking what you want to name the session. I named mine Tutorial. Click on OK to continue. It will now take you back to the main screen to fill in the options for the connection.

Fill in the fields with the information. The default port for MySQL is 3306. Once the information is all filled out, click on Save + Connect and it will connect you to the database as well as save it for the next time.
*Note: If you are unable to connect, you will need to configure your server to allow incoming connections and/or contact your host. MySQL does not allow remote connection by default and will need to be configured to do so.

This is the main window of Heidi. The left pane is the server you are connected to as well as the databases it contains. The pane on the right it the information pane that will change based on what you have selected on the left. It will allow you to browse the data, view the settings, and write queries to run against the databases. The bottom pane is the log pane and it will show you what the application is currently during.

That concludes this tutorial. Heidi is a powerful tool with everything you need to manage, manipulate, and update your MySQL database. Play around with it and get used to it and you won’t regret it. Thanks for reading.

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UAC is a security feature in Windows Vista that is designed to make sure you want to do certain tasks. UAC requires permission to perform all of the following tasks:
• Changes to system-wide settings or to files in %SystemRoot% or %ProgramFiles%
• Installing and uninstalling applications
• Installing device drivers
• Installing ActiveX controls
• Changing settings for Windows Firewall
• Changing UAC settings
• Configuring Windows Update
• Adding or removing user accounts
• Changing a user’s account type
• Configuring Parental Controls
• Running Task Scheduler
• Restoring backed-up system files
• Viewing or changing another user’s folders and files
Many users have asked if and how they can disable this from prompting them every time they want to do these tasks. This tutorial will walk you through disabling it.

To start you will want to click on the Start orb and type msconfig into the box for it to find what you are looking for (alternatively if you use the classic start menu, click on run and type msconfig and press enter).

The above window will appear. This is the configuration setting for a lot of Windows components and features. We will not want to click on the tools tab to open the section with our UAC settings.

This is the tools tab. This tab allows you access to some pre built scripts and features of the Windows Operating System.

Scroll down until you see Disable UAC. Click on it once and click the Launch button at the bottom of the screen.

The above window will appear to let you know that is has completed successfully or give you any error it may have encountered. That is all there is to it. As you may have noticed, there is also an option to Enable UAC which will allow you to turn it back on if you decide you would like to. I hope this tutorial was easy to follow and thanks for reading.

This tutorial will walk you through installing Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 Express Edition. This will allow us to create a database and start writing more advanced applications in Visual Basic that require a database. Microsoft has the express edition available free for download at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/express.aspx . This version will allow you to do anything you will need for most personal and small business databases. The database size is limited to 4 gigs but most small business and stuff won’t even get close to that. If that is too small for you, you should really consider buying the software. Let’s get started.

***NOTE*** The first several steps are only required if you don’t have .NET 3.5 installed on your machine already. There is also extra windows (not all of which are pictured in this tutorial) for PowerShell and Windows Installer 4.5. It won’t require you to download them and install it if you already have them.

Once you are at the pager, click on the Free Download button and it will take you to a login page. You need to register or already have a live account. It is free to register so go ahead. Once you get past that and log in, it will ask you to verify some information Once you verify the information and click on continue you will go to the download page.

Near the top of the download page, you should see the download now image. Click on this to begin the download. This will download a 605 kilobyte file that will download and install the software for you. Once this file downloads, launch it and you can start the installation process.

You will be given a window that has the EULA for .NET Framework 3.5. Review this document and agree to continue.

Next, this window will appear and start downloading the .Net Framework.

Once you are done downloading, it will automatically begin installing it for you.

This window will come up during the process….this part may take some time, so please be patient and let it complete.

You will get the above window alerting you that your machine must be rebooted before continuing. Save and close out of anything you are doing (and bookmark this page to come back an finish) and the give it the ok to reboot. Once windows reboots it may or may not restart the installation. If it doesn’t, just click on the setup icon and it will resume.

It should begin to download another file like shown above. Just download the file and then run it to resume the rest of the installation.

This window lets you pick which version you want to install. The options for additional services and with tools both will also install Windows PowerShell which is a scripting utility. I am going to go with the tools as well. This will give us the manager which will allow us to create databases, columns, and information. Click on install to begin installing the needed software.

This window will then come up and show you the progress of your install. You will then be prompted to restart your computer. Tell it to restart again. Once you reboot it will come back to the installation screen and continue installing again.

This screen will appear and test your machine to make sure it can run SQL 2008. If anything in here fails, it will need to be resolved before installation can continue.

This screen is were you select what type of install you want to use but seeing as we downloaded the express edition that is already marked for us and it is all grayed out. Just go ahead and click next.

This screen gives us the Terms of Service for SQL 2008. Read and understand these terms and check to box saying that you agree with them. Once you have done that, click on next to continue.

This window shows you what needs to be installed for everything to work. Click on install to begin the process.

This screen lets you pick extra features that you can install if you would like. For this tutorial I am selecting all of them. Click the select all button and then click next to continue.

This screen lets you pick the name of the instance and where to put it. An instance name will allow you to install several different instances of SQL and call them independently. You can name it anything you would like. Click next to continue.

This screen checks to ensure you have enough hard drive space for the installation to continue. Click next to continue.

This window let’s you pick what account on your computer should run the service for the SQL server. Select the system account for the top service and make sure that both of them are set to automatic.

This window lets you pick whether you want to authenticate users using windows authentication or using database credentials separately. Check the box that uses both and add you current user for the windows part and then type in the password twice that you want to be associated to the built-in database administrators account.

This windows lets you select whether or not you would like to send error messages to Microsoft for reporting. You can also opt to send operating information to Microsoft to help them make better products. Click next and it will go through another system check to ensure more things are ready for the install. Click next on that screen as well.

This window reviews all of the configuration options that we selected. Make sure everything looks the same as it should and then click next to finish the installation process.

This screen shows the installation process and will continue once the installation is completed. Click next to go to the final screen. The final screen gives you some information that may be helpful to you so read through it. Click on close once you are finished. I hope this tutorial was easy to follow and you learned from it. Next tutorial will walk you through configuring your database for access and creating the tables for it as well.

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This tutorial will walk you through configuring windows XP (look for the Vista tutorial later) to act as a kiosk mode without needing to buy additional software. There is software available that will do most of the options that we are going to cover for you, but they cost money.

First thing you should do is ensure your system is up to do with all Windows Updates (for security reasons). The next thing we are going to do is to create a user for us to use for this task. Let’s get started.

Click on Start (note that my start button says “TeamTutorials”) select Settings and click on Control Panel.

If you control panel looks like this, click on “Switch To Classic View” to get the old style control panel. If you already have the old control panel, continue on.

Double Click on User Accounts.

Select “Create a New Account” from the window that pops up.

The first window that pops up will want you to name the user. I am going to call my user “kioskuser”. This will allow me to remember what that user is for if I do other things on this machine as well. Once you have typed in the name for your user, click on next to continue.

Next, it wants you to pick the type of account the user will have. Go ahead and give them administrator access. We are going to disable things that will allow them to change it anyway, so it won’t be a big deal. Once you check the Computer Administrator option, click on Create Account.

Windows will now take us back to our user screen. You will now see the user we just created. Click on the users name to open the option for that user.

This window will pop up. Click on “Change the Password” to set the new password for the user. You may also want to make sure that any other accounts on the computer are password protected to prevent someone from using those accounts easily.

Pick a password for your user that you will be able to remember. Type the password in the top box and the second box. You can type a reminder of the password in the hint box if you wish. Click on Change Password to continue on once you are done inserting data into the fields. You can now close the user window but keep the control panel window open and select the System icon. We are now going to turn off error reporting, stand-by, hibernation, and some other features.

The above window will pop up. Click on the advanced tab.

This tab should look like above. Click on the error reporting button on the bottom.

Check the radial button that says disable error reporting. Click on OK and you should now be back to the System properties under the advanced tab. Click on the settings button under the “Startup and Recovery” section.

Make the window that appears look like the one pictured above (by checking and un-checking boxes and changing settings.) Once you are done, click on ok. You are now back to our system settings. Click on the Remote tab at the top of the window.

Make sure that the “Allow Remote Assistance Invitations to be sent from this computer” option is unchecked.

Now select the Automatic Updates tab and make sure the “Turn Off Automatic Updates” option is selected. We are now done with system settings. Now, lets log off of our current setup and log on with our new user that we have created. This will give us a new desktop with no icons, and allow us to make our changes to the registry that are user specific. [HKEY_CURRENT_USER]. Once logged in as “kioskuser” we need to set the background, screensaver, and power settings to the options we want to have enabled. We will now turn off hibernation.

Click on Start->Settings->Control Panel. Double-click on display. (Alternatively, you could right-click on the desktop and select properties from the drop-down menu). In these menus are all the option for how your desktop looks. You can set up all these options however you would like. There are three options within here that should be done though.

The first one is to turn off all power management (turn off monitor, turn off hard drives, ect..). To do this select the Screen Saver tab and click on the Power button.

Set all three options (Turn off monitor, turn off hard disks, standby to never). Note that I have on battery options as I am on a laptop. You can ignore those settings. Now click on the advanced tab.

Make your selections in the advanced window look like mine (again, ignore the laptop specific “When I close the lid of my portable computer” option). This will make it so that to shutdown all you need to do is simply press the power button once.

Now, click on the hibernation tab and ensure that it is disabled.

Finally select the Desktop tab and click on the Customize Desktop Button

Uncheck all icons except internet explorer. This will remove all icons from the desktop.

Click on start and select run.

Type in “control userpasswords2” (without the quotes) and press enter or click OK.

Select kioskuser and then uncheck the checkbox and click apply.

Type in your password for kioskuser twice and click OK. If the window goes away with no errors, all is ok. Close the user(s) window(s). Now we need to modify the registry to prevent users from moving the task bar, right-clicking on the taskbar, right-clicking on the desktop, and disable the Windows logo keys.

Click on start and select run.

Type in regedit and press enter.

To disable windows logo keys:
Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout

In the right pane, right-click and select New and then click on Binary Value. Name the value “Scancode Map” without the quotes.

Double-click on the value and enter in the following data:

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 5B E0 00 00 5C E0 00 00 00 00

(Please note that you will NOT be able to copy paste this into the form. You will have to type it in manually. The window will add characters to either side as you type as well, this is normal for this type of registry key. Also, this disables the windows logo keys for all users on the computer, not just kiosk user.)

To disable right-click on taskbar (you should move the tasbar off the screen so that they can’t see the start menu.

Right-click on the taskbar and un-check lock the task bar. You should now be able to hover over the top of the taskbar until you get a double sided arrow. Once you get the arrow, click and drag down, to remove the taskbar altogether. Once it is down all the way, you will notice that you can’t lock it in this position. We can however use the registry to lock it in this position.

Now navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
Advanced

Right-click in the right pane and create a new dword key and call it “TaskbarSizeMove” without the quotes.

Double click on the key and put in a 0 (default).

Note:
You should configure your computers BIOS to prompt for a password upon entering and also ensure that your hard drive is set to the first boot priority. This will make sure no one boots to a floppy or flash drive to compromise your system. Also, this will prevent them from changing settings in the BIOS themselves. I am not going to explain this in excruciating detail due to the numerous motherboard and BIOS manufacturers. Please refer to your manufacturer and/or motherboard documentation. If you have specific questions, please leave a comment.

Next we need to enter the rest of our registry keys to lock down the system a little more.

First, we are going to disable the ability to right-click on the taskbar.
Navigate to the following:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Right-click and create new DWORD named “NoTrayContextMenu”

Set the value of the key you just created to 1.

Next, we are going to disable right-clicking on the desktop.

Navigate to the following: Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Right-click and create new DWORD named “NoViewContextMenu”

Set the value of the key you just created to 1.

That is the last step. Now you should be able to reboot your machine and it will auto login the kisokuser. The user will not be able to move the taskbar, use the windows logo keys, right-click on the desktop, or right-click on the taskbar. Sorry for the length of this tutorial, but I hope it helps you. Thanks for viewing. Any additional questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment.

This simple tutorial will walk you through the steps to configure you thumbnails to be bigger than the default size. Alternatively, you could make them smaller as well, if you would like to fit more on a page but still have the thumbnail view. This will only change it for one user as well, so if other people use your machine, it will not affect them. Keep in mind that if the thumbnails are getting made bigger than they should they may distort after a certain size. Let’s get started.

This is the default size of the thumbnail images in windows XP.

We will be modifying the registry to make this change. To open the registry editor, click on Start and select Run (Please note that my start menu says TeamTutorials instead of “start” – Learn how to change that by following http://teamtutorials.com/windows-tutorials/changing-your-start-button-text)

Type in “regedit” (without the quotes) and press enter to launch the Registry Editor.

This is the default view of the registry. Click the expand button (the plus signs) next to the proper keys to navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

Once you are there, click on Explorer instead of click the expand sign in the left pane and the right pane will fill up with keys.

You editor should now look like the above picture. Look for a key called ThumbnailSize. If one does not exist (like the picture above) we will need to create it. If it does exist you can skip this step.

Right-click on any whitespace located in the right pane, hover over new, and select DWORD Value. This will create a key in the right pane. Name it ThumbnailSize. Make sure you have no spaces in the name.

Once you double-click on the value a box will pop up that looks like the picture above. You can now enter the value you wish to use. You can select either decimal or hexadecimal, doesn’t really matter, except the number limits are different. If you are using decimal, the number can be 32 (smallest) to 256 (largest) which converts to 20 (smallest) and 100 (largest) if you are using hexadecimal. You can now close out of your windows you have open and check your work.

Smallest:
Hex – 20
Decimal – 32

Windows Default:
Hex – 64
Decimal – 100

Largest:
Hex – 100
Decimal – 256

This concludes this tutorial. I hope you were able to follow it with little trouble. Please comment with problems and suggestions for new tutorials. Thank you for reading.

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This tutorial will walk you through how to modify system files in order to change the text that is displayed on the start menu’s “start” button.

NOTE: The steps outlined in this tutorial are to be followed at your own risk. We have tested it and it does work, but if you do something wrong your machine may become inoperable. I am doing this on a Windows XP Professional machine with Service Pack 2. There are no difference between professional and home for this tutorial. There are differences depending on the theme you are using. If something were to go wrong, simply go into safe mode by pressing F8 during boot and select Safe Mode. Then go into the registry and change our Shell value back to regular “explorer.exe”.

To complete this tutorial we will need to use a tool called a Hex Editor and/or a Resource Editor. These tools allow us to modify files that have already been compiled into DLL’s or EXE’s. A very good one to do this, that is free, is Resource Hacker and can be acquired by going to ResHackers Website (http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/). Scroll down on the page until you see the link to download the file as below:

Save the file to Disk once the download screen appears. Once the download has completed, open the file (which is zipped and you will need to unzip it before use).

You should now have the above file on your desktop (or wherever you extracted the files to).

You should see the above files within the folder. ResHacker.exe is the executable that we will be running. Now we need to prep things for the image swap. We will be modifying the “Explorer.exe” file located in your Windows directory, normally “C:\Windows”. Let’s open the files by selecting file and then open.

We now want to navigate to our Windows directory and double-click on explorer.exe to open the file as shown below:

We now have the file open in our tool and you ResHacker window should look like the following:

The objects that we are going to be modifying are located under the string table section and under the folders 37 and 38. Expand them and your reshacker should now look like this:

The reason we need to modify two of these files is that there are two strings for the start button, one which has classic windows style and one for Windows XP styles. These are shown below:

If you select the “1033” option in the 37 folder, you will get the following in the right pane which you can see shows “start” on the line that is labeled 578. This instance of the “start” text is for the Windows XP:

If you select the “1033” option in the 38 folder you will see the following in the right pane which shows you “Start” on the line labeled 595. This instance of start if for the classic view.

Once you start changing the text in the 1033 option in the 37 folder you will notice that the Compile Script button lights up as below:

Once you type what you want click on this button. If it completes successfully the button will become greyed out again. Repeat this step for the 1033 in the 38 folder as well. Keep in mind that you do NOT have to make them the same thing. Also, they do not have to be limited to a certain number of letters and Windows will re-size the button to fit whatever text is placed there. Out next step is to prep where we are going to save our newly created file. For weird reasons you can not rename this file and place it in the same folder. You have to create a folder for it specifically, or place it in another system folder. I am going to create a folder in the Windows directory called “start” as shown here:

You can now go back to ResHacker and select File and then Save As:

Now navigate to our “start” folder located in C:\Windows\ and save the file as explorer.exe. as shown here:

Now we can close ResHacker and start to tell our system where to get the new file from. To do this we will need to access RedEdit and modify the registry a little bit. To do this goto to Start and the select run and type RegEdit as shows below:

Once the registry editor opens up, you need to navigate to the following Key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Once you select the WinLogon folder, the right pane of the editor should look like this:

Scroll down in the right pane and look for the Key named Shell as shown:

Double-click on the key to bring up the window to modify its entry. Type the following in the box and click on OK.

Note that I did intend to use the forward slash. Please ensure you use the correct slash. Now you should be able to reboot your computer and see the effects of what you have done. You should see what you type no matter which version of styles you are using (To change styles – right-click on the desktop and select properties and go to the appearance tab). Here is the finished result:

This concludes this tutorial. I hope it went well for you and you were able to follow it. Please let us know if you have issues and/or have something you would like to see on the site. Thanks for viewing.

This tutorial will walk you through the process to change the image that is displayed on the logon screen as shown below:

NOTE: The steps outlined in this tutorial are to be followed at your own risk. We have tested it and it does work, but if you do something wrong your machine may become inoperable. I am doing this on a Windows XP Professional machine with Service Pack 2. I will alert you when something needs to be done slightly different (for home version instead of professional). There are steps at the end of this tutorial to revert your machine back to normal if something goes wrong. Please check them before you reboot to test your work, so you know how to fix it if something goes wrong.

To do this we will have to modify system files, so first please follow the tutorial that shows you how to show hidden system files.

To complete this tutorial we will need to use a tool called a Hex Editor and/or a Resource Editor. These tools allow us to modify files that have already been compiled into DLL’s or EXE’s. A very good one to do this, that is free, is Resource Hacker and can be acquired by going to ResHackers Website. Scroll down on the page until you see the link to download the file as below:

Save the file to disk once the download screen appears. Once the download has completed, open the file (which is zipped and you will need to unzip it before use).

You should now have the above folder on your desktop (or wherever you extracted the files to).

You should see the above files within the folder. ResHacker.exe is the executable that we will be running. Now we need to prep things for the image swap. We will need to pick images that we will be using to replace these files. In order for it to work we will need two different sizes of the same picture:

1.) 413×72

2.) 413×88

They should be the same image, just resized to fit. If the files are not this size, your computer will not boot properly and will throw an error. Please ensure that your file sizes match. They also have to be saved as 24-bit bitmaps to be functional.

Now we can open ResHacker and goto File->Open. Browse to My computer -> C Drive -> Windows -> System32 -> and the look for the file called “msgina.dll” and open it.

You reshacker should now look similar to the above screen shot. What you are now looking it is the contents of the dll. As you can see this DLL contains icons, bitmaps, dialogs, and more. You are able to modify all of these with this tool but PLEASE BE CAREFUL. You can seriously cripple your machine if you don’t take care.

Extend the Bitmap category to see the above listing.

You will need to upload your files to 101 (413×72) and 107(413×88) for Windows XP Professional.

You will need to upload your files to 128 (413×72) and 129 (413×88) for Windows XP Home.

Right click on the “1033” under the number file we need to replace, in this case we are using 101 which is our 413×72 image.

You will now get the upload screen. Click on the “Open file with new bitmap” button.

Use the file location box to browse to our smaller sized image that we are using and double click on it to open it. In this case it is on my desktop and is called small.bmp Then make sure that 101 (or 128 for XP Home) is selected in the textbox and the click on “Replace”.

You should now see you new image when you select that number in ResHacker. Repeat this process for 107 (129 for XP home).

Then you should see your new image when you select that number as well.

In ResHacker go to File -> Save As.

Make sure you are in “C:\WINDOWS\System32\ and then save the file as msgina1.dll. This way IF something were to go wrong, we still have out original msgina.dll to revert to if need be. Now that we have our new file, we need to tell windows to use it instead of the original. To do this we will need to modify the registry a little bit.

Goto Start-> Run and type regedit, this will bring up the registry editor. Hit the plus signs next to the words to navigate through to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Once you select the WinLogin folder, you registry editor should look similar to the above shot.

Right click on a blank spot in the right pane and goto new and then select String.

Name the key “GinaDLL” and press enter.

Now, double-click on the key and set the Value Datq equal to:

“C:\WINDOWS\system32\msgina1.dll”

Then select “OK”.

Once you restart your computer, you should see you login screen image that you selected.

IF your computer gives an error about not able to initialize the file, please start in safe mode (Press F8 while booting, and select Safe Mode) Once in safe mode, launch the Registry Editor and delete the string we created above and it will go back to normal. If this happens to you, please contact me and let me know. I am working on a fix for it, but it seems to happen when it feels like it, and I can’t find the cause. Thank-you for reading.

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If you have some files and/or folders that you would like to be hidden, this tutorial will show you how to mark them as system files so that they will only be displayed when the options to show system files is enabled. First we will look where this option is checked at. Also, keep in mind that you can access system files without enabling the view by simply typing the path into the address bar. For starters, lets make sure our computer is set to hide system files.

Start by opening any folder that you would like. At the top of the window, click on tools and select Folder Options.

This is the main folder options window. At the top of the window you see all the tabs we have to choose from to configure more options. Select the View tab.

In the view tab you will see a whole lot of options in the lower scroll box. Scroll down until you see an option that says “Hide Protected Operating System Files (Recommended)”. If it is checked it is hiding those files, which is what we want.

Next create a folder on your desktop.

Name the folder “system”.

Click on Start and select “Run”

Type CMD into the run box that comes up.

This will launch the above pictured command prompt window. Now we need to get to our directory. Type “cd C:\Documents and Settings\*USERNAME*\Desktop” without the quotes (where *USERNAME* is what you are logged onto the machine as.

You command prompt should now look like this^^.

Type “DIR” (Again, without the quotes) and you should see all the contents of your desktop appear in the window. You should be able to locate our “system” folder that we created.

Take a second to create a coupe of files within the folder we created. Name them anything you would like.

My files in the folder.

Now back to our command prompt window. Type in “attrib +h +s system” This command will make our “system” folder hidden as well as a system folder. It will disappear from the desktop.

If you run the command “DIR” again, you will also notice, that it has disappeared from the desktop in the command prompt window as well. Well, if I can’t get to it, how can I get the files from it. Since we know where we put the file, which in this case the path would be: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\system, we can access the file directly by doing the following.

Open my computer.

Type in the path of the folder

Once you press enter, it will take you to your folder and you will be able to see the contents of the folder while it is still hidden. You can see the files that we created in the beginning. This concludes this tutorial. I hope it was easy to follow and thanks for reading.

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This tutorial will help you use an application to make a graphical “roadmap” of the files on your hard drive. It will allow you to see what takes up the most of the space and where they are on the drive. It is a free application and can be found on Sourceforge’s website. The programs name is WinDirStat, and it can be downloaded from the link provided. (The link will automatically start the download once the page loads)

You will see the above window (or something slightly different, depending on your browser) whichever browser you are using, save the file to your hard drive. Usually, I put these files on the desktop until I am done installing them.

You should now see the above icon on your desktop (or wherever you saved the file from the download). Double-click on it to begin the installation wizard.

This is the first window of the installation. It contains the License Agreement. Once you have read through it, click on Next to continue.

The next window of the installer allows you to select what features will be installed. The CORE (default and locked) is the main program files. Depending on your OS one of the other two (ANSI or Unicode) will be checked as well. Leave them alone. The other options are all optional. I have chosen to create a program group in the Start Menu as well as create a shortcut on the desktop to my application.

The next window in the installer allows you to select where to put all of the applications files. If you do not know what to put here, leave it default.

This bar will move and text will go on the screen while the installation takes place. Once it stops working you can click on next to continue.

This final window of the installation wizard asks if you would like to launch the application now. Go ahead and make sure the box is checked to begin the application.

This window allows you to select what you would like to include in the scan. Feel free to select everything on your computer to view all of your files.

This window will appear while we wait for the application to do its thing. Depending on the amount of hard drives, size of hard drives, and the speed of your computer, this may take several minutes, please be patient.

This is the final output. The upper left section allows you to select the drive in which you would like to see. As you change drives and/or folders the graphs on the bottom of the screen will highlight the “bubbles” that represent that amount of data. You can also use the column to the right to select all files of a specific type and see where they are located at on the drive and how much space they take up. This concludes this tutorial. Feel free to roam around with this application as a lot of its features are neat and allow for a ton of information. I hope this was easy to follow and thanks for reading.

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Do you not know your computer operating systems’ serial number and you need it? If you want to re-install windows, or do any major updating it may require you to enter you serial number to confirm you indeed have a license for the software. This tutorial will guide you through using a website and information from your registry to get your CD-Key. This way, you wont have to download any software, as most of these utilities have viruses associated with them. First we need to get some information from the registry.

Click on Start and select “Run”

Type in “regedit” into the run box that comes up. This will launch the registry editor.

This is the registry editor with all trees minimized. This tool will allow us to make many changes within all of our applications and the operating system. You can severely damage your computer in here, so please be careful not to mess with anything unless told to do so. To continue with our tutorial we need to locate the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Expand SOFTWARE

Scroll down and expand Microsoft

Scroll down and expand WindowsNT

Highlight CurrentVersion. This will show you a whole bunch of keys in the right pane of the editor. I have blacked out the ones that will give out valuable information.

Look for the key in the right pane called “DigitalProductID” and double click on it.

The above box has the key in it but it is embedded and only part of this is the key. I whited out a lot of it to ensure that my key could not be compromised. Here is a guide to show you which numbers to write down (you should end up with 30 characters)

Start from the top and write all of the digits down. You will need to type them back in (sorry – cannot copy paste from here in the registry) Once you have your 30 digits we are now ready to get our product key. We are going to go to a website to convert this key.

A site called DagonDesign has a web based tool for converting this string into a usable key for us. Click on the link above to go to the site and you will see the box as pictured above. Type your 30 characters in the box and press “Decrypt Code” and it will give you your Windows CD-Key. This ends this tutorial. Thank-you for reading.

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