How To Return Remote Desktop View To Full Screen

At times while switching between users or computers, Remote desktop screen tend to set to one user profile desktop resolutions. This might be problem for new users who logged in after that.

To over come this issue and to fit to your screen resolutions, here are the simple steps to do on Windows machine.

1. Just make sure you can see the hidden files on your Windows PC, I guess you know how to do that
2. Close any Remote Desktop connection that is running.
3. Go to your Documents (Start - Documents)
4. Find this file, Default RDP (this file will be hidden format)
5. Delete that file, and then start remote desktop connection now.

Hope this helps for people who will get annoyed with changing remote desktops screen resolutions with multiple user logins!!

Hosts File in Windows 10 : Locate, Edit and Manage

Locating the Hosts file in Windows 10, navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc to find your Windows 10 hosts file. You can see it in the image given below

Editing the Windows 10 Hosts File

Before you can edit this file, you have a pre-requisites that need to be done, Make sure that your account has Administrator privilege as only administrators can modify this file.

How to turn your Windows 10 PC into a wireless hotspot

Windows 10 includes a feature called "Hosted Network" that allows you to turn your computer into a wireless hotspot.

Whether you're connecting to the internet using a wireless or wired adapter, similar to previous versions, Windows 10 allows you to share an internet connection with other devices with a feature called "Hosted Network".

Hosted Network is a feature that comes included with the Netsh (Network Shell) command-line utility. It's was previously introduced in Windows 7, and it allows you to use the operating system to create a virtual wireless adapter – something that Microsoft refers to "Virtual Wi-Fi" — and create a SoftAP, which is a software-based wireless access point.

Here is nice tutorial that is use full with step by step process. Blogger has given full details for setting up this process

How to Copy Files in Command Prompt using xCopy

The Windows Command Prompt can be very powerful once you understand some of the commands. You can get a lot more control with the Command Prompt than you would by copying and pasting in Windows Explorer. Knowing how to make the most out of the copy commands is essential if you're remotely operating a Windows server. It's also great if you want to be more efficient with your own system.

There are different ways to copy files using the Windows Command Prompt. All the commands can copy files from one place to another, but there are several cases where you may want to choose one command over the others.

• XCOPY - The xcopy command allows you to copy files and directory trees. This makes it much more suitable for copying folders. xcopy also has many modifiers which gives advanced users more control over the copying process. xcopy has been deprecated in favor of robocopy, but still works.

Example: C:\>xcopy c:\webshare\AppData\runtime\bin\admin\*.* c:\_backup\backup_20161208\admin /e /i

XCOPY source [destination] [/A | /M] [/D[:date]] [/P] [/S [/E]] [/V] [/W]
                           [/C] [/I] [/Q] [/F] [/L] [/G] [/H] [/R] [/T] [/U]
                           [/K] [/N] [/O] [/X] [/Y] [/-Y] [/Z] [/B] [/J]
                           [/EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]...]

  source       Specifies the file(s) to copy.
  destination  Specifies the location and/or name of new files.
  /A           Copies only files with the archive attribute set,
               doesn't change the attribute.
  /M           Copies only files with the archive attribute set,
               turns off the archive attribute.
  /D:m-d-y     Copies files changed on or after the specified date.
               If no date is given, copies only those files whose
               source time is newer than the destination time.
  /EXCLUDE:file1[+file2][+file3]...
               Specifies a list of files containing strings.  Each string
               should be in a separate line in the files.  When any of the
               strings match any part of the absolute path of the file to be
               copied, that file will be excluded from being copied.  For
               example, specifying a string like \obj\ or .obj will exclude
               all files underneath the directory obj or all files with the
               .obj extension respectively.
  /P           Prompts you before creating each destination file.
  /S           Copies directories and subdirectories except empty ones.
  /E           Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones.
               Same as /S /E. May be used to modify /T.
  /V           Verifies the size of each new file.
  /W           Prompts you to press a key before copying.
  /C           Continues copying even if errors occur.
  /I           If destination does not exist and copying more than one file,
               assumes that destination must be a directory.
  /Q           Does not display file names while copying.
  /F           Displays full source and destination file names while copying.
  /L           Displays files that would be copied.
  /G           Allows the copying of encrypted files to destination that does
               not support encryption.
  /H           Copies hidden and system files also.
  /R           Overwrites read-only files.
  /T           Creates directory structure, but does not copy files. Does not
               include empty directories or subdirectories. /T /E includes
               empty directories and subdirectories.
  /U           Copies only files that already exist in destination.
  /K           Copies attributes. Normal Xcopy will reset read-only attributes.
  /N           Copies using the generated short names.
  /O           Copies file ownership and ACL information.
  /X           Copies file audit settings (implies /O).
  /Y           Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
               existing destination file.
  /-Y          Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
               existing destination file.
  /Z           Copies networked files in restartable mode.
  /B           Copies the Symbolic Link itself versus the target of the link.
  /J           Copies using unbuffered I/O. Recommended for very large files.

The switch /Y may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable.
This may be overridden with /-Y on the command line.

How to delete a file or folder with a path too long?

I have come across a situation where I am unable to delete a folder? Interesting right. I tired different ways to delete like how we does in Windows like every time we do. But no luck. After I did some research I found a way to delete file or folder which is too long to delete.

Here is the error message you will get when you try to delete these files or folders “Destination Path Too Long:  The file name(s) would be too long for the destination folder.  You can shorten the file name and try again, or try a location that has a shorter path. “

Usually windows cannot delete file path greater than 255 characters.

So here is the simple way to delete these folders by doing Map Drive to that location. Here is how we can do using command prompt.

1. Start a command prompt (no admin privileges needed)
2. Use cd to navigate to the folder you want to go (you can use tab to autocomplete names)
3. Type subst Z:  to create the drive letter association. (instead of the . you can also type the entire path)
   C:\>subst Z:  d:\Java.Works\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20140702
4. Now in explorer you have a new letter in your computer. Go to it and do whatever you need to do to like by navigate to the files that have long names. You should now be able to rename/delete/etc them. The reason this works is because the path itself is no longer containing >255 chars
5. Go back to your cmd window and type subst /d Z: to remove the drive like this C:\>subst /d Z:

This worked for me. Hope it works for you as well. Good luck

Create Windows admin user from command line

Here is how we can create windows user from command prompt.
c:\net user /add [username] [password]
The above will creates the user account.

To add the user account to administrators group. Need to do like this below
c:\net localgroup administrators [username] /add

Hope this helps!

Guide to Resetting a Windows 7 Password

Every one has tendency to forget passwords. I am one of them. Here is the nice tutorial to reset windows 7 password which helped me. Its very helpful and nice tutorial. Author has done very good job for compiling this.

Hope this helps to you as well.

Missing Send to items in windows 7

Recently I lost few of my icons went missing from Send to folder when we right click on any item or folder. I frequently use Mail Recipient in this. Here is how we can restore this back from default profile

1. Go to following path for default profile setting to capture

"C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo" or any other profiles which you have access to from below locations
"C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo"
"C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo"

2. Now go to run command  or type in start-search box and type shell:sendto to access your own profile.

3. Copy missing files from your default profile to your own profile. If you want you can add  your own short cuts for quick access.

You are good to go now. Hope this helps!!

How To: Delete/Remove Services In Windows

Users can usually uninstall applications from their computers quite easily, however the same cannot be said for Windows services, of course you can disable a service, but the entry for it may still remain.

If you are looking for a way to completely delete a service from Windows here is how we can do this.

Open a command prompt, by going to Start > Run and type in cmd without the quotes and hit the Enter key.

Once a command prompt has opened up, type the command sc delete service name without the quotes

Once a service has been deleted you should see a message saying [SC] DeleteService SUCCESS, this should mean that the service has been deleted, to ensure that, just click on the refresh button in the services.msc window and confirm that the service has been deleted.

Note: You should always delete services in safe mode, just in case it causes you any problem, you may also want to create system restore points, just in case something goes wrong. But If you are a developer and its your own service then you don’t need to do this since you know about your service how it works. 

C#: How to Get Machine name of the webserver

Here is how you can do using C#,

Response.Write("machinename " +System.Environment.MachineName +"<BR>" )

This gives you name computer where your webserver is located.

If you need with the domain name here is how you can achieve using the following code snippet:

You need to import following namespace to use this,

using System.Net; 

public static string GetServerMachineName()
{            
    string domainName = System.Net.NetworkInformation.IPGlobalProperties.GetIPGlobalProperties().DomainName;
    string hostName = Dns.GetHostName();
    string sysdn = "";
    if (!hostName.Contains(domainName))
        sysdn = hostName + "." + domainName;
    else
        sysdn = hostName;

    return sysdn;
}

Happy Coding

Running 32-bit Applications in 64-bit Environment

WOW64 is the x86 emulator that allows 32-bit Windows-based applications to run seamlessly on 64-bit Windows. WOW64 is provided with the operating system and does not have to be explicitly enabled. For more information, see WOW64 Implementation Details.

The system isolates 32-bit applications from 64-bit applications, which includes preventing file and registry collisions. Console, GUI, and service applications are supported. The system provides interoperability across the 32/64 boundary for scenarios such as cut and paste and COM. However, 32-bit processes cannot load 64-bit DLLs for execution, and 64-bit processes cannot load 32-bit DLLs for execution. This restriction does not apply to DLLs loaded as data files or image resource files; for more information, see LoadLibraryEx.

A 32-bit application can detect whether it is running under WOW64 by calling the IsWow64Process function. The application can obtain additional information about the processor by using the GetNativeSystemInfo function.

Note that 64-bit Windows does not support running 16-bit Windows-based applications. The primary reason is that handles have 32 significant bits on 64-bit Windows. Therefore, handles cannot be truncated and passed to 16-bit applications without loss of data. Attempts to launch 16-bit applications fail with the following error: ERROR_BAD_EXE_FORMAT.

Translation libraries

The WoW64 subsystem comprises a lightweight compatibility layer that has similar interfaces on all 64-bit versions of Windows. It aims to create a 32-bit environment that provides the interfaces required to run unmodified 32-bit Windows applications on a 64-bit system. Technically, WoW64 is implemented using three dynamic-link libraries (DLLs):

1. Wow64.dll, the core interface to the Windows NT kernel that translates between 32-bit and 64-bit calls, including pointer and call stack manipulations
2. Wow64win.dll, which provides the appropriate entry-points for 32-bit applications
3. Wow64cpu.dll, which takes care of switching the processor from 32-bit to 64-bit mode

Hot Fix For Windows 7 Start Menu Search Not Working

Sometimes in windows 7 start menu search will not work. Many blogs will tell you to edit the registry. But it is not recommended. Microsoft released the hotfix for this. Download at: http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=977380&kbln=en-us

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 with SP1 enables IT administrators to manage roles and features that are installed on remote computers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 (and, for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003) from a remote computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows 7 with SP1. It includes support for remote management of computers that are running either the Server Core or full installation options of Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1, Windows Server 2008 R2, and for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008. Some roles and features on Windows Server 2003 can be managed remotely by using Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 with SP1, although the Server Core installation option is not available with the Windows Server 2003 operating system.

This feature is comparable in functionality to the Windows Server 2003 Administrative Tools Pack and Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 with SP1 can be installed on computers that are running the Enterprise, Professional, or Ultimate editions of Windows 7 or Windows 7 with SP1. This software can be installed ONLY on computers that are running the Enterprise, Professional, or Ultimate editions of Windows 7 or Windows 7 with SP1; it cannot be installed on target servers that you want to manage.

Both x86- and x64-based versions of Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 with SP1 are available for download on this page. Download and install the version that matches the architecture of the computer on which you plan to install the administration tools.

For more information go to MSDN for help. You can download this for 32 bit and 64 bit in the this URL.

10 Great Features in 10 Different OSes

If you are making the ultimate OS, what features would you choose?

1. Mac OS X, Time Machine: Apple introduced Time Machine backup software with the Mac OS X 10.5 in 2007. You can back up to a local drive connected via USB or Fire wire, or even to network storage via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. As long as your backup volume is available. Time Machine creates hourly, daily and weekly incremental backups of your system.
2. Unix, The Shell Terminal: There's always tension between command-line and graphical interfaces, and for the last decade or more, GUIs have been the dominant face of most OSes. But as Max Steenbergen writes in his article "Commands Lines: Alive & Kicking" for UX Magazine, the command line is making a comeback via app launchers like Alfred, Launchy and GNOME Do.
3. Ubuntu, Simplified Linux Setup: Ubuntu aims for easy installation and configuration, and that's been my experience so far. You can download a live CD ISO or a Windows installer to get going. It doesn't require much of a commitment if you just want to give Ubuntu a try. Burn the ISO to CD and boot from that, or install it in a virtual machine using VirtualBox, Virtual PC or VMWare Player
4. BeOS, 64-Bit Journaling File System: When Jean Louis Gasse left Apple, he founded a new team that created the charming and forward-looking BeOS in 1991.The file system included with BeOS, however, is one of its truly cool features. Called BFS (BeOS File System), it was a 64-bit journaling file system using file attributes, or metadata. The ability to query and sort against file metadata gave BFS some relational database-like quality similar to what we may finally see via WinFS in Windows 8. The 64-bit address space gave BFS the theoretical ability to support volumes of more than eight exobytes and files over 30 GB. This at a time when 30 GB hard drives were hardly commonplace.
5. IRIX, SGI Dogfight: The first components of what would become the Dogfight demo were created by Gary Tarolli in the early '80s. OK, technically Dogfight wasn't an OS feature like some of the other items we've discussed here, but it was designed specifically to highlight the advanced (for the time) 3D rendering capabilities of SGI's systems.
6. NeXTSTEP, Right-Click Context Menu: While the Mac OS didn’t embrace the right-click context menu until much later, it was an OS feature from the start in NeXTSTEP.
7. MS-DOS, BASIC: MS-DOS was undeniably the dominant desktop operating system throughout the '80s, and every one of those computers running MS-DOS included the Microsoft BASIC programming language in one form or another. In fact, the version of BASIC created by Paul Allen and Bill Gates predates even MS-DOS, originating as Altair BASIC in the '70s
8. Windows 3.0, Alt-Tab Task Switching: Pressing the Alt and Tab keys brings up a window that displays an icon for each open window present on the system (even if minimized). The currently active window is highlighted by default. Holding down the Alt key, you release and press the Tab key to move the highlight to the next window, thereby making it the active window and bringing it to the front.
9. iOS, Multi-Touch: The introduction of what we now know as iOS for the iPhone in 2007, however, represented the first chance for many of us to have a hands-on experience with multi-touch
10. Windows 7, Start Menu and Taskbar: The Start menu and taskbar as we know them in Windows today debuted in Windows 95. With each new release of Windows, new features have been added: integrated search, pinned applications, recently used files and one-click access to often used folders and system configuration tools. Vista added the ability to type a string into the search box and get a list of files and applications matching that string. Windows 7 made that feature actually work properly (mostly through more efficient file indexing) and added per-application recently used file listings.

These are captured from blog of Terrence Dorsey, who is the editor of MSDN Magazine.

How Application Pools Works ? (IIS 6.0)

What are Application pools? How it actually Works? The concept of Application Pools has from IIS 6.0. Application pools are used to separate sets of IIS worker processes that share the same configuration and application boundaries. Application pools used to isolate our web application for better security, reliability, and availability and performance and keep running with out impacting each other . The worker process serves as the process boundary that separates each application pool so that when one worker process or application is having an issue or recycles, other applications or worker processes are not affected. One Application Pool can have multiple worker process.

When you run IIS 6.0 in worker process isolation mode, you can separate different Web applications and Web sites into groups known as Application pools. An Application pool is a group of one or more URLs that are served by a worker process or set of worker processes. Any Web directory or virtual directory can be assigned to an application pool. Each application pool is given its own set of server resources. That way, if a Web site crashes, it won’t effect sites in other application pools.

A classic example of this is a Web site with a memory leak. If all of the Web sites hosted on a particular server were to share system resources, and one of the Web sites had a memory leak, it could potentially take memory away from the other hosted sites. If the leaky site were in its own application pool though, the memory leak would not effect any other site because each application pool has its own server resources (including memory).

Main idea behind application pools are
1. Isolation of Different Web Application
2. Individual worker process for different web application
3. More reliably web application
4. Better Performance

For more information check this URL from MSDN.

Hope this is useful

Disable User Account Control (UAC) For Administrators Only

If you can’t stand the User Account Control prompts, but you’d still like to retain a little bit of security, you can disable it for Administrator accounts only.

To configure this setting on Windows 7 / Vista Business and Ultimate, you can use the Local Security Policy configuration. Just type in secpol.msc into the Start menu search box and hit enter.

Brose down to Local Policies \ Security Options

Find the following in the list: “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” and double-click on it.

Change the setting to “Elevate without prompting”. You should be all done and good to go…

Note: Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, so better be warned :-)

Disabling User Account Control on Windows 7

Windows 7 makes it much easier to deal with UAC settings, and in fact you don’t have to completely disable UAC if you don’t want to. Just type UAC into the start menu or Control Panel search box or find how to go to UAC from my previous post.

Adjust the notification bar as per your choice. if you drag it all the way down to the bottom then it’ll be disabled entirely.

Note: Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, so better be warned :-)

User Account Control in Windows 7

User Account Control (UAC) helps defend your PC against hackers and malicious software. Any time a program wants to make a major change to your computer, UAC lets you know and asks for permission.

Introduced in Windows Vista, UAC is now less intrusive and more flexible. Fewer Windows 7 programs and tasks require your consent. If you have administrator privileges on your PC, you can also fine-tune UAC's notification settings in Control Panel. You can find this at Control Panel –> System and Security –> Action Center. Click on Change User Account Control Settings. (See Figure below) This window will allow user to choose when to be notified about changes in the computer.

How to solve Internet Explorer 9 installation problems?

Problems having installing IE9 on Vista, Windows7 or Windows 2008. Here is a beautiful summary of troubleshooting these issues from Microsoft. This URL have all the necessary information about Pre requisites and resolutions.

Click this URL for more information.

What is Thumbs.db?

The default behavior for many folders in Windows Operating System is to display thumbnail images of the files in the folder. This is primarily true of folders created from digital cameras or filed under the My Videos and My Pictures folders. Thumbs.db is Microsoft's way of caching thumbnail images of any image or movie file in a folder. The idea behind creating a thumbnail cache is to improve the speed of displaying thumbnails the next time you open the folder by caching a set of thumbnails for the image and video files in the folder. If you hadn't seen this file in your folders previously it's likely you didn't have Show hidden files and folders enabled. Deleting the Thumbs.db file simply deletes that cache, which is regenerated the next time you view the folder contents. It is possible to configure Windows to never cache thumbnails.

To turn off thumbnail caching, open Tools > Options in Windows Explorer and click on the View tab. Check the box next to Do not cache thumbnails and click OK.