Use WebShots To Create and Manage Screen Shots

Getting screen shots of web pages is not as easy as it sounds, especially if you want to save them as full sized images or thumbnails, WebShot is the program that will be useful. Screenshots can then be output in the PNG, BMP, JPG, or GIF formats.

Here are some of the features of WebShot:

• The program will automatically determine of pageheight and width that captures the whole page accurately.
• If a page has frame dimensions they are determined and calculated.
• You can specify the browser size to capture the whole page or part of it.
• You can use image thumbnailing which, can reduce the final capture image easily.
• If you need to load activex controls before capturing pages, a timeout will be available.
• You are able to save disk space with image encoding to BMP, PNG, GIF, and JPG with image quality control.
• You can parse the results of a screenshot capture operation with the CSV output.
• You can also parse the most important information from a page with the CSV output of the page this includes the title, the meta keywords, and the description.
• Blocks most popups, like javascript popups, script dialogs, or those injected through wmp popups.
• If use of multiple threads will allow you to capture more screenshots without running multiple processes.
• A web page that might be served to other browsers can be presented through custom user agents.
• You can control how much data is on you hard drive by deleting all of Internet Explorer’s cache.
• You can reduce memory footprints for multiple threads per instance with a global bitmap file mapping object.
• You can set up HTTP authentication credential and post strings.

The download operation looks like this:

Security Warning

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Setup

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Agreement

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Information

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Select the Installation Destination

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Tasks

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Ready to Start the Installation

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Complete

After the software is installed there are five tabs to use:

Single

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Multiple

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Image

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Browser

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Process

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Download program here.

Windows 7 – How to Remove the Lock Icon from a Windows Explorer Folder

While working with Windows Explorer, you may come across a folder with a lock on it. It’s a security feature. Follow the next few steps to eliminate the lock.

Windows Explorer

What does the lock icon mean? Basically that the file or folder has limited user access. It can only be accessed by you, and not any one else on your computer. Should you want this, then the lock icon is a good way to guarantee that those settings are in the proper place. However, should this not be in yourscope, then it’s a problem.

Select the Security Tab and Edit

To modify or remove the lock icon, the process begins with a change to the security settings on the folder. This will change the Users group to read from the folder, at the very least.

Select the folder with the lock icon, right click, select Properties. Go to the Security tab, select the Edit button.

Add A User

Notice that list of groups and users that have access to the folder will appear. And also missing from this list is the “Users” group. So click the Add button.

Next enter “Users” into the text field near the bottom of the window. Follow up with a click to Check Names button.

Select Users

The “Users” selection will change to the location where the Users group is located on your particular computer. In our case, this will occur at Mutley457-PC\Users and it is the name of test test machine). Then click OK.

Security - Features on Users

The Users group will appear in the list of Groups and Users that have access to the folder. The permissions are now modified with the permissions of the Users group, which at the minimum can be Read access. Click OK.

Users

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The Lock Icon is missing

Now the icon is no longer there.

Changing Library Icons without a Program

Image via Wikipedia

A few days ago, we mentioned at Windows 7 News how to change the icon of a library in Windows 7 using a little nifty tool called “Library Icon Changer”. The program doesn’t require any installation to run and is straightforward. Although this is wonderful news for the majority of users, there are still some people who prefer to do things the hard way. That is, manually change the icon without the aid of a program.

But why take the longer? Well as Jason mentioned earlier in his the article, Windows 7 is very customizable. We can change various aspects of operating system such as themes, the start orb, resize thumbnail previews and even the task switcher. Now for someone like me who doesn’t like to pile up installed applications, having a whole program just to customize a small part of the OS is just wasteful. The only available choice is to either apply these tweaks manually or rely on a tweaking utility such as WinBubble. This might seem a bit advanced for some people, but can be interesting for those who want to glimpse at how libraries work under the hood. Enough with the introduction, let’s dive straight into the steps!

Step 1: Locate the libraries

Have you ever wondered where libraries are really stored? We are told that they are “virtual” or a “special” type of folders that can display files from different locations at the same time and in one place. Well a library is stored as an XML definition file having the file extension .library-ms and the same name as the filename of that file. Because each user has their own libraries, they are placed in the user’s storage space (C:\Users\{username}). The fastest way to access the directory where libraries are actually stored is to copy and paste the following in the start menu’s search bar or in Windows Explorer. Make sure to replace the {username} with the name of the user before pressing Enter.

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Libraries

Step 2: Open Notepad

I don’t think this requires any explanation. If you like unnecessary complicated stuff or want to show off, try this in Windows Explorer or the Run command:

"%SYSTEMROOT%\Notepad.exe"

Step 3: Open the library with Notepad

A simple way to do so is to just drag and drop the library to the open Notepad window. Another way would be to right-click on its icon, click on ”Open with…” and choose “Notepad” from the list of programs available. Once it’s opened in Notepad, you should see something like this:

As you’ve probably guessed, this represents information about the library. Look for the child element  in the file. This element defines the icon resource that is used for the library. That is the icon of the library. If you still can’t find it, add it yourself! Type  under the  element. The file should now be similar to the following:

  S-1-5-21-1425347975-2883833823-642864168-1001
  1
  true
  
 

The text that you should add is written in red and is in bold. Note that your file would likely look different to mine.

Step 4: Specify whichever icon you want

Although the subheading might make it sound like a piece of cake, it actually isn’t! We’re now going to type the path of the new icon. To make things simpler, we’re going to install a small program called IconViewer to view icons stored in dynamic link library (dll) and .exe files. You can download it for free from here. Once, you’ve installed it:

• Navigate to (or type in the start menu’s search bar): C:\Windows\System32
• Highlight imageres.dll, right-click on it and choose “Properties”.
• Click on the “Icons” tab.
• Find a suitable icon for your library and note down its number/name.

Now that you know its number/name, type the following between the iconReference tags ”imageres.dll,-{#}“, replacing the text in red with the number/name of the icon you want to use. You should have something that looks like that:

  imageres.dll,-{#}

You might be wondering why we used imgeres.dll in particular. We’ve used it in this example because it’s the “Windows Image Resource” and contains a nice collection of icons. You might want to also check out shell32.dll for more icons or use your own ones – simply Bing OR GOOGLE ”free icons”, you should find a lot!

Step 5: Enjoy

Save the file and close it. You should see the change immediately happen after refreshing. Maybe it’s just me, but I find this way more enjoyable (yet length) than using a program. What do you think? I’ve spent a good deal of effort on this, so any feedback would be appreciated.

How to Run a Program as Administrator IN Windows Vista AND WINDOWS 7

From time to time, you may run into the problem that a program you have installed as an administrator will not run as a non-admin.

Some of the problems that you are likely to experience are:

• When users try and install software on their machine, the install will usually fail with an error of some sort.
• When users try to adjust the Date and Time in Control Panel, they get a dialog box saying they don’t have sufficient privileges to do so.
• When users try and configure Power Options in Control Panel, they can change the setting in the GUI but when they click OK to apply changes they get an Access Denied message.
• When users want to share a folder on their machine so another user can access their files, they can’t because there is no Share tab on the properties sheet for the folder they want to share.

Some  programs will need to run in administrator mode for them to function properly. And it may be  hard to remember which of those programs should run in administrator mode in order to utilize all of the  features. To avoid this, you can make any programs to run always in administrator mode without the need to every time right-click on the program and then choose “Run as administrator”.

But if you install the program for others to use, and you don’t want to give them Admin rights or privileges, how do you do this? Try these simple steps. Click start, and select the program that you want to run with admin privileges.

Select Properties from a Program

Next select the compatibility tab.

Compatability - Privilege Level

Select the privilege level. Click Apply and OK. This program will now run under the administrator account, without having given the user any special privleges or rights.

Troubleshooting and administrative maintenance will not be needed in this case, and the admin also does not need to keep tabs on which programs are running under the “run as” operation.

Securely wipe your data with a hidden Windows 7 tool

here are a huge number of third-party tools to allow you to securely wipe all the data on a hard disk in Windows, but did you know that Windows 7 itself contains a hidden utility for not only wiping data on drives, but also down to specific folders if you wish?

While I’ve been writing my new book, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out, I’ve had to research all sorts of stuff in Windows 7 (and I’ll be sharing more in coming weeks) and one of the little gems I found is a command line utility called Cipher.exe.

This is run from the Command Prompt (you’ll need to run it as an Administrator) and is simplicity itself to use.

The command is Simply cipher /w x:\folder where you would substitute x:\folder for the location you want wiped, for instance your D:\ drive or yourC:\Users\Mike Halsey\Music folder.

In the help for the command it says it…

removes data from available unused disk space on the entire volume.  If this option is chosen, all other options are ignored.  The directory specified can be anywhere in a local volume.  If it is a mount point of points to a directory in another volume, the data on that volume will be removed.

This will then write 1s, 0s and then random characters to each sector of the drive to securely wipe the data.

This is but one purpose of the cipher tool which is generally used to backup and restore encryption keys for the EFS (Encrypted File System) system that’s been around since Windows 2000.  This wipe feature though is new to Windows 7.

I would always recommend you use any tool like this with extreme care, but if you are dumping a hard drive or replacing an ageing PC, this is an excellent and completely free way to wipe your data forever.

SOME shortcuts to open your favorite program in WINDOWS 7

Having taught computers to a wide range of beginners, one of the things I found that confused many older students was the multiple ways you could perform tasks in Windows. Starting a program is a good example of this multiplicity.

All versions of Windows provided alternate ways to open programs. The most common method was through the Start menu where you selected All Programs, scrolled to the Program command and then clicked it. Sounds straight forward but finding a program command from a long list was confusing for some.

However, smart operators used other methods which were more efficient as well as quicker. They pinned their favourite program shortcut icon onto the Start menu or created a Desktop shortcut for it.

I’m no longer a fan of adding shortcuts to the Start menu or to the Desktop for that matter as there are better options available.

Personally, I dislike Desktop Clutter so I generally keep my Desktop icons to essentials only – User Files, Computer, Network and Recycle Bin. My screen is lean and mean!

Clutter Free Desktop with Taskbar fully utilized

Alternatively, you could use the Run dialog box to open a program. You’ll find this on the Start menu. Providing you know the Start Up command (this must be exact), typing it in the box and clicking Ok opens the program.

Under Windows XP, many users found the Quick Launch Toolbar a useful tool. It was a simple matter to drag important Desktop shortcut icons onto it, adding to the regular icons already there, Internet Explorer, Show Desktop and Media Player.

So having decried all of the common ways to access Programs under the previous versions of Windows, what did I do?

Windows 7 provides better, and quicker access to that favourite program. I add program shortcuts to the Taskbar.

Adding Program Shortcuts to the Taskbar

1. Click the Start button.
2. Select All Programs.
3. In the menu, right click on the program you want.
4. In the context menu, select Pin to Taskbar.
   
   
   

   Pining a Shortcut

Removing Program Shortcuts from the Taskbar

Just as you can add shortcuts to the Taskbar, you can also remove unwanted ones.

1. Right click on the shortcut you want to remove.
2. In the context menu, select Unpin.

Unpinning Shortcut

Super Quick Access

An added bonus is that the first nine program shortcuts added to the Taskbar are numbered from 1 – 9 with the 10th one as a zero (0).  So, if Internet Explorer is in the No 1 position, press the Windows key and numeral 1 and it opens.  To open the10th program shortcut use zero (0).

Quick Start Method

Now this is fine for those programs you use on a regular basis, but what happens if you want to use one you haven’t accessed for a long time?

Here’s a different approach! It involves using Search!

Putting Search through its Paces!

1. Open the Start menu.
2. In the Search box, type the name of the program (even a part name will do!).
3. Search goes to work finding any reference to the name.
4. Double-click on its name and the program opens.

Using Search to access a Program

Opening a File Using Search

An added bonus of this method is providing you know the name of the file (again even part of its name), you can open a file directly by double-clicking on it.

Opening a File via Search