Tips & Triks Desktop [part2]

[Part2]

Aligning Drop-Down Menus to the Right
All dropdown menus can be aligned to the right.
This features becomes useful when trying to access
menus with submenus that appear directly to the right.

Open the Registory editor (e.g. regedit.exe)
Goto \\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Create a string entry called "MenuDropAlignment"
Set its value to 1
Reboot
Note: Will not work under NT 4.0.

Repositioning a Background Bitmap
Normally, you only options for displaying a background bitmap are tiled, centered, or stretch to fit (with the Plus Pack).
You can edit the registry and have a third option which is to place the bitmap anywhere on your screen by specifying the X and Y coordinates.

Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Control Panel / Desktop
Create new Strings called WallpaperOriginX and WallpaperOriginY
Give them values to position them around your desktop
The bitmap must be smaller than your desktop size

Changing Drive Icons
To change a drive's icon when you open My Computer

Create a file called AUTORUN.INF on the root of your hard drive
Enter the lines
[autorun]
ICON=Name of the ICON file

For the name of the icon file you can either specify the path and name (e.g. ICON=C:\WINDOWS\ICONS\MY_ICON.ICO) or
a specific icon in a library (e.g. ICON=ICONFILE.DLL,2)

Adding AnyFolder and Mail to SendTo
Previous examples of adding items to the SendTo usually require editing the Registry.
An easy way around this is to use the following methods.

To add ANYFOLDER:

Open the Explorer
Go to \Windows\SendTo
Right click in the right hand panel
Select New / Text Document
Name it anything with a .otherfolder extension
When you want to send files to another folder:

Select the files with Explorer
Right Click
Select Send to and the name you just created
You them have the option of copying or moving the file to a folder of your choice
To add Mail:

Open the Explorer
Go to \Windows\SendTo
Right click in the right hand panel
Select New / Text Document
Name it anything with a .MapiMail extension (ignore any warnings about the file extension)
When you want to Mail files as attachments:

Select the files with Explorer
Right Click
Select Send to and the Mail name you just created
This allows you to easily mail multiple files

Adding Shortcuts to Desktop Without "Shortcut To" text
Start Regedit
Go to:HKEY_USERS \ .Default \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer
Add binary value to Explorer:link="00,00,00,00"
Now You can make Shortcuts to desktop without Shortcut To" text.

Easier User Interface
Add a menu item named "Open THIS folder!" to each of your cascading menus off of the Start menu.
This makes it easier to put items wherever you want them!

Go to Windows \ Start Menu \ Programs \ (etc.) in the Explorer
Start right click/dragging folders to the desktop, one by one.
Rename them and left click/drag them back to the same folder.
It takes a little while, but when you are finished you have a much easier interface to work with.

Removing the Start Button
Click on the start menu button twice, so there is a dashed line around the button
Press Alt and the minus sign
Choose Close to make the start button disappear, or move to move it to the right!
Note from Bob: - You have to re-boot to get it back again, or:

Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete
Highlight Explorer
Click on the End Task button
Select No to doing a full shutdown
Wait a few seconds and the click on the End Task button

Removing the InBox and Recycle Bin Icons from the Desktop
To remove the InBox from your desktop, without needing to run the Policy Editor:

Start Regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ explorer \ Desktop \ NameSpace
Below that should be a few keys
Rename the key {00020D75-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}. I usually put another character before or after the curly braces.
Restart Windows and the InBox icon should be gone
You can do the same for any other items you don't to show such as the Recycle Bin or The Internet icons

Changing or Removing the Start Menu Icons
Download Microangelo and install it.
Create a blank.ico file.
Put it in a directory (C:\Windows. Then double click on the Microangelo Engineer to run it.
When you get it up on the screen click on the "start" tab. You will see a list of all the icons in the start menu.
Highlight the first one (programs) and select "Change". It will bring up a dialog box - select "browse".
Go to the directory that contains the blank icon and select it. Hit OK until you get back to the main
Engineer window and do all the rest exactly the same way.
When you have finished changing them all to the blank icon, Hit "Apply".
Hit your start button and look to see if all the icons are invisible. (They should be.)
Close out Micro Engineer and you're finished.

Adding Drive to the SendTo List
I have recently found that if you want to send something from A: drive or from any where to any drive, you can just make a short cut of that drive in subdirectory SENDTO.
For example I have two hard drives, a Floppy Drive, and a CDROM
After I have make a copy of each of my drive I will be able to send a whole directory of E:\XXX from the CDROM drive to A: drive or any other drive that i have had made the short c t in the SENDTO subdir of WINDOWS.

Adding a Protected Briefcase
You can make your briefcase a shortcut on the on desktop so if you have multiple users on your PC and you don't want to have a password for your briefcase, you can at least protect it from inadvertent deletion by just making the briefcase a hidden file or in a different location other than \Windows\Desktop\My Briefcase, then send a copy or shortcut to the desktop.

Customizing the Start Button's Name and Icon
To change the name of the Start button:

Copy EXPLORER.EXE in your Windows directory to another directory
Start a hex editor (I've been using Diskedit from Norton)
Edit EXPLORER.EXE
Search for the string 53 00 74 00 61 00 72 00 74
This is the word Start with the letters separated by a null character
The section you are in should also have the words "There was an internal error..." also separated with the null character immediately following
Now just replace the Start letters with any of your choice (up to 5 characters only)
Exit Windows
Boot to DOS
Copy your new Explorer file over the original
To change the Start button icon:

Copy USER.EXE in your \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory to another directory
Use an icon editor that can replace icons in executable files
Edit USER.EXE and replace the flag icons with the icon of your choice
Boot to DOS
Copy the new USER.EXE
The same can be done with NT 4.0, just the offset will be different but the location to just before "There was an internal error..." is the same.