Search For Hidden Or System Files In Windows XP

The Search companion in Windows XP searches for hidden and system files differently than in earlier versions of Windows. This guide describes how to search for hidden or system files in Windows XP.
Search for Hidden or System Files By default, the Search companion does not search for hidden or system files. Because of this, you may be unable to find files, even though they exist on the drive.
To search for hidden or system files in Windows XP:
Click Start, click Search, click All files and folders, and then click More advanced options.

Click to select the Search system folders and Search hidden files and folders check boxes.
NOTE: You do not need to configure your computer to show hidden files in the Folder Options dialog box in Windows Explorer to find files with either the hidden or system attributes, but you need to configure your computer not to hide protected operating system files to find files with both the hidden and system attributes. Search Companion shares the Hide protected operating system files option (which hides files with both the system and hidden attributes) with the Folder Options dialog box Windows Explorer.

Add Open With to all files

You can add "Open With..." to the Right click context menu of all files.This is great for when you have several programs you want to open the same file types with. I use three different text editors so I added it to the ".txt" key.

1. Open RegEdit
2. Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\Shell
3. Add a new Key named "OpenWith" by right clicking the "Shell" Key and selecting new
4. Set the (Default) to "Op&en With..."
5. Add a new Key named "Command" by right clicking the "OpenWith" Key and selecting new
6. Set the (Default) to "C:\Windows\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,OpenAs_RunDLL %1", C:\ being your Windows drive. You must enter the "OpenAs_RunDLL %1" exactly this way.

Turn off Welcome screen

Open User Accounts in Control Panel.
Click Change the way users log on or off

XP Computer management console

To quickly access the computer management console, where you can see event logs (to see what's causing a problem, for example), right-click My Computer and choose Manage.
Then, select the Event viewer and double-click highlighted events in the Applications or System areas to view detailed explanations of what went wrong.

Automatic Screen Refresh

When you make changes to your hard drive and use Explorer, the changes are not usually displayed until you press the F5 key
To make the updates automatic:

1. Start Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / System / CurrentControlSet / Control / UpdateMode
3. Edit the DWORD value to be between 1 and 7
4. Restart Windows

Deleting Registry Keys from the Command Line

With the OEM Version of Windows95, a new switch, /D, is added to Regedit.
This enables you to delete items from Registry.
The syntax is: REGEDIT /L:system.dat_location /R:user.dat_location /D Reg_Key
where Reg_Key is the key you want to delete
There are two requirements:
1. That you have to boot to the same OEM version of Windows95 as the REGEDIT.EXE file.
2. You cannot be in Win95 at the time you use this switch.

Creating a Default File Opener

If you have a un-registered file type and want to view it with Explorer's Right-click
you can add your program to the right-click options by:

1. Starting Regedit
2. Go to HKEY_CLASS_ROOT / Unknown
3. Highlight the Shell Folder below it
4. Right click on Shell and create a New Key
5. Name it anything you want (For example NOTEPAD)
6. Create a New Key under that named command
7. Highlight the Command key
8. Double click on the Default value in the right hand panel
9. In Value Data, enter the path and filename of the program you want to use to open the file type
10. For example: C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE %1
11. Click on OK

In this example, when you right click on a file in Explorer, NOTEPAD will show up as an option.