Windows 2000 Tips

submitted by: Judg3 Pavleck
posted: 10/20/00

Recovering from a lost or changed admin password

Did someone change your admin password and now you can't do anything and the perpetrator won't tell you what the new password is? (This is from personal experience.) Well, there are two ways to fix the situation. First, though, make sure you make backups of everything before you try this, just in case. These are radical solutions for a tough situation.

1) Did you keep your root partition/drive as a FAT32/16 area? If you did the solution is easy. Get any Windows9x boot disk and boot up to it, then CD to X:\WINNT\system32\config and delete SAM (no extension), SAM.SAV, and SAM.LOG. The SAM without an extension is actually an exe file. Those three files control the usernames and passwords. Delete them, reboot, and there will be NO admin password to worry about. Recreate users as before and this time keep the admin password to yourself.

2) What if your root drive is NTFS? A Win9x boot disk won't work. Well, hopefully you have a spare partition to reinstall a copy of Win2K into. Then just CD to the directory listed above on the old copy of Windows 2000, remove those files, edit boot.ini, and reboot--you get the same result.

Unfortunately I had to pick the second option since I wanted high security ... stupid me. :)

Using IR to install Palm programs

I had the need to install a .prc file from my Windows 2000 machine, but realized I forgot my HotSync cradle at the office--I was at home.

I thought I was out of luck till the morning, when I decided to try using Mobile Link. I turned on Beam Receive on my Palm Vx (running Palm OS 3.5), pointed it at the IR port of my ThinkPad, and voila ... Windows 2000 IR picked it up and I was able to select the .prc file and Send to the IR recipient.

The only downside is you can only do one file at a time--because the Palm asks you to accept the file, it times out if you have selected more than one.

UPDATE:
submitted by: George
posted: 2/14/01

This is really a follow-up about the downside of the previous Tip.

This does not apply to the m100 or later. I use the IR exclusively at home with my Sony Vaio z600--it's actually as fast as the parallel at work.

Seeing all your Start Menu Programs

What to get rid of that expandable Start Menu, so you can see all your programs?

Right-click on the taskbar in an empty space and select Properties.

Deselect Use Personalized Menus

Voila, now you can see all your programs.

If you check the Win2K help, it states that selecting the Use Personalized Menus lets you hide programs you haven't used in a while, making them accessible through a down arrow at the bottom of the Programs group. Deselecting it shows all your programs.

Killing Dr. Watson

Have you noticed it takes Win2K absolutely ages to recover from application crashes, especially when they're big ones like IE5? That's because an irritating system tool called Dr. Watson (remember him from Win 3.11?!) makes a huge error log, which is almost useless unless you're a developer.

Here's what to do about it.

Go to WIN2000\system32 and rename drwtsn32.exe and drwatson.exe to *.exx (or some other easy-to-remember munge). Do the same in WIN2000\system32\dllcache. [Substitute WIN2000 for whatever your install folder is called, e.g. WINNT or whatever.]

You should now find that apps crash really quickly!! The first couple of times you'll get a dialogue saying that important system files have changed--just decline to update them!! That's it.

What hardware have you got?

To find out hardware stats, go to Run and type winmsd.

Undo your last action

So you renamed a file in Windows Explorer, but you've changed your mind and now you aren't sure exactly what the old name was? Oops, now what?

It's easy to fix this with the little-known key combination Ctrl+Z. This automatically undoes whatever name change you made and restores the original file name.

You can also right-click an unoccupied space in Windows Explorer and the shortcut menu will show Undo (your last action) as a choice you can select. This is a multiple-level undo, too, which lets you go back several steps. It works in a surprising number of situations.

Shortcut to Computer Management

To quickly get to the oft-used Computer Management MMC (Microsoft Management Console), right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop and choose Manage.

Missing msconfig?

Love the stability of Windows 2000 but hate how it doesn't come with msconfig?

It can! Just extract a copy of msconfig from your Windows 98 CD and run it. It'll work flawlessly and you can get rid of those pesky programs that load at startup.

Changing Dual-Boot Options under Windows 2000

If you installed Windows 2000 after Windows 9x, you may have opted for Dual-Boot. By default, Windows 2000 makes itself the default option when booting, and displays the menu for 30 seconds.

To change these settings, right-click on My Computer and select Properties. Select the Advanced tab, then click the Startup & Recovery button.

From there, you can select which menu item is the default and how long before that default is automatically selected.

Win2K Boot Disks

If you are installing Windows 2000 and can't boot from the CD-ROM, then you'll need the boot diskettes. A set ships in the retail boxed copy of Windows 2000, but you can also create them from the Windows 2000 CD-ROM.

To do so, insert the CD-ROM into any computer running Windows 95, 98, NT, or Windows 2000. Click Start >> Run (or open a Command Prompt) and type:

d:\bootdisk\makeboot.bat a:

You'll be prompted for a blank diskette and the process will begin. You'll need a total of four blank diskettes to make all of the boot diskettes for Windows 2000.

Easier Cascading Control Panel

There's an even easier way to expand the Control Panel with Win2K.

Right-click on an empty area of the task bar and click on Properties, then go to Advanced.

Place a checkmark in Expand Control Panel. No need to mess with that Registry!

You can also expand My Documents, Network and Dialup, and Printers and make it scroll the Programs menu instead of opening up in panels, as well as displaying favorites and administrative tools, too.

Cascading Control Panel

You can add a cascading Control Panel to your Windows 2000 Start Menu with ease.

Just right-click the Start button and click on Explore. In the right Explorer window, right-click and select New then Folder. Name the folder exactly as below:

Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

Then click on your Start button and voilá!

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