Ultimate Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

Anyone who has been using PC for a while will definitely tell you that reaching out for the mouse for every small thing is really frustrating. Why not learn some really cool windows shortcuts which will make your life a lot easier. Apart from making you work more efficiently and faster, you can also impress your friends or colleagues by being able to work without a mouse. Shutdown down system real quick, Bring desktop in a second, access system properties in a jiffy, Super fast copy, Prevent Autoplay with a single key and much more. Keep Reading.

Ultimate Windows Text Selection and Copying Shortcuts

Most of our times in office is spend on Viewing various documents and selecting and copying various elements from them. There is a joke going around in my office which says that only thing people do in office in Ctrl+ C and Ctrl + V! Now this might be an exaggeration by any standards, but this Post gives you incredible keyboard tricks for selecting, copying and Pasting data which will greatly increase your productivity. Interested! Read On.

Watch ASCII Star Wars in CMD(All windows Vesrions)

Star Wars- Whether you are a fanboy or not, no one can miss the fun of watching star Wars! Getting bored @ Office or @ home. Why not watch a Star wars movie? Well whats the fun in that? It is the same movie with aliens fighting each other for galaxies and such stuff. There is nothing new in it. But wait, have you watched an ASCII( American Standard Code for Information Interchange) version of Star Wars and that too in Windows using telnet. A word mostly linked with computer wizards. Well if you have not, then you must do it now!

There is a complete copy of Star Wars done entirely in ASCII characters that you can watch in the Windows operating system (or any OS that supports telnet). The only thing required to watch it is an internet connection; speed does not matter.

To watch it on Windows XP,

1. Go to Start, Run.
2. Now type "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl" without the quotes and press Enter.
   

On Windows 7 and Windows Vista

Telnet is turned off by default in the latest versions of Windows. So, in order to watch star wars, you must first enable telnet by going to Control Panel › Programs › Turn Windows Feature On or Off and ticking both the telnet check boxes. After doing that, follow the steps given below:-

1. Go to Start, Search.
2. Type telnet and press Enter.
3. In the following command prompt window, type "o" without quotes and press Enter.
4. Now type "towel.blinkenlights.nl" without the quotes and press Enter.

Note: In all versions of windows, you can start any service by using the Command net start in Cmd. So, for starting Telnet you can simply write net start telnet and press Enter.
To stop the service, use net stop telnet
If you do not need telnet anymore, you can turn it off.

Convert FAT32 to NTFS Without Formatting or Losing Data

While it is generally recommended to use the NTFS file system because of its stability, security and lesser defragmentation time, most of us end up using FAT32 because that is what most disks are preformatted with.

So, Do have a flash drive or probably an external hard drive that currently has FAT32 file system and you want to change it to NTFS. Yes! But why change to NTFS? Because FAT32 does not support handling large files (over 4GB) or it is just simply old for your taste but there is just one problem, you don't want to lose your saved data. Now there are Software available in the market to so this, but why not get your hands dirty and try something on your own this time. It is easy and everyone can do it. So lets get our hands dirty achieve seamless transition from FAT to NTFS without  any data loss.

Step By Step Tutorial to Convert NTFS to FAT file System 

1. Go to My Computer, and note the Drive Letter of the Partition whose file system you wish to convert. For Example it could be drive 'C' or D'
2. Use Run from Start Menu or type the Shortcut Windows +R to bring the Run Dialog Box
3.   Type Cmd in the Run Dialog box that just came
4. Execute "chkdsk X: /f " (without quotes) where X is the letter of the drive to undergo conversion. This  checks the drive for errors and fixes them automatically.
5.  Execute "Convert X: /FS:NTFS" (without quotes). X is again the letter of the drive to be converted.
6. The command prompt will start the conversion process and after a few minutes, CMD will say that conversion was successful.
7. You can check it in the properties of the drive through right click<Properties.

Windows Keyboard Tricks : Make a Disco

Keyboards usually have small LED's which indicate whether different types of locks are activated or not. Now, why not make some creative use of these LED's and create your own Disco right @ your Desktop. Here is a trick to use the lights of your keyboard to create a Disco

This trick uses a simple Visual basic script which when activated makes your scroll lock, caps lock and num locks LED's flash in a cool rhythmic way which gives the perception of a live disco on your keyboard.

To make your own live disco, follow the steps given below:-

1. Open Notepad.

2. Copy paste the exact code given below:-

Set wshShell =wscript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

do

wscript.sleep 100

wshshell.sendkeys "{CAPSLOCK}"

wshshell.sendkeys "{NUMLOCK}"

wshshell.sendkeys "{SCROLLLOCK}"

loop

3. Save the file as Disco.vbs or any other name. Make sure you end it with .vbs extension. This trick has been tested on all versions of Windows after Xp. 

4. Double click on the file Disco.vbs to start having fun!

Note: To stop the Script, Start task manager. You can do so by pressing Alt+Ctrl+Del together or Ctrl+Shift+Esc together. Go to the Process tab and end the process wscript.exe 

Create Invisible Folders in Windows

Here is one interesting Trick for all version of Windows(Xp and Later). By this trick you can create true Invisible folders on windows- Folders which neither have image nor icon. And remember, we are not talking about simply hiding the folders. No need to hide folders here. Here is step by step instruction on how to do it.

Invisible Folder in Windows

Step 1 : Select any folder (or file) from your hard Disk that you want to rename. Best effect would be if you select one folder from Desktop.

Step 2 :For Next step make sure your computer has a NumPad. All Desktops an Most modern laptops have them. In case you don't have them, make sure you use Onscreen Keyboard. You can use Windows+U key combination and activate onscreen Keyboard

Step 3 : Now right click on the folder(or file)  and choose Rename option. You can also use F2 to quickly do so.

Step 4: Now on the  Rename screen Enter Alt + Nupad 255. This means keep holding down alt key and press Numbers 2,5,5 from the number Pad. A blank space will be created.

Step 5 :Now just hit Enter and the nameless file or folder will be created. The file or folder that seems nameless is actually named with a single space as '255' is the Ascii value of a blank space.

Step 6:Now, till now we have an Folder but no Name but still an Icon. Next stip would be to hide even that!

Hide your Folder's Icon

Select the folder and right click on Properties. Select the Tab Customize.

Step 7. On the Customize tab, Select change Icon. You'll see number of Icons. Scroll to your right and you will see a few blank icons. Select on the Blank icon and click ok.

 

Voila! Now you have an Invisible Folder on your PC.

Note: If you want to access that folder, you can do so by selecting Ctrl+A. It will make the folder visible. However, what i prefer is keeping the folder on desktop and remember its position. Then if you hover your mouse over that position, you can access that file. Here is a screen shot of my desktop with the invisible folder. One picture shows the complete invisible folder while other shows how you can access it with Ctrl+A option. Enjoy!

Invisible Folder on Desktop