Windows
[XP] Disable the fraking annoying Security notifications
This is f*cking annoying.
How to shut it down for good:
1.) Open IE (why the f*ck do i have to change SYSTEM SETTINGS IN A BROWSER?)
2.) Open "Internet Options", then "Security" Tab, "Custom Level". Scroll down until you finally reach "Launching Applications and unsafe files (not secure)"
3.) Check "Enable (not secure)".
4.) NOW M$ decides to annoy you with a warning that the current settings are a Risk to your Computer (in IE, you should not be using this "Browser" anyway, but it keeps freaking me out during windows updates)
5.) To turn THIS off, you have to edit the registry: Navigate to HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Security (creating any non-existing key).
6.) Create a DWORD-Value called "DisableSecuritySettingsCheck" (Case-sensitive!) and set it to 1.
7.) Shoot yourself (optional)
Use full 4GB RAM in Windows XP32
I just found this BRILLIANT tweak while googling randomly.
The solution is pretty neat: Its a RAMDisk driver which creates a RAMDisk which resides in the unused top 768MB of your RAM.
1. download depositfiles.com/de/files/916161
2. extract anywhere
3. run ramdisk.exe, leave everything on default, set size to 768MB, change drive letter according to personal flavour
4. change the pagefile to reside on your new RAMDisk
5. reboot
6. check the RAM statistics in Task Manager. If everything went fine, you should have 31xxMB of physical RAM plus your 768MB Swapfile (if not, you may have to enable PAE in the registry – google it).
7. ???
8. Profit!!!
For me, this is the biggest performance boost i ever had from a software setting. Windows feels like its on crack.
Control if everything is set up right (german): www.thinkpad-forum.de/thinkpad-software/windows/47545-den-winxp-taskmanager-richtig-lesen-auch-ein-beitrag-zur-auslagerungsdatei/
chkdsk doesn’t work correctly on mounted drives
This wasted an afternoon for me.
chkdsk appeared out of nowhere during boot yesterday. It fixed some filesystem errors. To investigate further, i decided to run it once again when windows was up and running. It detected one error.
Then i decided to install a Windows PE on an USB Stick, which took me about an afternoon, because its not an easy thing to do and because i wanted a multiboot-USB stick. Well, when i finally booted into WinPE and ran chkdsk /r : no errors found.
I investigated further and found the following quote in the NTFS-3g forums:
You should never run CHKDSK on a mounted partition. CHKDSK is silly.
Chkdsk seems to be very inaccurate if ran over mounted partitions.
Thanks for informing us about that, Microsoft!
Anyway, now i have a Multiboot-USB-Stick 
How to disable annoying and completely unnecessary items from system tray
Do you have multiple network adapters? If you use a laptop, you probably do, and valuable taskbar space is wasted by completely superfluous items in the task bar.
They basically inform you that there is no network cable connected to a specific network card. Now, network errors are one of the most obvious errors. If there is something wrong (and in 99% of the cases there isn’t, even though windows bugs you) you WILL notice it early enough, and check the settings.
If you have some virtualisation going on, the situation will get completely out of control (see picture).
Another bullshit message Windows is going to spam you with: “Limited or no connectivity”. IF there is no IP obtained, im going to notice this and run ipconfig myself, thank you very much.
Anyway, luckily there is a solution, and a quite easy one: its just deleting a registry key (back it up before, tough):
1. delete HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{7007ACCF-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}
2. ???
3. PROFIT!
iPhone home-user synchronisation plan
As most of you will already know, i own an iphone.
As a chaotic person, i had no syncing going on on any of my data, which was quite an advantage because i could make a fresh start with the new device.
Unfortunately, Apple fails miserably at adding decent synchronisation options to iTunes, which led me to the choice of either installing Outlook or using google.
For a starter, i decided to go for a synchronised calendar. Next epic fail, sponsored by Apple: iTunes won’t sync its calendar to anything except Outlook (fail!). Of course, leaving Thunderbird for Outlook was not an Option, so i decided to dump iPhones built-in calendar for a google-calendar Bookmark on my home screen, which works great (google built some neat iPhone-optimizations into it). On my desktop PC, i sync the online calendar to Thunderbird with the “Provider for Google Calendar” add-on.
So, the next task would be RSS-Feeds – an easy one since i have been using Google Reader for a long time – just drop the link on the Phones home screen and i’m done (no, i don’t like google, but it’s simply my favourite rss-reader).
Next Task would be Contacts, and since i don’t have any nifty groupware server to sync to, i will have to do it the google way (yes, they have a decent contact tool) again – iTunes failed on me the first time, trying to delete any contacts on the phone (thank god there was a confirmation message) – but i found a workaround and now it syncs the contacts nicely.
Of course, i pull those contacts down to Thunderbird with a add-on – Zindus. Works!
This is far from perfect – but it is free, works with a single iTunes sync and up to now hassle-free.
IMO it’s sufficient for the average user, and can even stand comparision with paid services.
The only real downside is Googles’ privacy policy, but i think privacy is always a problem when you want to sync your stuff online – especially if you want to do so for free.
Links:
Provider for Google Calendar
Zindus
Any suggestions, comments or questions? Don’t hesitate to contact me.