Pretty Folder Pictures

We all know that images within a folder show up in the thumbnail view of the folder,
but what if you want only one of these images to show up? Just rename this image to
folder.jpg (folder.gif works too)! Even better, if you do this for your music collection,Windows Media Player will load this image as album cover art if you’ve disabled visualisations.

By default, Windows shares your all drives (C: shared as C$, D: as D$ and so on) so that you can access them over the network using your administrator password. However, if you’re the paranoid kind or need to share your admin password with your colleagues from time to time, you might want to turn this off. You can do this using the Sharing tab under the drive’s properties, but the shares are enabled again after you restart. For the permanent solutions, open the Registry Editor (Start > Run > “regedit” > [Enter])and navigate to HKEY_
LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesLanManServerParameters. Right-
click in the right-hand pane and select New > DWORD value. Call this DWORD
“AutoShareWks”, and assign it a value of 0 (which it should be by default). Restart your PC for the change to take effect.
Hate the “Shared Documents” icon at the top of your My Computer window? Instead of
trying to figure out why this bizarre “feature” was needed, here’s how you can be rid of it: open the Registry Editor
(Start > Run > “regedit” > [Enter]), go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE MicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerMy ComputerNameSpace DelegateFolders, and delete the sub-key (it looks like a folder) called {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}. You should see the effect
immediately.

While you rarely see a BSOD with Windows XP, the few times they do crop up are
usually due to misbehaving drivers. To see which of these (if any) is causing your
problems, use XP’s unsung Driver Verifier (Start > Run > “verifier” > [Enter]). In the first screen, select Create Standard Settings and move ahead to select which drivers to verify. Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to reboot to let the Verifier do its job. If a driver is indeed your problem, then you’ll get a blue screen during the booting process which will tell you which driver it is. If your PC boots fine, then your problems lie elsewhere.

To reset the verifier, do Start > Run > verifier /reset > [Enter].

If you’ve got a large number of folders you want to share on the network, navigating to each one of them and going into their properties and changing them one by one can be quite a nuisance. Even sharing can be as simple as “Next, next, and next” with the Shared Folder Wizard (Start > Run > “shrpubw” > [Enter]).
You can even set share permissions right there, so there’s no need to go back to those shared folders for additional settings. Just remember to check the “Run this wizard again” box at the last dialog if you want to move on to the next folder.