Nexus - Its my network!

cmd.exe works but cmd does not work in Start Run in Windows XP?

2011-07-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

Once I was working on my office computer trying to experiment something and after sometime I realised that the experiment has led me to a great problem. I was not able to open command prompt from Start -> Run available in Windows. What was the problem, just few minutes back I was very much using the Run Command to open Windows Command Prompt.

When I tried typing cmd in Start -> Run I was greeted by an "Open With" dialog with disabled "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" option and that too unticked.

Hmmm.. well thats a difficult situation indeed and after hours of surfing the internet I finally reached to nowhere. None of the articles actually pointed me to the right direction and so I thought that if I get a solution to bringing my cmd back on track I will try to post the same so that others could be benefitted.

One more crazy thing I found during all this hunting for the correct solution was that when I type cmd.exe in the Start -> Run then my command prompt opens correctly. So what is the problem with cmd.

Well now as the answer is with me I would share the same here. The answer to this big question rests in the way Run command recongnises an Microsoft Excel program by simply typing excel in Start -> Run and similarly Microsoft Word through winword.

Coming straight to the answer without waisting any more time here is the solution -

But first just an advice so that you dont end up corrupting your Windows - As this is a registry hack so would request you to take a backup of the registry entries you are trying to make changes to and be very careful while you update the registry. Registry is not a place to play around as it is a sort of Windows database for finding relevant entries. Now with the advice given the solution is listed below -

1. Go to Start -> Run and type regedit and Ok button.
2. The above step will open registry editor for you. Now go to the following entry -
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppPaths\
3. Create a new Subkey under AppPaths with the following name - cmd.exe. Please do mind the name here as if you will create this Subkey with the name cmd1.exe then the command prompt will open by entrying cmd1 in Start -> Run instead of cmd.
4. Now click on the new Subkey and in Default enter the full path for the cmd.exe which will be -

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe

5. Make a new string entry called PATH and enter the following path for the command -

C:\WINDOWS\system32\

and with this all is done and we are ready to start using our very own cmd once again through Start -> Run in Windows.

Hide zipped file in a jpg/jpeg picture file!

2009-06-18T02:36:00.000-07:00

Hi Everybody! Here is a simple trick that can help us sometimes..

Well this can be used to do a simple hide out for some essential documents that u may not otherwise want to be made available in ur computers hard drive open to all.. :) ..If you need to hide some compressed file (rar) in a jpg file then here is the tip to do so. Let's say I have a document Lloyds.pdf that I want to hide and a picture file (.jpg) called Star.jpg. Then we can infact hide our Lloyds.pdf inside the picture file so that if anybody opens it up he/she views only the picture file and not the pdf.

So here we go -
1. Copy the pdf file and the jpg file into a folder called Hack say in F drive.
2. Compress the pdf file to Lloyds.rar. (Use Winrar for the same).
3. Now open the command prompt.
4. Navigate to the respective directory - F:\Hack.
5. Now type the simple command - copy /b Star.jpg+Lloyds.rar Jinx.jpg. Press Enter.
6. Job Done!

Exit the command prompt.

Check the directory, there must be a jpg file called Jinx.jpg available. Try opening it, we can see the picture file. Now to get back the pdf, open Winrar and drag drop the Jinx.jpg file into the Winrar window and here u go. Winrar shows us the pdf file. Extract it, our pdf is safe and sound.

Note - I have tried to perform some experiements with this but found that Winzip isn't doing the job for us so thats why i mentioned winrar specifically above. Also keep that in mind that as our copy program just attached the two files one after the other so the size of the final file has increased. So hide only those files like this, so that no one suspects the size of the final image... in other words small compressed files... N yes Don't use this tip to hide office documents which are confidential... Let ur conscience rule u but in a positive way... Happy implementing.. :) ..

Why is there god damn pointer icon in VB toolbox ????

2008-04-13T04:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes while programing in VB (.net and earlier), we click on the toolbox to pick up a control so as to paste it to form, but then we realize... Oops!!! I picked up the wrong control.

Then, how to get rid of this control. Answer to this is fairly simple ----> Click on the pointer icon shown on the toolbox and.... Whoosh the sticky control is gone. Now I can pick a new control easily.

The pointer icon is pretty handy when VB starts behaving odd to us and the control sticks to the mouse pointer and even Esc etc keys fail.