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Change the Windows Vista Power Buttons to Shut Down

2007-11-14T03:36:00.000-08:00

The default action for the Power button on the start menu in Windows Vista is Sleep, which isn't necessarily useful for everybody. You can configure this setting easily by using the advanced power settings panel, which is a little tricky to get to normally, but we'll take the shortcut.

Open a command prompt (type cmd into the start menu search bar), and then type in the following:

powercfg.cpl,1

You could also take the long route (Control Panel \ Power Options \ Change Plan Settings \ Change Advanced Power Settings)

Once you get to this dialog, browse down as shown to "Power buttons and lid"

From here, you can change the options:

Power button action - Changes the hardware power button action
Start menu power button - Changes the power button on the Start Menu

You can change the power button to either Sleep, Hibernate or Shut Down, or even nothing for the hardware power button.

What is jusched.exe And Why Is It Running?

2007-09-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

What is jusched.exe And Why Is It Running?

If you've looked in Task Manager and wondered what on earth the jusched.exe process is and if you can turn it off, then you are in luck. This process is the Java Update scheduler, which is a process that wastes memory all the time just to check once a month whether there are new updates to Java.
There's a scheduled tasks feature built into Windows for this type of thing… the java update scheduler is obviously not being used for critical updates since it's only scheduled to check once each month. Since I simply can't understand why the process needs to waste my memory, it has to go.

What you'll need to do is open up Control Panel, and then if you are in XP you can click on the Java icon, or in Vista you can click on Additional Options, and then click on Java.

Once you have the Java Control Panel open, select the Update tab, and then uncheck the box for "Check for Updates Automatically"

You'll receive a warning message stating that if somebody finds a security hole in Java that it will take up to a month before you are protected from it:

Does anybody else think that the sentence should read "the fastest and most secure Java" instead of the way it's worded?

After you click the Never Check button above, you'll probably receive this error message if you are in Windows Vista, stating that it also hasn't been properly certified to work with Vista in the first place. Just click that it works correctly.

That does make me wonder… I guess we'll miss the update that fixes the problem with the control panel… or will we? What you can do instead is schedule a task to run monthly using the built-in Task scheduler. If you don't care about updates to Java, then disregard the next part.

Schedule Java Update Check (Optional)

Just type in Task Scheduler into the start menu search box to open the task scheduler, and then click on Create Basic Task.

Follow the wizard along to pick a month and date, and then when you get to the "Start a Program" screen, use this as the path, adjusting if you are running a different version of Java. The key thing is that you run the jucheck.exe in your Java directory.

"C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_01\bin\jucheck.exe"

Now when the scheduled task runs once a month, or whenever you schedule it, you'll get this dialog if there is a new version, or another dialog stating there are no updates to Java.

It's actually somewhat ironic that there's an update to Java on the day that I write this article…

Create a Custom Boot Logo for Windows Vista

2007-09-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

If you are a desktop customization kinda guy, one of the first things you'll want to figure out is how to create a customized boot logo. There's a little utility that you can use to create the boot logo formatsFirst you'll need to download the Vista Boot Logo Generator 1.1 utility, which we'll use to create the correct logo image type.

Once it's installed, you need to make sure that you run the application as administrator:We should choose an appropriate logo file. Since I'm a big fan of linux, and not as big a fan of Windows Vista, I chose an image of Tux making windows suck that I found over here

Choose two versions of the image, one needs to be 800×600 at 24 bit color, and the other 1024×768 at the same color depth. Both files must be in Bitmap(BMP) format. Save the file somewhere like your desktop, because we can't yet copy directly to the correct directory, until we take ownership of the file.
To take ownership of the file, you'll have to open an administrator command prompt. (type cmd into the start menu search box, and hit Ctrl+Shift+Enter), and then run this command:

takeown /f C:\Windows\System32\en-US\winload.exe.mui

Now run this command, substituting geek for your username:

cacls C:\Windows\System32\en-US\winload.exe.mui /G geek:F

Now copy the file that you created into the C:\windows\system32\en-US\ directory. Make sure you choose the overwrite option.Now you'll need to use the msconfig utility. Just type msconfig into the start menu search box, and then click the Boot tab:

Check the "No GUI boot" option, and we're all ready to reboot and test it out. Sweet!

Disable AutoPlay in Windows Vista

2007-09-02T04:57:00.000-07:00

Windows Vista's AutoPlay options are a great improvement over Windows XP in terms of flexibility, but unfortunately there are so many options that it can be confusing, especially since there's no specific mention of USB Flash drives in the options.
Open your Control Panel, and then click on "Play CDs or other media automatically" to open the AutoPlay dialog.

Disable AutoPlay Globally
The quickest way to disable AutoPlay entirely is to just uncheck the box for "Use AutoPlay for all media and devices", which should usually work.

Disable for a Single Type
You can choose a setting in the drop-down menu for a single type of drive, for instance Audio CD in this example. For this to work you'll have to make sure to keep the global autoplay option on, and then choose the specific setting in the drop-down.

Disable for just Removable (flash) Drives
The problem here is that while there are settings for Audio CDs and DVDs, there's nothing specifically for USB flash drives. Windows will determine the drive type based on the content it finds on the flash drive itself, so that's what we'll need to change.
In order to disable AutoPlay for the removable drives, you should change all of the following to Take no action: Software and games, Pictures, Video files, Audio files, and Mixed content.

Disable Through Group Policy
A number of readers have written in complaining that the option to disable autoplay isn't working for them, so if you'd like to disable it entirely you can use the Group Policy editor on the Business and Ultimate versions of Vista.
Open up gpedit.msc through the start menu search box, browse to Windows Components \ AutoPlay Policies, and change the value of "Turn off Autoplay" to enabled.

Disable with Registry Hack
The Group Policy editor is not available on Windows Vista Home editions, so I've also included the registry tweak to disable AutoPlay entirely.

Download and unzip this registry hack and then double-click on the appropriate file.
DisableAutoPlay.reg will disable autoplay entirely.

DisableAutoPlayRemovable.reg will disable autoplay on removable devices.
Hopefully all your AutoPlay questions are now answered!

Window Vista Secrets

2007-08-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

Window Vista Secrets