[How To] Remove Unread Mail Count in Windows XP

If you’re using Windows XP, you might have noticed that annoying “X Unread Mail Messages”
message that shows up below the user name on the logon screen. It’s
actually a pretty useless number considering it never seems to be
right, at least for me.

By default, the Unread Mail Count is derived by looking at all
accounts that have been checked within the last three days, including
Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, and the MSN browser client. The
problem is that it includes all the accounts of other people who have
checked their email under the same user name.

Image Source: Poremsky

There are two ways to get rid of the unread mail messages line under the user name in XP: edit the registry or download the Microsoft Tweak UI Power Toy and change the setting there. I’ll go ahead and describe both methods since they are pretty easy.

Remove XP Unread Mail Count – Registry

Before you modify the registry, always be sure to make a backup! If
you don’t know how to make a backup of the registry, then don’t use
this method! First open the registry editor by clicking on Start, choosing Run and then typing in REGEDIT.

Now navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail

Note that you will not see this key if you are in a
domain environment, so it won’t be there on office or corporate
computers most likely.

Once there create a new DWORD Value (right-click on the UnreadMail key in left-hand pane, New > DWORD Value) and call it MessageExpiryDays.

Double click on the MessageExpiryDays value you just created and set the value to 0 though it should be the default value already.

That’s it! You’ve now disabled the unread mail message
count in Windows XP! Now you’ll just see the usernames without all
those useless unread email counts.

Turn off login screen Unread Mail Count using Tweak UI

Ahhh so let’s just do it the easy way! Download the Tweak UI Power Toy and install it. Now open it up and go to Logon at the bottom. Under that you’ll see the option Unread Mail.

Go ahead and uncheck the “Show unread mail on Welcome screen”
option to disable the Unread Mail count. That’s it! A lot easier
right!? The next time you log on, the screen will not display your
unread message count like shown above. Enjoy!

Source: Poremsky

Torrent2Exe – Convert Torrent files into EXE

Windows
only: Want to direct your non-Torrent-savvy friends or relatives to a
download they really need to check out? Free web utility Torrent2Exe
takes torrent download links—the kind you’d normally pass to your
favorite BitTorrent client—and creates tiny .exe programs that do all
the download work for whoever double-clicks them. You can also grab a
link to post on your own site (or Twitter stream) that lets others
download the same self-running Torrent grabber. Great for distributing
your own files to a select group of downloaders, or helping
Linux-curious friends grab the right disk images. Torrent2Exe’s
downloaders are for Windows systems only.

Torrent2Exe [via Download Squad]

DriveSpacio – A Free Space Monitoring Tool

DriveSpacio
is a free Windows utility for examinging hard drive usage. When you
first boot the program you’ll get a list of each hard drive and
partition on your system, along with, some details like the files
system, cluster size, and a pie chart or bar graph showing used and
free space.

But the fun really begins when you click on the Folders section. You
can choose a folder, or an entire drive (just click C: or E: or what
have you in the browse window), and DriveSpacio will plot your folders
on a graph showing you which of your folders are eating the most space.
It taks a few moments to scan folders with a lot of subfolders or
files, but the result is a pretty effective tool for figuring out why
you’re running out of space on your hard drive.

[Link]

[HOW TO] Fix Windows Icon Cashe

There is a hidden icon cache file in your windows directory, ShellIconCache, which contains a copy of all the default desktop icons. It sometimes gets corrupted. If it does, your icons will go all black or they may display the wrong icons. If this happens, delete it and reboot. NT (& Win9x) will repopulate the cache with the default icons. To delete the ShellIconCache:

• at a command prompt, change to the %SystemRoot% folder
• remove the hidden attribute from the file:
  type attrib -h shelliconcache and press ENTER.
• delete the file:
  type del shelliconcache and press ENTER.
• logoff and backon and the default icons should be restored.

TweakUI has been known to corrupt the ShellIconCache.

This tip applies to all versions of Windows including Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

If the default icons were deleted from a Windows NT desktop, they can be recreated from the registry. See Q151723

Working with SATA Hard Drive

Well, in the previous post, I started the installation of Windows XP on my new Toshiba notebook. I got an error message and I got shocked about it in the first screen of my installation.

I performed an internet search and I found that this is a common problem. Microsoft doesn’t support SATA hard drive in their installation of Windows XP. So, The driver of SATA hard drive shall be added to the installation. The common method is to press F6 at the start of the installation to verify the driver of SCSI or SATA drive.

However, this is a stupid method, because it will ask u to inset the FLOPPY drive which contain the driver. Most notebooks don’t have floppy friver, and hence we cannot go such way.

I performed another internet search and I found some solutions. First, we have to get the driver of the SATA controller and extract it. the main idea is to inject this drive into Windows XP installation files. Some people illustrate how to do this manuallay, and some suggested nLite. So, what is nLite? nLite is a tool that can create a customized Windows XP installation CD with many options, u can use it to create a fully automated Windows XP setup so that u just inset the CD, and wait for some time, and then u will have a Windows XP installation on ur computer.

nLite can be easily used to solve the problem of SATA, just select Drivers section in nLite program, and add the folder of the extracted SATA files, and nLite will add it to Windows XP installation files.

I tried this method, and I created Windows XP installation with SATA driver and the problem was fixed very easily.

Toshiba L40-17R Notebook

Finally, I got my new Toshiba L40-17R notebook. Although it’s little bit slower than the HP 6720, but it’s more robust. The computer is really well-made. The design of the notebook itself is nice. U can find USB ports in a very suitable locations. Network interface is in a very nice place.

The notebook comes with no operating system. However, I have my own copy from my previous notebook. So, I started to install it. Partitioning was very easy using Acronis boot CD. After this, I started the Windows XP installation process. Before the first screen of Windows XP starts (to select Install, Repair or Windows…) I got an error message. The dead blue error message that dumps memory to hard disk and then shuts down computer.

I was shocked to see this message. Is there a problem with the notebook ?!! I decided to perform some search in interent before calling Toshiba customer service. I found this common problem which is with SATA drive.

I will post the solution on the next blog.

However, I’m now running the Windows XP on the laptop and it’s comfortable for me. It achieves exactly my requirements. The most amazing point is that it saved asome good money for me, and at the same time, I got a good brand notebook instead of the bad-made HP notebook.