This helps to prevent all kinds of attacks and exploits that would normally be able to run freely on your system. Data Execution Prevention comes in two flavors, hardware-enforced DEP and software-enforced DEP.

Most users will never need to worry about DEP because it works in the background and normally only protects Windows system binaries or programs that “opt-in”. However, if DEP is turned on for all programs, it can cause issues with some certain programs.

DEP will sometimes shut down a program or process without any notification if it violates DEP. Normally, these are third-party or older programs not written properly for Windows.

You can turn off Data Execution Prevention for a particular program in Windows by following the steps below. Note that you can turn off DEP globally for the entire system, but it’s not recommended as it makes your computer less secure.

Step 1: Right-click on My Computer and choose Properties. Then click on the Advanced tab and then Settings under Performance.

Step 2: Now click on the Data Execution Prevention tab and you’ll see two radio buttons:

Step 3: Go ahead and click on Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select.

Step 4: Click the Add button and browse to the location of the executable for the program you want to remove from DEP protection.

After you do this, you should reboot your machine once in order for the changes to take place.

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How to turn off DEP (Data Execution Prevention) in Windows

The other reason is performance, you would not want to connect to a slow network if you have a faster network in range. Sometimes you would forget to connect to the right network so maintaining a list of preferred network is a good idea.

To set a preferred wireless network in Windows, enter the control panel, then go to the Administrative Tools.  Under the administrative tools choose Services:

Make sure that the Windows Zero Configuration is started (if not, just right click it then click START):

Now right click your Wireless Network then choose properties:

Under the Wireless Networks tab look into your “preferred networks” list.  If you did not see the “Wireless Networks” tab then you need to go back to the previous step.  The “Wireless Networks” tab does not appear if the Windows Zero Configuration is not started. 

Remove any network connections that you don’t trust.  This way you will not automatically connect to those networks once your laptop gets in range of those networks. 

Click the Move up or Move down buttons to change the priority of the wireless networks when connecting. If you are in an apartment complex, this comes in really handy since there may be 10 different wirless networks that your computer detects. 

If you don’t set the preferred network, there can be times when your computer will connect to a neighbors network because their signal is stronger due to your location. 

In the next post I will show you how to do this in Windows Vista!

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

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How to set preferred Wi-Fi networks in Windows XP

When connecting to another machine, just about all keyboard actions are transmitted to the remote machine, i.e. pressing Enter, typing, pressing the Windows key, etc. However, that is not the case for some key combinations.

One that has bothered me for a very long time when using Remote Desktop in Windows is when I press Ctrl + Alt + Del while logged into the remote computer. Instead of sending the key combo to the remote computer, it would instead perform the action on my computer!

This was actually intended by Microsoft because there are many cases where you may not want that to be sent to the remote computer. So, by default, Ctrl + Alt + Del will only work for the local computer.

So how does one perform this same action on the remote computer? It’s pretty easy actually! In order to send Ctrl + Alt + Del to the remote PC, just press the following alternate key combination:

Ctrl + Alt + End

That’s it! Pretty easy eh? Unfortunately, I tend to use Remote Desktop rarely and therefore forget this key combo all the time! Also, note that there are a bunch of other keyboard shortcuts you can use in Remote Desktop:

Alt + Page Up – Switch between programs (Alt + Tab is the local command)

Ctrl + Alt + End – Display the Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc is the local command)

Alt + Home – Brings up the Start menu on the remote computer

Ctrl + Alt + (+) Plus/ (-) Minus – Minus takes a snapshot of the active window and plus takes a snapshot of the entire remote desktop window.

Those are pretty much all of the remote desktop keyboard shortcuts you will ever need! If you know of anymore, post a comment! Enjoy!

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Send Ctrl-Alt-Delete in a remote desktop session

Anyway, if you are one of the poor souls who is forced to work from home by connecting to a VPN, there may come a time when you would want to setup the connection on more than one computer or reconfigure it on your current computer.

I’ve created a video post on how you can setup a VPN connection in Windows XP to your corporate network. Note that this post is not intended to teach you how to setup VPN access for employees, etc. This post assumes the VPN has been configured on the corporate side and teaches you how to connect to that VPN.

If you enjoyed this video, you may also be interested in my previous post on how to create your own virtual private network for your home network using a tool called Hamachi.

Creating your own private VPN allows you to connect to your home network just like you would connect to your office network from home.

If you have any questions about the video on how to setup a VPN connection, please post a comment! Enjoy!

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How to setup a VPN connection to your corporate network [VIDEO]

To start using this functionality on MS Office 2003, click the Research button under the Tools menu:

A window will appear where you can type a keyword you want to research.  See the example below where I searched for “Battlestar Galactica”:

I like the fact that it easily connects to other research services like HighBeam Research and not just MS sources like MSN and Encarta.  The good thing about this research thing compared to Google and other search engines is that it can switch from one resource type to another very quickly.  For example, to switch to dictionary, just click on the resource type dropdown then choose Encarta Dictionary:

Another great thing about this is that it also supports language translation where you can translate a word or the whole document to another language!  Also, if business and stocks is your thing, it is integrated real-time with stock quotes and company information.  A bunch of third party web services are also tied-up like Gale, Factiva and WordLingo.  This means you are not limited to the Microsoft resources! You can also add your own Sharepoint site inside your Intranet which is a very helpful thing for us corporate Sharepoint users.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

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How to use the MS Office research capabilities

Your computer might be at risk. Antivirus software might not be installed.

It’s fine if you don’t know how to use a computer or forget to install something, but if you know what you are doing, then this nagging popup message is useless. So how can you turn off that message? Here’s how!

Step 1: Open the Control Panel and click on Security Center.

Step 2: Now on the item(s) that are in red, either Firewall, Automatic Updates, or Virus Protection, click on the double arrow that is pointing down and click on Recommendations.

Step 3: At the bottom, click on the checkbox that says “I have an antivirus program that’ I’ll monitor myself” and then click OK.

Note that you can do this for the “Firewall is not turned on” and “Automatic updates is not turned on” popup messages also. You can also simply click on the Change the way Security Center alerts me link at the left in Windows Security Center.

Now just un-check what you do not want monitored anymore and you won’t get the “Your computer might be at risk” message again!

That’s it! Pretty simple eh? Of course, you should make sure you do have some kind of anti virus program installed and a firewall also. Keeping Automatic Updates on is pretty smart too! Enjoy!

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Turn off or remove “Your computer might be at risk” in Windows XP

Of course, if you already have a backup system in place, then you could actually increase your computers performance by turning off System Restore. If not, then read on to learn how to easily create a new restore point manually.

Step 1: Click on Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and click on System Restore.

Step 2: Click on the Create a restore point radio button and then click Next.

Step 3: Now give your restore point a description so that you know exactly what you installed afterwards, i.e. “Before installing driver”, etc.

Step 4: Now click the Create button and your restore point will be created. Now if you ever need to revert your computer back to a previous state, just run the System Restore tool again and choose “Restore my computer to an earlier time”.

Any date that is bold means there is a restore point stored for that day. You can click on the date, choose the restore point and then click Next to restore your computer.

That’s it! You’ve just created a restore point in Windows XP. Note that backing up the registry and the system state is great, but you should also manually backup all of your Windows drivers. Enjoy!

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How to create a system restore point manually in XP

For example, let’s say you like to rip DVDs, convert the DVD to iPod, PSP, AVI, etc, and re-burn them. That’s probably going to eat a lot of your CPU cycles. So if you have more than one processor, you can dedicate one processor to just those tasks and leave the other one for normal computer activity, such as browsing the net or working with Office documents, etc.

How to set affinity in XP

In order to set affinity, you have to go to the Processes tab in the Windows Task Manager. If you are not familiar with the Task Manager, I suggest you read my three part article that goes through all aspect of how to use the Task Manager.

Now go to the Processes tab and find the process name that you want to set the affinity for. Note that all of the names are actually the executable names, not the name of the application, though lots of time they are very similar. If you can’t figure out which process is associated with which application, go to the Applications tab first and right-click on the application and choose Go To Process.

This will take you to the Processes tab and highlight the associated process for you. Easy enough. Now right-click on the process and choose Set Affinity.

You’ll now get the Processor Affinity dialog, which will have 32 check box options, all grayed out except for the number of CPU’s on your computer.

Note that in Windows XP, if you have a dual core processor, it will look like there are two processors in Windows, however there really is only one processor and TWO cores. So in a single dual core system you’ll see CPU 0 and CPU 1. The first one is the physical process and the second one is the virtual processor.

In a computer that has two dual core processors, you’ll have the screen like above, CPU 0, CPU 1, CPU 2, and CPU 3. CPU 0 and CPU 1 are both the physical processors and CPU 2 and CPU 3 are the virtual processors.

Note that setting processor affinity is only useful for programs that actually support hyper-threading. If you try this on a non hyper-threading process, it won’t make any difference and could actually slow your computer down. Lots of newer games and some apps support hyper-threading, but you’ll have to read the documentation to really know.

Another issue you might see is when running older applications on a dual core machine. Older applications will actually run slower and may start using up 100% of the CPU. You can go into the Processor Affinity dialog and un-check one of the cores so that the program uses only a single core.

Having any issues or problems? Post a comment and I’ll try to help you out!

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Set affinity for a program via Task Manager in Windows XP

In Windows XP, there are several ways to shut down a computer: click on Start and Shut Down or Turn Off, press CTRL + ALT + DEL and choose Shutdown, open the command prompt and type in the shutdown command, or install a third party application that shuts down your computer for you.

Let’s try to go through each method and see how we can block them. First, you can remove the Shut Down button from the Start Menu and from the CTRL + ALT + DEL screen by using the Group Policy Editor.

Click on Start and then Run and type in gpedit.msc and press Enter.

In the left pane, expand User Configuration and then expand Administrative Templates. Finally, click on Start Menu and Taskbar.

Now on the right pane, double-click on Remove and prevent access to Shut Down command and set it to Enabled. You’ll notice in the description that this will remove the shutdown option from the Start Menu and security dialog box. However, the system can still be shutdown via the command prompt also.

Also, find Remove Logoff on start menu and set it to Enabled also. If a user is able to log off, they can shutdown the computer on the main log into Windows screen. You can also configure Group Policy to only allow shutdown of the computer when someone is logged on.

Go to Computer Configuration – Windows Settings – Security Settings – Local Policies – Security Options and scroll down to Shutdown: Allow the system to be shutdown without having to log on and set it to Disabled.

Finally, you need to prevent people from going to the command prompt and simply typing in shutdown! To do this, go to the following policy:

User Configuration – Administrative Templates – System and double-click on the Prevent access to the command prompt policy and set it to Enabled.

Note that everything in the User Configuration section will apply to all users except the Administrator, so you can restart the computer and log in as Administrator to change back any of these settings if you like.

Also, if you make the account a non-administrative account, then users will not be able to install any software that could be used to shut down the computer. So create a new user account and make sure it is not in the Administrators or Power Users group and the apply these Group Policy settings. This will also ensure that someone cannot use the remote shutdown command in Windows to shut down the computer. 

There are lots of other cool things you can do in Group Policy, such as disabling the restart now message after a Windows Automatic Update or adding Google and Wikipedia to the Vista Instant Search menu.

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How to prevent shutdown of a Windows XP computer

If this problem annoys you also, there is a simple way to change the default photo display program in Windows to the application of your choice! Actually, there are two ways to go about it.

Step 1: Open the Control Panel and click on Switch to Classic View at the top left. Then click on the Folder Options icon.

Step 2: Click on the File Types tab and scroll down to the file extension that you want to change the default program for. For example, if you want to change the default program for viewing photos and pictures, you are going to want to find the JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP extensions and click on each one of them.

Once you highlight an extension, click on the Change button to choose a different default program. As you can see from above, my default program for opening pictures is Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, but I can choose any program from the list or browse if it’s not in the list.

The second way to change your default photo viewing program is to simply right-click on a photo and choose Open With and then select Choose Program.

Select the program from the list and then check the box that says “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file”.

That’s it! Now instead of having some annoying default program like Windows Picture and Fax Viewer or JASC Paint program open your photos, you can choose your favorite photo editing program. Enjoy!

If you don’t like Windows default settings, you may be interested in reading my posts on how to change the default location for installing programs in Windows and how to increase the default thumbnail size for pictures in Windows Explorer.

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How to change default picture viewer in Windows

Most of the time you will see this in corporate environments where the IT staff has locked down the computer by disbaling Windows settings and services. If it’s a policy pushed out by the main servers, it’ll be pretty hard to bypass, however you can still try!

In order to re-enable access to edit the registry, you can try to edit the group policy settings and see if that works. If you know the local admin password for the computer, log in under that account. If not, you can still give it a shot.

Method 1

Step 1: Click on Start, choose Run and type in gpedit.msc.

Step 2: Navigate to User Configuration – Administrative Templates – System

Step 3: In the right hand pane, double click on “Prevent access to registry editing tools”

Step 4: If it is not configured, go ahead and enable it, click OK and then come back and disable it. If it’s already set to Enabled, then simply disable it.

Now try to run the registry editor and see if that works. If not, go to the command prompt (Start, Run, type cmd) and type in gpupdate. But if you are in a corporate environment, you may not want to do this as it will update back to the restrictive setting.

In that case, restart the computer, but unplug the network cord so that the computer does not refresh the group policy from the main server. You may also want to do the procedure above while disconnected from the network completely in order to ensure that the policy does not get overridden by the corporate policy.

If you have a home computer, then you don’t have to worry about all of this, just restart your computer and you should be able to edit your registry again.

Method 2

Another method you can use is to go to Start, then Run and paste the following line into the run box:

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Now try to open the registry editor and see if it works. You may have to restart your computer for the effects to take place.

Note: Before making any changes to the registry, read my article on how to backup and restore the registry in case something goes wrong. 

Method 3

If you don’t like to mess with the registry, you can download a VBScript that will enable the registry for you when you run it. The script is a little more advanced and will not harm your computer, it’s actually written by a Microsoft MVP!

You can download the script here and then just double click on it to run it. After that, try the registry should be enabled.

If none of the above methods work, you may have a virus or some other sort of malware installed on your computer. In some cases, there is a file called regedit.com that gets created and you have to either delete it or rename it to regedit.exe. Read this post on how to remove spyware and malware from your computer. Enjoy!

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Fix Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator error

First Open Help and Support by clicking on Start >> Help and Support.

The Help and Support Center window will open up.  From here under the Pick a task header click on Use Tools to view your computer information and diagnose problems.

Next under the Tools section on the left side select “My Computer Information”.

Then on the right hand side under the My Computer Information section click on any of the shown topics.  For this example I will select ‘View system information about this computer’.

This opens up a graphical report of your system which can really help as it is easy to read and determine what is going on with your machine.

There are other programs that can help with these types of reports, but if you can get by with this trick, no reason to install the extra software!

Written by Mysticgeek who is also a contributing author at How-To Geek.

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Improve the quality of help and support in XP

**Keep in mind that this tip will allow anyone to startup your PC and login.  You definitely want to take into account your situation and security.  If you are in the workplace or in an environment where curious eyes are a concern you probably do not want to set this up.  Use your best judgement! **

First click on Start and go to Run then type in “control userpasswords2” (without the quotes) then click OK.

The User Accounts dialog window will come up.  Uncheck the box next to “Users must enter a user name …” then click OK.

Right away the Automatically Log On dialog box will pop up.  Here you will want to enter in your username and password twice and click OK.  Now, when you restart the username and password screen will be bypassed and will boot directly to your desktop.

Again, as a reminder to take your security situation into account.  You could enable this while your doing upgrades to your computer that require several restarts and then set the password protection back by going into User Accounts and rechecking the box.

Written by Mysticgeek who is also a contributing author at How-To Geek.

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First open up My Documents and click on the Views button.  Here you can see it is in Thumbnails view.

Now set the view to your preference.  Personally I prefer Details as it can be easier to find specific files by date.

Now that you have My Documents set up how you want the other folders to look go to Tools and Folder Options.  Now in the Folder Options Window click on “Apply to All Folders”.

A confirmation dialog box will come up go ahead and click Yes.

Finally click OK to close the Folder Options window.  Now when you go into any of your folders you will have the same view throughout.  Just to verify it worked here I went into various directories and as you can see everything is in detailed view.  Simple but very useful time saving tip!

If for some reason you want to change the settings back you can simply go back into Folder Options and click the “Reset All Folders” button.

Written by Mysticgeek who is also a contributing author at How-To Geek.

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Make all folders have the same view in Windows XP

To do this right click on the Start menu and select Properties.  This opens up the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties.  From here just click on the Customize button.

Click on the Advanced tab and uncheck the box next to Highlight newly Installed Programs.  Uncheck the box above will allow you to not have a lot of sub menus popping up while your searching through your programs.

Another trick is displaying menu items as classic and setting various settings there as well.  This way the Start menu takes up a lot less real estate on your screen.  This comes in handy especially if you are using a laptop or a smaller monitor.  For this again right click on the Start menu and select Properties.  This time click next to Classic Start Menu and hit the Customize button.

This opens the Customize Classic Start menu screen.  This option not only gives you more space on the screen, but also makes accessing various components of XP much easier.  For instance expanding the Control Panel allows access to everything directly from the Start menu.  The same is true with My Document, Pictures, etc.  If you are a power user and access Administrative tools quite often, then it is also good to check that box as well.

Accessing these XP components all from the Start Menu makes for more efficient computing and less mouse click!

Written by Mysticgeek who is also a contributing author at How-To Geek.

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How To Customize The Start Menu In XP