Faster Start Up and Turn Off Your Computer (PC)

When you have Windows installed for several month or more it can become very slow. It's not only your programs run slower than usual but also Shut Down and Start Up time increases a lot. What you can do to make computer turn off and start up faster? One way is to reinstall windows or add more RAM but if you have many programs instaled which you need to use everyday, you can not afford to go with fresh Windows installation. Searching for drivers alone could cost you a half day. Buying RAM is good but also needs time and investment.
The easiest way to decrease up and down time for your computer is to use hibernate function. Off course you know about hibernating but do you really used it? You will be impressed with the results. It can take up to 2 or 3 minutes for old and stuffed computer to shut down but with hibernating you can leave your computer after 15-20 seconds. Starting up also takes much less time.
The main concept of hibernating is that computer saves all the information of working Windows OS to the hard drive and later only has to load already working Windows session. You can even watch DVD movie from the point where you left before hibernating.
How to use hibernation?
Press Start button and as usual select Turn of Computer. On the popup window press Shift and you will see that Standby button changes to Hibernate. Press it and you're done. Literally you can continue one session even a month if you never shut down your computer fully. But I suggest you to do so once in a while because sometimes one program can become unstable and you will load that error again and again, but if everything works fine you can hibernate as much as you want.

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How to Avoid Disk Check Scan at every BootUp

Often while startingup windows we will feel a problem called Disk Check.The check disk scan that appears at boot up because of improper shutdown of the previous session.
1. Open Start->Run and Type cmd2. Type chkntfs /x For example: chkntfs /x d:3. Run this command for all the partitions of your hard drive.4. Reboot your computer properly and it will not do a disk scan again.
Caution: You need to do a manual chkdsk here after on all the partitions or physical hard drives if you want to keep your hard disk healthy.

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Solution : Unmountable Boot Volume Error !!

Problem :
When booting up to Windows XP you may get an error that reads: Unmountable Boot Volume.
Cause : This is probably because your boot.ini file is messed up.
Solution :
1. Start Windows XP with the Windows XP CD in your CD/DVD drive.2. Once you see the "Welcome to setup" message, press the letter 'R' on your keyboard to enter the Recovery Console.3. Select the Windows installation to be repaired (Administrator password required)4. You will then get a DOS prompt. From here type: chkdsk /p [Enter]5. When that is done type: fixboot [Enter]6. Type: Y at the next prompt [Enter]7. Then type: exit [Enter]8. The system will now reboot into Windows.
If for some reason that didn't work, you can boot to the recovery console (STEP 2)
Type: chkdsk /r [Enter]
When done type: exit [Enter].
This takes a bit longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.

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Add Safe Mode in Boot Up List If You Feel Adding It

Safe mode is required when you have to fix a problem such as virus infection or uninstalling drivers in your windows XP. Generally we need to use F8 Key to get into safe mode and if not timed properly you will need to restart windows xp again. Here is a small trick which lets you add Safe mode by default into your Boot list. You will see it when you restart your windows xp machine.Steps to Add Safe Mode in Boot list

step 1: Go to control panel > System.

step 2: Click on Advanced Tab.

step 3:Then click on settings under the startup and recovery action.

step 4: Click on edit under system startup to indirectly edit your boot.ini file.

step 5: Add the following entry “multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”XP - Safe Mode” /fastdetect /safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog” without quotes .

Add safe mode to your boot list.Then do restart your machine and you will see another label as “XP- Safe Mode” added to the list.

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Restart Windows without Restarting PC

It’s really very very annoying to restart your PC everytime after you install some hefty applications. Ever thought how to get rid of this? Well most of us will never think of this and just stick to the default Windows Xp/Vista’s annoying reboot process.
Here is a trick involving tricking the PC do a “warm reboot,” rather than a “cold boot.” The trick involves holding down the SHIFT key when invoking the restart.
Windows Vista: Select Start, then click on the padlock button icon and from there, hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “Restart” choice.
Windows XP: Its pretty much the same. Select Start. Select “Shut Down…” Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “Restart” button.

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Resolve Error While Removing Pen Drive : Generic volume cannot be stopped right now error

When you try to remove a USB pen-drive by using “Safely Remove Hardware > Safely remove USB Mass Storage device” option, windows should stop all the read-write operations on the drive so that the drive can be removed.
But sometimes when you try to eject the USB device by using “Safely remove USB Mass Storage device” option, it shows a message box which says:The Device Generic volume cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device later”In such case its not safe to remove the pen drive as it can get corrupt or get damaged. Many of us face such problem in removing pen-drive. In this post we will see how to fix such issue.
First Let’s see why it happens and the fix for that.This error comes when you have an application which is running from your pen drive or may be some file or document opened from your pen-drive when you are removing your drive.In short, some file on your pen drive is in use by some other program on that computer. So close all such files or applications and try removing the drive.It happens sometimes that you have no application running from your pen drive or any file opened in your knowledge but still when you try to remove the pen-drive it shows this error message shown above. In that case you can use a free application called Unlocker which will help you to remove your pen drive from your windows.
What is Unlocker? Unlocker is an explorer extension that allows you with a simple right-click of the mouse on a file, folder or pen drive to get rid of error message like the one mentioned above.
How To Remove USB Pen Drive with Unlocker?
step 1: Download Unlocker from here and install it on your computer.
step 2: Right click on your USB pen drive in my computer and select Unlocker.
step 3: A new window will open that will list all the busy handles of files being used on your pen drive. Now click the button which says Unlock AllAfter clicking Unlock All try to remove your pen drive normally, through “Safely Remove Hardware” dialog.
If still you are not able to remove pen drive then try clicking the Kill Process button in Unlocker.

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Make Your System Boot Time Faster

First of all, this tweak only apply to those who only have one HDD on their primary IDE channel (nothing else on device 0 or 1) and a CD-ROM and/or DVD-ROM on the secondary IDE channel. Each time you boot Windows XP, there's an updated file called NTOSBOOT-*.pf who appears in your prefetch directory (%SystemRoot%Prefetch) and there's no need to erease any other files as the new prefetch option in XP really improves loading time of installed programs.
We only want WindowsXP to boot faster and not decrease its performance. Thanks to Rod Cahoon (for the prefetch automation process...with a minor change of mine) and Zeb for the IDE Channel tweak as those two tricks, coupled together with a little modification, result in an EXTREMELY fast bootup:
step 1. Open notepad.exe, type "del c:windowsprefetch tosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) & save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:
step 2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc".
step 3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window.
step 4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open".
step 5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit.

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How to Shutdown Your PC with Timer

Do you know that you can make your PC shutdown at a time u wish to? If no then no worries,Here is an end to that!

METHOD 1
Step 1:
Right click on your desktop and choose “New=>shortcuts“.
Step 2:
In the box that says “Type the location of the shortcut“,type in “shutdown -s -t 3600” without the quotation marks and click next.
Note: 3600 are the amount of seconds before your computer shuts down. So , 60secs*60mins=3600secs.
Step 3:
Make up a name for the shortcut and you’re done.You can change the icon by right clicking=>properities=>change icon=>browse.
To abort the tazk:
To make an abort key to stop the shutdown timer just create another shortcut and makethe “location of the shortcut” to “ shutdown -a” without the quotes.
METHOD 2
Here is another trick to shutdown at a specific time, for example you wish to shutdown at 11:35am. Type this instart=>Run
Type Code: at 11:35 shutdown -s
To abort
Code: shutdown -a
Note: all time are in 24hr, example u would like to shutdown at 8:30pm, you should type“at 20:30 shutdown -s” without quote

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