Open command windows here (DOS is Here)

It would be very handy if you can open a dos command window in the folder that you are currently borrowing by right click the folder icon. Windows 7 does provide this function, but it is kind of “hidden”. You have to press the Shift key, in the meantime, right click the folder icon, you will see the “secret” option “Open command windows here”.

How about Windows XP?

No, no secret option here, however, you can use registry key. Here is the code:

************************************************
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\DosHere]
@="Open command windows here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\DosHere\command]
@="C:\\windows\\SYSTEM32\\cmd.exe /k cd \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\DosHere]
@="Open command windows here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\DosHere\command]
@="C:\\windows\\SYSTEM32\\cmd.exe /k cd \"%1\""

*************************************************
Copy and paste to your notepad; save it as a .reg file; then double click the file to import it to the registry table.

That’s it! You'll get this:

Enjoy!

If you don't like it, here is the uninstall code:

***********************************************
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\DosHere]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\DosHere]

***********************************************
Save it as a .reg file and run it. Just be sure you run it as an Administrator.

Install Backtrack 4 to a USB stick

Many reasons that you need to install Backtrack 4 to a USB Stick. For me, I just want to keep the tools up to date. It was a little bit tricky because I was able to install it to a USB Stick, but it still acted like “Live CD”, meaning every change is gone after I reboot it.

But now it becomes very easy because I found this great video:
http://www.offensive-security.com/videos/backtrack-usb-install-video/backtrack-usb-install.html

Just make sure you have a 8G USB stick, because a 4G USB stick will only have 300M free space after the installation.

Uncontrollable Zooming in Microsoft Word and IE

The Dell Latitude D630 laptop I was using has a very strange behaviour, when I connect it to a projector, and press Fn+F8 to show the screen on both devices, word zooms to 500% and stay there, whatever I change zooming setting, it goes back to 500%. Same as IE. I have to reboot the laptop to solve this problem, but when I press Fn+F8, it happens again. The strange thing is, if I don’t connect it to a projector, everything is fine, even I press Fn+F8. And I couldn’t reproduce the problem in another Dell laptop.

It really annoys me because I cannot use it for presentation. I decided to find out the reason. I believe there is a process causing this problem, I killed the suspect processes with Process Explorer 11.33 (www.sysinternals.com) and finally found out it is iType.exe that causes the problem.

Here is detail of iType.exe:

Once I kill the process, everything back to normal.