How To Disable a USB Flash Drive (Mass Storage Devices Only)

Whenever you insert a USB flash drive into your computer, the flash drive is detected automatically by Windows and then opened. Here I am going to show you how to stop your USB Flash Drives Mass Storage Only through registry.

This trick can also be done through my computer Device Manager but that one stops all the USB connections. This is not recommended.

So are you ready to start?

Here we go.

1.Click Start Menu > go to run command and type "regedit" without quotes. Registry Editor will open.

2.Expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder then SYSTEM >CURRENT CONTROLL SET > SERVICES >USBstor, located at the left pane.

3.Find "Start" in the right pane with the blue icon.

4.Double click "Start". A box titled "Edit DWORD value" will open.

5.Write down "4" in the "Value Data" Field. Illustration 1.1

6.Click OK and then close the Registry Editor.

Illustration 1.1

Your USB flash drive is now disabled. Whenever you insert a flash drive, Windows won't detect it and will not open it.

To enable it again, repeat steps 1 through 4 and then change the value to 3. The default value for enabling a USB flash drive is 3.

Note: Performing this trick will only Disable USB Mass Storage devices and will not affect other USB Devices such as USB Keyboard, USB Mouse, Scanner, Printer etc....always backup your registry to prevent losing your valuable data.

Show Hidden Files and Folders not working?

Show Hidden Files and Folders not working?

A few days back, a client came to me and told me that he was having trouble with his Windows XP. The show hidden files and folders was not working at all. If he selected the radio button “Show hidden files and folders”, and then press Ok .. the changes would just disappear upon opening the dialog again. It was probably some virus attack after which the Windows registry was not being updated properly. So here is what I did to restore it back. There are so many methods to restore back the registry. If one method is not working, please try another one.

Method 1:

Go to registry editor by running regedit in the run box.Go to this key:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
In the right hand area, double click hidden and change the value to 1.

Now you’re all set to go. Check it in your tools menu if the changes have taken effect.

Method 2:

1. Click “Start” -> “Run…” (or press Windows key + R)2. Type “regedit” and click “Ok”.3. Find the

key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL4. Look at the “CheckedValue” key… This should be a DWORD key. If it isn’t, delete the key.5. Create a new key called “CheckedValue” as a DWORD (hexadecimal) with a value of 1.6. The

“Show hidden files & folders” check box should now work normally. Enjoy!

Method 3:

1- Click Start –> Run –> regsvr32 /i browseui.dll –> enter
A confirmation message will appear like given below
2- Click Start –> Run –> regsvr32 /i shell32.dll

Wait for the confirmation and click OK.

Method 4:

If none of the above methods work, please download our Smart Virus Remover from here:

Smart Virus Remover

Using this Virus Remover please restore your Windows settings and your show hidden files and folders will be set to default.

Compare and Synchronize Files between different Folders with PathSync

It is always a good idea to backup and copy your data to some other location; it can be anexternal drive, cloud storage or may be to some other folder. While I don’t like backing up and spending time on it, it is always worth it. Have you ever come across a situation when you wanted to synchronize two different folders with the same data in both of them? Well this can be a tedious task to figure out which file has already been copied and which not.

Here is a simple and small tool that will not only compare two different folders for you but also help you in synchronizing them so that you have same data in both of them, may be for the backup purposes. This tool is called as PathSync and it is capable of comparing different locations (both locally and remotely) and copying the data to and fro.

Using this tool is quite simple too, as you just need to set the local source, remote destination(by browsing both the locations) and the copy type which can be from source to destination,destination to source or even bidirectional meaning from and to both locations. When you are done setting up the tool for the use, you then need to click the Analyze button.

The tool will start comparing the files automatically and will then copy the required files from the source to the destination. This is a really useful file synchronizer for Windows which you can not only use to create similar copies of the folders in the computer but also to backup the data to an external disk or may be to a cloud server.

The tool is free to use and have been found to work well on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. So if you want to give it a try, you can get it from the link below.

Download

Convert Files into any Format with Right Click using Cometdocs for Desktop

There are lots of file formats being used today, and every format has its own advantage. While we use PDF files where we wish to protect the data, we use images to capture some info. So what if you need to convert the same file you are using into some other format, you may go to the free online web services and get them converted or may be download and install a tool just for this purpose.

Meet a new tool called as Cometdocs for Desktop, and what this have in different from others is that it incorporates the converter right into the file context menu. This means, if you come across any file that needs to be converted into some other format, look nowhere, just right clickon it and select the output format. The converted file will be presented to you in some time.

Cometdocs is an online file conversion site which has launched this desktop tool for Windows. While uploading large documents to convert them online can slow down your browser (thereby preventing you from working) or converting the document in the system can slow down your machine, this converter works in a different way. It still uses its old way of converting which is to upload the file from the client directly (without you doing it) and then downloading back to the machine and the same folder automatically.

Although this will use your data plan but will save the machine from getting slowed down. To be able to use this tool, you need to login into the cometdocs account which you can register for free anytime (simple email address and password is all it need).

You can convert the file into any format from the list present in the right click context menuand the conversion status can be seen in a separate window. If you think it is a really useful tool, then you can get it for free from the link below.

Download

Custom Screen Lock for your Windows using ScreenBlur

If you have a personal computer then it’s perfectly fine but it is not the case with everyone since most people have someone to share the system with someone. Hence it is very important tolock your screen before heading out somewhere so that no one is able to view what you have been working upon or what data you have in your computer. for this purpose, you can use the default Screen Lock key combination that is Windows + L, which is quite efficient too but too simple.

So if you guys are bored up using the same old Locking method and need a new locking procedure then here is a tool called as ScreenBlur. The reason why I am sharing this today is that apart from screen locking it provides couple of new features that might interest you like you can set up any custom image as the lock screen so that whenever your screen is locked, your own image will show up.

This is somewhat similar to the Windows 8 lock screen which shows some image. Also there is an option to put your desktop in a blackout state which means that you can instantly hide the screen with a black screen so that nothing is visible to the person. You can then unlock and enter the system as usual.

Using the tool is pretty easy too, as you just need to download, unpack and run the executable file to start the tool. To lock the screen, you just need to select the icon from the taskbar and left click on it but be sure to set up the unlock password so that you are able to unlock it by entering your own password.

Since the tool doesn’t require any installation, you can directly remove it too (in case you don’t like it), and just need to uncheck the self-starting option in the settings before deleting the package. ScreenBlur is found to work well on Windows XP, 7 and 8, so if you would like to give it a try, the link is right below.

Download

Solution to Windows Delayed Write Failed Error

This is some strange problem faced by one of our readers as he was unable to save any data on his hard disk due to this error message that pops up which read as “Windows Delayed Write Failed”. Usually this problem does not occur even if your hard disk quite old or have bad sectors but you can still come across this alert message while dealing with huge volume of data which involves either single heavy file or large number of small files.

So if you are also seeing this message in your Windows system, then below are some steps that you can follow to solve this problem and fix your system.

1. What you need to do is first kill the process that might be running in the background. So if you are unable to do that through task manager, you can make use of the command prompt for this.

Go to Run -> cmd -> type tasklist. This will give all the tasks running in the background. Now type taskkill /im XXXX /f (where XXXX is the process number).

You need to kill some weird looking process somewhat similar to WKocfFMPaI.exe

2. So if you have the process number of this process as 1234, then typing taskkill /im 1234 /f will terminate the process.

3. Now you need to fix the issue by making changes in the registry editor. Go to Run -> regedit

4. Now navigate to following location HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> Run

5. In this key you will see the same weird looking file, just delete it and exit the registry editor.

6. Restart the system

After the system has been restarted, you should now see the system free from the error message and the hard disk should now work fine.

Solve Simple Volumes become inaccessible due to power loss shortly after creation

Disk Management which is the standard utility present in our computers is used for managing the hard drives and its space. This is a great and simple utility to use as it helps in easy creation, deletion or renaming of the disk partition.

But it was the following problem which one of our readers faced while creating a new partition. So if you are also unable to access a new volume that you just created and are seeing this error message then this post will help you.

“The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management Console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer.”

Moreover if you try to follow the instructions as mentioned in the message like restarting the device management or the computer, you will find that nothing works. So what you need to do here is re-install the volume. Here are the steps:

 

1. Open the Device Manager first, type devmgmt.msc in the Run box to open.

2. Now you need to open the Storage Volumes tree there as shown below. If you can’t see the Storage Volumes then go to View and select the Show Hidden Devices.

3. Under Storage Volumes, you should notice a volume listed as “Unknown device.” Right click on this device and choose “Uninstall.” When asked to confirm, choose OK.

4. If you are asked to restart the computer, go ahead and if not then go to Action -> Scan for Hardware Changes.

5. Once the scan is complete and installation of the volume completes, you will be able to access the volume.

Note: If the power loss occurs within a few seconds of volume creation, in rare circumstances you may be prompted to format the volume after you follow the above steps. If this occurs, the file system configuration was not written by the time the power loss occurred. You may need to reformat or recreate the volume.

Remove Olympic Malware with BitDefender Olympic Malware Removal Tool

To add to the vulnerability of the computer users, hackers from all over the globe try to take advantage of any ongoing event. It was when the London Olympics were ongoing couple of weeks ago that the internet security saw a new malware reaching out to the public and affecting their computers.


In case you are also one of those who have received some email stating that you have won air tickets to London for the Olympic Games and by chance you have downloaded the attachment, then it may be possible that your system is infected with this London Olympics Malware.

What this Olympic.Games malware does is that (after it has been downloaded by you from the spam email), it connects to the internet and acts as a malware downloaded which in turn downloads more malwares from the internet. It also tends to infect your installed software like MS Office and also sends out your information to the hacker making you to lose your secret information.

To curb this malware and stop it from spreading, the famous AntiVirus company BitDefender had come up with the removal tool that specifically removes this Olympic.Games malware called as Olympic Malware Removal Tool. This malware removal tool comes free and can be used easily to scan your system.

You just need to download this Olympic Malware Removal Tool, scan your PC and clean out Olympic Games malware if detected in your system. It is interesting to note here that this Olympic Malware Removal Tool detects and remove only the Olympic.Games malware and you may not be able to find any other malware with this tool. However you can go for Mbam to search and delete other malwares.

Olympic Malware Removal Tool

Unsubscribe from Junk Emails and Mailing Lists easily

We all like receiving promotional and offer emails to our email inbox regularly, don’t we? Whether it is the websites that we daily visit, asking us to enter email address so that we can receive the newsletters or it is the serials of some software, we are required to provide our email address. I also receive lot of spam and junk useless emails in the inbox, checking and deleting which takes lot of time. This implies that we need to be careful while providing our personal info.


For all these emails that we receive, we can choose to unsubscribe from them but it is a manual process and will consume lot of time of ours. It would have been good if there is some automatic way of unsubscribing from these promotional or junk emails with just a click. Well this is possible with the help of some free services that enables us to automatically unsubscribe from these mailing lists easily.

Here are two such free services that you can make use of:

Swizzle

Formerly known as Unsubscribr, this free service helps you remove your subscription from the emails that you receive in your mailbox. What you just need to do is just visit this website, enter your email address (currently limited to some email providers only), allow this service to scan your emails and click the Unsubscribe button.


The service is safe to use, and produces a list of the websites where you are subscribed. You can now select the websites to unsubscribe. This will automatically send an email to them and remove you from the list.

Unroll.me

Another great service that can be used to unsubscribe from the mailing lists automatically and easily. Similar to Swizzle, you need to provide your email address (this one is safe too), scan your mailbox and unsubscribe from the lists.


This service also provides before you, the list of the mailing lists as scanned in your mailbox and allows you to unsubscribe from them with just a click. However the only limitation with this is that it currently supports Gmail only.
So no more wasting of your precious time on deleting the useless emails that you receive daily, just use these services and get yourself unsubscribed from the mailing lists that you wish.