Changing keyboard shortcuts in PowerPoint… costs (40) 150 USD! [updated]

When you go to Options for changing Ribbon settings, in your Word 2007 or Word 2010, you can see a small button at the bottom of button list letting you to change keyboard shortcuts for most areas of you text editor. When you go to exactly the same place in your PowerPoint 2007 or 2010 you my (surprisingly?) notice, that there is no such thing. Googling around the web let’s you discover that this is… normal situation!

2023 Update: It is still a normal situation for Microsoft. Only this time you have to pay 150 USD per year (!) to gain the ability of changing keyboard shortcuts (that is: the most basic feature of every software)!

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Mapping drive letter or directory to a local folder

There are at least three solutions, how to map drive letter or directory to a local folder, available in Windows. All are discussed in this article along with some side problems and examples on how each solution can be used.

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Can’t pin folders to my Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar

When you right-click Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar in Windows 7, you can see list of recent items (i.e. recently opened folders) with an option to pin some of them permanently. On some Windows 7 systems user may experience issues with recent items and pinned entries list not being displayed, missing or cleared without reason. New items cannot be added to these lists.

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Symbolic links under Windows 7…

…are possible! All you need to do is to use mklink program:

[code language=”shell”]
mklink /d "D:\Photos" "\\SERVER\Photos\Family\Dad"
[/code]

Strange Windows 7 folder names

After installing Service Pack 1 over your Windows 7 (or some other update “around”) you may find, that some of your folders has now a strange name. This happen mostly in non-English versions of Windows 7.

To fix this problem, turn displaying of hidden files on, locate desktop.ini file, edit it and remove LocalizedResourceName key from it or delete entire desktop.ini file at all.

Quick directory listing using console and… Word

If found an interesting tip on how to get listing of your folder as text, that you can copy to any document or email, without need to manually write all folder and file names. It requires console window and… Word.

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Disable Program Compatibility Assistant

Windows Program Compatibility Assistant can be a real pain in the ass when you often use programs, scripts or applications that runs just for a second or two and then terminates itself. It can be also painful, when you run some software by a mistake and quickly close it right after starting. In each such scenario you’ll be nagged with a stupid message asking, if you want to run this program again.

To completely disable Program Compatibility Assistant follow these simple steps:

1. Run Registry Editor (regedit.exe).
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\AppCompat branch
3. Create new key named DisablePCA of dword type and give it 00000001 value

Or… save the following code as a .reg file somewhere:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\AppCompat]
"DisablePCA"=dword:00000001

Then double-click saved file and confirm addition to Windows Registry.

God Mode or admin’s power panel in Windows 7

The magic word is Admin.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.

Create a new folder in any folder you like (make it root folder on your first drive or deeply hidden secret dir) and use exactly above string as folder’s name. Folder’s icon will change to confirm that you’ve succeeded.

Double clicking this folder — instead of showing contents of empty directory — will give you an access to a really impressive list of shortcuts to most powerful and hidden features of Windows 7.

Happy hacking, folks!

Quickly switching network connection in Windows XP

A lot of people uses the same notebook to access Internet from many places or networks. For example from home and office. If all these networks are using DHCP-assigned IP addresses and network parameters or if you’re using different medium (i.e. One at home, wireless at work) then there is no problem. However, if both networks uses static parameters over the same medium, then the only option you’re left is manually changing network parameters, as Windows does not allow you to create more than one connection for single hardware (network medium). Hopefully, you can easy your life with a set of simple batch scripts.

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