Customizing Windows XP Start menu via registry keys

Customizing Windows XP Start menu is quite fun but if you are using 10 or more PCs as my job requires me under a workgroup environment then sometimes it becomes tedious. I heard that this can be done using policies but I can’t remember how to do this in a non-domain setup. Anyway, for my personal taste and requirements, I need to hide some items from the Start menu(non-classic mode). Since I am using more than 10 computers, sometimes even more, I was looking for a cheap solution to customize it really quick and easy. Below shows my .reg file that one can use or as a starting point for specific needs. <—– start copying starting from the line below and save the file as xpcustom.reg

;xpcustom.reg
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
;Show Control Panel as a submenu
"Start_ShowControlPanel"=dword:00000002
;Hide MyDocuments
"Start_ShowMyDocs"=dword:00000000
;Hide Recent Documents
"Start_ShowRecentDocs"=dword:0000000
;Hide My Pictures
"Start_ShowMyPics"=dword:0000000
;Hide My Music
"Start_ShowMyMusic"=dword:0000000
;Hide My Network Places
"Start_ShowNetPlaces"=dword:0000000
;Hide Set Program Access and Defaults
"Start_ShowSetProgramAccessAndDefaults"=dword:0000000
;Hide Printers and Faxes
"Start_ShowPrinters"=dword:0000000
;Hide Help
"Start_ShowHelp"=dword:0000000
;Hide Search
"Start_ShowSearch"=dword:0000000
;Hide Network Connections
"Start_ShowNetConn"=dword:0000000
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StartPage]
;Remove Show on Start Menu Internet/Email
"Favorites"=hex:ff

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects]
;Set for best performance
"VisualFXSetting"=dword:00000002

<——– don’t copy this line For more information about the registry keys, visit this link. Note that it is for Windows 2000 but the information serves its purpose for this blog. And last but certainly not the least, I have used Regmon utility extensively while working on what keys to change. See this link for download. Download xpcustom.reg here. ~ts

Copy and Paste in rdesktop

I have installed Remotedesktop Client 0.23 (Gnome frontend for rdesktop) to connect to my Windows machine. Unfortunately, I am unable to perform copy and paste between my rdesktop sessions and/or rdesktop to a text editor running in Linux. The good thing is that there is a work-around for this. Connect to the Windows machine using RDP 5. Thus say:

#: rdesktop -5 hostname -g 1024x768 -u user.name

~ts

VMware browse button hangs in Debian Etch

VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 vmware see http://www.go2linux.org/vmware-browse-button-halts-vmware-server http://www.novell.com/coolblogs/?p=960

Minimal Debian Install with X in Vmware

World wide mirror sites (link)
After installing the base system, do the following.

For main Debian repository

hostname:/# nano -w /etc/apt/sources.list

#more entries from here of course from /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free

Hongkong is best for my case too:

#more entries from here of course from /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free

Continue with installing the rest of the software:

hostname:/# apt-get update
hostname:/# apt-get install less

Depending on your Debian version, do install xorg related packages.

	Debian Sarge 3.1	Debian Etch
	apt-get install x-window-system-core	apt-get install xorg

Note: Based from this url , the above package is for compatibility only from Debian 3.x. Etch should instead use xorg package.

hostname:/# apt-get install gnome-core
hostname:/# apt-get install gdm msttcorefonts gdm-themes
hostname:/# reboot

After reboot, you should now be in graphical mode. Next step is to prepare the system to install Vmware tools.

hostname:/# apt-get install gcc
hostname:/# apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

From the host machine, using VMware Server Console, do VM->Install VMware Tools.... Back in guest Debian, do the following as a root user.

hostname:/# mkdir /mnt/cdrom
hostname:/# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
hostname:/# mkdir ~/soft
hostname:/# cp /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-1.0.6-91891.tar.gz ~/soft
hostname:/# cd ~/soft
hostname:/# tar -xvzf VMwareTools-1.0.6-91891.tar.gz
hostname:/# cd vmware-tools-distrib
hostname:/# ./vmware-install.pl

Just supply the default values when running vmware-install.pl. Note that you have to select the next smaller screen resolution with reference to your host machine else it will be a bit difficult to navigate in the guest OS. For some reason the driver from VMware mouse driver is not copied to the right location and xorg.conf was not adjusted too so we have to do this manually.

hostname:/# cd /usr/lib/vmware-tools/configurator/XOrg/7.0
hostname:/# cp vmmouse_drv.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers
hostname:/# nano -w /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Your xorg.conf should have something like this:

#more entries before this line
Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier "Configured Mouse"
 Driver  "vmmouse"
 Option  "CorePointer"
 Option  "Device"  "/dev/input/mice"
 Option  "Protocol"  "ps/2"
 Option  "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
 Option  "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5"
EndSection

Then do a reboot,

:/# reboot

Install additional applications, like:

:/# apt-get install synaptic
:/# apt-get install firefox
:/# apt-get install gnome-themes
:/# apt-get install gnome-art

~ts~

Http tunnels for Windows

Hopster -Bypass Firewall - Bypass Proxy - HTTP tunnel HTTP Tunnel Client - HTTP-Tunnel acts as a socks server, allowing you to use your Internet applications safely despite restrictive firewalls and/or you not be monitored at work, school, goverment and gives you a extra layer of protection against hackers, spyware, ID theft's with our encryption. ~ts

Linux software for Debian I like

xtrlock - Minimal X display lock program

#: apt-get install xtrlock

~ts