Adding your own messages to Windows 7's logon screen

Adding your own messages to Windows 7's logon screen....

If you are responsible for managing Windows 7 systems that are open to the public or have multiple user accounts, you may want to add a warning message to the logon screen. You may also want to display logon statistics on the logon screen. Fortunately, doing so is easily accomplished by tweaking a couple of existing registry settings and adding a new setting.In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, I’ll show you how to delve into Windows 7’s registry to make the appropriate changes.

Editing the registry
It is important to keep in mind that the registry is vital to the operating system and changing it can be dangerous if you inadvertently make a mistake. As such, you should take a few moments to back up your system by creating a Restore Point as well as by creating a system image in the Backup and Restore tool. That way if anything goes awry, you can restore your system and get right back to work.

To launch the Registry Editor, click the Start button, type Regedit in the Start Search box, and press [Enter]. When the UAC dialog box appears, respond appropriately.


Getting started
Once the Registry Editor launches, locate the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

From this key, shown in Figure A, you’ll be able to make all the following changes to the Logon screen.

Figure A

From this key, you’ll be able to make all the necessary changes to the Logon screen.


The warning message
The warning message that you’ll add to the Windows 7’s logon screen is actually made up of two parts: the title and the message text.
To add a title to the warning message, locate and double-click the legalnoticecaption value. When the Edit DWORD dialog box appears, type the title in the Value data text box, as shown in Figure B, and click OK. As you can see, for my example I chose to use a Welcome message, but you can essentially type anything that you want for your title. You can use up to 80 characters, including spaces, for the title.

Figure B

The legalnoticecaption value allows you to specify a title for your warning message.

To add the warning message, locate and double-click the legalnoticetext value. When the Edit DWORD dialog box appears, type the warning message in the Value data text box, as shown in Figure C, and click OK. Again, you can essentially type anything that you want for your message text. You can use up to 16,383 characters, including spaces, for the message text.

Figure C

You can type a lot of text into the legalnoticetext value.


Tracking logons
If you want to be able to keep track of logons that were made on your system, you can configure the Logon screen to display logon statistics. Right-click anywhere inside the System key and select New| DWORD (32-bit) Value. When the new value appears, type DisplayLastLogonInfo and press Enter twice. When the Edit DWORD dialog box appears, simply type a 1 in the Value Data text box, as shown in Figure D, and click OK.

Figure D

If you want to be able to keep track of logons that were made on your system, set the DisplayLastLogonInfo value to 1.


The new logon display
Now when you restart your system and access the logon screen, you’ll see the warning message, as shown in Figure E. Just click OK and you’ll see your user icon and be able to continue with the logon operation.

Figure E

The warning message will appear on top of the logon screen.

When you select your user icon on the logon screen and type your password, you’ll see the logon statistics, as shown in Figure F. Just click OK to complete the logon operation, and you will

immediately see the desktop as you normally would.
Figure F

After you click your user icon, you’ll see the logon statistics on the logon screen.


ENJOY........ ^_^

Five tips for freeing up PC hard disk space

Five tips for freeing up PC hard disk space

NOTE: Before you attempt to use any of these techniques, you should perform a full system backup.

1) Clear application caches:-

If you want to free up hard disk space, you should start out by clearing any application caches that might exist. Application caches can contain a lot of data. For example, some older versions of Internet Explorer are designed to consume up to 10% of your total hard disk space with temporary files. Newer versions use a default cache size of 50 MB.A better example is a video editing application I frequently use. This application caches all source video files. The last time that I cleaned out the cache, I managed to recover almost 200 GB of disk space.

2) Look for signs of disk corruption and system upgrades:-

Hard disk corruption and operating system upgrades can both cause disk space to be wasted. I recommend opening a command prompt window and executing CHKDSK with the /F switch. This will cause Windows to scan the hard disk for corruption and repair any problems that it might find. (Be sure to make a backup first.) In certain situations, this can free up quite a bit of disk space.
Even if no corruption is detected, that doesn’t mean that no corruption has occurred in the past. When CHKDSK encounters files that can’t be repaired, it stores the file fragments in .CHK files. Unless you are attempting to recover lost data, you can safely delete any .CHK files you find on the system. While you’re at it, you might also look for temporary files (.TMP files) and log files (.LOG files), both of which can usually be safely deleted.Another thing to check for is an old Windows installation. If Windows is reinstalled (or if a new version of Windows is installed) from outside the Windows operating system, Setup will attempt to preserve the previous operating system by creating a folder named Windows.old. As long as you don’t need anything from the previous Windows installation, you can safely delete the Windows.old folder.

3) Run Disk Cleanup:-

Desktop versions of Windows come equipped with a tool called the Disk Cleanup Wizard. It searches the system for unneeded files that are safe to delete (such as memory dump files). You can run the Disk Cleanup Wizard by opening My Computer, right-clicking on the drive you want to clean, and choosing the Properties command from the shortcut menu. When the drive’s properties sheet opens, click the Disk Cleanup button on the General tab.

4) Look for unneeded applications:-

Almost every new PC includes a ton of trial applications and nagware that are installed by default. I always recommend blanking the hard drive on a new PC and starting with a clean Windows installation, but often times I encounter PCs that are still running the factory configuration.In these situations, you can go through the Control Panel and remove any of the trial applications that are not being used (as well as the nagware). While you’re at it, check for any other applications that might have been installed by the system’s owner but that are no longer used.If the system contained a Windows.old folder, there’s a good chance that there are also application remnants in the Program Files folder. These remnants won’t appear in the Control Panel because the applications were installed on the old operating system. The only way to get rid of them is to manually delete them from the Program Files folder.

5) Remove manufacturer partitions:-

In addition to all the trial applications and nagware that manufacturers install on PC hard drives, PCs usually contain a recovery partition. This partition exists so that the PC can be reset to factory defaults in the event of a problem. In some cases, it may be possible to delete the recovery partition and then merge the empty space with another volume on the system. I prefer to just back up the system, delete all the partitions, create one big partition, and then restore the backup.Of course, if you get rid of the recovery partition, you can’t use it to rebuild the system. As long as you have a Windows installation DVD, that shouldn’t be a problem (unless you actually want some of the applications that are loaded on the system by default). The recovery partition is often outdated anyway. For example, if a system shipped with Windows Vista but has been upgraded to Windows 7, the recovery partition will contain an outdated operating system (Vista).

Don’t forget to defrag:-
All of these techniques have the potential to recover quite a bit of lost hard disk space. Any time you manage to recover a significant amount of disk space, it is a good idea to defragment the system afterward.