January 5, 2010 - 10:51 am
Tags: General
Posted in Admin's Arsenal, How To, Questions | 19 comments
I know the feeling of your secure network being compromised by an end user… Passwords do fall into the wrong hands and then what do you do? Scenarios start running through my head and I make a mental list of all the passwords and system configs that need to be changed. These aren’t fun times [...]
January 3, 2010 - 12:52 am
Tags: General
Posted in Questions | 18 comments
You know the saying, “You can’t have too much RAM or too much storage.”
Well, there is at least one case where a lot of RAM can cause problems.
My current desktop had 1 Gig of RAM and I recently bought an additional 2 Gigs since the price was so low. (And of course I used [...]
October 26, 2009 - 6:30 am
Tags: General
Posted in How To | 9 comments
As avid Windows users you have seen how applications add right click menu options. For instance Mcafee antiVirus adds a shortcut to Scan For Threats in the selected folder or Resco’s options to encrypt or de-crypt a folder.
Now you want to add useful right click options for yourself and AtA is here to show you [...]
October 15, 2009 - 12:00 am
Tags: General
Posted in Admin's Arsenal, How To, Tips/Tricks | 5 comments
Everyone knows your friendly neighborhood admin is all about shortcut keys and uber productivity.
I don’t know how I never found this one before… Check it out you have your quick launch buttons displayed next to your start menu for easy access.
By default you have Show Desktop, IE and whatever other applications you installed. Now you [...]
August 11, 2009 - 12:52 am
Tags: General
Posted in How To, Reviews | 15 comments
We have used many different retail programs to recover accidentally or maliciously deleted files off of our PC, Digital Camera or Mobile device. We have tried a few free ones and they bring us back to the old saying… You get whatcha pay for! As such we never really covered the topic here on Ata, [...]
July 30, 2009 - 12:00 am
Tags: General
Posted in Reviews | 10 comments
We have reviewed Crucial Memory in the past here when we gave away a 2gb memory module to one of our readers. So we were happy to plug them again when Jenny from San Fransisco wrote us asking:
Yo Admin can you tell me what kind of memory is in my PC without me having to [...]
July 24, 2009 - 12:00 am
Tags: General
Posted in Admin's Arsenal, Free Download | 6 comments
Do you hate looking for and downloading drivers on every re-format?
Well if you can get to your desktop you should be able to run Double Driver and copy your drivers off your machine to a USB stick and then restore them right back into your fresh clean formatted system! We covered something a little while [...]
June 1, 2009 - 12:00 am
Tags: General
Posted in How To | No comments
So are you wondering why you would want to save your searches?
Think about it… How would you like the ability to dynamically find the items you need with a saved search? So the boss called and said – I need all the purchase orders less than a months old and tagged Smith?
How about Power Point [...]
April 16, 2009 - 7:56 am
Tags: General
Posted in How To, Questions | 5 comments
This morning we had a request for adding a “High Priority Folder”.
This would be a top level folder that shows up on your Windows desktop and in My Computer. Didn’t think you could do that? Well read on…
The folder we will be creating can not be removed – just like My Computer or My Documents. [...]
I had the pleasure of attempting to migrate a print server this weekend. I mean I had to figure out a quick and efficient way to install the 70 some odd printers on a new server. I was not going to be doing this manually that was for shit sure! I had some junior admins [...]
Our Reader RJ writes to us:
August 17, 2007 - 5:32 pm
Karl,
Thank you for your help and more importantly, the prompt help. Much appreciated.
I just had one further query on this particular ‘issue’.
Would it be correct (not using the word ‘right’, to avoid confusion :))that when the ‘my pictures’ folder is dragged from origin-my computer window to destination-my computer window, it should be Right click & Drag ??
I believe I, inadvertently, did that and it works spiffingly well.
Ta very much for your help, again.
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August 17, 2007 - 6:10 pm
i am glad we could be of assistance tell your friends about us. but it is left click and drag for us so that might be a whole other issue!
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CoryK Reply:
January 16th, 2009 at 7:46 am
I believe the technically correct reference (which i discovered doing tech support) would be primary click and drag. Typically left click is the primary click, and right is secondary. However this is not the case if you set the mouse to reverse the mouse buttons.
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Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com Reply:
January 16th, 2009 at 9:48 am
I didn’t even think of that. Thanks Cory! Where are you from? We love to hear from new Admin’s! Any interest in writing up some of your favorite tips and tricks to be published on AtA?
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CoryK Reply:
January 16th, 2009 at 11:21 am
I’m Canada. I’m the “Network Administrator” although my job entails quite a bit more than just administering the network (like programming a handheld scanning unit). I’m not too sure how I feel about writing stuff, but I will keep it in mind.
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Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com Reply:
January 16th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Fair enough Cory! If you are interested email me at info at asktheadmin dot com and we will get you all set up.
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August 17, 2007 - 8:39 pm
I do this with the entire My Documents folder all the time. I move it to another partition so I can reinstall Windows with less trouble.
The one thing to be aware of is that if you ever boot the machine and the external drive is not available, Windows will recreate the folder in the default location AND keep using that new location until you manually change it back.
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Clara Reply:
January 17th, 2009 at 9:39 am
My computer did that. How do I manually change the location back? I can;t figure it out. Thanks.
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Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com Reply:
January 20th, 2009 at 5:11 am
Remove the remote drive and reboot. Access my documents and it will recreate it at the normal location.
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August 18, 2007 - 2:30 am
thanks Peter – AtA appreciates it!
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August 18, 2007 - 9:19 am
It looks like I spoke too soon. Some testing with a VM shows that you can boot the system without the external drive in place and it does NOT recreate the folder. It happily operates without access to the My Pictures folder and when the drive is reconnected it connects to that location.
I guess the system can’t operate properly without the My Documents folder so that one does get recreated if it cannot be accessed.
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August 18, 2007 - 9:54 am
Thanks Peter for coming back and sharing your findings with our readers. Any interest in helping out Ask The Admin?
Shoot an email to The Admin via karl at asktheadmin dot com. _NinjaAdmiN_
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August 19, 2007 - 11:23 pm
Worked like a charm, just what the doctor ordered.
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August 20, 2007 - 9:32 am
how come i didnt know that?
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December 13, 2007 - 1:33 pm
Now that’s useful!
I’ve been looking for this simple solution for years, and I mean years, like early XP days I think.
I’d forgotten about it till now and when I first though of wanting to move the my documents folders around the internet wasn’t my first point of call, that’s how long ago it was, and I was a little scared of killing my computer.
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November 17, 2008 - 12:11 am
This is a really good and easy tip! But, if by some chance you can’t locate the My Pictures folder or any other shell folder, you can edit the registry to resolve this by going to:
“HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders”.
Then log out and log back in and the problem should be resolved.
All precautions when editing the registry apply.
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July 14, 2009 - 4:35 am
Wouldn’t it be better to Cut and Paste the folder, rather than Drag it? If you Drag the folder it will just be making another copy of the folder on the External Drive. Now you have two copies of the same thing and you have not freed up any space. Or am I missing something? Thanks for the help.
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Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com Reply:
July 15th, 2009 at 5:16 am
This is the procedure after you drag and drop Windows does the work behind the scenes to change the mappings.
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March 19, 2010 - 9:48 am
Hi – does this also apply to moving My Music? I’m using a backup service called Dropbox. I would like to point My Documents to My Dropbox so that everything is auto backed up as soon as a change is made. However My Documents currently includes My Pictures and My Music and it’s too big for the free Dropbox service (2GB). Let me know if I can drag both to a new location using the method mentioned above.
Thxs…Scott
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