Posts tagged windows
I have hundres of files to rename help me Admin!
Jun 24th
Yes, we know you have taken a million digital photos over the last year, on your fancy shmancy new camera. And we also know the holiday season is almost upon us. Being the geek that you are, you could not just leave your pictures named digital_image_13456.jpg for your slide shows…
We just couldn’t have that now, could we?
Oh, how well we know you.
Wayne from Florida wants AtA’s help to create a script that will batch rename his purty pictures. Instead we are going to point him to some FREE software our friend Daniel at HackYourDay blogged about.
The software is called Batch File Renamer (clever eh?) from Cerebral Synergy.
Daniel says:
Here’s one software that productivity nuts will love. If you’ve ever needed to catalog files, change extensions, add something to a filename in large batches you know the suffering that is “right click, select, type, enter” done over and over and over again. If you need a tool that can simply edit filenames, rename extensions and so on in a very powerful, customizable way, read on!…
I set out to find some sort of tool because I need to catalog files in batches of 100 about every two days. I get a batch of stuff in txt format and I need to do the following operations.
- I need the files to be in the following format [ID - Number.txt]
- I also need them in this format [ID - Number.html]
Practically this means that I need “032 – 001.txt”, “032 – 002.txt” and so on (all the way to 100), also in .html format and I need to be able to customize all of this because for the next batch I will need “033? at the beginning.
Doing a Google search and trying a lot of free software that popped up I finally found Batch File Renamer. Not a fancy name, not a fancy program, but it gets the job done better than I’ve seen with other apps. First, head over to the Cerebral Synergy download page, scroll down and download Batch File Renamer.
He was able to change file extensions, mass change file names and it comes with all sorts of other free geeky options! Check out Daniel’s article at HackYourDay here and the Free Cerebral Synergy download is here.
4 Simple Steps to Change Your Computer Sounds
May 26th
Tired of your standard Windows Startup and Shutdown tunes?
If you’re like me, you use your Windows-based computer almost every day. The startup and shutdown sounds have just gotten a little boring to be honest. Here are some simple steps to use your favorite voice, music excerpt, or sound for your computer’s start-up and shutdown sequence. You’ll need two soundbites.
Step 1. Choose the soundbites: Choose the track which you want to play at start-up and shutdown jingles. Key to note:
- It must be in the .WAV format.
- The soundbite shouldn’t be too long otherwise you could be waiting for the bite to end before you begin computing.
Your preferred file is likely an mp3, but regardless, if its not in .WAV format, you can easily convert it using any converter. My preference is audacity, which is an open source music editor <– it allows you to actually select a “soundbite” from any song.
Step 2. Rename the new files. Rename these files as “Windows XP Startup.WAV” and “Windows XP Shutdown.WAV” respectively.
Step 3. Rename the old files.
- Goto “C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA”
- Find the files “Windows XP Startup.WAV” and “Windows XP Shutdown.WAV”, and rename them to Windows XP Startup_old.WAV and Windows XP Shutdown_old.WAV respectively. This step is required for the case if you need to revert back to these sounds, otherwise you can ignore this step and just delete them (not recommended).
Step 4. Save your new files. Just copy your files from step 2 into the directory “C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA”
You now have new startup and shutdown tunes.
Kerry enjoys writing about a variety of topics. Her favorite website is CallCatalog.com which is a reverse phone directory website. You can also read her blog which discusses phone number privacy issues.
What are Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files? Can I delete them? Do I need them and how can i make them stop coming back?
Apr 13th
James from Virginia wanted to know if it was safe to delete these Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files from his network. Check out our answer and step by step removal tips.
Running in a mixed Windows/Mac environment I find it annoying to deal with all the little artifacts the great OS’s leave behind. All of our mixed shares and network drives are full of these frickin ‘Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files.
Each folder with initiated thumbnail views (that is where they have displayed a Thumbnails or Filmstrip view in Windows Explorer) will have a Thumbs.db file.
They do nothing for me. I look at them like litter on the ground. I looked up what they do and started deleting them. But they came back…
Some times I get caught up in doing something after in enrages me enough. So I was now determined to get rid of these files from my shares here on out. I did some research on how to get rid of them permanently and how to prevent them from coming back!
Here is how you prevent Windows and OS X from creating these annoying files.
Prevent the creation of Thumbs.db in Windows:
Prevent the creation of .DS_Store files on Network volumes in MacOS:
- Open the Terminal application from the Utilities folder which is nested in the Applications folder
- Begin by first clicking on the Start Button
- Then click on Search and then Click on the All files and folders option
- In the All or part of the file name: box type in Thumbs.db
- Quickly ensure that the Look in: pull-down menu is set to whatever network drives you want to scrub
- Now Click on the Search button to search for all Thumbs.db files on your system
- In the All or part of the file name box type in Thumbs.db
- After the Search completes, click on the word Edit contained in your top tool bar area
This will pull down a menu for you to now click on Select All - Now Press the Delete key on your keyboard to delete all the Thumbs.db files on your system
- Then Close the Search Results window to return back to your Windows session
Now this doesn’t help you deleting the files that already may exist.
To accomplish that you may be interested in BlueHarvest to scrub your network of .DS_Store files and you can do a simple find and replace on Windows.
Find and Replace:
To delete all the existing Thumbs.db files on your computer you just:
For those of you who are scared to delete system files, the Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files are strictly cosmetic on network volumes and will have almost no impact on pretty much anything! Do you use them for something? Let us know in the comments.
_TheOCAdmiN_
Can I hide the Sceduled Tasks and Printers Folders in the Network view?
Apr 2nd
By default your windows XP machine shows the Printers and Faxes share along with the Scheduled Tasks folder. You can make use of the scheduled tasks folder like this or use a remote printer share to quickly install a remote printer.
Some people like this, most people don’t use it and a few people REALLY hate it. So here is a quick how-to on peacing it out:
To hide the Scheduled Tasks from the network share view, follow these steps:
- Click Start, Run and type REGEDIT
- Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \RemoteComputer \ NameSpace
- Backup the key by exporting it to a .REG file. (You need this to revert back!)
- To remove Scheduled Tasks, delete the following key:
{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}
- To remove the Printers folder, delete the following key:
{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
- Close Registry Editor.
By deleting one key or the other you are removing the folders from the network view and not disabling printing/scheduling in any which way. To restore the shares after removing them import the .REG file you saved in the third step above.
_ThePeaceYouOutAdmiN_
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