Hiding an administrator account in windows 7

 

Today I was just toying around with the idea of having a root user in windows 7 and have my user account changed to the Standard one so that it would be like on a Linux machine where I will have to put in the root users password for running any thing that requires administrator privileges. Now it is just easily possible to do this by creating an administrative account from the control panel, but I wanted the admistrative account to remain hidden from the welcome screen. I assumed that I could just logon to the root administrative account by using the ctrl+alt+del at the welcome screen.

I did the following steps to hide the administrative account :

I navigated to  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon in the registry

Created a new key SpecialAccounts

Created a new key inside SpecialAccounts called UserLists

Then made a dword 32 bit with the name of the account root and set the value to 0

Now my account is a standard on and the root account is administrator.

Sadly when I tried to run a program that need administrative privileges I faced a critical problem!

I couldn’t click on the Yes button on the administrative privilege dialog box , it was hidden too!!

I couldn’t undo any changes to the registry as I had no privileges

I couldn’t logon to the root account even in safe mode.

This was a serious problem, luckily I found a solution on the internet.

I typed in user:root "control userpasswords2"

it asked me for the root password , I was so happy

I put in the password and added my account which was a standard account to the Administrators group.

Logged off and logged back in and my problem was solved I was Administrator again.

Technorati Tags: windows 7 hidden account,hidden admi,hodden root,windows hidden account

Outlook web access

Microsoft outlook web access is now widely being used in offices and educational institutions.More and more organizations are switching to Microsoft exchange server for their organizational mail.However people don’t like change and this new outlook application is not the simplest of things to use either.

One of the problems with this application is that its not easy to import contacts from the outlook web access program.

For doing this one has to manually import as csv file from outlook 2010/2007 on the computer and then sync it.

Something else I’ve learned about this new app is that all the global address can be locally accessed.

For achiving this one has to do as follows

In outlook 2010

 

That’s it.

Multimedia on Opensuse 11.3

I spent a lot of time installing multimedia codecs on linux distribution opensuse 11.3

A few point to remember while doing this are:

Add packman to the repository list

Install all the essential codecs like win32codecs-all and mp3,xvid etc.

After all this I got video and mp3 to play on my OS but there was no audio in the video.I look all over the internet, installing reinstalling the packages over and over again.

Finally when I was just about to give up I looked at the KDE mixer one last time and found the PM volume is zero.

I couldn’t think of volume being a problem as MP3 played loud and clear. So did youtube videos.

I seems that the digital audio from divx and xvid files needed too be outputted in pcm so as soon as I raised the PCM volume the was sound!!

MTNL Digital certificates and CAPICOM

Technorati Tags: CAPICOM,MTNL,digital certificates,CAPICOM problem,Windows 7,capicom windows 7,copicom,.NET framework,.NET framework CAPICOM

CAPICOM is and ActiveX control developed by Microsoft , that enables the user to access to  digital certificates in a computer via the cryptography service.

CAPICOM has been discontinued by Microsoft.It is included in the vista OS and can be downloaded for all other OS preceding windows 7

MTNL’s e-Procurement system is one such application that requires users to login using a username and password.Then the user is to use the users Digital certificate to authenticate the session and access the e-procurement system.

The problem arises while using Windows 7 to access the e-procurement system.

However Microsoft’s .NET Framework 3.5 consists of equivalent functions.

Hence installation of .NET framework 3.5 is required for systems that need the CAPICOM control for accessing digital certificates.

The easiest way to do this is use Windows Update and install all the updates.Gradually .NET framework also gets installed.

DELL BLUETOOTH PROBLEM

I had this problem with Dell INSPIRON’s wireless Bluetooth adapter  WIDCOMM made by Broadcom corp.

The Bluetooth connection would break off after a few minutes whenever I used my Sony Bluetooth stereo headset with the laptop

The peculiar thing about the problem was that this happened only when the headphone was in stereo headset mode and not when it was acting as a hands free for Skype calls.

The Problem:

• Bluetooth Icon disappears from the system tray
• The Laptop doesn't appear to have Bluetooth after this point,
• Other devices do not ‘see’ or ‘find’ the laptop as a Bluetooth device
• Everything returns to normal after a restart.

The Observation

For some reason after a certain amount of time the Bluetooth adapter switches off and the laptop no longer acts as Bluetooth pair able device.

The Solution

Before applying the solution here is a checklist of things that needs to be checked before hand

Is the Bluetooth ‘turned on’ ,it could just be turned off/on  by the following

• BIOS
• Function Key on the Laptop [f2]

Have you installed the latest dell Bluetooth driver windows (in my case dell Bluetooth driver windows 7)

You can find these drivers at the dell support website

Finally all I did was

1. Go to the Device manager
2. 
3. Select the Bluetooth Device
4. Right click on it and select properties
5. Go to power management tab

1. In this tab
2. UNCHECK (if checked) the

Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power

That's it click on OK and close the device manager.

This fixed the problem for me

Technorati Tags: dell,dell bluetooth problems,dell bluetooth windows 7,windows 7 bluetooth problems. dell inspiron,dell wireless,dell bluetooth wireless 365,del 365,widcomm problem,dell widcomm problem