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Add Defragment to a Drives Right-Click Menu

July 29, 2008

Direct from HowToGeek comes instructions on adding a simple registry tweak that will allow you to add “Defragment” to the context menu on any drive when you right click it.

After manually applying or downloading the hack, you’ll have a new item on the right-click menu for your drives…

image106 Add Defragment to a Drives Right-Click Menu

Which will start up the command-line version of Disk Defragmenter (after accepting the UAC prompt)

image107 Add Defragment to a Drives Right-Click Menu

Manual Registry Hack

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell

image108 Add Defragment to a Drives Right-Click Menu

Create a new key under shell called “runas”, and then set the (Default) value to “Defragment”. If you want to hide this menu item behind the Shift key right-click menu, then add a new string called Extended with no value.

image109 Add Defragment to a Drives Right-Click Menu

Next, you’ll need to create a key called “command” and set the default value to the following, which is the command to run defrag with the default options but show verbose output.

defrag %1 -v

You can alternately choose from one of the other defrag switches here if you’d like.

Downloadable Registry Hack

HowToGeek provides a downloadable registry hack to do all of this for you. Simply download, extract, and double-click on either AddDefragToDriveMenu.reg (for the regular menu) or AddDefragToExtendedDriveMenu.reg (to hide behind the Shift key). There’s also an included removal script that will remove either one.

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Categories
Tech, Vista Tweaks, Windows
Tags
command line version, context menu, default options, disk defragmenter, hkey classes root, howtogeek, menu search, registry hack, registry tweak, right click menu, root drive, shell, start menu, switches, vista tweak, Vista Tweaks, windows registry hack, windows vista
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Customize SPB Mobile Shell 2.0

March 12, 2008

If you haven’t checked out SPB Mobile Shell 2.0 you really should. It provides a cool “Now” screen (first screenshot below), which is similar to the Windows Today Screen except that it’s a more refined “immediate” window into your current activities. One of my favorite new additions is the beefed up contacts. You have photo contacts, but when you click on one you get a very finger friendly list of ways to contact them (second screenshot below). Mobile Shell 2.0 also introduces gestures so that you can access the mobile shell panes from any application and get real time previews of them (third screenshot below).  That’s just the tip of the iceberg, there’s much more under the hood but I won’t go into detail on that here.

100 Customize SPB Mobile Shell 2.0301 Customize SPB Mobile Shell 2.0

So that all sounds pretty sweet right. One thing is lacking, it’s not really all that customizable. You can change the color scheme (or make it match your existing scheme) but you can’t change the icons, or re-arrange a whole lot. I imagine a lot of that is by design… Mobile Shell is meant to be very easy to use an intiutive, they didn’t overload it with a boatload of customization abilities to keep it simple. But… power users are power users and they of course see the awesome potential and want to trick it out. Enter the amazing folks at XDA developers. They’ve figured out how the whole thing is put together and started hacking away.

402 Customize SPB Mobile Shell 2.0

What you get are program screens that look like these:

 Customize SPB Mobile Shell 2.0  screenshot1zm6 Customize SPB Mobile Shell 2.0

As well as tricked out now screens that look like this:

 Customize SPB Mobile Shell 2.0

Wanna find out more… hit up XDA. I imagine many more threads will jump out but here’s the main one thread now. Here’s a direct thread on how to remove the top 12 pinned icons from your Launcher and center the 6 grid launcher. Personally I don’t mind the “quicklaunch”, I’ve pinned a bunch of often used apps up there and find that pretty useful. Want I want to know how to do is replace the bottom buttons (in the last image above) with the HTC style icons. I’ve seen images of people who have done it, but I haven’t figured it out… yet.

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Categories
Windows Mobile
Tags
boatload, color scheme, current activities, customizable, customization abilities, design mobile, gestures, img src, new additions, one thing, panes, power users, program screens, real time, screenshot, shell, spb mobile shell, spb mobile shell custom icons, spb mobile shell customization, time previews, tip of the iceberg, whole lot, xda developers
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