PaulSpoerry.com

Social Media, Technology, and geeky stuff for your brain.

You are here: Home / Archives for menu search

Add Defragment to a Drives Right-Click Menu

by Leave a Comment

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…

image

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

image

Manual Registry Hack

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

Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell

image

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.

image

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.

Namecheap.com - Cheap domain name registration, renewal and transfers - Free SSL Certificates - Web Hosting

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.

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin

Automatic Defrag All Drives in Vista

by Leave a Comment


By now most people have likely already upgraded to Windows Vista Service Pack 1, but one of the smaller feature upgrades might have passed most people by: You can now configure automatic defragmenting for All drives, as well as defragment all of your drives at the same time.

Set Automatic Defrag Options

Launch Disk Defragmenter by typing dfrgui into the start menu search or run box (or you could just search for defrag in the start menu or control panel)

Once you are there, you will notice the new “Select volumes” button that wasn’t there before Service Pack 1:

image

This will launch a dialog where you can choose which drives should be automatically defragmented at the scheduled time:

Note: Vista SP1 most likely already scheduled all your drives to be defragmented by default so there’s really nothing to do but make sure you have the latest Vista Service Pack!

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin

Speed up Vista’s start menu Instant Search

by 1 Comment

Vista’s start menu search box is one of the nicer touches to the new OS. In fact I rarely use the programs menu’s anymore and instead just start typing the name of the program I want to run. I’ve always been big on keeping my start menu clean. I create logical categories like Media for DVD burning software and graphic programs, System for antivirus and compression utils, Games for… duh… games, etc. For most users, their start menu is a nightmare.  You know who you are, you have folders that pop out under all programs that scroll out 2-3 levels deep.

With Vista you have Instant Search and you are never more than a few keystrokes away from whatever you’re looking for. This feature, which is available almost anywhere you are in Vista, enables you to search for a file name, a property, or even text contained within a file. It’s uber slick. Instant Search is also contextual, optimizing its results based on your current activity—whether it’s searching Control Panel applets, looking for music files in Windows Media Player, or looking over all your files and applications on the Start menu.

So with all this power, what is there to do? Tweak it! The biggest detraction from the search is that by default it searches an index of all files on your computer. Seriously, how often are you going to do that? Probably never, the search box isn’t a good use of searching for a file on your PC.

Vista Instant Search customization To change the settings right click on the Orb (previously called the start button) and click properties. You’ll see a dialog like the one to the left (click to see full size image), scroll down to the search options. I’ve disabled search files. As I said above, I don’t think the start menu is the right interface for searching for files across the entire pc. If you don’t use Windows mail and contact you can disable Search Communications. If you favor FireFox over IE, you can disable Search favorites and history too. If you are an IE user, you might wanna leave this on. I personally find this a LOT easier to find a webpage that I wanted to go to, but couldn’t remember, than the IE history. I suggest leaving Search Programs on… as that’s the seriously cool feature of Instant Search.

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin