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Executor – Challenger to the Launchy throne

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Executor is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. It allows you to pretty much ignore your start menu and do all kinds of time saving stuff from the Executor itself.

No doubt I’ve been in love with a similar application called Launchy for quite some time. Launchy is a free windows and linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. It indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

Many have come, but Launchy still stands as the king. But Executor brings with it many features that Launchy doesn’t have and it might be time to make a switch.

One of the major differences between the two is Executor’s emphasis on keywords. Although it does text search for just about anything, Executor gives priority to user-assigned keywords for launching apps, documents, and folders. What’s more, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to any keyword for quick launches without even invoking Executor. It’s also has a small footprint on your system clocking in at just about 10 megs.

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Add Defragment to a Drives Right-Click Menu

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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…

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

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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

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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.

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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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Automatic Defrag All Drives in Vista

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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:

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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!

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Launchy 2.0 released

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Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

What’s New:

  • Launchy has been completely rewritten with QT o Your old plugins/skins will no longer work
  • Your old configuration will be wiped
  • A new look! New icons and skin thanks to Tyler Sticka
  • Much better skinning support
  • Options merged into a single, tabbed dialog
  • Skin selection now shows previews
  • Plugins much more configurable
  • Launchy can hide when it loses focus
  • Fade in/out effects
  • Customizable transparency
  • Optional shallow scan of directories
  • Unicode support for Firefox bookmarks
  • Vista support
  • It’s just better.

Download: Launchy 2.0

Screenshot: >> Click here <<

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Vista tweak – Reduce System Restore disk usage

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System restore is never anything I found particularly useful… in fact I don’t know that I’ve ever even used it. However, I’ve always left it enabled just in case. In Windows XP you could configure the amount of drive space System Restore uses via a slider control. No such control exists in Windows Vista and by default the sucker is configured to use up to 15 percent of your available drive space! Ok… 15% for something I don’t think I’ve ever used… I don’t think so.

To store restore points, you need at least 300 megabytes (MB) of free space on each hard disk that has System Protection turned on. System Restore might use up to 15 percent of the space on each disk. As the amount of space fills up with restore points, System Restore will delete older restore points to make room for new ones.

My laptop currently has a 60g drive and it’s allocated 5.136g of space. Of course this isn’t visible via the interface but to find out you can open a command prompt. Click on the start menu (or the orb as it seems to be called nowadays) and in the searc box type ‘command’, right click on the Command Prompt icon and select Run as Administrator. You’ll then see a DOS command prompt open up… type the following to see the current settings:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

What you’ll see is something like the following:

System Restore - show current usage

The command to set the amount of space used follows this syntax:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

So to configure your drive to only use 2 gigs of space on your C: drive you’d to the following:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB

That’s it! You’ve recovered some space. If you find system restore useful I’d recommend not touching this setting, or at least not reducing it too much. But if you’re somebody like me who’s never used it you can easily reclaim some space.

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