Archive for the ‘Tips & Tricks’ category

2 Ways to Change Drive Letter in Windows 10

December 5th, 2016 by Admin

The drive letter you want is already used by another partition? Your drive doesn’t appear in File Explorer and no drive letter is assigned? In this tutorial we’ll show you 2 ways to manually change drive letter of any volume on your hard disk or USB storage device. Quickly get the missing or desired drive letter back in Windows 10.

Method 1: Change Drive Letter in Windows 10 Using Disk Management

To get started, you need to open Disk Management. In Windows 10, you can access it by pressing Windows key + X and then selecting Disk Management.
In the right pane you can see the details of all volumes and partitions on your hard drive and removable media. Right-click on the volume or partition you want to change, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
In the next dialog box, click Change.
Choose the the Assign the following drive letter option, then click the drop-down list to select your desired drive letter and click OK.
A warning message box will pop up. Click Yes and your drive should now have the new letter assigned.

Method 2: Change Drive Letter in Windows 10 Using Command Prompt

Open the Command Prompt in Administrator mode. This can be done by press the Windows key + X and then selecting “Command Prompt (Admin)“.
At the command prompt, type diskpart and press Enter. Next type list volume to list out all volumes on your computer. Note down the volume number next to the drive that you want to change the letter of. In our case, that number is 4.
Type the following command to select the volume whose drive letter you want to change. Replace 4 with the volume number you noted down in above step.
select volume 4
Run the following command to assign a new drive letter. Substitute A for the new drive letter you’d like to use.
assign letter=A

Tips: if you want to remove the drive letter only, type “remove letter=F“. Replace F with the current drive letter.
Now you’ve successfully changed the drive letter in Windows 10. Your drive should show up with a new drive letter.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

Tags: assign drive letter windows 10 change drive letter change drive letter windows 10

Ophcrack No Tables Found? How to Install?

December 5th, 2016 by Admin

When I launch Ophcrack Live CD on the computer, it boots up and says “No Tables Found”. However, when I look at the contents of the CD, tables are there. Any suggestions?

Ophcrack is a free Linux Live CD that cracks Windows login passwords by using LM/NT hashes through rainbow tables. The most common issue you may experience with Ophcrack is “Tables not found” or “No tables found”. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to manually install rainbow tables into Ophcrack Live CD.

Tips: A rainbow table is just a large database of precomputed hashes for a comprehensive set of passwords. But there are no guarantees Ophcrack will find a match for your password.

Ophcrack No Tables Found? How to Install?

Before getting started, browse to the Ophcrack Live CD you created and check if the “tables” directory is empty. If it’s empty, you need to download the rainbow tables from Ophcrack website. Unzip it and copy the contents to a USB thumb drive. Follow these steps to install rainbow tables into Ophcrack:

When you see the warning “No tables found“, press Enter key as the screen indicates.
Select “Ophcrack (Run Ophcrack QT graphical interface)” from the options that come up, and press OK.
When Ophcrack launches, click on the Tables button in the toobar. In the popup window, you might see no tables are installed. Click the Install button at the bottom.
Browse to the rainbow table directory located in your CD or the USB thumb drive, and then click the Choose button.
In the Table Selection dialog, you should see your table was installed on disk. Click OK.
Now you can load the SAM hive into Ophcrack, and click the Crack button to recover your password.

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Posted in Free Software, Tips & Tricks

Tags: ophcrack install tables ophcrack no tables found ophcrack tables not installed

2 Ways to Repair Corrupted or Damaged RAR / ZIP Files

December 2nd, 2016 by Admin

When trying to extract files from RAR/ZIP archive, you might come across the error message like “CRC32 failed”, “Checksum error”, “Unexpected end of archive”, etc. How to fix and extract corrupted archive?

zip-archive-corrupted

It’s quite common to get a corrupted RAR/ZIP file when you download it from the Internet with low or unstable Internet connection. Try downloading the file again and it may resolve the issue. When a redownload is not possible, you have to look for ways to repair the RAR/ZIP file. In this tutorial we’ll show you 2 ways to repair a RAR or ZIP archive whether it’s damaged, corrupted or partially downloaded.

Method 1: Repair Corrupted or Damaged RAR/ZIP File Using WinRAR

Before get started, you need to download and install WinRAR on your computer. If you don’t have a licensed copy of WinRAR, you can download a free evaluation copy which gives you about 40 days to try it out.

Right-click on your corrupted RAR or ZIP file and select “Open with WinRAR” from the context menu.
When WinRAR opens, click the Tools menu and select Repair archive.
Click the Browse button to select the destination location where the repaired RAR/ZIP file has to be saved. Leave the archive type as what it was and click OK.
After WinRAR has completed repairing the archive, click the Close button.

You’ll see a repaired archive created in the same folder as the corrupted archive.

Method 2: Extract Broken RAR/ZIP Archive

Unfortunately, after repairing RAR/ZIP archive, WinRAR may still say the file is corrupt. Then you can attempt to extract the content in the RAR/ZIP archive. WinRAR has an option to extract broken files using which you can actually extract the broken or corrupt files – ignoring all the errors no matter what.

Double-click your corrupted RAR or ZIP archive to open it in WinRAR. Click Extract to in the toolbar at the top.
Choose the destination folder where you want to extract the files. But most importantly, you have to check the Keep broken files option under the Miscellaneous section.
Click OK and wait while the files are extracted. Eventually you’ll have all the files present in your RAR/ZIP archive.

Conclusion

So that is how you can repair corrupted or damaged RAR/ZIP files. Of course, there are also many third-party RAR/ZIP repairing utilities available on the net, but I won’t recommend them as most tools might have even lower recovery rate than WinRAR.

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks

Tags: extract corrupted rar files repair corrupted rar files repair zip archive unexpected end of archive

How to Fix “Cannot Start / Open Microsoft Outlook”

December 2nd, 2016 by Admin

Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook, unable to open the Outlook window? Outlook stuck on the “Load Profile” window? This can happen when your Outlook profile or Outlook data files have become corrupted or damaged. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to fix these issues by making a copy of Outlook profile.

Tips: If Outlook cannot start because your Outlook PST file is corrupt, you can check this how to repair PST article . If Outlook prompts you to enter PST password but you’ve forgotten it, you can recover PST password with this method: Recover Forgotten Password for Outlook Data File (.PST).

How to Fix “Cannot Start / Open Microsoft Outlook”?

Open the Control Panel and set the View by option to Large icons. Click Mail (32-bit).
This will open the Mail Setup window. Click the Show Profiles button.
You should see the default profile called Outlook. Highlight it in the list and click Copy. (If you are told to make a new profile because your profile is corrupt, click the Add button to proceed).
Type a name for the new profile and click OK.
Under the option of “When starting Microsoft Office Outlook, use this profile“, choose the first option (or select the new profile from the drop-down list and make Outlook automatically open that profile). Click Apply and then OK.
Now restart Outlook application. When prompted for a profile to be used, choose your new profile and click OK.

Outlook will start with all your email, contacts and other data intact.

A Outlook profile is made up of email accounts, PST data files, contacts, calendars and preferences. If making a copy of your existing Outlook profile doesn’t fix your problem, you might need to create a new profile and set up your email accounts from scratch.

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks

Tags: cannot open outlook cannot start outlook outlook stuck on loading profile

Display Full Path in Title Bar of Windows 10 File Explorer

November 26th, 2016 by Admin

By default, Windows 10 will display the folder name alone in the title bar of File Explorer. Sometimes you might need to know the absolute path of the location you are currently in. In this tutorial we’ll show you 2 ways to make Windows 10 display full path (file location) in the title bar of File Explorer.

Method 1: Make Windows 10 Display Full Path in Explorer Title Bar Using Folder Options

Open File Explorer. Click the View tab on the ribbon. You’ll see the the Options button on the right-hand side. Click it to open the Folder Options dialog.
Click the View tab. Locate and tick the checkbox named “Display the full path in the title bar“.
Click Apply followed by OK. Log off your user or restart the computer. As you see, the File Explorer should now show the full file path instead of the folder name in the title bar.

Method 2: Make Windows 10 Display Full Path in Explorer Title Bar Using Registry Editor

Press the Windows key + R to open the Run dialog box, type regedit and hit Enter.
In the left pane of Registry Editor, navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState
In the right pane, double-click the value entry FullPath and modify the value to 1.

If FullPath doesn’t exist, you need to create it first. To do so, right-click on the empty space and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Vaule, and name it FullPath.
Close Registry Editor and reboot your computer. If you want to make Windows 10 not show full path in the title bar of File Explorer, just open Registry Editor and delete the FullPath value entry.

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

Tags: display file location windows 10 display the full path in the title bar windows 10

How to Create Shortcut to Shutdown / Restart Windows 10

November 25th, 2016 by Admin

In previous post we’ve covered 7 ways to shutdown / restart your Windows 10 computer. However, if those are not simple or quick enough for you, you can create a shutdown / restart shortcut on your desktop. The following tutorial will walk you through the steps of creating a shortcut to shutdown / restart Windows 10 more quickly.

Tips: If you want to schedule your computer to shutdown or restart at specified time, please check out this article: Auto Shutdown Windows 10 / 8 As You Expect

How to Create Shortcut to Shutdown / Restart Windows 10?

Right-click any empty space on the desktop, select New and then Shortcut from the context menu.
When the Create Shortcut wizard appears, copy and paste one of following commands in the location box and click Next.
- Shutdown Computer:
  %windir%\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 0
- Restart Computer:
  %windir%\System32\shutdown.exe /r /t 0
- Lock Computer:
  Rundll32.exe User32.dll,LockWorkStation
You’ll be asked to name the shortcut. I suggest you name the shortcut to correspond to the action it will perform.
When you’ve clicked Finish on the above dialog, you’ll see a shortcut on the desktop. You can double-click it to immediately shut down or restart your computer.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

Tags: create shutdown shortcut windows 10 shutdown shortcut windows 10 windows 10 restart shortcut

How to Disable Automatic Restart After Windows 10 Update

November 23rd, 2016 by Admin

By default, Windows 10 will reboot automatically with no warning after installing an important update. Yesterday when I left my computer for 5 minutes, I found Windows 10 automatically rebooted to finish updating itself, even when there are open applications and unsaved documents. Luckily I find out 2 methods to disable automatic restart after installing updates in Windows 10. Hopefully this will also save yourself the headache of lost work.

Method 1: Disable Automatic Restart After Installing Updates Using Group Policy

Press Windows key + R to open the Run dialog, type gpedit.msc into it and press Enter.
When the Local Group Policy Editor opens, expand Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update. In the right pane, double-click the “No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic update installations” setting.
Select Enabled and click OK. Reboot your computer to make the policy changes take effect immediately.

Method 2: Disable Automatic Restart After Installing Updates Using Registry Editor

Since the Local Group Policy Editor is not included in Windows 10 Home edition, you may need to use this registry hack to prevent Windows 10 from automatically restarting after installing updates.

Press Windows key + R to open the Run dialog, type regedit into it and press Enter.
When the Registry Editor appears, navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

By default, the last two keys (WindowsUpdate\AU) doesn’t exist and you need to create it manually. To do so, right-click the Windows key in the left pane, select New -> Key and name it WindowsUpdate. Next right-click the WindowsUpdate key you just created, and create a subkey named AU.
With the AU key selected in the left pane, right-click any empty space in the right pane, and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value, name it NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers and set its value to 1.
Reboot your computer. Now your Windows 10 computer will never reboot automatically after installing updates.

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Posted in Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

Tags: disable auto restart after installing updates disable automatic reboot for windows updates disable automatic restart after installing updates

2 Options to Disable BitLocker on Surface Pro 4

November 22nd, 2016 by Admin

Surface Pro comes with BitLocker encryption enabled by default. Many Surface Pro users don’t realize that BitLocker was turned on until they get locked out of Windows 10, or be asked for a recovery key during advanced boot up. In this tutorial we’ll show you 2 simple methods to turn off / disable BitLocker on Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10.

Option 1: Disable BitLocker from Settings

Press the Windows key + I to open the Settings screen, or click the Settings icon from Windows 10 Start Menu.
Click on System.
Click About on the left side. From the right side, scroll down to the Device encryption section and click Turn off button.
A pop-up window will open, saying “If you turn off device encryption, your files won’t be protected, and decryption can take a long time“. Just click Turn off button to proceed.

Option 2: Disable BitLocker from Control Panel

Open the Control Panel in Large icons view. Click BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Click the Turn off BitLocker link where it appears next to your drive.
Click Decrypt all drives to begin the decryption process.

How to Know if Your Drive is Decrypted?

BitLocker decryption is running in the background and you won’t be informed when it’s complete. Depending on the amount of data on your drive, it can take several hours to get the job done. To check out the decryption progress, open an elevated Command Prompt and run the following command:

manage-bde -status

bitlocker-status

This will display the Bitlocker stauts for all disks. In this example, the conversion status shows my OS drive is fully decrypted. If the decryption is still in progress, the conversion status will shown as “Decrytpion in Progress”, and you need to wait for “Percentage Encrypted” reaches 100%.

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

Tags: disable bitlocker surface pro disable bitlocker windows 10 turn off bitlocker windows 10

How to Enable the Hidden Default Account in Windows 10

November 22nd, 2016 by Admin

DefaultAccount is a built-in local account that exists on every Windows 10 installation. By default, it is disabled and doesn’t show up on Windows 10 sign-in screen. What does DefaultAccount use for? DefaultAccount was created and used by the system, and it’s a member of the System Managed Accounts Group. We can rename this account but unable to delete it.

cannot-delete-defaultaccount

In this tutorial we’ll show you 2 methods to enable the hidden Default Account in Windows 10, so you can log into this account and discover its purpose.

Method 1: Enable Windows 10 Default Account from Command Prompt

Open an elevated Command Prompt in Windows 10. This can be done by pressing WIN + X shortcut and selecting “Command Prompt (Admin)“.
Type the following commands one by one, press Enter after each. This will activate the DefaultAccount account and change it to standard user.
net user DefaultAccount /active:yes net localgroup Users DefaultAccount /add
When it’s done, reboot your computer and you can then log into DefaultAccount without typing a password!

Method 2: Enable Windows 10 Default Account from Computer Management

To get started, you need to open the Computer Management. Right-click the This PC icon on your desktop and select Manage.
Expand System Tools -> Local Users and Groups -> Users on the left side. On the right side, right-click on the DefaultAccount and select Properties.
Uncheck the option “Account is disabled“.
Now we need to add this user to the Users group. Click the Member Of tab at the top, and then click the Add button.
In the Select Groups window, type Users in the object name box and click OK.
Click Apply and then OK.

Now reboot your computer and you can see the DefaultAccount user show up at Windows 10 login screen.

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

Tags: enable windows 10 default account windows 10 DefaultAccount

Fix: Windows 10 PIN Not Working after Anniversary Update

November 22nd, 2016 by Admin

Can’t login to Windows 10 with PIN after Anniversary Update? Enter the PIN you used before but it says “The PIN is incorrect. Try again“? How can I get past the login screen if both PIN and local password don’t work? In this tutorial we’ll show you different methods to fix the issue of PIN not working after Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Method 1: Type PIN Using On-Screen Keyboard

This issue can happen if your keyboard layout changed after installing Windows 10 Anniversary Update. For example, if your computer should use US keyboard layout, but it was suddenly changed to UK keyboard, the PIN you typed might not be recognized any more.

on-screen-keyboard

To get around this issue, you can use the On-Screen Keyboard to type your PIN. When you’re at Windows 10 sign-in screen, click the Ease of Access icon at the bottom-left corner and select On-Screen Keyboard. Click in the PIN login box and click the keys on the On-Screen Keyboard to enter your PIN.

Method 2: Create A New PIN

Another workaround is remove the old PIN and create a new PIN. There are 2 ways to remove Windows 10 PIN login:

Press the Windows key + I keyboard shortcut to open the Settings app. Select Accounts -> Sign-in options. Under the PIN section, click the Remove button, and enter your Windows password afterwards. This method requires you knowing the password of your Windows local administrator or Microsoft account.
If your PIN login is corrupted, use this method to remove your PIN. Open File Explorer and browse to this location: C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Ngc. Just take ownership of the Ngc Folder and then delete everything within that folder.

After removing the PIN, you can open the Settings -> Accounts -> Sign-in options, and set up a new PIN. Reboot your computer and hopefully the new PIN code will allow you sign into Windows 10 successfully.

Method 3: Remove PIN with Windows Administrator Account

PIN doesn’t work and you don’t remember your local user password? Then you’re unable to remove PIN using the methods above. In this case, you need to reset your forgotten Windows 10 password firstly. Here’s how to clear Windows 10 administrator password with PCUnlocker:

Boot your computer from PCUnlocker Live CD (or USB drive). If you doesn’t have one, you can create it from another PC you can log on as administrator.
After PCUnlocker loads, you can see a list of user accounts on your Windows 10 system. Choose the local administrator account and click on Reset Password.
This will clear your password and activate the account. Reboot your computer and take out the CD. You can then log into Windows 10 administrator without a password.

After logging into Windows 10 as administrator, you can easily remove the existing PIN and create a new PIN.

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Posted in Others, Tips & Tricks, Windows 10

Tags: windows 10 pin incorrect windows 10 pin login not working windows 10 pin not working after update windows 10 pin stopped working