This is the start of a series of posts that will guide you through using Microsoft Management Console to manage your system. In this post most of the text has been excerpted from the MMC help file. The MMC allows you to control and manage the many available options from an easy to use interface. All the options are also available from the Windows Registry. But for many dealing with Registry is not an easy task. Also for simple administrative tasks involving MMC using the Registry will be an overkill for many. (You can find the posts on Registry here) The following i a brief into to MMC from the MMC help available in Windows XP.

The extension of console objects are always msc representing Microsoft Console. They can be found under “%systemroot% \system32 ” folder. A backup copy of each could be found under “%systemroot%\system32 \dllcache ” folder

Introduction to MMC

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) can be used to create, save, and open administrative tools (called MMC consoles) that manage the hardware, software, and network components of your Windows system. MMC does not perform administrative functions, but hosts tools that do. The primary type of tool you can add to a console is called a snap-in. There are two general ways that you can use MMC: in user mode, working with existing MMC consoles to administer a system, or in author mode, creating new consoles or modifying existing MMC consoles.

The following administrative tools appear under Windows XP

Component Services

Used by system administrators to deploy and administer COM+ programs from a graphical user interface, or to automate administrative tasks using a scripting or programming language. Software developers can use Component Services to visually configure routine component and program behavior, such as security and participation in transactions, and to integrate components into COM+ programs. For more information, see Using Component Services.

Computer Management

Used to manage local or remote computers from a single, consolidated desktop utility. Computer Management combines several Windows XP administrative tools into a single console tree, providing easy access to a specific computer’s administrative properties. For more information, see Using Computer Management.

Data Sources (ODBC)

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a programming interface that enables programs to access data in database management systems that use Structured Query Language (SQL) as a data access standard. For more information, see Using Data Sources (ODBC).

Event Viewer

Used to view and manage logs of system, program, and security events on your computer. Event Viewer gathers information about hardware and software problems, and monitors security events. For more information, see Using Event Viewer.

Local Security policy

Used to configure security settings for the local computer. These settings include the Password policy, Account Lockout policy, Audit policy, IP Security policy, user rights assignments, recovery agents for encrypted data, and other security options. Local Security Policy is only available on computers that are not domain controllers. If the computer is a member of a domain, these settings may be overridden by policies received from the domain.

Performance

Used to collect and view real-time data about memory, disk, processor, network, and other activity in a graph, histogram, or report form. For more information, see Using Performance.

Services

Used to manage the services on your computer, set recovery actions to take place if a service fails, and create custom names and descriptions for services so that you can easily identify them. For more information, see Using Services.

# To open MMC, click Start, and then click Run (WIN+R). In the Open box, type “mmc“.

# The consoles available in Windows XP are listed below. To access any just type their name (include the .msc) in Windows Run box (WIN+R)

certmgr.msc
ciadv.msc
compmgmt.msc
devmgmt.msc
dfrg.msc
diskmgmt.msc
eventvwr.msc
fsmgmt.msc
gpedit.msc
lusrmgr.msc
ntmsmgr.msc
ntmsoprq.msc
perfmon.msc
rsop.msc
secpol.msc
services.msc
wmimgmt.msc

The follow up posts in this series will deal with managing you computer with the MMC.

This is the screen shot of a Microsoft Office document with an image inserted into it. The top one is the original image. But Office kept on showing it with white portions as black. This is shown at the bottom of the Screen shot.

If you have met with a problem like the above one its just a minor bug in Microsoft Office that renders transparency in PNG (Portable Network Graphics) images. To put it lightly Office will not show PNG images with transparency. The problem could be solved with a workaround. Try saving the image as GIF with transparency or make the transparent pixels just white (remove transparency) and add the new image. It will be rendered correctly. No other image type seems to cause a problem.

Process Explorer NT is the replacement for the default Task Manager in Windows from Microsoft (links are given at bottom of page). It is also available from Sysinternals which is now a part of Microsoft. Among the many tools they offer a post have been made about TCP Viewer earlier.

Process Explorer is just every system administrators dream come true. Among the many functions provided the mainly noticeable ones are listed here.

Processes could be suspended and resumed. Just like the way you pause and resume music player you can suspend and then resume processes. This will be a great benefit if a program like a video encoder doesn’t have pause function.

You can Restart, Search online about any process. There is also a Properties view for processes which will show detailed stats of the process its handles, IO activity, Virtual an physical memory usage, TCP IP history, Environment Variables etc.

Process Explorer is able to replace task manager. You could do it right from the menus it self. This is done by a simple Registry Edit. I’ll post about it later.

This is the one of the basic tools everybody should have. Another one I would suggest would be a Free Data Recovery software.

Download Process Explorer NT here or visit the software page at Sysinternals.

There are times when we are not quiet sure which program could be used to open a file. Worst case scenario is when the file doesn’t have an extension. Here are some ways in which you can recognize/open such files.

Try the extension at an online file extension archive.

Use a Universal File viwer to open the file.

If everything else fails open the file with a HEX editor or using Notepad. Look for the first few charecters. These will be the filetype headers in most cases. Here is a small list of filetypes and header charecters for popular file types.

Here are some methods you may try to save the Videos from various sharing site. Most of them work with more than one site. All of them have been tried by me.

1. Real Player Browser Plugin

You can use Real Player 11’s browser plugin to download flash videos right away with the click of a mouse button. Read more on How to Download streaming Videos with Real Player.

2. Use Free File conversion sites.

Both of the Free file converter sites allowed users to download streaming videos from Youtube. Read about the first one here and the second here.

3. Use the Download Video Button (youtube only)

You can use the JavaScript Download Video button to download the original youtube file as mp4 right from the Youtube site itself. Here is how you can add such a button to your “Link Bar” of your browser.

4. Use downloader sites

Many sites allow you to download videos hosted on sharing sites by submitting the URL of the video page. In most cases the disadvantage is that you get an FLV file. Here are some sites that allows you to do this – DOWNLOADYOUTUBEVIDEOS.com, downloadyoutubevideos.in – allows you to download videos from many sites like Google, Youtube, Blip, Bolt, Dailymotion, MySpace, ifilm and Break.

The old method of copying Flash files from the browsers saved files folder still works. But who wants to do it when all these easy ways are here.

Does anybody notice the rising CPU usage of your browser when you are at the create post page (Tiny MCE) of your self hosted Wordpress blog? Previously when I was using Firefox the CPU usage rose to 50 percent and FF was running fast like a snail. I thought it was because of problems with FF. Last day when I was using Opera Process Explroer was open. I couldn’t believe that Opera too used very much CPU resources. It was then that I realised the culprit was the Wordpress Create Post page (A intersection B, lol).

I was amazed when a Google search provided me only one relevent result. The problem is actually with the Wordpress “autosave” feature. If autosave is enabled, then the “Save” “Publish” buttons on my post page used to blink. Everything will come to normal once you “Disable AutoSave” on your blog.

To disble AutoSave you need to comment out the function wp_enqueue_script(‘autosave’); from the following file by adding “//” before them. Comment the line in the following files – /wp-admin/post.php  /wp-admin/page.php  /wp-admin/post-new.php  /wp-admin/page-new.php

After commenting the lines should look like – //wp_enqueue_script(‘autosave’);

Upload these files back and you will have solved the problem. Remember that since SutoSave is disabled you must manually save changes while writing a post.

I didn’t notice the CPU usage while using Opera because Opera is better than Firefox at managing memory and CPU. Also the overall perfomance of the Opera was not affected by the presence of the post page. But in FireFox when the page ws open I couldn’t scroll through any of the pages or couldn’t switch tabs by cliking on them.

I found all these information from Richard Timothy’s blog. Thanks Thimothy .