Disk Usage Analyser(DUA) is a GNome ustility available for Linux. As the name indicates DUA scans the filesystem and finds out how much space is occupied by each directory and file. It then shows the usage along side a folder tree as a bar graph.When you click on a directory name, memory usage by each subfolder and files can be seen as an arc diagram on the right pane.

Left side shows a tree structure and bar graphs while the right pane shows the selected directories memory usage and its contents.

The Disk Usage Analyzer can be used to find out which directory or file uses how much space. It can be very helpful if you are trying to clean-up some Hard Disk Space from your PC. A similar tool for Windows is WinDIrStat at Sourceforge.net. but this one is a little less visaully attractive one. For KDE users KDirStat might be a solution.

A Contact form is an essential form for any website. But if you are on blogger or a free host you wont be able to create one on yourself even if you know PHP. Although if you are running WP you can get plugin’s specific for that application. I use cForms for my contact forms.

So if you just need a frills free contact form you can place on your website you may try Contactify . It offers free contact forms as well as spam protection (word verification) for the service. You just need to copy paste the JavaScript they provide after you register.

Here is my sample contact form : Contact me

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This is a small list of folders and files which were displayed by the method mentioned on the previous post in this series.

Hidden folders and files in C drive of Windows

Recycler : Recycler is aanother form of Recycle Bin. The Recycler folder contains a Recycle Bin for each user that logs on to the computer, sorted by their security identifier (SID).

System Volume Information : This contains the log files and backups of important System Files that are used for System Restore in Windows. (System Restore allows you to roll back all the settings and System Files to a previous time)

MSOCache : MSOCache is the folder that contains cached Office installation files. The folder is safe to delete.

NTLDR : This is the Windows NT boot loader. This is replaced by winload and Windows Boot Manager in Windows Vista

NTDETECT.COM : This file is used by Windows NT during startup to detect basic hardware required to boot the OS. This is used for Systems having BIOS.

Autoexec.bat : is most often used to set environment variables such as keyboard, soundcard, printer, and temporary file locations. It is also used to initiate low level system utilities.
These are the main folders and files in XP.

pagefile.sys : This is the actual pagefile, as the name indicates, of Windows. This file is used as virtual memory on your system.

hiberfil.sys : As the name indicates this is the file used for Hibernation. While hibernating the system stores all the content of the RAM to this file and shuts down. The next time you start your system the RAM contents are restored from this file.

On the last article we have discussed about seeing all the files that are part of Windows. Now lets see whether we can directly access these folders. As it turns out Windows by default will not grant you permission to the folder System Volume Information.

Thats because the folder contains important System Restore Point informations. So what do you do when you can’t touch your own property. well it is there that the Windows file sharing comes into play. It may sound a little weird at first but it is true. Lets see how.

Step 1 : Go to Tools>>Folder Options and select View tab.

Here scroll down to the bottom, you can see a check box named Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended), UNCHECK the box, click APPLY and OK. Now you are done with the settings part. So just take the Properties (ALT+ENTER) or RIGHT CLICK>>PROPERTIES) of System volume Information you can see a new tab named Security here. You can see that there will be a user named SYSTEM there and it has full permission (refer picture).

You need to add your User account as a user here and give full permission to your self in order to gain access. Click Add button and type in your user name and click Check Names your user name will be filled along with the computer name automatically.

Click OK. now just click on user name of yours and check Full control. Click Apply, OK and you are done.

You can get access to files that return an “Access Denied” error by using this method. are some Files and Folders which need some more work to open I’ll discuss it in next post. Till then try this and figure out what all were hidden from you.

This is the first among a series of posts on administering Windows . It starts with how to see the files and folders that were hidden by Windows for some reason. The series is actually inspired from the one done by Samanathon on Starting your Day with a fresh Computer. He did a good job and I am a regular visitor of Saman’s Blog.

A Super Hidden or a Protected Syetem File is a file that is normally not shown in the Windows Explorer even if you have enabled Show Hidden files (Tools>>Folder Options>>View>>Show Hidden Files and Folders) in Windows Explorer). This is because if some of these files are deleted or changed Windows may encounter a fatal error. Some of such folders are :

• C:\Windows\system32\dllcache
• System Volume Information – this is in all the drives
• Recycler – which is also in all the drives

So the first step involved is to make Windows show all the Super Hidden files. This can be done in two ways. One is directly through Windows Explorer Tools>>Folder Options and the other is through . So the former being easier and straight forward I’ll discuss it first.

1 . Through Windows Explorer

In Windows Explorer from Tools (Alt+T) menu take “View” tab in “Folder Options”.Make sure that you have selected Show Hidden Files and Folders and that you have unchecked Hide Protected operating system files options. Click Apply and then OK. This will enable you to see system files that had previously been hidden from your view.

2 . Through Registry Editing

This is a little more complex.(It is recommended that you read the following posts before you go into the registry. Try this if you know Registry editing. Make a backup of the registry before you proceed.( The Introduction to Windows Registry , Know how to backup your registry )

Follow these steps..

1 . Run ( WIN+R ) regedit and open registry editor.

Go to the Key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.

2 . In there you will see a Registry DWORD named ShowSuperHidden Make the value 1 instead of 0.

3 . Now all you need to do is to restart Windows Explorer. to do so you can goto Start>>Shut Down and Click Cancel while holding down SHIFT+CTRL+ALT. Now press ALT+CTRL+DEL this will bring Task Manager. Take File>>New Task and type explorer and press Enter.

Now if you go to any drive you can see the previously Hidden files there. Note that you will still need to enable Show Hidden files option in Folder Option.

The Disk Management object under Microsoft Management console can be used to Change Drive letter association, find unrecognized partitions or Mount a logical drive into a folder as in Linux.

If you want to prevent access to a drive, read 2nd tip in “Points to note” given after this post or read how to Prevent access to select drives using Registry.

“One of the key differences between Windows and Linux is the tree structure used in Linux for filesystem. In Linux everything is a hierarchical leaf or branch of the Root “\” directory. It was only recently that Linux started loading (mounting) drives other than the system drive automatically. (If you want to know more,  here is an article which will explain the Linux file hierarchy). To implement the Linux style tree structure in windows is pretty easy and is explained here.”

Open Disk Management object by typing “diskmgmt.msc” in START » RUN box or in Command Prompt. Here you can see all the Primary (Blue) and Logical (Green) partitions available on your system.

You will be able to see the Linux partitions too. Select a drive and Right Click on it. Here you can see an option “Change drive Letter and Paths“. Under this option you can remove a drives letter change it or mount a volume into a folder.

Screen shot of my H and G drives mounted in a folder “C:\Drives”

Consider reading The post on Microsoft Management Console if you want to know more.