How to Use Symlinks in Windows

This is a nice short tutorial on how to create symbolic links in Windows.

We've found that symlinks are incredibly useful, and use them all the time. However, you can get into trouble using symlinks if you aren't careful. It's even possible to permanently damage your filesystem. The symlink is a powerful tool, and should be used carefully. When you're ready to learn, click to the next page.

Symlinks work best in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (OSX also includes symlinks, but we'll talk about them later). While they're lightly supported in Windows XP, they aren't quite as transparent to apps as in the later OSes, and we haven't tested them in XP, so your mileage may vary.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

Lifehacker's list of the five best startup management tools

Use these tools to optimize your Windows startup routine.

You boot up your computer and you wait, and wait... and wait, as all sorts of programs, helper apps, widgets, and remnants of forgotten installations load. Grab one of these five popular startup managers and beat back the startup clutter.

• Link

Use Relative Paths in Your Batch Files

If you haven't come across this already, this could be handy in the future. Simply use the special variable "%~dp0" without the quotes to refer to the current path where the batch file is located. This is different from using "." or "%CD%", which refers to your current path, i.e. the location that you are calling the batch file from.

For example, say you have this batch file in C:\TEMP\cur.bat

@echo off

echo Batch file location: %~dp0
echo Your current path: %CD%

If your prompt is currently sitting at C:\, and run the batch file with the command "TEMP\cur.bat", the output would look like this:

Batch file location: C:\Temp\
Your current path: C:\

• Link

How to Fix Missing Network, Clock, Volume, and Power System Icons on Vista

For some reason, after a reboot of Vista, some of my system icons were missing. I wasn't able to simply re-enable them in the notification area, but a registry edit found here fixed it:

The problematic issue can happen if Windows group policy disables the Clock, Network, Power (or Battery), and Volume icons, or the registry keys related to notification area icons have corrupted. To re-enable and restore the check boxes, and hence user able to restore these system icons on notification area, the policies have to be turned off, and the registry keys reset, cleared or fixed.

• Link

Forty-Three of The Best Free Windows Enhancements That You Should Know About

This post on Freewaregenius lists a number of useful Windows utilities that will make your Windows desktop even better. Check the rest of their site for other useful freeware programs.

When I first thought of this post, I more or less knew what programs I wanted to list here. The common theme that brought these together was that they were all really cool Windows “enhancements”: i.e. apps that tweak or change the way we work with files, folders, applications, or the system environment itself (or, apps that brings functionality to the Windows environment that could or should have been a built-in option in Windows ;)).

• Link

PicPick - all-in-one screen capture utility

Feature-filled screen capture utility with a number of other useful tools.

PicPick is an all-in-one software for software developers, graphic designers and home user.

...

It features a powerful capture tool, image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and etc. You can use all these tools freely.......

• Link (via freewaregenius)

DiskDigger

DiskDigger is a powerful undelete utility for Windows. It is capable of doing a deep scan and may be able to recover more files than simpler programs.

• Link (found via Lifehacker)

SendKeys under Vista

If you are maintaining a VB6 application or something similar under Vista, and the application makes use of the SendKeys call, you will likely get an exception, particularly if you are running the application within an IDE. This appears to be due to the security model in Vista.

In my case, I was able to rewrite the code to avoid the use of SendKeys. For other possible workarounds, see:

• vbAccelerator - SendKeys using the API
• Visual Studio Magazine Online: VB Statement Against Vista