Hands on: Add Tools tab to XP

The mystery of a new Windows tab solved and how to find files in XP

Being a frequent user of the XP System Configuration Utility (Msconfig.exe), I was rather surprised to see that it had suddenly sprouted another tab, entitled Tools, just like the Vista version.

This provides shortcuts to all sorts of commands that sometimes take a lot of rummaging through the Start Menu or obscure buttons in remote dialogues.

Among those on offer are the System Information tool, the Event Viewer, and Network Diagnostics. Other items here, such as System Properties and the Command Prompt, are more accessible, but it’s useful to have them all in one place.

It appears this came with XP Service Pack 3, but it is available for download separately. It doesn’t appear to be available via Windows Update, but you can download the Tool tab update here. The same page also shows you how to customise the list of tools, should you feel brave enough to dabble in some XML code.

If you fancy a third-party toolbox, try XPSyspad. This provides access to administrative and system tools, Control Panel items and special folders. It will recover Windows and Office product keys, and there’s even a process viewer. Despite the rather alarming domain name, we couldn’t find any trace of malware.

While on the subject of Msconfig, one irritation is that the window is not resizable. This is especially irksome if you are trying to see the command path or Registry location of an item in the Startup tab. Even if you widen a column by dragging the division between the column headers to the full width of the window, it often still isn’t wide enough. Purely by accident, however, I discovered that if you keep dragging the divider right out of the window, the column continues to widen past the available space. So, by judicious use of the horizontal scroll bar, you can see the entries in their entirety. This also works in other fixed-size windows in XP and Vista, such as the Defrag report.

A good hiding
There’s a cunning way of hiding files from others who might have access to your XP computer. You will need an NTFS partition, a file to act as a hiding place, a file to hide and a command prompt window. Assume the partition is C: and create a new folder therein named ‘Hideaway’. Copy to, or create a text file in Hideaway with a sentence or two in it. Let’s call this justtext.txt. Copy the file you want to hide into Hideaway. This can be any file, but for this experiment we’ll use the Windows Solitaire game at C:\Windows\System32\Sol.exe.

Now open a command prompt. Assuming this starts somewhere on the C: drive – it should default to your profile folder - type ‘CD\’, followed by Enter, then ‘CD Hideaway’. You should now be ‘in’ the new folder and see C:\Hideaway> as the command prompt. Now type the following line, then press the Enter key, making sure you get the spaces, punctuation and symbols exactly as shown:

type sol.exe > justtext.txt:sol.exe

Nothing will appear to happen. There will be no message in the command window – just a new prompt and the contents of the folder will look the same – a text file of the original size and the majestic 56KB of sol.exe. Only the modified date of the text file will have changed, and opening it will merely show the original text content. Just to show there’s nothing up your sleeve, you can delete the copy of sol.exe.

Now, at the same command prompt, type the following, again paying attention to the spaces and punctuation, and following it with the Enter key. It’s an oddity of the Start command that it needs the entire path to the file:

start c:\hideaway\justtext.txt:sol.exe

Lo and behold, a game of Solitaire will commence. You can hide any file type in any other file this way. So how does it work?

NTFS supports Alternative Data Streams (ADS). In other words, one file can be associated with more than one set of data, which is the trick we’ve just performed. If you read the NTFS entry in Wikipedia you’ll find more than you ever wanted to know.

Fat32 doesn’t support ADS, so if you try to copy a streamed file to, say, a Fat32 USB key, you may get a message telling you this, as well as revealing the name of the hidden file. Emailing a file as an attachment also strips out ADS, as does sending the file to a compressed (ZIP) folder.

Windows does use ADS for various obscure tricks of its own: some files have a Zone Identifier added in this way when you download them. It’s this that triggers the security warning when you open some downloaded files. If you clear the ‘Always ask…’ box, or click the Unblock button in the file’s property sheet, the ADS – and the warning – will be removed. Another example is ‘favicons’ – the icons you see next to sites in your IE Favourites folder are hidden in the Internet Shortcut files. This technique could be used to hide malware and ADS Spy.

Quick new folder
If you’re a fan of the Quick Launch toolbar, here’s a rather neat way to save yourself all of two clicks whenever you want to create a new folder. Right-click in the Quick Launch toolbar and select Open. This will show the Quick Launch folder buried deep within your profile. To create a new folder, right-click, New, Folder. You can leave the default name or choose another name. Close the Quick Launch folder and you’ll see a new Folder icon on the Quick Launch toolbar. If you Control & Drag this to any open folder (or the desktop) you’ll get a new folder in the target. This works with any Windows version that has a Quick Launch toolbar.

Although NTFS is far superior than Fat in terms of reliability, it does have one peculiar foible. Every time you access a file or right-click and view its properties, even if you don’t change or save it, this event is recorded as the ‘last access time’. This takes a little time and isn’t a great benefit to most users, unless they have backup programs that use the Remote Storage Service. You can turn this off in Vista and XP Pro by opening a command prompt and typing:

FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1

Replacing 1 with 0 turns it back on and:

FSUTIL behavior query disablelastaccess reports the current state.

Skip the welcome screen
If you have more than one user account in XP but always want to log on to a default account rather than use the welcome or log-in screen, you can do this with TweakUI - the free but unsupported Microsoft tool for XP. Vista has a hidden way of achieving the same end. In the Start, Run box, type NETPLWIZ. This opens the Advanced User Account dialogue. First select the user you want logged on automatically, then clear the ‘Users must enter a password...’ box. Click the Apply Button, then Enter and confirm the password for the chosen user. This doesn’t affect logging off or fast user switching in either operating system.

Gadget of the month
It has been a while since we had a bit of culture in this column, so here’s a Vista Sidebar gadget that brings you a masterpiece from the Rijksmuseum. Click on the painting to enlarge it, then ‘turn it over’ to read about the work and the artist.

If you’re using XP, you can also get a daily dose of Dutch mastery, as there’s a Yahoo Widget available. You’ll first need to download the Yahoo Widget Engine. Pay attention when you install this, as you need to clear two checkboxes if you don’t want Yahoo as your home page and default search engine. Having installed this, you’ll have a sidebar similar to the Google one mentioned in April’s column, except that it is not transparent and has some annoying Yahooish features, such as taking over your desktop in ‘Heads Up’ view.

Pssst!
In April’s column of PCW, I said that “deleting mail and emptying Deleted Items in Outlook 2007 actually increased the size of the message store (.dbx) file”. That should be .pst, not .dbx, which is the Outlook Express format. To perform a manual compress, go to File, Data File Management..., select ‘Personal Folders’, click ‘Settings’, then ‘Compact Now’.