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Category: Windows XP
If your like me and start up a lot of applications that do not have shortcuts in your start menu or on your desktop you may find this tip useful.
In both Vista & XP you can configure Application Paths. Lets say as an example that I want to start notepad.exe by just typing in note.exe or even npd.exe I can edit the registry to make it allow this. This also is handy if you have some programs that you use often but are not in your Start Menu or Desktop such as PuTTy.
What you need to do is open up regedit with Administrative privileges. The location you need to navigate to is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths
If I highlight App Paths in the left pane and right click in the right pane and select New -> Key I can type in what I want to type to run the application. In this case I’ll use npd.exe. Once the key is created all that is needed is to edit the Default value with the location and name of the exe, so c:\windows\notepad.exe. Now whenever I type npd.exe into the search box on Vista or the Run box on XP it will bring up Notepad for me.
Warning: Before changing any aspect of your registry it is a good idea to do a full backup of your registry in case anything goes wrong.
A quick update: An open source app has been created to do this for you http://sourceforge.net/projects/apppaths/
In this article I will be going over a method to delete an undeletable file that doesn’t require safe mode or killbox. The only requirement for it is that you are using Windows XP Professional/Corporate with Simple File Sharing turned off.
First of all find the undeletable file and right click on the file and click Properties on the menu that appears. When the properties load up click on the “Security” tab at the top of the file properties window. You should see something similar to this:
Click the “Advanced” button at the bottom of the properties window and then uncheck the box “Inherit from parent the permission entries that apply to child objects. Include these with entries explicitly defined here.”. A messagebox will appear warning you about unchecking it and giving you three options: Copy, Remove and Cancel. Select “Remove”.
This will remove all the permissions to the file so if you just finished now nothing would be able to access the file, but it would also mean we can’t delete it so we need to add permissions in for us to delete it.
Click on the “Add” button which will bring up a dialog box “Select User or Group” click on Advanced down the bottom and then “Find Now” on the right hand side. This will list all the users and groups in your system. Find and select your user then click “OK”. It will return to the “Select User or Group” dialog and you can just click “OK” here again.
Now for the permissions. First click on the checkbox under Deny for “Full Control”. This will block all access of. Then click the Allow checkbox for “Delete”. It should look like this:
Click “OK” if it the checkboxes are as in the image, and keep clicking OK until the file properties window is gone. Now nothing in your system can run the file including SYSTEM itself. Heres a picture of what happens if you try to run it:
Now that you’ve blocked it from being executed at all you can either use Task Manager or Process Explorer to end the program. If it’s spyware and is one of the several around these days that use Winlogon you will need to restart your computer to stop it. Otherwise if its a dll file you can use Process Explorer to find what application is using the dll file and provided its not a required windows system exe you can end the task in process explorer and it won’t be able to open the file again allowing you to delete it.
Please post any comments or suggestions.
