A marginally useful article on how to get around the single-user limitation using WinXP and Remote Desktop:

http://sig9.com/articles/concurrent-remote-desktop

*Note: You can't enable fast user switching if the system is on a domain.

This is a sample command line for adding an SVN server, but you should be able to re-use these options to create anything you need:

C:\svn\repository>sc create svnserver binpath= "c:\svn\bin\svnserve.exe --service -r c:\svn\repository" displayname= "Subversion" depend= Tcpip start= auto
[SC] CreateService SUCCESS

You can easily create an .ico file (e.g. a favicon.ico file for your website) with the ImageMagick convert program:

$ convert myicon.png favicon.ico

To edit the programs that run on startup of a Windows 9X / XP installation (this doesn't work on Windows 2000), go to Start -> Run and run msconfig. Click on the Startup tab and check or uncheck items to add or remove them from your startup sequence.

Inserting a control character in vi(m) on Linux is a simple case of pressing Ctrl+V and then pressing your control character. Windows insists on pasting with a Ctrl+V, so you do the following:

test

Normally I wouldn't create a tip to tout a bit of software, but this one is too good to pass up. It's a tiny clipboard history manager named ClipX. Instead of alt-tabbing back and forth between windows copying bits and pasting them you can copy everything you need and then alt-tab over and ctrl+shift+v and hit the number of the entry you want to paste.

Link: http://www.bluemars.org/clipx/

To log into MySQL using the CLI in windows:

(in the mysql\bin directory)
c:\mysql\bin> mysql --user=<user> --pass=<pass> --port=3306

There are a bunch of great switches for Outlook that you can use to automate some of your Windows mailing experience:

http://www.techgalaxy.net/Docs/Exchange/OL2003_switches.htm

Thanks Tucker for this URL!

Running Windows Vista and can't find the Run command?

• Right-click Start and select Properties
• Select the Start Menu tab and choose Customize
• Scroll down and check the Run command
• Click OK and then Apply

That's it! Run should now appear on your Start Menu.

If AOL still remains on your computer after removing each of its entries from Add or Remove Programs in XP's Control Panel, then follow these steps to remove in manually:

1. Reboot your computer into Safe Mode by repeatedly pressing F8 before the Windows splash screen and log-in
2. Open My Computer and double-click your home drive, which most likely C:
3. From Explorer, select Tools, then Folder Options, then View, and check the bubble for "Show Hidden Files and Folders"
4. Open the Program Files directory and delete any folders named AOL
5. From there, open the Common Files directory and delete any folders named AOL
6. Navigate back to the root of your home drive and open the Documents and Settings directory
7. In each user's folder, including the one for All Users, open the hidden Application Data directory and delete any files named AOL
8. In each user's folder, including the one for All Users, open the hidden Local Settings folder and delete any files named AOL from the Application Data directory stored there
9. Open the Registry Editor by clicking Start, Run, typing "regedit" without the quotes, and clicking OK
10. Open the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive, then the sub folder for Software, and delete any keys named AOL
11. Open the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive, then the sub folder for Software, and delete any keys named AOL
12. Reboot your machine and cross your fingers

If you need to make sure your password is working for a particular domain, try running a program as that domain\username.

1. Right-click on the short-cut and choose 'Run As...'
2. Change the radio button to 'The following user:'
3. Enter the domain\username & password.

If the app runs, your auth pair works.

Note: If you need to enable 'Run As' on your system, this Microsoft article will be helpful.

I had 232,000 small text files to delete and they were going to take upward of 50 minutes to push them to the recycle bin by selecting them all and smacking the delete key. I canceled it and tried to shift-delete (delete the files, don't put them in the recycle bin). They were gone in 2-3 seconds.

Warning: When you delete files like this they're gone. The only way to get them back is to run an undelete utility.

This .cmd (or .bat) script stops system clock on WinNT (=2000/XP/Vista):

:a
@echo %time%|time>nul&&goto a

Requires at least Power User.

If you want to use it for fun, run it via Task Scheduler (``at time command``) to hide cmd window.

A way to test whether your domain login credentials are working is via net use on the commandline like so:

c:\> net use \\<computername>\IPC$ /user:<domain>/<username> *

The * forces it to ask for your password. Otherwise, you can replace * with your password to do it all at once. Also, net use supports smartcard authentication, etc.

Thanks to Scott Morrison (a.k.a. "Plaid") for the tip!

This file is essentially the same as the UNIX hosts file:

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

My first foray into Windows PowerShell hasn't been too painful. It looks a lot like shell scripting and a bit like SQL with the 'where' cmdlets:

PS C:\WINDOWS> ps | where {$_.handles -ge 200 -and $_.name -ne 'svchost'} | sort -Descending handles

Handles  NPM(K)    PM(K)      WS(K) VM(M)   CPU(s)     Id ProcessName
-------  ------    -----      ----- -----   ------     -- -----------
   4575      70   147404      87676   642   783.97  10888 OUTLOOK
   2452       3     2720       3984    35     4.20    700 LVPrcSrv
   1670      47    67200      40188   207    59.39   5964 iTunes
   1659      13   150800      58608  1245    44.03   8720 javaw
...

Win-key is a button with small flag on your keyboard. Single press (opens Start menu) is equivalent to Ctrl+Esc press. Win+E launches Explorer. Win+R shows Run dialog. Win+U shows Accessibility settings dialog. Win+L is equivalent to Change User button (if enabled) or Lock Screen. Win+D minimizes all windows when pressed first and restores them when pressed another time. Win+F opens Explorer with Find dialog (same does F3 when no windows are shown). Win+B deselects all windows (transfers focus to desktop) Win+M only minimizes all windows.

Many of these shortcuts also work in Linux (KDE).

Bonus: pressing Ctrl+ScrollLock leads to BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) on some computers (It demands on some registry value). :)