Here on How in the TECH I do a fair bit of registry tips that uncover additional functionality or features of Windows. They all start the same, from your Start Menu search and execute regedit, traverse the registry tree, and create the key/change the value in question. Clearly, it’s a very point and click driven process – so what if you wished to replicate a change across a network of computers? You are probably interested in learning how to manipulate the Windows Registry via the command line, which can then be integrated into batch files and initiated from your users network login scripts.

The command line program is logically abbreviated as reg and can be used to add and delete or export and import registry keys.

Executing reg /? uncovers all the available options with their appropriate syntax.

To add a new key Test under  HKEY_Local_Machine\Software the syntax is as straight forward as it comes.

reg add HKLM\Software\Test

Logically, deletion is handled the same way; merely swapping add for delete

reg delete HKLM\Software\Test

Expanding, to modify values within keys requires a few more parameters on the command line. After creating the above key Test under HKLM/Software, let’s create a value TestValue with of type DWORD and data 1.

reg add HKLM\Software\Test /v TestValue /t REG_DWORD /d 1

All of the above commands can also be projected onto remote computers, assuming you have the same login credentials on both systems – just prepend \\computer_name to the key location.

reg add \\remote_computer\\HKLM\Software\Test

Like setting jumpers on peripherals before plug and play came along, deciphering BIOS diagnostic beep codes is a dying skill. Today we see PCs with BIOSes that can relay the problem via voice synthesis. However, it was only a short few years ago where all a PC enthusiast had to go by where beep codes.

Everyone one is familiar with the singular beep when you turn on your PC and before the operating system loads – it’s the audible noise of success. There are other beep codes that vary in auditory length, not unlike morse code. Through a combination of short and long beeps you are able to determine which component is causing you grief. It’s a rather clever approach at the time and it would be even more beneficial if the various BIOS manufacturers had agreed on a single nomenclature. Thankfully, through mergers and acquisitions, the number of manufacturers has dwindled to just a small handful but the beep code system is used so infrequently, you may still have trouble recalling them all.

Beep Codes Viewer by Rizone is a portable free Windows application that outlines all the beep code combinations and their resulting meaning in tabular format. The software displays information for the AMI, Award, Phoenix, and IBM BIOS systems – which will cover probably 95% of the systems in question. In addition to explaining what the beeps mean it also suggests a few troubleshooting procedures for the problem – though since a beep code is generally a signal of some physical problem, fixing it will involve opening up the computer which isn’t something everyone is comfortable yet.

Beep Codes Viewer is a handy utility to have on your PC repair and troubleshoot DVD or thumb drive.

Download Beep Codes Viewer

Windows, by default, stores your User Profile directory on the drive Windows is installed on. In Vista and 7, the directory is typically c:\Users while XP’s is found at c:\Documents and Settings. The user profile contains a wide array of data; from local mail folders, to application settings and preferences, to Documents and Music, and even random temporary Internet cache files. It’s not hard to see a lot of things make their home in your user profile. When hard drive space was a major concern, you could often reclaim gigabytes of space by the cruft that wasn’t necessary any longer just be poking around in this folder; assuming you knew what and where to look.

Today, hard drive sizes have grown to ridiculous proportions so the issue has somewhat dissipated – except for the recent convergence towards solid-state drives or SSD. While SSD is insanely fast compared to traditional hard drives, it comes with a great limitation. The sizes available while still remaining somewhat economical to the consumer is constraining. Because of this, it may make sense to relocate the location of your user profile. It’s simple enough to move your Documents or Videos – but as you’ve seen above, it’s only a part of the solution and even though it could represent a large percentage of the space, it ignores another drawback to solid-state – you only have so many writes to the device before failure.

At this point you have two options.

The user profile directory is defined in the Windows Registry under the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ ProfileList . You can launch the Registry Editor from Start->Run and typing regedit.exe. The registry editor can be intimidating for inexperienced users, so it’s something you want to  be careful in fooling with.

Otherwise, if the registry editing has you concerned, Profile Relocator is a free application that can facilitate the changes for you – without requiring you to get your hands dirty.

Unfortunately for us, neither process provides an easy way to physically move your existing profile over to the new location. For the most part, it’s as simple as copying and pasting from the old to the new directory and rebooting. However my recommendation is to use an application like Profile Relocator after a fresh install, typically after your brand new SSD purchase, as all newly created profiles will reside automatically in the new location – saving you the effort of moving files yourself.

Download Profile Relocator

If you find yourself having to support more than a handful of computers you quite likely struggle in keeping all the variations of hardware straight. When the symptoms and troubleshooting of a problem points to failing system memory – how easily can you recall whether the memory type is DDR2 or DDR3? For me it’s quite a challenge – it’s not something Windows publishes very well. Many years ago, I could tell you what memory type corresponded to what motherboard chipset or processor. I knew the front-side bus speed and from that, the speed of the memory necessary. Today, and it’s probably just a sign of being older and a different alignment of professional priorities, it’s a disaster to keep organized in my head.

Speccy is a handy Windows utility that can uncover all the system specifications of a running PC by the same developers of CCleaner, Piriform. Most know that a right-click on My Computer will display things such as the processor speed or amount of memory installed – but it is of extremely limited use for most situations.  Short of tearing open the computer case, and that’s assuming you are even local to the computer in question, Speccy is the simplest way to unearth the details of the hardware installed.

Initial execution provides a quick summary of the PC.

The details provided by Speccy are really shown when you dig a bit deeper. Here I can see things such as the manufacturer, part number, serial number, and even the current frequency.

Additionally, Speccy is able to display other tidbits such as the SMART information from your hard drive and system temperatures.

Finally, Speccy is completely free and if that wasn’t enticing enough the software is portable meaning it requires no installation – a perfect program that belongs on everyone’s emergency repair USB memory stick.

Download Speccy

The modern world, by and large, are quite conscious of energy consumption and some of the wastefulness that exists. Regardless of which side of the go green initiative you stand, it’s hard to argue against their not existing at least some unnecessary inefficiencies or waste.

A potential source of an increased electricity consumption is the abundance of computers in the house; many households have more than one computer – a concept rather foreign even just a few years ago. While all modern PCs have the capability of slipping into a low-power consumption state, like stand-by or hibernation, not everyone does.

For some, the function of their computer does not allow for any time offline – perhaps a print or file server as an example. Still others may have background tasks that occur while they are away from the computer – tasks that otherwise would interfere with the performance of their computer. It’s quite commonplace to perform disk defrags, full anti-virus scans, or backups when the PC isn’t actively being used; such as throughout the night.

If you are energy conscious you may be at a crossroads here as not all tasks can awake a computer from stand-by. While utilizing Task Scheduler in Windows, it is possible to wake the PC it’s not at all user-friendly. Instead, I suggest you look at WakeUpOnStandBy – which does just as the name suggests. If their exists a few tasks that need to take place routinely the application can be configured on a schedule to execute those tasks, even if the PC is sleeping. After completion, WakeUpOnStandBy can then put the PC back into it’s dream state.

With WakeUpOnStandBy I can have my PC wake-up in the early morning and download all the podcasts recently released, that way they are ready to be sync to my portable device first thing in the morning. What are you using it for?

Download WakeUpOnStandBy

No matter what your level of experience is, chances are you’ve been tasked to provide PC support for a friend or family member. If you are lucky, the troubled friend is just down the street, as problems are easier to knock out when you can touch the computer. However, this isn’t always the case and having to provide remote support, generally over the phone, is frustrating and stressful for both parties. Because of this, Microsoft provides a tool to aid in these types of situations – Windows Remote Assistance. You probably have never heard of this feature and you may even be more surprised to learn it was first introduced way back in Windows XP! The entire process got a spit-shine in Vista/7 and I have to say the experience is rather slick.

To get started, search for remote assist from the Windows Start Menu search; this will launch the Windows Remote Assistance wizard.

Choose Invite someone you trust to help you.

Remote Assistance will now create an invitation file but first you must choose the delivery method for your request – generally via email is the easiest and that is what I suggest. If you use a webmail service for your email you must first save the invitation as a file and then send it as an email attachment. Seems straightforward enough right?

With the invitation created and delivered Remote Assistance will now launch and await an incoming connection request. For security purposes, the whole session is protected by a randomly generated password that is required in order to connect to your PC.

If you happen to be the generous user providing the support portion of Remote Assistance your responsibility is kick-started by simply double-clicking the received invitation file and supplying the correct connection password. If successful, the application window will open and you will see the troubled user’s desktop, as if you were sitting there in person, helping over their shoulder.

Remote Assistance is an excellent support tool that can greatly ease the frustration of helping less savvy PC users blindly over the telephone.

We all know we should backup our system and files regularly in order to avoid any disastrous results yet a small minority of us actually do. The cliched saying that they are two types of computer users, those that backup and those that never lost anything is blunt and to the point – it’s only a matter of time before you transition from one class of users to another. The painful irony to it all is the built-in backup utilities in Windows were generally poor – were because in Windows 7, Microsoft has finally revamped the entire process.

The backup process is kick-started by searching for backup off the Windows 7 Start Menu Search and choosing Backup and Restore.

Select Set up backup.

The first real decision is selecting where you wish your backups to be saved; they can reside on a second hard drive, a removable device, or even on a network share.

Logically, we must now decide what files should be included in the backup set. I generally appreciate absolute control over processes so I would tend to select the files manually but Windows can choose logical folders itself.

Check any and all folders or files to be backed up.

Review your settings and selections – take note of the ability to automate the backup routine by defining a schedule for the task to follow. The usefulness of backups is greatly diminished if they are not current!

If you are happy with everything click Save settings and run backup.

While Microsoft’s built-in Backup and Restore feature isn’t the Rolls Royce of backup applications – I’d like to see the notion of incremental or differential based backups for example – it is more than enough, and most importantly, simple enough to convince users on the importance of backups.

Microsoft has gotten immensely better at aiding users in keeping their system drivers current. Through Windows Update, Microsoft often pushes out updated video or printer drivers for devices detected on your computer. This one-stop shop is quite handy and chips away at the level of geekery needed to keep a system performing optimally. Unfortunately for many, not all vendors drivers are available through Windows Update. For these companies you must visit their website directly, search and locate your piece of hardware, then download and install the latest driver release – that is if you even remember to check for newer drivers! Certainly the adage of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it applies to driver upgrades – but that doesn’t stop a lot of us.

Device Doctor is a free Windows application that can scan the current computer and then display information and download links applicable to the hardware detected. If Device Doctor finds a later iteration of your video card drivers, it provides a mechanism to download the latest immediately. In testing, the software found updates for my network card, sound card, and monitor. Generally speaking, these are all relatively safe to update but you should be warned that other devices can prove to be more troublesome to update than they are worth – chipset drivers for example.

Some may hasten to point out that a free utility such as Device Doctor is quite ironic in that users that have the knowledge and gumption to update their drivers don’t require the software itself. I would suggest otherwise, Device Doctor is an excellent way to supplement the process of maintaining a stable system. Running Device Doctor, perusing the results, and then deciding whether the upgrade is necessary is quite a bit easier than going to each individual manufacturers website and ascertaining whether an update is available.

Download Device Doctor

To be fair, blue screens occur rather infrequent compared to just a few years back. Windows, as a platform, has become quite stable and mature irregardless of the negative opinions that still linger. The reality is, Windows XP melded into a solid operating system – so much so that Microsoft is having a heck of a time convincing consumers and businesses alike to abandon the release and upgrade. Vista and 7 are built off much of that same solid foundation and by and large, share the same functional stability. However, blue screens do still occur and it remains just as unsettling as always.

Briefly, blue screen of death is an error screen that Windows throws when it encounters a critical error that it is unable to cope with – the computer crashes and must be restarted. During the earlier days of Windows, Microsoft was just a guilty of crashing the system as anything else. However, today blue screens are rarely a direct result of poor Microsoft coding. Rather, the errors are generally the result of malfunctioning hardware, either physically or through their driver layer. Applications are rarely able to bring the entire system down – a shift from the Windows 95 days for example.

Typically there are two courses of action should you receive the blue screen; you either reboot and pretend nothing happened (while hoping it’s just a fluke) or you take the STOP ERROR and throw it into Google and work from the results. Today I’m showing you a third option: BlueScreenView from the guys at Nirsoft.

BlueScreenView is a free and portable Windows application that can greatly aid in the debugging of what exactly caused the error. It’s not magical and what it will provide will still require a bit of elbow grease on your part but it is still an essential piece of software for any enthusiast. BlueScreenView can analyze the mini-memory dumps that are saved at the time of the crash. What makes the software shine is it’s ability to correlate the affected memory address with the faulting driver or module. Version and vendor information is also displayed for the possibly offending driver. Lastly, BlueScreenView isn’t limited to analyzing dumps of the local computer – it can diagnose dumps across the local network, assuming appropriate access is available.

BlueScreenView isn’t a miracle worker but it can be used to work miracles.

Windows keeps track of every device that is connected to the system, even when the device hasn’t been seen in months. Every USB thumbdrive is uniquely identified and recorded in the bowels of Windows – the Windows registry. To the user, this is what allows Windows to always assign the same drive letter to an external storage system, for example. Typically, this indefinite tracking of devices rarely presents a problem but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason to keep it clean. It may come in handy if your trying to cover your tracks after corporate espionage.

As iterated above, all this information is stored in the Windows Registry, specifically in the keys:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\CPC\Volume

While you can get your fingers dirty and clean up everything manually, there is a free utility named Drive Cleanup that will nuke all non present Storage Volumes, Disk, CDROM, Floppy USB drives. Drive Cleanup is tiny at just 20KB and is executed from an admin-rights Command Prompt.

Drive Cleanup can be controlled by a number of command line parameters that determine which types of devices you wish to purge. If launched directly without any flags, it does it’s job fully so be warned of that. Adding the -t option will describe exactly what Drive Cleanup will perform without actually doing it.

Now don’t you have some cleanup to do?