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Display serial number of your Windows XP, or 2003 install
Sometimes Windows gets so cloged up you just have to call it quits and reformat the entire hard drive. Starting from scratch is nice since you know all of the baddy spyware, trojans, and rootkits are not going to lurk in the background and come back to haunt you a few days later.
The biggest problem I have when I do this is I can never find the OEM sticker on the machine. If you have never seen one, these OEM stickers are required by Microsoft to be put on a machine when windows is installed at the factory - that way you will always have a serial number when you reload the machine. More often than not, the user tears it off or it is a white box special.
There is a great utility with a cool name - The Magic Jelly Bean Key Finder
It works on XP, and 2003. It will quickly find and display the current serial number for the system it is run on.
Just launch the application and it will instantly show you your serial number:
Now, my serial is blured out for obvious reasons.
Just another one of those apps to add to your toolbox
Download it from http://www.magicaljellybean.com/
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Fix the broken search feature in Windows XP & 2003
Quietly, Microsoft changed the way its search feature within windows works. In windows 95, 98, ME, NT and 2000 you could search for text within any file on the system. Without notice XP, and 2003 now only search 'registered' file types. There are only a handful of these types.
Microsoft does not make it clear they are only searching certain file extensions. It can really throw you off the track when you are looking for a certain string within a file.
For example. If I was looking for the string 'purchase' within all files that matched *.* windows would skip all file extensions that it does not recognize.
A simple registry change can be made to bring XP, and 2003 search back the way it was:
Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE:
SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions
Set the above value to 1
It will treat unknown extensions as text files. After a reboot the change will take effect.
Now when you search for a string within the files that match the wildcard of *.* it will actually search all files it finds - Imagine that!
Posted By: Steve Wiseman on Tuesday, April 11, 2006
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