Many a time, it becomes necessary for us to write protect our USB flash drive so as to protect it from viruses and other malware programs. Because flash drives are so popular and most widely used to move data between computers, they are the prime target for attackers as a means to get infections spread around the computer world. Also, since USB drive is not a Read-Only Memory (ROM), the data inside it can easily be modified or deleted by malware programs.

But unfortunately, most of the new flash drives do not come with a write-protect feature as the manufacturers wish to cut down the cost of production. Hence, the only way to write-protect your USB flash drives is to enable this feature on your own computer.

This can be done by adding a small entry to the Windows registry which acts as a switch that can be enabled to make use of the write protection or disabled to allow write access. Just follow these steps:

1. Open the Registry Editor (Open the “Run” dialog box, type regedit and hit “Enter”).

2. Navigate to the following Registry key:

 3. Create a New Key named as StorageDevicePolicies. To do this right-click on Control, and click on New->Key and name it as StorageDevicePolicies.

4. Now right-click on  StorageDevicePolicies and create a New->DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it as WriteProtect.

5. Double-click on WriteProtect and set the Value data to 1.

Now the right-protection for USB drives is enabled on your computer (no restart required) and thus it would not be possible for anyone or any program to add/delete the contents from your USB flash drive. Any attempt to copy or download the files onto the USB drive will result in the following error message being displayed.

To revert and remove the write-protection, all you need to do is just change the Value data for WriteProtect (Step-5) from 1 back to 0. Now write access to all the USB devices is re-enabled.

Sometimes it may seem difficult to remember and follow the above mentioned steps each time you want to enable/disable the write protection. Hence as an alternative way, there are many tools available to automatically enable/disable the write-protection feature. One of my favorite tool is USB Write Protect by Naresh Manadhar. Using this tool you can limit write access to your USB drives with just a click of a button. You can download this tool from the following link:

1. The image you need to set as the background should be a .jpg file and it’s size should not exceed 245KB.

2. The image resolution can be anything of your choice. However I prefer 1440 x 900 or 1024 x 768. You can use any of the photo editing software such as Photoshop to compress and set the resolution for your image. Once you’re done, save this image as backgroundDefault.jpg.

3. You will need to copy this image to

You will need to create that path if it does not already exist on your computer.

4. Now open the Registry Editor (Start -> Run -> Type regedit) and navigate to the following key

If Background does not exist rightclick LogonUI, select New and then Key, and then name it Background. Now locate OEMBackground (listed on the right side). If it does not exist, right-click Background and select New and then DWORD and name it OEMBackground.

5. Double-click on OEMBackground and set the Value Data to 1.

6. Now log-off to see the new logon screen background. If you would like to revert back to the default background, just set the Value Data back to 0.

I hope you like this trick. Just try out and give your feedback!

Ever wondered how to alter the Windows Product ID?

It is possible to alter the Windows Product ID and change it to what ever you like. For example, you can change the Product ID and put your nickname in place of the formal Product ID displayed by the Operating System. This hack is too easy and can be done within minutes. The screenshot showing the altered Product ID is given below

Win 7 PC showing Original PID

Windows 7 PC showing Altered PID

As you can see from the above screenshot it is simple and easy to make your Windows display what ever you want in the place of the real Product ID. Here is a step-by-step procedure to alter your Windows Product ID.

1. Goto Start->Run and type the following in the Run dialog box

2. After you open the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key

3. On the right hand side, you can see an entry by name ProductID listed under the heading Name.

4. Double-Click on ProductID, a dialog box will pop-up showing your Windows PID. Now you can delete the original PID and enter anything of your choice.

5. Once you are done, just click on OK and close the Registry Editor. Now you can see the altered Product ID in the Windows Properties window.

I hope you like this trick. Pass your comments. Cheers!

This article explains how to inspect and repair registry errors in your Windows PC, so as to improve it’s overall performance. If you are a Windows user, then you will most probably be aware of the fact that the Windows registry gets corrupted over time resulting in an overall decreased performance of your computer.

At times, registry errors can also make your PC to freeze down and hang up every now and then causing a serious annoyance to the user. At this point, the registry needs a serious repair to bring your PC back to it’s life. Well, before I tell you how to repair the registry, lets see what causes the registry to get corrupted.

Registry errors may occur due to installing too many applications/softwares from time to time without verifying the publishers. This may create invalid entries in the registry hive leading to errors. With the Internet boom and the era of freeware with free downloads, people often install programs from untrusted sources which results in a serious damage to the registry. Since the registry is a crucial component of the Windows operating system, damage to this registry can cause the system performance to drop down significantly.

How to Repair the Registry?

The best and the easiest way to repair your registry is by using a Registry Repair Tool (Registry Cleaner). A Registry Cleaner will automatically scan the registry of your PC to find invalid entries and will repair them by removing the errors with in no time. A registry cleaner is the simple and safest solution to repair registry and bring your PC back to it’s life without the need to re-install the Windows.

Which Registry Cleaner is the Best?

Well, today there exists hundreds of Registry repair tools on the market and as a result, people often get confused at which one to go far. Hence, when it comes to the choice of Registry repair tool, we must be very selective since not all of them are the same.

On the Internet, there exists many such tools which are simply useless and doesn’t apply any significant fixes to the Windows registry. After trying many such useless products on my PC, I finally found one good product which actually made a magic to my PC performance. It is:

PC Health Advisor (TESTED)

PC Health Advisor is one of the best and award winning registry cleaner tool that repairs registry to avoid PC errors such as unwanted shutdown, freezing, crashing and more. PC Health Advisor will

• Repair registry and increases your PC performance by upto 70%
• Repair registry to fix DLL errors and invalid shortcuts
• Free up virtual memory to avoid error messages
• Performs Defragmentation and Compression of the registry
• Repair registry to fix blue screen errors, system crashes, startup errors and more…

PC Health Advisor is not just a Registry cleaner, rather it is a complete Optimization Toolkit for your PC. Visit PC Health Advisor Homepage for more information on this program.

Can I Manually Repair the Registry?

Windows registry has a very complex structure with hundreds of thousands of entries embedded in it. A corrupt registry may contain thousands of invalid entries and errors in it and hence it is impractical and almost impossible to manually inspect, find and repair those errors. Also manual registry repair involves serious risk and can lead to a total system breakdown if done improperly. Except you are a highly experienced Windows user or a Windows expert, users are not encouraged to tamper with the registry.

Hence, using a registry repair tool is the safest and easiest way to repair the registry and improve the overall performance of your PC. Registry repair tools will not only repair the registry but also maintains it’s health in a good condition so as to avoid any future damage to it. It is recommended that you periodically (daily or weekly) perform registry scans using these tools to repair the errors as and when they come up so that, you can keep your PC’s health at it’s best. Just repairing the Windows registry can make your PC blazing fast like never before!

1. Go to Start->Run, type regedit and hit ENTER

2. Navigate to the following key in the registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\policies\system

On the right side pane look for “legalnoticecaption“, double click on it and enter the desired Legal Notice Caption.

3. Next below this look for “legalnoticetext” and enter the desired Legal Notice Text. The legal notice text can be up to a page in it’s size so that it can include a set of do’s and dont’s for your computer.

4. After you do this just restart your computer and upon the next startup you can see the legal notice information for your computer. This trick works on both XP and Vista. You can also try it on Windows 7 and should work with no problems.

Hope you like this post. Pass your comments.

This hack allows you to run a program at startup only once. This hack also avoids the need of startup folder and the autorun is configured in the registry itself. In this hack the specified program runs only once at startup (Right after the first boot of configuration) and will not continue to run for the subsequent startups. Here’s the hack. If you need to run the program at startup everytime then refer the followint link: Run Program At Startup Without Using Startup Folder

1. Goto Start->Run.

2.Type “regedit” (without quotes) in the run dialogue box.

3. In the registry editor navigate to

4. Create the key Runonce

(The [Runonce] Key you create will remain in the registry for use with a new string value)

5. Now create the following entries for Runonce key

6. Exit the Registry and Reboot.

This hack allows you to change the title bar from Windows Media Player to Windows Media Player provided by <Yourname>. So if you enter the text [GoHacking.Com], it would read: Windows Media Player provided by GoHacking.Com

1. Goto Start->Run.

2. Type “regedit” (without quotes) in the run dialogue box .

3. In the registry editor navigate to

4. Create the Key [WindowsMediaPlayer].

Modify/Create the Value Name [TitleBar] according to the Value Data listed below.

5. Exit the Registry editor and reboot.

This hack allows you to change the text on the Internet Explorer title bar. The default text or title is “Windows Internet Explorer”. You can change this title text to your own choice.

1. Goto Run (Press Win key+R)

2. Type “regedit” (without quotes) in the run dialogue box .

3. In the registry editor navigate to

4. Modify/Create the Value Name [Window Title] according to the Value Data listed below.

5. Exit the Registry and Reboot.