A Geek’s Toolkit Supplement: Loaded USB Drive
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Being a geekette; that is a female computer designer/builder, as well as a blogger, I often get asked by my girlfriends (And some of their boyfriends too – Shh!) to pop over for a cuppa and attend to some problem they’re having with their computer. Most of these problems turn out to be software-related, so it’s always a good idea to come prepared – Although I can download most of what I need from the internet, sometimes their internet connection is not working for whatever reason, and more than one is on dial-up – Which can make downloading a program a 2-hour job in itself. To combat this I have a 1Gb USB flash drive with most of anything I might need on it; plus loads of links to anything useful on the internet itself that might be useful which I haven’t bothered to include because I probably won’t need it. |
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I pop the cord from which the USB stick hangs around my neck, and go to sort out their issues. I mainly have program installers in the form of .exe files on the USB drive: These are always useful. I also am able, in a worst-case scenario, to provide them with a temporary internet connection via my mobile device, for which I also carry a USB bluetooth dongle to plug into their computer on the rare occasions where it is necessary; such as an instance a year plus ago where a friend somehow lost the driver for their network interface device and was unable to communicate with their router as a result: I removed the old driver which was faulty but obviously didn’t have that particular driver on the USB device; so I set up a temporary internet connection via my mobile phone/bluetooth and downloaded a new driver, installed it – Target neutralised. The items I have on my USB drive are listed below: I’m sharing this with you as I’m assuming that as a geek you too get called out to similar situations; but being unable to fix it on the spot you end up taking their computer home, doing the work in your spare time, and returning their computer at a later date; which causes inconvenience to both parties. |
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The files I carry around on my USB device are as follows: 1. AVG Anti-virus.exe installer: You’d be mightily surprised how many people don’t run an anti-virus program! They might find that their computer slows down with use; and, not realising that it is caused by the registry getting cluttered with crap among other things, they start removing programs which they think are unnecessary in order to attempt to get the machine to speed up again, one of those “unnecessary” programs being their anti-virus program. 2.. A free anti-spyware program; such as AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy – For the reason stated above or that they didn’t even know what spyware was etc. The latest AVG antivirus has built-in spyware-protection, but that protection is not exhaustive, so it’s always a good idea to install extra spyware protection supplemental to that. 3. Free FTP clients in .exe installer format, such as WS-FTP-LE and FileZilla: They do occasionally come in handy. 4. Diagnostic programs; such as Core Temp.exe, Diskcheckup.exe… I know; rather than listing them all here I’ll show a picture of all the icons below and to save a lot of my time I’ll let you Google for them all. Obviously the folders are of my own making: Batch Files contains some useful batch files that I wrote or copied, Dragons Websites contains the URLs of the websites of the millionaire entrepreneurs from the BBC series “Dragon’s Den”, Glint(Program) contains the .exe file of the Glint System Monitor program, KK contains pictures which I use regarding Kustom Komputa; Suppliers, Parts, and Circuits contains URLs to suppliers of computer hardware components, plus a few electronic circuits, Web Shortcuts contains hundreds of various useful URLs, Websites contains copies of all my website files from some of my various sites, WP Plugins contains some useful WordPress plugins. Some of the files, such as DSC00* are photos from my mobile phone. aports.zip shouldn’t be on there as it’s a program that contains malware. OEM Exel and OEM INXP are folders containing branding files which I add to the OS to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer. The file “Kustom Komputa” is a copy of some files from my Kustom Komputa website. WP Themes contains WordPress themes. The Folder “Self-Installing Scr” contains a number of screensavers that I created and which automatically install on the computer upon activation of the .exe file thereof. (No malware involved.) The folder Paint.net contains the program Paint.net, and the folder “Sounds” contains some alternative Windows sound effects as spoken by the Daleks from the BBC TV series “Dr Who”. There are also a number of shortcuts which you don’t normally see on any Windows desktop. These shortcuts; such as “Sound Recorder“, “Volume Control“, “Command Prompt“, “Device Manager“, and “Sleep or Hibernate” are described on this site, including the method to create your very own icon(s).
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So that’s pretty much it: Carry this lot plus your own personal files around on a USB flash drive and you won’t go far wrong. HTH (‘Hope That Helps.) |
Portable Shortcuts
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At times I’m browsing through folders and remember that I need to make a backup to another internal HDD of a particular file or subfolder, or I discover a file in the wrong folder. Sometimes I snag a picture from somewhere and add it to the My Pictures folder. On my computer I store my main picture library on my D: drive; which is a relatively large drive on a separate disk all to itself. I built my computer myself: As you may have gathered if you’ve spent any length of time browsing my blog; I’m a computer-designer & builder as well as a blogger. This one I built for myself is from a range of a particular baseline design of computer I call INXPense. As an experiment and to use up an old hard-drive I had lying around I used a 40GB Hitachi HDD as the system drive (C:) and I try to keep as much as I can off that drive and store it on the other drive(s). |
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(The reason for this is that should the system drive fail on me (Which has happened to me at least once already with another computer.) I have a recent backup of C: which I keep up-to-date; and therefore it’s a simple matter of removing the old disk drive and installing a new one; restoring the twenty-something gigabyte backup to it, and I’m ready to go again within the hour; avoiding too much downtime. Previously on the other computer mentioned above I had a 320GB HDD split into 2 partitions of around 160GB each. The operating system stored all pictures by default to the My Pictures folder…etc. In a short time I had filled up over half of the system drive C: with mainly files that had little or nothing to do with the o/s and I’d backed up everything to an external hard drive – Hence when the internal HDD took a dive I had a backup of all the contents of both drives: So installed a new internal HDD (15 mins.), restored the contents of the C: drive backup onto it, (> 1 hour) then had to partition it ( 1 hour) and install the contents of the D: drive backup onto the newly-formed drive D: (> 1 hour). Altogether the machine was down for about 1/2 day which pissed me off no end. If it happens again I won’t have that problem. (I could have used RAID 1 instead; but that requires a second identical hard-disk and I just didn’t have the room in the case nor the SATA ports on the motherboard – and those PCIe RAID controller cards come in at nearly £20 ($35-39USD) cost each – Even the PCI RAID cards are almost £15 ($26-29USD) – And although I had all necessary components in stock I didn’t want to utilise resources unnecessarily.) |
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This is becoming a little long-whinded admittedly; but I’m getting there: – So you’ll appreciate that I don’t want everything I input accumulating on the relatively small C: drive or it’ll fill up fast. Every now and then I transfer a small accumulation of files, such as pictures, from where the operating system puts them by default – In this case the My Pictures folder, to the Pictures library on the D: drive. The immediately obvious way to do this would be to open the My Pictures folder, highlight an icon, click Edit>Select All, then cut everything, open the D: folder, browse to the Pictures folder which is in a folder called “Media” on D:, and paste. What a load of hassle! There’s a much easier way – I call it a “portable shortcut”: |
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Enabling hidden-folder viewing reveals a system-folder called “Send To” in %windir%Documents and SettingsUsername. (Where %windir% is the root-directory of your system drive; usually C: ) Right click on this folder and create a shortcut to it on your desktop. (You might not believe it but that was a major part of the operation.) Here comes the boring bit: Create further desktop shortcuts to folders and drives that you use a lot; for example a shortcut to D: drive, if like me you happen to have another hard disk or partition of a hard-disk at that location. On that drive you may have, for example, a folder called “Recipes” and another called “Dress Patterns“. (Or even “Motors” and “Porn“.): Create desktop shortcuts to whichever folders you feel like doing so; especially those that you use a lot and transfer files into and out of a lot. Be thorough. I appreciate it’s very boring after a while; but the more decent shortcuts the better. So that you don’t overlook a shortcut that you create I suggest that you create a new folder and label it something like “New Shortcuts“. Put all your newly-created shortcuts in that folder as you create them. When you’ve finished creating and rounding up all the shortcuts you like, it’s time to edit them – yes all of them individually. (I know this is getting very boring; but it’ll be time well spent in the end.) What you want to do is shave off “Shortcut to” from the shortcuts name; thus “Shortcut to D:” becomes simply “D:” and so forth. DO keep the shaved shortcuts in your “New Shortcuts” folder; otherwise if you let them spill onto the desktop you could think that they’re direct-path icons which might lead to some confusion: If you like you could even create a folder within New Shortcuts called “Shaved Shortcuts“; just so that you know where everything is: It’s better to be meticulous and safe than slightly careless and sorry. Once you’ve done that; copy the contents of your Shaved Shortcuts folder by highlighting a single shaved shortcut, click Edit in the toolbar at the top, and click Select All, right-click a highlighted shaved shortcut and select Copy. Now mouse-over the Shortcut to Send To icon on the desktop, right-click it, and select Paste. You’re all but finished: If you don’t want to keep the New Shortcuts folder and anything inside it on the Desktop, then it seems a shame to delete it after all that work – So mouse-over it and right- click. Select Send to… – Where do you want to send it to? All those shortcuts you just created are now made available as portable shortcut (LOOK!) places that you can send that, and indeed any other shortcut or file, to in the same manner. Sending the file to anywhere will not delete it from its original location though; so after you’ve sent it wherever you choose, you can then erase it from the Desktop if you like; safe in the knowledge that your hard work is in the folder that you sent it to. |
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Test it out again if you like: Create a new text file on the Desktop and call it “Test“. Mouse-over it, right-click and send it somewhere using your enhanced Send To… menu: Now go where you’ve sent it to and you’ll find it. So in future anything that you download; you can use the Desktop as the default download location rather than fiddling about specifying the file to download it to, if you like: As soon as you’ve downloaded your file(s) to the Desktop and checked it (them); just mouse-over, right-click, send it (them) to its (their) final destination(s); then delete it (them) from the Desktop. – This can and does save a lot of time – Especially if you’re transferring files from one folder to another:- Imagine that you have a file in the folder C:My DocumentsFashionTops that you want to transfer to D:PicturesCatwalkModelsTops: If you have a portable shortcut in the Send To folder to Tops that is the destination folder then all you need do is browse to the source folder C:My DocumentsFashionTops and send the file straight to Tops on the D: drive without all the faffing about. |
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There are many useful enhancements you can make to your Windows XP operating system and this is just one of them. There are others mentioned on this blog-site; as well as at http://www.pcmech.com. Here they’re all free so far at the time of writing; at pcmech.com there is so much content that there has to be a charge for some of it; but what you get for a small fee is well worth it in my honest opinion. Yes I’m a member, and no I’m not currently getting paid for advertising it: This is just a complimentary favour at this point in time. This site, kkomp.com, is currently at time of writing totally funded by advertising: I don’t currently charge anything for anything: Nil, nada, sweet FA. If you’d be so good as to look at some of the adverts, click a few, even buy something you might like, or give it as a present to someone even, then it will help to fund this site. |
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