How to hide the "Delete" command from Recycle Bin context menu in Windows Vista

The Delete command from the Recycle Bin context menu in Windows Vista cannot be removed, but can be hidden by using a tweak. To hide the Delete command and replace it with a Search... command, use these steps:

• Download the file Vista_recyclebin_hidedelete.reg (from the Attachments section below)
• Save the file to your Desktop
• Right-click on the file and choose Merge
• If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation
• Click Yes to continue
• After applying the REG file, the Recycle bin context menu will appear as in Fig 1below:

How to undo the above tweak?

To undo the above tweak, and to show the Delete option (default setting), download and apply the Vista_recyclebin_showdelete.reg file. After applying the undo REG file, the Delete option should be restored, as in the figure below.

PreviewConfig Tool Registers File Types for the Preview Pane in Windows Vista

Windows Vista introduces the Preview pane in Explorer, which shows the contents of the currently chosen file. You can also play multimedia files from the Preview pane, without opening Windows Media Player. This article explains how to use the PreviewConfig utility to register a custom file type for the Preview pane in Windows Vista Explorer.

Registering file types for the Preview pane

If you have a custom file type and wish to register a plain text or a multimedia Preview handler for the custom file type, you can do so using this utility.

Usage

Download and run PreviewHandler utility (requires administrative privileges to run). Select the file type from the listing, and choose the type of Preview you want for this file type (Media / Plain-text / None), and click Apply.

Additional details are available in the Readme.txt file.

Adding new file types

If a file type is not displayed in the listing, you may manually type the file extension (example, .cpp) into the text box provided, and choose the Preview type for this file extension.

Example

You may use this utility to register text previews for plain-text file types such as:

.REG | .CSS | .BAT | .CMD | .INF | .CS | .VB | .CPP | .SQL

Preview Handler information

When you select a file type, the information of the Preview handler registered for the file type will be displayed in the text box. You can copy the contents to Clipboard by double-clicking the text box.

How to enable the Preview pane in Windows Vista

You can enable the preview pane by selecting Organize | Layout | Preview Panefrom the folder’s menu.

How to hide drive-letters from the Send To menu in Windows Vista

Hide removable drives from Send To

By enabling the NoDrivesInSendToMenu policy, you can hide drive-letters from the Send To menu in Windows Vista without actually hiding the drives in Windows Explorer environment. As indicated in this article, NoDrivesInSendToMenu is not applicable for Windows XP systems.

NOTE: To automate the following, you may use the nodrivesinsendto.reg file available for download from the Attachments section below. Download and save the file to Desktop, right-click on the file and choose Merge. There is an undo file provided also.

Manual registry edit

• Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
• Navigate to the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer

If the above branch does not exist by default, you'll need to create it.

• Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value named NoDrivesInSendToMenu
• Double-click NoDrivesInSendToMenu and set its value data to 1
• Exit Registry Editor.

Screenshots

Fig 1: Drive-letters displayed in the Send To menu

Fig 2: Drive-letters hidden in the Send To menu

How to Access the Hidden Themes in Windows 7

Windows 7 includes additional themes set which are kept hidden from the themes dialog. The hidden international themes are stored in a super-hidden folder. Here is how to access the hidden wallpapers & themes set.

Open Windows Explorer and paste the following address:

%WinDir%\Globalization\MCT

Note that the folder MCT is hidden (system attributes) by default.

Under the MCT folder, the following folders (MCT-AU, MCT-CA, MCT-GB, MCT-US, MCT-ZA) exist:

These folders include themes for Australia, Canada, UK, US and South Africa. Under each folder there will be four folders, including a Theme folder. Open the Themefolder and double-click the .theme file to apply it.

The Globalization theme gets added to the Windows Themes list in the Personalizeapplet.

Office 2007 File Types DOCX, PPTX, XLSX Downloading as ZIP

When you try downloading one of the Office 2007 file types such as .DOCX, .PPTX, .XLSX, the file may download as a .Zip (Compressed Folder). This happens if the Office 2007 file format MIME types are not registered in the Web server you’re downloading the file from.

There is nothing much the user can do, apart from saving / renaming the file with the correct extension and then opening it using Office 2007.

If you had already downloaded the file (as .zip), simply rename (change) the extension accordingly. To do that, you’ll have to clear the Hide extensions for known file types check box in Folder Options.