Monday, November 26, 2001		Article

Hide desktop from prying eyes
Vipul Verma

THE world of computers is like an iceberg. What you see above the water is just the tip while most of it is absolutely invisible. The extent to which we normally use our computer is quite basic while the real power and performance from the PC can be derived once you explore the hidden secrets. Since the past few years, we have seen fast and rapid changes in technology that has made the old technology redundant. The best example to this fact is hardware like processors, hard disks, motherboard etc. However this does not apply fully to the Windows operating system. Even today, the Windows '98 2nd edition is one of the most popular operating system. Even after introduction of Windows XP, the importance of Windows 2000 has not been sublimed and it is still popular. This week the discussion on tips and tricks is related to Windows 2000.

Windows 2000 is certainly one of the most powerful operating system and at the same time, user friendly too. Normally, PC users do not want others to peep into their workstation and see all that is present on their computer. There are methods using which you can minimise all your open program Windows and go back to the original Windows screen that is the desktop or the wallpaper. Even your desktop screen provides a lot of information about your computer and the programs installed in it. Since most of the installed programs create a shortcut on the desktop, thus even your desktop provides more than sufficient information to curious onlookers.

Now what if you would want to hide your desktop from unwanted onlookers. You can do this easily by using a simple trick. All you need to do is click on the Start button and then click on run option. Now in the run dialogue box type Regedit. Locate the registry path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer and add String Value NoDesktop DWORD Value 1. The value of 1 will hide all Icons present on your desktop. Whereas the value 0 is the default and using this value will again show user-defined desktop elements. It is important to understand that hiding desktop elements does not mean that the programs will be inaccessible to the other users or the onlookers as they can easily access the programs using other tools, such as File Manager, to accomplish the same tasks.

Normally, computer users who upgrade their operating system from Windows '98 to Windows 2000 feel a bit uncomfortable with some of the options, which were present in the Windows '98 but are not present in the Windows 2000 operating system. One such feature, which is an important part of Windows '98 is the resource meter. Well! It is of interest to the Windows '98 users to know that there's no need of a utility like resource meter in Windows 2000 for two basic reasons:

1) Windows 2000 is basically a 32-bit operating system whereas only reason it exists in Win '98 is that Windows 9X (which is a 32 bit OS) is based on a 16-bit OS. So practically, Windows 2000 will never run short of resources unlike Windows '98. Under Windows '98, the system resources are divided into 3 parts that use 16-bit resource heaps.

2) 2^16 is 65536 or 64K whereas Windows2K/NT is entirely 32-bit and uses 32-bit resource heaps. 2^32 is 4294967296 or 4GB. Since 4 GB of RAM is the maximum supported by Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server, thus you would run out of memory before you would run out of resources. So, there's no need to worry about the system resources in case of Windows 2000/NT.

Many computer users often use the default settings of the operating system and thus remain deprived of the better performance, which they can get by altering some of these settings as per their requirement. One such setting is of virtual memory paging file that is instrumental for the better performance of PC.

In order to alter the virtual memory paging file all you need to do is click on the start button and then click on the Control Panel. Now click the system Icon under the Control Panel. This will open the system properties window on the computer screen. Click on the advanced tab then click the performance options. Under Virtual memory, click Change. In the Drive list, click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change. Under Paging file size for selected drive, type a new paging file size in megabytes in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set. If you decrease the size of either the minimum or maximum page file settings, you must restart your computer to see the effects of those changes. However, the increase typically does not require a restart. It is worth mentioning here that as a thumb rule ideally you must always have a minimum paging file size of 2.5 times of your RAM and the maximum can be as high as the amount of free hard disk space on the PC. Keeping a maximum combined size of 1 GB is more than sufficient.