I have been hearing lots of chatter about this hidden feature in Windows 7. Everyone is calling it “God Mode”

You will see why it is called that in a minute, but essentially it is a hidden control panel that gives you easy access to just about every setting in Windows 7.

To get to it, simply create a new folder on your desktop:

Then rename it to this:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

After you finish renaming the folder, the icon will change:

Double click on it, and you will be shown a huge (That is not even the right word) number of options:

(Click to see all the options – it is a big image!)

Now with the warning – It works great in Windows 7, and Vista. But! If you have the 64 bit version of Vista do not try this…it will crash every time explorer is loaded. The only way out is to use a command line recovery or safe mode from another account.

In Windows Vista shows in Disk Cleanup listed items below have huge GB file sizes, for the following Lists.
Per user archived Windows Error Reporting Files
Per user queued Windows Error Reporting Files
System archived Windows Error Reporting Files
System queued Windows Error Reporting Files

WARNING:
If you click Delete these listed items in Disk Cleanup without fixing this bug first will cause removal of working files in windows and you have to reinstall Vista.

Fix for Disk Cleanup Windows Error Reporting Windows Vista x86 (32bit)

Download Fix_DiskCleanup_Error_Reporting.reg file.

Click on Save, and save the file to the Desktop.

Right click on the file(on Desktop) and click Extract then run fix.reg file.

Click on Continue (UAC), Yes, and then OK when prompted.

When done, you can delete the files from Desktop

Relogin, or restart the computer to apply the changes.

NOTE: The Disk Cleanup shortcut is correct in the 32 bit Vista.

If you have the 64 bit Vista, then you will also need to fix the Disk Cleanup shortcut only.

Fix for Disk Cleanup Windows Error Reporting Windows Vista x64 (64bit)

Open the Start Menu.

Click on All Programs, Accessories, and then on System Tools.

Right click on Disk Cleanup and click on Properties.

NOTE: All other Disk Cleanup shortcuts are correct in(x64). Just this one has incorrect parameter.

In the Target: area, change it from:
%SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\cleanmgr.exe
TO:
%SystemRoot%\system32\cleanmgr.exe

Click on Apply for changes

Click on Continue in the Access Denied and for UAC prompt.

Click on OK.

We have been working hard on Network Administrator 3.

It was just released – You can download it from here:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/NetworkAdministrator.exe

Network Administrator allows you to make tweaks and changes to computers across your network, and in version 3 we have an extensive plugin system that allows us to add functionality quite quickly.

One of the requests we keep getting is a plugin to change power management settings. It turns out that this is actually much harder than it seems. There are different ways in each version of windows – and some of them don’t even work all the time.

We worked around the clock to work around all of the quirks and issues, and finally built a plugin that allows you to change these settings on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, and Windows 7.

These settings are not even available with group policy, or any specific registry settings – so this is a huge time saver.

The settings for the plugin are packed with power management options:

In a few clicks you can change the power management options for multiple computers across your network.

Best of all, Network Administrator is a free tool to use on up to 3 computers at a time.

Give it a spin and let us know what you think.

Need to use Network Administrator 3.0 on more than 3 computers? Get an unlimited copy for only $199 Click here to purchase

I was at a friends house last weekend. I found a very interesting problem with Windows 7. They had a laptop they just purchased in Taiwan, and no matter how they tried to connect it to their network, it would always say “Identifying Network”:

Now, in the screen shot it is the wireless network, but this was happening with a direct connection to the router as well.

After some digging and poking at the machine I determined that it was not picking up an IP address from DHCP. It turns out that this is actually an issue in Vista too.

Microsoft has a soloution: KB928233. In short the fix is to set a registry key. There are actually two different registry keys.

One of them allows you to try the current method (But broken with older routers), and if it fails it will try the old way:

DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle

The other key allows you to bypass this entirely and totally switch back to the old XP way:

DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag

Both of them are under the GUID of the network card in this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID}

Neither of them solved my problem. I tried for quite some time different tricks to get Windows 7 to pickup an IP address from this old router with no success.

The final solution was to give the laptop a static IP address. Not the best, but at least he could get on the net.

The question is, have you ever seen this problem with Windows 7, or Vista? If so, how did you finally get it to work?