Recently I was reading an article on some Windows 7 forums on how to change Windows Logon Background. There are manual steps which helps me to change the longon background, but its tedious if I have to do it manually everytime. So I decided to make a tool which can do it for me. 

I start up a new project in Visual Studio 2010 and create a new windows application. I am not writing about how I did it, I am just giving away this tool for use. Just Browse and click Change Logon Screen and you are done.

Press WIN+L to lock your computer and check your new logon screen. There is only one limitation, you cannot select an image which is larger than 256KB.

I will be uploading the complete source code at codeplex shortly. So keep an eye on the update.

Download: Win7 LogonScreenChanger.zip (49.21 kb)

Source Code: Win7LogonScreenChanger.zip (139.44 kb)

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We all know about a feature called User Account Control (UAC) which introduced with the launch of Windows Vista. By default, UAC is enabled and provides users a better and safer computing experience, but most of the users find it irritating when the UAC prompts everytime they try to run a program. Disabling UAC is not recommended at all.

With UAC enabled programmers find it difficult to access some of the locations on the local drive. Programatically you cannot write or create a file or directory in root partition, inside Program Files, System32 folder and some other locations. Recently I ran into a same problem where I have to access System32 folder, create new folders and copy files from one location on my system to this folder. With UAC disabled this is pretty easy, no security settings and no runtime errors or exceptions. Usually you cannot ask the users to disable UAC and then use the application, so therefore I made my application compatible with UAC and YES!!! you will be prompted with the confirmation box to run the application with administrator privileges. In Windows Vista and Windows 7, even if you are an administrator of your machine you do not have the complete access to resources even if you are an administrator. So in order to make your application run with full administrator rights follow the steps below. This will work the same if you run your application with "Run as Administrator" option which you see when you right-click the application.

Create a new application in Visual Studio. Right-click project and add a new item.

From the Add New Item box select Application Manifest File.

In the manifest file un-comment the following line:

<requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false" />

Build your applicaton....and when the build is complete you will see the security shield icon accompanying your application icon. A dialogue box appear in front of the user to run the application with full administrative privileges.

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I am a huge music fan, so huge that I need headphone while I work on my machine and if I don't have them in my head I can't work. It's not the case with me but most of the people do the same thing. But sometimes the things get worsts when people with their headphones on start singing. Ok they sing only when they know the lyrics and if they won't they search for them and then sing along. It's not the case with me but for the folks who wants to search lyrics for their songs collection, I have created this small tool which will help them to get lyrics, get album name, album art, release date and artist image. Just enter artist name and song name and let this tool get the details for you. I have consumed lyricWIKI, Last.FM and LyricFly web service to get the details.

This tool is build on .NET Framework 3.5. So in order to use this tool you must have .NET 3.5 Framework installed on your machine.

Download: MP3 Informer.msi (655.00 kb)

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Since I have started using BlogEngine.NET I never thought of using any other open source blog engine. To me BlogEngine is the most extensible blogging platform availableat present. As a popular blogging, engine blog engine users faces a lot of spam comments. I was so totally annoyed and even after moderating comments I have to manually go and delete the comments. After some search I found an extesion from  Joel Thoms (http://joel.net). Simple and easy to use, dont even require moderation.This extension passes the commnets to Akismet spam database which then checks approves or disapprove commnets.

To get it working you need an API Key which you can get for free at http://akismet.com. Once you get an API key extract the files in App_Code/Extensions folder and jump to your Extension section under Settings.

Once you save your settings you are done. NO MORE SPAM.

Download: AkismetExtension.zip (3.55 kb)

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The easiest way to find out the processor architecture is to use the Environment class GetEnvironmentVariable method

Console.WriteLine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE"));

This will print the processor architecture on the console window i.e. x86 and x64 for 32-bit and 64-bit respectively.

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