Windows2000Tips

I mentioned these at the XtC some time ago and OliBye asked me to put them on this Wiki. Well, here they are...

All these involve editing the registry, so the usual caveats apply: make sure you use regedt32 (not regedit), and for complete safety, back up your registry before making changes.

Run As... Menu Item

This adds a Run As... menu item to all executables that allows you to run the executable as a different user. Selecting the item pops up a dialog box prompting for user name and password. This is invaluable when installing software because you don't have to log out, log on as administrator, install, log out and log back in as yourself. This also lets you improve overall security because you can conveniently work in an account with few permissions and run selected programs (installs, etc.) with more permissions, and run other programs (web browers, etc.) with even fewer permissions.

• Open the registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\runas
• There will be a value called Enable or Enabled (I can't remember because I've deleted it on my machine).
• Delete the key. This will enable the Run As menu item.

Filename Completion in the Command Prompt

The Windows2000 command prompt can complete filenames for you, but the functionality is disabled by default! The Windows2000 implementation of this works very well, unlike the NT4 version which was basically broken.

• Open the registry key 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ Microsoft\ Command Processor' (with no the spaces before Microsoft or 'Command Processor'. They are there to stop the Wiki hiding the '\' characters).
• Set the values 'CompletionChar?' and 'PathCompletionChar?' to 0x09 (the ASCII code for Tab).
• The Tab key now completes file and command names just like in Unix shells.

³host³³date³September 7, 2001³agent³Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0)³Windows2000Tips