How Customize your Computer Properties: Change Support Data and Add your Photo?

All PCs using Windows display OEM information (OEM stands for original equipment manufacturer, but most often refers to a reseller). You can change this information and personalize it to suit your personality. Changing it will make it look a little like you built your computer. Or you can use this modification for shameless promotion of your business if you are computer vendor or repairmen.

To see the OEM information of your PC, right-click on My Computer to call service menu, and select Properties. The window, that opens, defaults to the General tab, which shows the OEM information.

To change this information, follow these steps:

1. You want to find a file called "oeminfo.ini". You can do this by performing a Find File for "oeminfo.ini". The file is in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder (or SYSTEM32 folder, depending on the Operating System). Make a backup of this file and save a copy in a safe place. Or leave it there, but rename it for safety reasons to oeminfo.bak. If your computer doesn't have this file, you can create a new one. Just follow the example below. Create a new Notepad document and rename it to oeminfo.ini.
2. Open the existing or newly created file oeminfo.ini file by double-clicking on it. You'll see a list of items that looks something like this:

[general]

Manufacturer= Nesher Computer Services

Model= My Best Old Friend

[support information]

Line1 = Collection of Web Freebies
Line2 = http://webfreebies4u.blogspot.com
Line3 = The Best Information on Web!
Line4 = Yes, we Can!

You can change the information after the = sign. You can delete several lines in the support information, or add some more. If you're creating a new oeminfo.inf file, just type this information, preserving the format properly.

General information is visible on the main tab, and support information is visible when you click on the Support Information button, displayed in the box that pops up.

3. Perform a Save As, and save the file as a .ini file (replace the oeminfo.ini file in the system folder).
4. Check the OEM info by right-clicking on My Computer and select Properties. Your changes should be in effect.

You can also add an image to the OEM info box. To do this:

1. Create a bitmap image with the dimensions of about 175x100 pixels.
2. Save the file as a bitmap and name it "oemlogo.bmp".
3. Place the file in the system folder along with the oeminfo.ini.

Some users reported that their oeminfo data is located in system directory, other – in system32 directory, so place the newly created files accordingly. 

4 Steps to Change Startup and Shutdown Sounds on your Computer

You boot up and shut down your computer quite frequently. And every time you have to listen the same built-in sounds files - again and again. The same annoying audio files, which other millions of people listen on the daily basis. Do you know that you can stop that forever. Here is the solution, now you use any of your favorite voice or music or dialogue as your computer shutdown and start up.

The hack to be implemented in 4 simple steps.

Step 1

Choose the track which you want to play at start-up and shutdown jingles. There are following limitations to the chosen file:

* It should be in .WAV format.
* The size of file should not be too big. Try to choose or make the file of no mote than 1 Mb, otherwise your startup process will take a bit longer.

If the file you want to make your start-up or shutdown is not in .WAV format, you can easily convert it using any audio converter, available on the market.

Step 2

Rename the chosen files as “Windows XP Startup.WAV” and “Windows XP Shutdown.WAV” respectively.

Step 3

Go to the directory “C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA” and locate there files with the same names “Windows XP Startup.WAV” and “Windows XP Shutdown.WAV”. Move these files to some other locations for backup purposes, in case you will need to revert back these sounds some time in the future.

Step 4

Move the new files you prepared to the directory, where the Operating system retrieves the sounds from: “C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA”. On next reboot, you will get your favorite sound clips activated.

Setting Custom Wallpapers for your Folders

You probably aware that there is quite easy to change the Windows background from the default wallpaper to any other texture images, located inside the system folders of your Operating system, or random image you might like (your kids, for example).

But what happens when you open the folders through Windows Explorer you see the yellow folders and only a white background. Do you know that you can change the folder wallpaper as well? And it could be an individual change, so each of your folders might show up with different backgrounds. This post will present you on how you can set wallpapers for your windows folders backgrounds. It works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2000 and 2003.

1. Pick up the "Image" you like to use, and resize it to 815 x 685 - this is to avoid Tiling of the result.
2. Create a temporary folder for experimenting where you will have to create a new file desktop.ini

3. Open new window in your default Notepad text editor, or any other text editor you are regularly using. Even with extremely small Notepad capabilities, for this task, the software will be sufficient.

4. Paste the following code into it: [note: you should replace your image location in the red] [{BE0981 40-A513-11D0-A3 A4-00C04FD706EC}]
IconArea_Image ="C:’[image-location].jpg"
IconArea_Text= 0x00000000

5. Remove the spaces in the first line, change the image path to your desired picture in second line, and change the text color to choose your liking.

These are the commonly used colors for your text: Black - 0x00000000, Pink - 0x00FF99FF, Purple - 0x00FF99FF, Red - 0x00FF0000, White - 0x00FFFFFF. You might need to find more colors codes in Google.

6. Save this notepad file as desktop.ini, in the new folder you created, with file type property as "All Files". You can change also the file property to hidden, if you prefer it out of your way.

7. Register your ini file by "WinKey + Run" type the following "attrib +s "c:’location of your folder" (or Start-Run), where the exact location of the folder should be present. Press OK to finalize your changes.

8. Now Open the folder and see if the changes appear in the folder.

9. To change the wallpaper for your other folders, copy the desktop.ini file and do the necessary changes.

If this procedure is too complicated, or you do not waste your time on following instructions, you can use the software that will do it for you. The software name is Windowpaper XP.

Developers website: http://www.sodabush.com/windowpaper/index.php