Thursday, July 22, 2010

What is CCC.exe and Why Is It Running?

You’re probably reading this article because you’re frustrated with that CCC.exe process running in Task Manager, and you’d like to know how to get rid of it, or at least understand what it’s there for.

This article explains what the process actually is, but we’ve also got you covered if you want to remove the ATI Catalyst Control center from the desktop right-click menu.

For example, you’ll see the process here wasting memory in Task Manager…

image

So What Is It?

CCC stands for Catalyst Control Center, and it’s part of your ATI video card driver package—or to be more specific, it’s part of the utilities bundled along with the drivers, and adds features like customizing your display, or setting hotkeys for different display profiles. As long as the ccc.exe utility is installed into your Program Files\ATI Technology directory, it’s a legit process that can be left alone.

It’s also responsible for that icon cluttering up your system tray:

image

Once you’ve launched the full Control Center, you’ll see a screen similar to this one (depending on your driver version).

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On my test system, there was no startup item anywhere for this process. Depending on your driver version, it’s possible that it would be included in startup and could be removed.

Get Rid of the Tray Icon

You can remove the icon easily by clicking Options –> Preferences –> Enable System Tray Menu to turn it off. Sadly, this won’t usually get rid of the process that’s running, but at least it’ll save a few resources and keep your system tray cleaner.

Note that depending on your driver version, this setting might be in a different place, but it should definitely be in there.

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Depending on your driver version, it’s possible this might remove the process—it didn’t on my laptop, however.

Totally Uninstall CCC.exe (and the ATI Control Panel)

You can completely get rid of the whole thing by simply going to Uninstall programs in Control Panel, and just removing it from there using the wizard—you’ll want to make sure to keep the display driver installed, and just remove the ATI Catalyst Control Panel.

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You can also totally uninstall the entire package, and then reinstall without selecting the control panel. It’s up to you.

Install ATI Drivers Manually

Depending on how you removed the ATI components, you might need to re-install your drivers (without installing Catalyst). You can do so in Device Manager by right-clicking on the display driver and choosing Update Driver Software.

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Once the wizard has opened, you can allow Windows to search automatically (if you aren’t a gamer this usually works pretty well). Otherwise, you can download the drivers manually, extract them to a folder, and then click the ‘Browse my computer for driver software”.

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Then choose the location you uninstalled the software to, and make sure to click “Include subfolders” when checking for the driver.

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Temporarily Kill CCC.exe the Easy Way

If you’d rather keep the ATI utilities installed because you use them, you can setup a shortcut to automatically kill CCC.exe whenever you want… just create a new shortcut to the following:

taskkill /f /im ccc.exe

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You could even try putting this into your startup folder… or create a scheduled task instead. This is the safest and easiest method to get rid of the process without breaking anything else.

Drastic Steps You Shouldn’t Take

If you want to keep all the ATI stuff installed, but want to get rid of CCC.exe, you could simply rename the file to CCC.bak instead. This will keep the process from running, but obviously is going to break anything that would be trying to use it. Keep this as the last resort, and you should probably disable the tray item before you do this.

Remove ATI Catalyst Control Center from the Desktop Right-Click Menu:

Have you ever wondered how to remove the “Catalyst(TM) Control Center” item from the desktop context menu? After writing yesterday about how to remove the NVIDIA Control Panel, a number of readers wrote in asking how to get rid of the ATI version.

We can look in the same place in the registry in order to quickly remove the item, or we can use the same utility we used yesterday to completely disable the shell extension.

Note: This method works the same for XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

In case you aren’t sure what we’re talking about, here’s the menu item we’re looking to remove:

image

Remove the Registry Hack Way

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\ACE

image

Double-click on the (Default) value in the right-hand side, and then add some dashes in front of the value to disable it. You should be able to right-click on the desktop and see that the item is removed.

If you would prefer, you can simply get rid of this key, but I would do right-click / export the key out to a file for backup purposes before deleting it.

Completely Disable the Shell Extension

If you don’t want that shell extension loading at all, you can use the awesome Nirsoft ShellExView application to just completely disable the extension and prevent it from running.

Note: make sure to launch ShellExView by right-clicking and choosing Run as Administrator if you are using Vista. This doesn’t seem to work for Windows 7, but the registry hack above will work perfectly fine.

Find the “SimpleShlExt Class” item with the description “ACE Context Menu” in the list, and click the Disable button.

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If you aren’t sure it’s the right one, double-click on it to see the details, and verify that it’s similar to this one (although your version could be different)

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At this point, you should have a nice clean desktop context menu:

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Does this menu item annoy you as much as it does me?

Add Control Panel to the Desktop Right-Click Menu in Vista:

A couple of days ago I noticed a thread on our forum asking how to add Control Panel to the desktop context menu, so I decided to write up the solution for everybody, since it seems like a really useful hack.

Since we like to explain with screenshots, when you right-click on the desktop you’ll see a new menu item called Control Panel:

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Once you select that item, obviously it will immediately open up Control Panel:

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Of course you could use the same technique to add any item into the context menu, or you could even use the same location in the registry to remove things like the NVIDIA Control Panel or ATI Control Center from the menu.

Manual Registry Hack

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then browse down to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell

Once you are there, you’ll want to right-click on “shell” and create a new key called Control Panel.

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Under that one, you’ll want to right-click and create a new key called “command”.

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Select the “command” key on the left-hand side, and then set the (Default) value on the right-hand side to the following:

rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL

You should immediately see the new item in your context menu, and it should be working. To remove, simply delete the Control Panel key.

Downloadable Registry Hack

Simply download, extract, and double-click on the AddControlPanelToDesktopMenu.reg file to enter the information into the registry. You should immediately see the new item. To remove, use the included remove script.

Download AddControlPanelToDesktopMenu Registry Hack

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Change Default Time TO Live (TTL) in Windows Server 2008 & Windwos Vista:

The Time To Live (TTL) value in an IPv4 packet determines the maximum number of links or hops on which an IPv4 packet is allowed to travel before being discarded. The default TTL value in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista is set to 128. While the defaults are good enough and may never need changing, there may be instances where you may want to change the default TTL.
The following procedure to edit the Windows Registry should help you change the default TTL value of 128.

To modify the default TTL in Windows Server 2008 & Windows Vista,
1. Click Start - Search and type “regedit”. This launches the WIndows Registry

.

2. In the registry, navigate to the following registry key

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet
\Services
\Tcpip
\Parameters

3. In the right pane, right-click and select New – DWORD (32-bit value) and set its name as “DefaultTTL” and set its value anything between “0″ and “255″. The value sets the number of Hops or links the packet traverses before being discarded.
Change Default TTL in Windows Server 2008 & Vista

How to Backup & Restore Outlook Express emails,Addressbook,mail accounts:

Outlook Express backup and restore is not as simple as it is in Ms Outlook

. The following procedure will help you with a step by step procedure on backup and restore of Ms Outlook Express. This should work on Outlook Express 5 & 6 and as you are aware there is no Outlook Express 7.

The procedure involves

1. Backing up emails

2. Backing up (export) Address Book

3. Backing up (export) Mail Accounts

Backup EMails

Backup the outlook Express mails to a seperate folder by doing the following:

1. Open Outlook Express, click Tools and then Options.

2. Click the Maintenance tab then Store Folder.

3. Copy the storage location path.

4. Click Cancel, Cancel to close the dialog box.

5. Now, Click Start – Run, paste the path copied and click OK.

6. Once the folder opens, copy all the files in the folder [.dbx file] and paste then onto a new folder [say MailBackup] on the C:\ drive.

Backup Address Book

Export the Address book in the CSV format to the MailBackup folder by doing the following:

1. Open Outlook Express, click File – Export and select Address Book.

2. Select Text File (Comma Separated Values) and click Export.

3. Browse and select the MailBackup folder as the backup location and name the file[say as, BackupAdd.CSV].

6. Click Next.

7. Select the fields that you want to export, and then click Finish.

8. Click OK and then Close.

Backup Mail Account

Backup the Mail Account onto the MailBackup folder by doing the following:

1. Open Outlook Express, click Tools then Accounts.

2. Click the Mail tab, then the mail account to export, and click Export.

3. In the Save In box, locate the Mail Backup folder and click Save.

4. Repeat these steps for each mail account that you want to export.

5. Click Close.

Backup News Account: Backup News accounts (if any) using the above procedure where in Step 2, click the News tab instead of the Mail tab.

With this the Backup completes. Now, proceed with the following to restore the Outlook Express mails. All the data backed up needs to be restored back using the Import function. If there are multiple identities from which Backup has been done then each identity has to be created seperately and the following procedure should be repeated for each account.

Restore Email messages

1. Open the Outlook Express, click File, Import, and click Messages.

2. In the Select an e-mail program to import from box, click Microsoft Outlook Express 5 or Microsoft Outlook Express 6, and click Next.

3. Click Import mail from an OE5 store directory or Import mail from an OE6 store directory, and then click OK.

4. Click Browse, and then click on the Mail Backup folder on your system.

5. Click OK, and then click Next.

6. Click All folders, click Next, and click Finish.

Restore Address Book:

1. Open Outlook Express, click File, Import, and then click Other Address Book.

2. Click Text File (Comma Separated Values), and then click Import.

3. Click Browse.

4. Locate the Mail Backup folder on your system, click the address book .csv file, and click Open.

5. Click Next, and then click Finish.

6. Click OK, and click Close.

Restore Account Settings:

1. Open Outlook Express, click Tools, Accounts.

2. On the Mail tab, click Import.

3. In the Look In box, locate the Mail Backup folder on your system.

4. Click the mail account that you want to import, and then click Open.

5. Repeat these steps for each mail account that you want to import.

6. Click Close.

Restore Newsgroup Account:

Restore the Newsgroup account the same way as above where in Step 2, Select news tab instead of the Mail tab.

How to uninstall Internet Explorer/Outlook Express from Windows Registry:

Are you trying to uninstall an older version of Internet Explorer or Outlook Express and run into the problems? Well there is always Windows Registry

. A currently installed version of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express can be uninstalled from Windows Regsitry.

To uninstall Internet Explorer and Outlook Express from Windows Registry, please try the following. This should work in Windows 2000, Windows XP

and later:

WARNING: Editing Windows Registry can have serious consequences.
You are editing at your own risk.

1. Click Start – Run

2. Type “regedit” and press enter to launch the Windows Registry Editor.

3. To uninstall Internet Explorer

On the left panel, Navigate to the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{89820200-ECBD-11cf-8B85-00AA005B4383}

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SOFTWARE
\Microsoft
\Active Setup
\Installed Components
\{89820200-ECBD-11cf-8B85-00AA005B4383}

internetexplorer uninstall
4. In the right-pane, change the value of the IsInstalled (REG_DWORD) value from “1″ to “0″

This will uninstall Internet Explorer from Windows Registry.

5. To uninstall Outlook Express

On the left panel, Navigate to the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{44BBA840-CC51-11CF-AAFA-00AA00B6015C}

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SOFTWARE
\Microsoft
\Active Setup
\Installed Components
\{44BBA840-CC51-11CF-AAFA-00AA00B6015C}

uninstall outlook express

6. In the right-pane, change the value of the IsInstalled (REG_DWORD) value from 1 to 0

This will uninstall Outlook Express from Windows Registry.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Hide Hard Disk Drive in Windows Vista

It is possible to hide a hard drive letter using Windows Vista, preventing it from showing up in applications and Windows Explorer. However, this will not prevent you from access files from it manually (by browsing directly to it by typing "D:" for example). This can be useful to hide files quickly and easily.


To being, load the Registry Editor from the run box (Press WINDOWS KEY + R to access this) by typing "regedit" and clicking OK:



Once this loads, browse to the following registry key on the left hand side:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer

Then, right click on the white space in the right hand side and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, and call it "NoDrives":



Double click on "NoDrives" to enter a Decimal value. This value depends on the drives you wish to hide, and is created by adding the numbers for each drive you wish to hide from the list below. Click OK once you have entered this number.

For example, to hide drive D you would enter a decimal value of 8. To hide both drives D and E, you would enter a decimal value of 24 (8+16):




A = 1
B = 2
C = 4
D = 8
E = 16
F = 32
G = 64
H = 128
I = 256
J = 512
K = 1024
L = 2048
M = 4096
N = 8192
O = 16384
P = 32768
Q = 65536
R = 131072
S = 262144
T = 524288
U = 1048576
V = 2097152
W = 4194304
X = 8388608
Y =16777216
Z = 33554432
All drives = 67108863


Once you restart your computer, the selected drives should be hidden. If you wish to remove the hidden drives, browse to the NoDrives registry value and delete it.

As with all registry modifications, care should be taken to ensure that these steps are followed exactly. You should make a backup of your system before any major changes should things go wrong.