Keep Your Icons in Check with DesktopOK

DesktopOK is a tiny but extremely useful utility that you will want to keep handy if, like me, you have a desktop covered in carefully arranged icons used to access applications. At times a profile problem has meant that I've had to patiently re-create the familiar arrangement. This program will prevent you from ever having to do the same. It saves the positions of all icons with a single click. With that done, to prove that it can do what it promises, it offers a "Punch the Icons ;)" button which randomly spreads your icons across the desktop. You can then restore everything back to complete order with a single click of the OK button. Fantastic !
It works on all recent versions of Windows, and has an interface in English or German.

Excellent Wallpaper Manager - John's Background Switcher

Now at version 4, John's Background Switcher is an excellent free desktop wallpaper manager for Windows. I tried a few others, but this offers outstanding features and quality.
I was looking for something that could span my dual-monitor set-up with a single image, preferably the impressive ones that feature on Bing.
This software offers combinations of ways to display images, stretched or cropped, per-monitor, or per desktop, and even creative 'photo' or 'postcard' montages consisting of multiple images.
It's designed to make use of a wide range of internet image sources, including Flickr, Facebook, Google, Bing and Yahoo image searches, or any RSS feed - as well as files from your computer, of course. It can be set to save every image it downloads, and even delete them after a specified time.
An extra bonus is that it also offers a set of keyboard shortcuts, one of which quickly resets the desktop to a plain background, which I sometimes prefer to do before I lock my computer.
I highly recommend this software that has made my desktop a more beautiful sight to see.

Ubuntu Linux: How to Mount .iso Images

Here's an easy way to mount a .iso file as a CDROM with Ubuntu Linux:

sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 imagefile.iso /mnt/iso

Ubuntu Linux: How to Create .iso Images from CDROMs

It turns out to be surprisingly easy to create .iso files from CDROMs with Ubuntu.
Just use the readom utility with the device path and output file name, like so:

sudo readom dev=/dev/cdrom0 f=/home/mydir/imagefile.iso

There are other ways, but readom does error checking.

Windows XP: Install Windows onto a USB Hard Drive

I successfully used the instructions here to install a fully working installation of Windows XP SP3 onto a 60G USB drive.
Luckily I had a Windows and Linux laptop to hand, so I used ISO Master on Ubuntu to edit the .iso, rather than WinISO, and my favorite K3b to burn the image.

With my laptop set to boot from USB as the priority, I can plug the drive in to boot Windows, or leave it unplugged to boot into Linux.

I haven't gotten around the page file warning on startup yet, but I plan to create some space on an internal drive to host it.

Windows: Show the Desktop

Press the Windows and D keys together to minimize all currently open Windows.
Press them again to restore all windows.

I use this key combination constantly, to access desktop icons and launch other applications.

See here for some more handy Windows shortcuts.

Thanks to Thomas Lee who skilfully lead us through a Windows 2008 Server course this week.