But despite the endless warnings, we just can’t keep our hands off. Curiosity is an inseparable part of human nature. Human advancements are the result of making mistakes and learning from them. That’s why there are tools like Secrets, which allow non-geeky users to play with those scary configurations safely and unlock hidden mac features.

Tell me your Secrets

Secrets is a Mac OS X preference pane developed by Blacktree – the same guys who brought us Quicksilver. This little app will allow Mac users to peek into their feline’s deepest secrets which were usually only accessible via command line in Terminal.

To download the app, go to the developer’s website and click on the “PrefPane” link. The latest version at the time of writing is 1.0.6 (10.5+). It means that this app is not for Tiger users and below.

Using it is fairly simple. After installation, just open System Preferences and click on Secrets under the “Other” group.

A window full of modifiable items will appear, ready to be tinkered with to access hidden Mac features. In the left pane is the list of Applications and on the right is the list of their secrets (modifiable hidden settings).

You could go through the applications list one item at a time and change the settings of each one by one, or you could also use the search function if you know which settings that you are looking for.

*Editor’s note: It is advisable to only change one setting at a time and view their effects, in order to prevent crashes or other unfavourable results.*

In my opinion, the most important function of Secrets is the “Revert” button located at the bottom of the window. Clicking this button will revert the system to its default value. This is the safety net for the times when the changes you’ve made causing your system to become unstable.

The Secrets society

The feature that makes Secrets superior to other similar applications is its growing database of secrets. If there are new items available or if you install new tweakable applications, Secrets will download those entries and add them to the hidden Mac features list.

The update process is automatic, but you can use the “Update Secrets” button to invoke it.

Part of this ever growing database comes from ordinary users like you. If you know an unlisted secret or two, you can contribute them to Blacktree’s database so that everybody else can also benefit from them.

If you spot non-working secrets or if you have a secrets wish list, you could also contribute your thoughts to them.

Sharing few useful secrets

There are many useful secrets that I found among tons of other secrets. Here are few examples:

1. The ability to change the login desktop picture –> This is the first item on the “Top Secret” list. Click on the location on the right and Secrets will let you choose other desktop picture for the login windows.

   

2. Check spelling as you type –> this item is located under the “System” group. As a person who doesn’t use English as the main language, the constant red line that appears under every word I type could be very annoying. Disabling this option gives me a more relaxed view.

   

3. Login window text –> Dig deeper into the System group, you’ll find option to add login window text, along with other login options.

   

4. Enable/Disable Dashboard –> Not everybody uses Dashboard. While some people uses Widgets heavily, others might see them just as additional burden to the system. There are many ways to enable/disable Dashboard, but I found that using Secrets is the easiest.

   

5. Adding separators to the dock –> Secrets allows users to add separators to the dock either on the left side or on the right side (or both). There are also options to add Stacks.

   

   And here’s what the result looks like.

   

6. Quit Finder in the menu –> If you’ve ever wanted to quit Finder, you could use this option to add “Quit Finder” in the menu.

   

   And if you don’t believe me you could do that, here’s the proof.

   

7. X-Ray vision –> And here’s my favorite: Show X-ray folder in Quick Look. You can find it on the “Top Secret” or Finder section. If you activate it, you can view the contents of a folder while using Quick Look. (Secrets will ask you to quit Finder before the result could take place). Not really useful, but totally cool.

   

   Try it yourself by selecting a folder in Finder and hit the Spacebar key to activate Quick Look. Then take your time.

   

Have you tried Secrets? Do you know some other cool secrets that we can activate? Share using the comment below.

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The 7 Simple & Great Tricks to Tweak Your Dock on Mac OS X (6)
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• Use the Places Utility to Customize Locations in Open File Dialogue Box [Windows] (19)
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The Achilles heel which viruses exploit is the autorun.inf file. Autorun.inf file is a simple instruction file present in removable media like CDs, DVDs and USB drives. This file contains a series of commands that triggers the operating system to start an executable, tells it which icon to use, and which additional actions to make available. A basic autorun.inf file looks like this –

[autorun]
open=autorun.exe
icon=autorun.ico

Special Note: Autoplay is the Windows action which asks you to specify the application to use to open a particular file. The autoplay dialog box asks you to select from the options when you insert a media. Autorun on the other hand, is the Windows action which automatically launches applications depending on the commands given in the autorun.inf file when we double click the removable drive icon.

The keyword is automatic. We have to find ways to short circuit the automatic execution of programs (good or bad), so that a hidden malware does not penetrate our system. The idea then is to change the way Windows handles the autorun.inf file. The methods expressed here are majorly for Windows XP.

Use the SHIFT key

Suppress autorun by pressing the SHIFT key when inserting a USB drive. Then, right click on the icon in Explorer and select Explore to access the contents of the drive. This is a one-time action and you have to keep that in mind every time you insert an USB drive. And you have to be ever mindful of never double-clicking your USB drive icon in Explorer.

Go to the Group Policy Editor

Group Policy Editor is used to define user and computer configurations for groups of users and computers.

1. Open GPEditor via Start – Run. Enter gpedit.msc in the Run box.
2. Navigate to Computer Configuration – Administrative Templates – System.
3. Highlight System on the left hand pane. On the right hand pane, go down to the entry – Turn off Autoplay and double click on it.
4. Select the Enabled radio button, then for the Turn off Autoplay on dropdown, select All drives.

This will disable the autorun feature and let you explore the drive contents for all drives instead of directly opening it.

Hack the registry

We can also disable the autorun feature by making a change in the registry. Be forewarned that if you are not at ease with the registry, it is advisable to skip this step.

1. Launch the Registry Editor by typing regedit in the Run box (Start -> Run)
2. On the left hand pane, keep expanding the entries by clicking on the + sign. Search for this entry – HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer
   
3. For this registry entry, go to the right panel and double click the NoDriveTypeAutoRun registry key.
4. Change the Value data to FF for Hexadecimal or 255 for Decimal value.
5. Click OK to close the registry editor and restart the computer.

Fall back on software

If you are the type who hates going into the guts of the operating system, there are of course handy pieces of software available. Here are two examples of such applications.

USB 1.3

This 7KB USB anti-virus tool works by detecting the removable drive and renaming the autorun.inf file to autorun.inf_current date_time thus preventing its running by the system. The program loads in the system tray and with just one click, you can turn Autorun on or off. Another option informs the user about all actions on autorun.inf files.

The program works from the system tray and is compatible with Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98 and Windows 95.

TweakUI

TweakUI, Microsoft’s Power toy for Windows XP gives a user access to system settings that are below the visible interface of the OS.

To disable autoplay using TweakUI, go to the My Computer – Autoplay – Drives setting. Deselect the drive you wish to disable the autoplay for. Also, go to My Computer – AutoPlay – Types. Uncheck Enable Autoplay for removable drives. Click OK and you are done.

The 126KB download is compatible with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

These methods will prevent the automatic jumpstart of a USB drive. But if a malware sneaks through, then the value of a good, updated anti-virus and anti-malware as the first line of defense cannot be exaggerated enough.

Do you let a USB drive run automatically or do you control it with a blocking action? Which is your favored method? Let us know.

While we are learning more about USB drives, also take a look some of our popular posts about the device.

Image credit: Nedko

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• Tweak Your Windows OS With Portable Ultimate Windows Tweaker (17)
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• Tweak Your Windows Operating System With Xpy (10)

If you’ve been a regular Make Use Of reader, I’m sure you have your Windows system configured exactly to your liking.

But what happens when you reinstall the operating system because you needed to ?

The answer is you lose all those custom settings. Sure, you can browse through our archives and enable those tweaks again or you can get used to Windows looking the way Microsoft intended it to.

Not anymore !

Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a Tweak UI application that does exactly what it’s name says it should. It is a collection of hundreds of esoteric Windows tweaks available in one application so that you don’t have to hunt for them when you really need them.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker classifies the tweaks under different categories like Personalization, System Performance, Network tweaks, User accounts, UAC and so on and presents them to the user in the simplest way possible, hiding all the gory registry editing that goes on behind the scenes.

So, suppose I’m really irritated with the time it takes Windows to kill a non-responding application and I’d like a way to make Windows kill such applications faster.

I have two ways to go about changing the default Windows behaviour. Google my heart out and find a solution by hit and miss. OR launch Ultimate Windows Tweaker (UWT).

I open up UWT, click on the System Performance category in the left sidebar and I get a number of options that I can change to improve the operating system’s performance including, lo and behold, a slider that lets me reduce the time Windows waits before killing a non-responding application.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker also includes a number of other useful and popular tweaks like changing the appearance of the start menu by adding or removing entries from it (Personalization category), turning on RSS feed discovery in IE (Internet Explorer category), disabling remote desktop sharing within the domain and network (Network Tweaks category), and so on.

The best part about this application is that it’s portable. Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a self contained executable so you can carry it with you on a thumb drive and use it as and when you want to without installing it.

I’ve found the tweaks included in UWT very useful for customizing my Windows setup and I am sure you all will also find them useful.

Do you use something different to tweak your Windows system?   If so, tell us about it.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Tweak Your Windows Operating System With Xpy (10)
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• How To Troubleshoot Your Windows With The MSconfig Utility (6)
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We have previously covered Google Labs features for Gmail. Here are 7 more innovative Gmail labs features that should not escape your awareness.

To enable Gmail Labs features, log into your Gmail account, go to >Settings >Labs, browse all experimental features and check enable for the ones you would like to use, then finally save your changes. As will be described below, some features require further settings to come into effect.

Signature Tweaks

No one wants to scroll through pages of quoted text to find contact information in the signature, right?

Signature Tweaks is one of the most simple features, taking care of this signature dilemma.

It tweaks your signature so that it will appear above the quoted text, rather than below it, which would be the default behavior. Simple, but cool.

Location in Signature

If you travel a lot, Location in Signature could be a fun feature or simply an easy way to share with your friends where you currently are.

To make your location appear in your signature, you need to enable this feature, have a signature (>Settings >General) and check “Append your location to the signature” below the signature box.

If you’re sneaky you could of course cheat a little and change your location manually. I wonder whether anyone has sent eMails from Mars, yet. April Fools Day anyone?

Superstars

Superstars gives you several more “stars” to star or visually tag your mail.

You can edit your superstars by going to >Settings >General and dragging icons from “not in use” to “in use” and vice versa.

Personally, I would love to see an even bigger variety of icons, for example gif images to draw extra attention and smileys.

Previews In Mail For Yelp, Picasa, Flickr & YouTube

Here we have one of the newer set of features added in mid March. It’s actually four individual features, but the essence is the same. If someone shares a Yelp review, a Picasa, Flickr or YouTube link, you no longer have to open the URL in a new browser tab. You can view the preview right in your mail.

Multiple Inboxes

Gmail supports filters, but filters can too easily drag mail from your attention, by silently moving them into the target folders. With Multiple Inboxes you can move important mail back into your field of vision. It gives you five extra panels that will appear in a custom location next, above or below your inbox.

Once the Multiple Inboxes feature is enabled, you can go to >Settings >Multiple Inboxes and add search queries for messages you always want have handy.

Here is how that will look like. On the left is my inbox, on the right you see the extra panels, which are starred messages, drafts and eMails from Twine.

Mail Goggles

This one will keep you from sending stupid mails in the middle of the night by making you solve math problems before being able to send an eMail.

Per default it is active Friday and Saturday between 10pm and 4am, but you can manually adjust days, times and difficulty level under >Settings >Generals.

Undo Send

Despite any precautions, accidents happen. So if you still send the wrong mail to the wrong person, you may be delighted to learn that Google has just recently implemented a feature that allows you to call your mail back.

Unfortunately, the undo feature will only work for a few seconds right after the message was sent. So you have to quickly realize your mistake!

What novel features would you like to see in Gmail Labs?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The first thing I check on a slow computer is if it is running in PIO or DMA mode.

I hear you panic, “What the doodle is DMA mode? How do I check that? Oh Guy, don’t get too techy on us!!!”

Don’t sweat it. This procedure only takes about 3 minutes and is quick and painless. That’s why I check this first instead of running all the diagnostic and hard drive utilities. Plus, if this IS the problem, those utilities will take FOREVER to run and won’t solve the problem.

What Happened?

How does a Windows-based machine drop from the Direct Memory Access (DMA) modes (fast modes) to the Programmed Input/Output (PIO) mode (death warmed over)? Apparently, if Windows encounters six or more CRC or timeout errors, it will have a “hard drive attack” and slow the Secondary IDE settings to PIO mode.

Simply shutting down your computer by the power button can lead to this problem too. So, don’t do that anymore.

(NOTE: Hardware Engineer Types, I know this isn’t the most accurate explanation, but it’s the very basic overview that my Aunt Tessie can handle, OK?)

How Can I Fix It?

Now for the juicy part – how to fix it. You might have gathered that from the heading above. Good eye.

Go to the Device Manager (accessible via the Windows Control Panel, double-click the Systems Icon, click the Hardware tab, then the Device Manager button)

Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers entry.

Double-click on the first IDE Channel entry. This is where the problem seems to occur the most. If you don’t find it here, then check the other entries with the same method.

Click on the Advanced Settings tab and see if the Current Transfer Mode reads PIO Mode and the Transfer Mode reads DMA if available.

If it does, then set the Transfer Mode to PIO only. Click ‘OK’.

Double-click on the first IDE Channel entry again, click on the Advanced Settings tab, and change the Transfer Mode from PIO only to DMA if available. Click ‘OK’.

Once more, double-click on the first IDE Channel entry and click on the Advanced Settings tab. Now the Current Transfer Mode should read something like Ultra DMA Mode 5. Click ‘OK’, restart your computer and see how it runs so much faster. Quick and painless, n’est pas?

Wait, you’re still here? It happened again? You’ve been shutting down properly right? I see.

Well, there are some other possible contributing factors that can cause the hard drive to drop to PIO mode. At this point though, you may be best to take it to a qualified repair shop. Most of these problems will be hardware related. At least you didn’t waste 17.25 hours waiting for a defrag that wasn’t going to fix anything.

Have you had this problem before? Know of any other simple changes that can be made in the Device Manager that can help your computer? Let us know in the comments.

Picture Credit : Jaisey

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Enter Xpy, to take care of your tweaking needs!

Xpy allows you to tweak a number of Windows settings easily and improve the overall Windows performance. All you have to do is place a check mark next to the setting you wish to change and then hit “next” and Xpy will take care of the rest.

There are a number of other features (i.e. deleting pagefile on shutdown, removing windows messenger etc.) that make Xpy a tool worth having, however first le’ts have a look at some of the settings you can tweak with Xpy.

The tweaks are classified into several categories: General Services Internet Explorer Windows Media Player Windows Messenger Windows Desktop Search Usability Delete Files

And they range from “Enable delete pagefile at shutdown” to “disable selected services” to “Increase maximum connections in Internet Explorer” to “Disable DRM for imported music in WMP” to “Disable balloon popups, Autorun, Desktop Cleanup” to “Deleting Recycle Bin, My Documents, My Computer shortcuts” and much much more.

There are a couple of interesting features that I really like in Xpy.

It allows you to save all the tweaks that you made on the system in a file. Just use Xpy with /file switch and it creates a settings file on the desktop. Next time provide the file as an argument and boom all your settings are applied! This is especially useful if you have to re-install the system or you are responsible for maintaining a number of computers.

Secondly it allows you to restore any changes you made to the system using Xpy. When you run Xpy, after you have applied the tweaks, it gives you the option to restore previous settings or go ahead with further tweaking.

Thirdly it’s portable (doesn’t require an install) and always ready to use!

Some other features include:

- Disable Windows communicating with Microsoft
- Disable questionable services
- Tweak Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player
- Remove Windows Messenger
- Improve privacy and security
- Improve performance

A Mention: The Xpy icon looks scary. It looks as if double-clicking the icon will unleash a wrath of the Devil on your system. Some anti-virus programs may also show it as a suspicious file but as the Xpy page says: “Xpy is not evil, it’s a problem with all NSIS compiled software, but if you are the suspicious type you can always have a look at the source code (SourceForge and Google Code) and build a binary yourself!”

Do you use such software to tweak your system?  Or do you prefer editing the registry manually instead? Know of other similar tools? Let us know in the comments!

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Speed Up The Shutdown Of Your Windows (14)
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When you open the xMod application, you will see a window with several option panes at the top.

Under the Tools pane, there is a one-click button for you to check SMART status of your disks. For those who are not sure what SMART status is, it refers to the Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology that is built into your Mac’s hard drive to constantly monitor its condition. Frequent checks of the SMART status can allow you to predict and/or prevent disk failures.

You can also repair files permission and verify Preferences files in the Tools pane.

In the Finder pane, there is a great list of stuff that you can tweak, ranging from the default behavior in the Finder window to screen capture file type and save location. You can also change the menubar to a white background (just like in Mac Tiger) or give it a textured look.

One tweak that amazed me is the ability to set your screensaver as your desktop wallpaper. If you like to see a dynamic effect on your desktop, then you will definitely like this tweak.

The Dock pane allows you to change the behavior of your dock. If you prefer the old 2D dock in Mac Tiger or want to lock up some of the dock options (such as the position of the dock, dock content, autohide option) so that other people cannot change it, then this is the place to tweak it. If you don’t like the dashboard, you can also disable it here.

Both the Safari and the Clean panes contain tweaks for the Safari browser. The Safari pane allows you to enable the “Inspect Element” and debugging options while the Clean pane provides a one-click clean up of all your Web history.

The iTunes pane is a newly added feature in the latest version 1.5. It allows you to change the play count of selected songs and also remove dead tracks if there are any.

On the whole, I would recommend xMod to anyone who wants to get more out of their Mac Leopard and/or looking for ways to get thing done faster. It didn’t take long for xMod to become one of my ‘must-have’ applications in Mac. What about you?

xMod is free and can be downloaded from Geek Peak Software.

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