We showed you how to create and manage user accounts in Windows 7 in a previous post. But what if you don’t need it anymore? The process of deleting an account is relatively easy, but you might want to save their files and / or settings in case you need it again.

Delete a User

To delete a user, type user accounts into the Start search bar and hit Enter.

Then click on Manage another account.

Select the user account you want to get rid of.

Now click on Delete the account.

You are then given the option to keep the user files. You may want to do this if they need them for another machine or you want to store them if needed later.

If you choose to keep the files they will be saved in a folder on the desktop.

Then go ahead and delete the account.

This should help you get rid of users you no longer need on your machine, and save their files if needed.

My quick and easy solution to this problem is so simple that it barely deserves a full article, but we’re going to cover it anyway—basically, you just create a shortcut to edit the file in Notepad, and set the properties to always start as Administrator. The final step is to create that shortcut in the Start Menu, so it will be easily accessible with the start menu search engine.

Once you’re done, all you have to do is type hosts into the start menu, and you can edit the Hosts file.

Let’s Make a Shortcut! 

Open up the start menu folder—for those of you that might be new, we’ve covered how to easily open up the start menu folder in Windows 7. Then right-click and create a shortcut, with the following location:

notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Once you’ve created the shortcut, and make sure you give it a useful name like “Edit Hosts”, you should open up the shortcut properties, click the Advanced button, and then select the “Run as administrator” option.

Once you’ve done so, you can simply type hosts into the start menu to pull up the item…

You’ll be prompted to accept the UAC prompt, since you have to edit the hosts file in administrator mode.

And there we are. Edit away!

And yes, you might point out that you can simply change the permissions on the Hosts file to not require admin mode, but that would lead to a less secure system, since malware often tries to edit the hosts file.

Also, you might point out that this was such a simple and easy topic that I shouldn’t have bothered. But I did! Loss of geek points for me.

Virtual Hard Drive

In a previous post we showed you the steps for creating a VHD. Remember when creating a VHD it’s using the space on the volume where you create it.

When you no longer have a use for it, you can go into Computer Management by right-clicking Computer then Manage.

In Computer Management go under Disk Management, right-click on the VHD you want to get rid of and select Delete Volume.

Agree to the warning message that appears. You probably want to make sure and head its advice and make sure there is no data you need on it.

However, the drive is not completely gone, you’ll need to go in and manually delete it.

That’s it! Now it’s gone and you have regained some hard drive space for whatever you need.

What is mDNSResponder.exe or Bonjour?

The mDNSResponder.exe process belongs to the Bonjour for Windows service, which is Apple’s “Zero Configuration Networking” application, typically installed automatically by iTunes. If you’ve ever wondered how one iTunes install can talk to another on the same local network, Bonjour is what actually does this behind the scenes.

Don’t use iTunes? You aren’t alone, and that’s not the only way that Bonjour gets installed on your computer. It’s also bundled in a whole bunch of other software, like Pidgin, Skype, and Safari, and used to connect clients together on the same network.

It’s implemented as a Windows Service, which you can see if you head into the services panel (or just type services.msc into the start menu search box). You can stop it from here anytime.

The whole problem we have is that it generally doesn’t show up in Add / Remove Programs, so you can’t get rid of it through any normal methods. Thankfully you can still remove mDNSResponder.exe if you really want to, and it will simply limit some of the functionality in the apps that might rely on it.

Important: Don’t remove Bonjour if you use iTunes to share libraries, or any other feature from an application that relies on it.

How Do I Remove It?

First, it should be noted that you can disable Bonjour without necessarily removing it—just head into the Services panel, double-click on the service, and change the Startup type to Disabled.

This is probably your best bet if you don’t really want to break anything—if you have problems you can always re-enable it.

Alright, How Do I Really Remove It?

Let’s get down to business. If you’re absolutely sure you want to remove it, it’s really pretty simple. Open up a command prompt in administrator mode (right-click and choose Run as Administrator), and then change into the installation directory, usually the following:

\Program Files\Bonjour

If you are using Vista or Windows 7 x64 edition, you’ll need to head into the Program Files (x86) folder instead. Now that you are there, type in the following command to see the options:

mDNSResponder.exe /?

Ah, so now we know what to do to remove it! Simply type in the following:

mDNSResponder.exe –remove

You’ll get a message saying that the service has been removed. (Note again that you need an Administrator mode command prompt)

You’ll want to also disable the DLL file in the directory by renaming it to something else:

ren mdnsNSP.dll mdnsNSP.blah

You should be able to actually remove that entire directory if you really want to.

Wait, How Do I Enable It Again?

Oh, so your favorite application broke? No matter, you can easily re-install the Bonjour service with the following command:

mDNSResponder.exe -install

But I Deleted It!

See, you really shouldn’t delete things until you are sure they aren’t useful anymore. That’s why renaming is a good thing. Thankfully you can simply head over to Apple’s page and install Bonjour again.

Download Bonjour for Windows

Now when you right-click on the Start Orb in Windows 7, you just get the generic “Open Windows Explorer”, which takes you to the Libraries view. Not what we wanted!

The Stupid Geek Trick

Yep, this one is so easy it hurts.

Just right-click on the “All Programs” button on the start menu, and choose Open to head to your personal user-specific start menu folder, or “Open All Users” to open up the system-wide Start Menu folder.

Let’s Get Geeky With It

We couldn’t leave you with something as simple as that, so we’ll get a little more geeky and tell you how you can access the start menu other ways too.

For instance, you can type in the following to get to your user-specific Start Menu folder—or you can put it into a shortcut if you wanted to, or even use it from the command prompt.

%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

Want to get to the All Users start menu? Just use this instead:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

And thus ends the really simple tale of right-clicking and getting to a folder. I’ve lost 378 geek points by writing this article.

Note: AppLocker is only available in Ultimate and Enterprise versions of Windows 7.

Using AppLocker 

To access Group Policy Editor and create rules in AppLocker you’ll need to be logged in as Administrator. Click on Start and type gpedit.msc into the search box and hit Enter.

Under Local Computer Policy go to Computer Configuration \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Application Control Policies \ AppLocker.

Now you will see the overall controls for the applications.

Under Configure Rule Enforcement click on the Configure rule enforcement link.

Now under AppLocker Properties check the boxes next to Configured under Executable rules then click Ok.

Blocking Apps from Running

In this scenario, Jack wastes time playing games like Minesweeper and Solitaire when he should be doing his homework, so we are going to block all of the games. After completing the steps above, under the Overview section click on Executable Rules.

Since this is your first time accessing AppLocker, there will be no rules listed. Right-click and select Create New Rule…

This opens up the Create Executable Rules wizard and you can select not to show the introduction screen at start up for the next time you access it.

Select Permissions under Action select Deny.

Add the user you want to block, in this case it’s Jack.

After you’ve selected the deny action and selected the user continue to the next step.

In Conditions you can select from Publisher, Path or File hash. We don’t want Jack to have access to any of the games. so we will select Path.

Click on Browse Folders and select the Microsoft Games folder.

In the next screen you could add Exceptions like allowing certain files, but because we are blocking the entire games directory we’ll skip to the next screen.

Here you can add a description to the rule so you can keep track of them is there are several rules configured. When everything looks right click on Create.

A message pops up saying default rules haven’t been created yet. It is important to make sure they are created so click Yes to this message.

Now you will see the default rules and the new one you created showing Jack is denied access to the Microsoft Games directory.

After creating the rule make sure and go into services and make Application Identification is started and that it’s set to automatically start as well otherwise the rules won’t work. By default this service is not started so you will need to enable it.

Now, when Jack logs into his user account and tries to access the games he will only see the following message. Only an Administrator can go in and change the rule.

Conclusion

Use caution when configuring the rules and only start the Application Identity service after everything looks right. Otherwise you have the potential of locking yourself out of all applications including AppLocker.AppLocker is a powerful feature included in Windows 7 and we showed you a basic rule so you can get an idea of how it works. In the future we’ll take a look at more complex tasks to accomplish and gain tight control over what programs each user is able to access.

If you’ve got any geek skills at all, you probably don’t need to bother paying for an expensive security suite and a subscription. Instead, you can use the completely free Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus application, which we’ve already given our official blessing as a great solution.

I also explained the basics of how to keep your computer updated using Windows Update and third-party tools like Secunia PSI (which we’ve previously covered here).

For more, check out the article over at Lifehacker: Stop Paying for Windows Security; Microsoft’s Security Tools Are Good Enough

Adjust Navigation Pane

In Windows 7 there are five locations shown by default. They are Favorites, Libraries, Computer, Network, and Homegroup. You can click through to each location in the navigation pane, but that becomes tedious and annoying, especially when working with a lot of files and directories.

If you are moving from XP to Windows 7 you might find this method annoying and want to show subfolders instead of clicking through the hierarchy of folders and drives.

There is an easy way to remedy the annoyance. With Explorer open click on Organize then Folder and search options.

Under the General tab and the Navigation pane, check Show all folders and Automatically expand to current folder, then Apply and Ok.

The result is more complete list of folders to allow you to have easier access to everything while going through tons of files and organizing everything.

Automatically expanding to the current folder makes navigation faster and easier.

By checking those settings, every time you start up Explorer everything will be displayed in the list. If you want to change it back you can right-click in the Navigation Pane and turn the options on or off.

This simple adjustment should make navigation in Explorer a lot simpler and save time so you can focus on things that matter while your at work… like games and Facebook.

Blue Screen of Death

The BSOD is actually a protection mechanism that shuts down the system functions before further damage can occur. Many times the BSOD is caused by a hardware driver issue and a reboot can solve it. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case and additional troubleshooting is needed. The problem is that the computer will reboot before you can write down the error message and figure out what is wrong.

BlueScreenView

BlueScreenView is a handy utility that will display the BSOD dump file in an easy to read report so you can see what caused it. When you launch BlueScreenView it scans for minidump files (usually C:\Windows\minidump) created by the crash and displays the information. The dump files are displayed in the top pane and and in the lower pane it highlights the drivers involved that caused the crash.

Double click on the drivers to display an easy to read table showing the various properties of the error.

If you don’t want a lot of clutter you can just show the driver files involved.

Right-click on any of the dump files and send them to an HTML Report, which will be handy if you need to send the information to a technician. The ability to save the reports is also good for identifying reoccurring issues.

Another neat feature is you can have the original BSOD error be displayed.

You can also customize the settings for what you want to make visible.

It’s available in several different languages and works with XP, Vista and Windows 7. With BlueScreenView installed, you’ll no longer have to worry about frantically trying to write down the error message.

Download BlueScreenView (download link toward bottom of the page)

For more help with the BSOD check out The Geek’s article: Help Troubleshoot the Blue Screen of Death by Preventing Automatic Reboot

Show Messenger Icon in Notification Area

When you close out or minimize Messenger it will reside in the new Taskbar.

To make it act like it did in previous versions of Windows, right-click on the Windows Live Messenger icon and go to Properties.

In the example above I created an icon on the desktop but you can also do the same thing with the icon in the start menu.

Then go to the Compatibility tab and run it in Windows Vista compatibility mode.

The icon might be hidden in the notification area though…

You just need to customize the Notification Area Icons and have it Show icon and notifications.

That’s it! Now you have your Messenger icon back where it used to be.

If you’re annoyed by the way the Live Messenger icon is displayed, following this quick tip should help you out.