"God Mode" for Vista/Windows7?

Started by Darren Dirt, March 05, 2012, 09:00:00 AM

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Darren Dirt

has anybody tried this?

http://www.computerhope.com/tips/tip180.htm

Quote
Enabling Windows GodMode

Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit version) introduced a new hidden feature called GodMode that allows you to view and adjust all settings within Windows. To create a shortcut to the GodMode in Windows Vista (32-bit) or any version of Windows 7 follow the below steps.

Anywhere on your computer create a new folder.
After the folder has been created, copy the below text, rename that folder, and paste the text as the file name.
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Once the above steps have been completed a new shortcut entitled GodMode will be visible. Opening this shortcut will display a Window similar to the below example.



_____________________

Strive for progress. Not perfection.
_____________________

Mr. Analog

By Grabthar's Hammer

Tom

Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 05, 2012, 09:06:48 AM
Nope, does it work?
Yeah, it gives you a folder full of direct shortcuts to a bunch of control panel applets, and dialogs that are normally burried behind a lot of clicking.
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Thorin

Quote from: Tom on March 05, 2012, 09:20:09 AM
Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 05, 2012, 09:06:48 AM
Nope, does it work?
Yeah, it gives you a folder full of direct shortcuts to a bunch of control panel applets, and dialogs that are normally burried behind a lot of clicking.

w00t!  No more searching!  Well, still gotta search through a couple hundred entries in a folder...

I wonder why Microsoft added this - you think it's because the developers were getting sick and tired of using the normal UI?
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Mr. Analog

I dunno, but it's always telling when you need something like this :)
By Grabthar's Hammer

Darren Dirt

Quote from: Thorin on March 05, 2012, 10:03:35 AM
I wonder why Microsoft added this - you think it's because the developers were getting sick and tired of using the normal UI?

Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 05, 2012, 10:08:36 AM
it's always telling when you need something like this :)



step 1: remove almost every handy one-click feature from your OS that billions are stuck using
step 2: wait until a ton of people complain about how you changed things that did NOT need to change (i.e. "fixed" what was not broken")
step 3: ignore those people, after all they are just devs and admins and you're already at RC1
step 4: wait a few years as 3rd parties create a bunch of "hacks" to get your system the way it USED to be
step 5: finally concede that you effed up ... by letting it slip there's a "god mode" that's always been there, now no need to rely on 3rd party hacks! (or at least no more reason to complain)

:sigh: any wonder why people are moving to Linux or Apple...
_____________________

Strive for progress. Not perfection.
_____________________

Lazybones

Sorry search works faster that scrolling through the monster God mode list.

Mr. Analog

In Windows XP how do you restore your computer from an earlier time? Or change your UAC settings or check security status?

Exactly.

Quote from: Darren Dirt on March 05, 2012, 02:29:50 PM:sigh: any wonder why people are moving to Linux or Apple...

I love generalizations. Most people are stuck on XP still, probably due to sluggish corporate upgrade programs, in fact 2003 looks a lot like more recent times with the split between Win 2000 and XP very similar to the split between XP and Win7.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

Quote from: Lazybones on March 05, 2012, 02:45:03 PM
Sorry search works faster that scrolling through the monster God mode list.

also this ^^^
By Grabthar's Hammer

Lazybones

Quote from: Darren Dirt on March 05, 2012, 02:29:50 PM
:sigh: any wonder why people are moving to Linux or Apple...

No there is not a significant drive to Linux in the desktop.. Despite RANDOM larger companies and orgs that have switched there isn't much momentum. Linux simply does not work well in some environments. Have you tried to use Linux as your sole desktop environment for more than a month? Have you ever tried to get 2 or 3 (current note repo packages are nearly always old) server packages install at once on a linux server?

Tom

Quote from: Lazybones on March 05, 2012, 03:00:21 PM
Quote from: Darren Dirt on March 05, 2012, 02:29:50 PM
:sigh: any wonder why people are moving to Linux or Apple...

No there is not a significant drive to Linux in the desktop.. Despite RANDOM larger companies and orgs that have switched there isn't much momentum. Linux simply does not work well in some environments. Have you tried to use Linux as your sole desktop environment for more than a month? Have you ever tried to get 2 or 3 (current note repo packages are nearly always old) server packages install at once on a linux server?
Yes and Yes.
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Mr. Analog

Quote from: Tom on March 05, 2012, 03:35:25 PM
Quote from: Lazybones on March 05, 2012, 03:00:21 PM
Quote from: Darren Dirt on March 05, 2012, 02:29:50 PM
:sigh: any wonder why people are moving to Linux or Apple...

No there is not a significant drive to Linux in the desktop.. Despite RANDOM larger companies and orgs that have switched there isn't much momentum. Linux simply does not work well in some environments. Have you tried to use Linux as your sole desktop environment for more than a month? Have you ever tried to get 2 or 3 (current note repo packages are nearly always old) server packages install at once on a linux server?
Yes and Yes.

Using shell commands, amirite? Not really a "desktop" experience then, is it. :)

Anyway, I feel responsible for all this wailing and gnashing of teeth, all I'm sayin' is that in Vista/Win7 it would have been handy to enable this if you wanted to without creating a shell folder that copies shortcuts to all 270+ tasks available in the Control Panel (which, as Lazy says, are searchable in the Start menu).

I guess if you enjoy scrolling through monolithic lists though this is the bees knees :lol:
By Grabthar's Hammer

Lazybones

Quote from: Darren Dirt on March 05, 2012, 09:00:00 AM
Quote


Using the Vista Start menu Search....

(Windows Key) "Change Cu" Enter <-- Minimum characters before hit was highlighted
(Windows Key) "Change U" Enter
(Windows Key) "add r" Enter <-- Minimum characters before hit was highlighted to jump to add remove programs.

Seriously this is EXACTLY what the Ubuntu unit bar is cloning, and has been in Mac OSX (⌘-Return instead of windows key) since 2005.

Quit thumping around menus when you know what things are called just search.

Darren Dirt

Quote from: Lazybones on March 05, 2012, 04:25:39 PM
Quit thumping around menus when you know what things are called


aye, but there's the rub, though, innit guvnah?
_____________________

Strive for progress. Not perfection.
_____________________

Tom

Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 05, 2012, 03:50:33 PM
Quote from: Tom on March 05, 2012, 03:35:25 PM
Quote from: Lazybones on March 05, 2012, 03:00:21 PM
Quote from: Darren Dirt on March 05, 2012, 02:29:50 PM
:sigh: any wonder why people are moving to Linux or Apple...

No there is not a significant drive to Linux in the desktop.. Despite RANDOM larger companies and orgs that have switched there isn't much momentum. Linux simply does not work well in some environments. Have you tried to use Linux as your sole desktop environment for more than a month? Have you ever tried to get 2 or 3 (current note repo packages are nearly always old) server packages install at once on a linux server?
Yes and Yes.

Using shell commands, amirite? Not really a "desktop" experience then, is it. :)
Nah, if I was more comfortable with the various package management GUI's I could use those. But otherwise I like me a GUI. I run KDE 4. I get bling.

I've been running KDE+Linux as my primary OS for a good 10 years now.

Quote from: Darren Dirt on March 05, 2012, 04:42:52 PM
Quote from: Lazybones on March 05, 2012, 04:25:39 PM
Quit thumping around menus when you know what things are called


aye, but there's the rub, though, innit guvnah?

Indeed, my biggest problem is not remembering what the heck I'm looking for. One reason I need a gui. I have to see the thing I'm looking for, before I remember ;D
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Mr. Analog

Oddly enough there are associative keywords for must functions so you don't have to know the exact name, just type in what you're looking for. Windows 7 at least is smart enough to give you a short list of most likely what you were looking for.
By Grabthar's Hammer

Thorin

I will admit search in the start menu works easier than trying to find the right icon, but only because I'm good at remembering what things are called.  However, it's not so much the start menu I want text shortcuts for, it's web browsing.  I open a browser and go to the same website over and over in a day, and I'm on a laptop with a touchpad, and I hate using touchpads.  I've added custom search engines to Chrome to point to specific urls; for instance, to check these forums for new messages I start Chrome and then type "rw" in the address bar.  That shortcut (sorry, "search engine") is linked directly to the url for new posts on forums.righteouswrath.com.  Now if only I could get my custom search engines would follow me from computer to computer.

Back to the original topic, yeah, it's weird that they've added code to Windows to respond to this exact folder name - seems pretty unnecessary.  Who knows, maybe it was used during QA.  Might be easier to use automated tests in an Explorer window.
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Tom

I really like KDE's krunner. It ties virtually any kind of data or resource into KDE's search/run box.

It has a bunch of plugins:

Applications - Find applications and control panels
Bookmarks - obvious
Calculator - built in calculator!
Calendar events - also obvious?
Contacts
Control Audio Player
Desktop Sessions - fast user switching
Devices - Manage removable devices
"Sessions" - support for various kde application's sessions (kate, konqueror, konsole)
Locations - file and url opener
Nepomuk Search - search through everything that the desktop indexer has scanned (files, tags, email, whatever)
Power Management
Recent Documents
Special Characters - create special characters from hex codes
Spell Checker
Terminate Applications
Unit Converter
Wikipedia
Windows - list windows and desktops and switch between them
Activities - list and switch between Activities (extension of virtual desktops that apps can be aware of)

So yeah. Bit of a KDE fan here.

Should note, that KDE 4 was branched off of KDE 3 on July 25 2005. And the idea for krunner predates that. The "Windows 7 like"ness of KDE4 that people seem to comment about predates the first Windows 7 previews too. :D Lots of borrowing going on between Windows/OSX/KDE/Gnome I tell you what.

append: the stock "start menu" also has a search feature, and it looks like it shares a bunch of the functionality of krunner. I'd be surprised if it didn't just use krunner's library directly (or dbus commands?)
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Thorin

Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Tom

Quote from: Thorin on March 05, 2012, 10:51:32 PM
Why is there a K in every name?
It's only in the classic names. In fact they have a bit of an "anti k" thing since the start on kde 4. Now everything has a funky name, like Plasma, Ion, Strigi, Nepomuk, Akonadi, Air, Oxygen, Solid, PowerDevil, BlueDevil, Dolphin, Phonon, Decibel, Calligra, Sonnet, "GHNS/DHX", Gluon, ThreadWeaver, OwnCloud... You get the picture :)

The K stuff was because well, it's KDE. Aka: The K Desktop Environment.
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Mr. Analog

"KDE" is a pun on the older Unix "Common Desktop Environment", the K stands for nothing in particular
By Grabthar's Hammer

Tom

Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 06, 2012, 06:54:50 AM
"KDE" is a pun on the older Unix "Common Desktop Environment", the K stands for nothing in particular
It started out as Kool. Then they dropped that. But yes, it was a play on CDE.
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Mr. Analog

Quote from: Tom on March 06, 2012, 08:34:28 AM
Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 06, 2012, 06:54:50 AM
"KDE" is a pun on the older Unix "Common Desktop Environment", the K stands for nothing in particular
It started out as Kool. Then they dropped that. But yes, it was a play on CDE.

Haha, that's awesome
By Grabthar's Hammer