Daily Cup of Tech

In my office at work, have have set up two computer systems (soon to be three). Once system is for my day to day work and the other system is for testing and monitoring. Each system has two screens giving me a total of four screens.

Now, the one thing that I didn’t want was two keyboards and mice. So, my first thought was, “Get a KVM. Problem solved.” The problem was that I needed to have all of the screens active at the same time. With a KVM, I would switch screens (although I could always not use the screen portion). The other issue that I saw was that a multiple screen KVM with digital inputs started to get pricy!

After some research, I discovered a wonderful little program called Synergy. It allows you to run a program on each computer and then it transfers control from one computer to another. So now, all I need to do is slide the mouse off the right hand side of screen two on computer one and it magically appears on screen one of computer two.

I have put together a little tutorial on setting up a two computer system with a single keyboard and mouse. I also explain how to set up the system so that it is taking up a minimial amount of desk space with the maximum amount of usability.

If you are planning on running more than one computer, this will give you a really good head start and probably give you some ideas that you have not thought about.

Multiple Computer Setup

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One of the most common complaints that I get from people is that their computer just seems to be getting slower and slower as time goes on. There can be several reasons behind this but one of the common issues is file fragmentation.

File fragmentation occurs when a file is saved on the hard drive in pieces. These pieces are located at different places on the hard drive whic, in turn makes the hard drive work harder to get that file and it takes longer for that file to be retrieved.

One of the best things that you can do to help aleviate this issue is to defragment your hard drive. This is, essentially, the process of bringing all of the file pieces together again so that the hard drive can access them quicker.

There are several different ways to defragment your hard drive but I prefer to use the command prompt because it is quick to access and can be easily run from a batch file or scheduled.

Here are the steps to follow so that you can defragment your hard drive from the command:

1. Open up a command prompt by going to Start→Run…. Type in cmd and click OK.
2. Let’s assume that you would like to perform a complete defragment of the C: drive. To do this, you would simply type defrag C: -f and then press the Enter button.
3. Once the defragmentation process has completed, you can close the command prompt.

You can repeat this process for every hard drive.

If you want to make the process even easier, create a file in Notepad called defrag.bat and save it to your desktop. The, in the file create a defrag entry for each hard drive on your system and save the file. For example, if you had hard drives C:, E:, and F: on your system, your defrag.bat file would look like this:

defrag C: -f
defrag E: -f
defrag F: -f

Then, all you would need to do to defragment your hard drive would be to double click on the defrag.bat file.

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Often I forget that there are a lot of people out there just starting out with this whole computer thing. So, I’ve decided to create a number of really quick posts that talk about the basics of computers, network, etc.

Today’s post is about creating a hidden network share on Windows. This post assumes that you are in a networked environment and that Windows is set up as a stand alone system or in a workgroup, not a part of a Windows domain.

But first, why would you want to create a hidden share? One of the biggest reasons is because it is a lot harder to find information if you do not know it is there. When a share is hidden, people need to work that much harder to find it.

Now, please keep in mind that a hidden share is not a replacement for good network security practices. Rather, it is a good addition to a security policy.

There are a few short steps involved in creating a hidden network share.

1. Using My Computer, find the folder that you would like to share.
2. Next, right click on the folder and click on Sharing and Security…. This will bring up the properties for the folder with the Sharing tab selected.
3. In the Network sharing and security section, check off Share this folder on the network.
4. In the Share name: box, give the share any name you would like.
5. Now, here is the trick! To hide this share from others browsing the network, simply add a $ at the end of the share name. That’s it!
6. Click OK to create the hidden share and close the properties window.

Now, if you were to browse to this computer from the network, you would not be able to see the share that you just created. So, how do you access this type of a share?

If you go to Start→Run…, you can then type in the full UNC path to the share. So, for example, if the computer that I created the share on was called DCoT and the hidden share that I created was called Downloads$, in the run box I would enter:

\\DCoT\Downloads$

Assuming that everything is set up properly on your computer network, your hidden share should come right up!

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