Useful Windows tweaks

Application tweaks

Here are some useful tweaks that I use to get various applications on my Windows XP system running just the way I like it.

Running multiple Firefox profiles

I started doing this because I have 2 Gmail accounts, but Google only allows a single account to be connected from a single browser session. To enable 2 Firefox sessions with different profiles (so that the cookies for each session are isolated).

1. Ensure Firefox is not running and start Firefox using
   firefox.exe  -ProfileManager
2. Use the profile manager to name the default Firefox profile (e.g. PrimaryProfileName)
3. Create a 2nd Firefox profile (e.g. SecondaryProfileName) using profile manager, or from the command line using
   Firefox -CreateProfile SecondaryProfileName
4. Start the primary Firefox profile using
   Firefox -P PrimaryProfileName
5. Start the primary Firefox profile using
   Firefox -P SecondaryProfileName -no-remote

• Use Firefox personas to make the two Firefox profiles distinct, so that you know which Firefox window is associated with each profile

If Firefox is already running, when opening a URL, Windows passes that URL to the Firefox instance that was started without -no-remote. If only the -no-remote instance is running, an error message is displayed when Windows, (or another application) attempts to open a URL.

Edit  profiles.ini to ensure that the primary profile is the one that will be started if Firefox is not running when another application (or the operating system) opens a URL. The location of the profiles.ini file can be found (in Firefox 3.6) by going to Help | Troubleshooting Info and then clicking on Profile Diectory [Open Containing Folder] and then going up 2 folders. The usual location is C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini

Ensure that the desired primary profile has the line Default=1

Windows Explorer context menu extensions

I have installed various applications and registry teaks to provide several very useful context menu options to Windows Explorer.

1. Add Copy path to clipboard
2. Command window here
3. Copy/Move to folder
4. Open with (tweak registry to always show this option)
5. WinMerge “compare/compare to”
6. 7-zip
7. Edit with Notepad++
8. Unlocker