Making hard and soft (symbolic) links in Windows

One great feature of Unix-like file systems is the ability to make links to other files and directories. Windows has had the ability to make shortcuts for a long time, but only since Vista has it had the ability to create soft (symbolic) links to files and directories and hard links to files.


You may be asking yourself, "What are links and why should I care?" In short, links work better than shortcuts and can allow you to do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to do.


For example, if you use Dropbox, you know that only files and folders in your Dropbox folder get synchronized. But, if you make a hard link in your Dropbox folder to a file outside of your Dropbox folder, it will get synchronized because the file now lives in both places. It does this without taking up any more space on the disk. Cool, right?


The following pages explain how links work and how to use them in more detail:


Using Symlinks in Windows Vista - The How-To Geek

How-To: Use Symbolic Links to Master Vista's File System

How to migrate user profiles to a different domain

If you've ever migrated a user's workstation from an old domain to a new domain, you know it's not a simple matter of dragging and dropping the contents of the profile directory in Windows Vista and 7 like it was in Windows XP. You have to manually copy selected files and folders and you lose all of the user's preferences.


That is, of course, unless you use the User Profile Wizard from ForensIT. This small, free utility makes it a breeze to migrate user profiles to a new domain.

Lock Down Your Computer Like the NSA

Here is an article from Lifehacker about how to secure your computer like the NSA. It links to the NSA web page with documents on securing Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris.

Logging into a Vista PC on a domain as a local user when you don't know the computer name

If you're logging into a computer that's on a domain and you go to "Switch User", it will try to log you in as a domain user.  So, if you want to log in as a local user, you have to specify that.


However, there's no "Log on to" drop-down box anymore, so you have to type the computer name followed by a backslash in front of the username.


Okay, but what if you don't know the computer name?


Aha!  There's a shortcut.  Instead of the computer name, use a period (.).  That's right, a dot.  A dot is shorthand for "where I am now" in UNC paths, DOS and UNIX/Linux.  So, you type the username like this:


.\username


Voila!