PCTips Box

In order to improve performance and reduce the amount of time spent waiting to view Web pages, Internet Explorer stores many of the Web pages and graphics you have viewed in a folder on your hard drive. Next time you revisit a Web site, Internet Explorer can use the content stored in the Temporary Internet Files folder to display the site content, instead of retrieving them from the Web.

You can manually clear the contents of this folder in Internet Explorer by selecting Internet Options for the Tools menu. From the General tab, simply click the Delete Files button. You can also configure Internet Explorer to empty the contents of this folder when you close your browser. To do so, select the Advanced tab from the Internet Options window. Under the Security section, select the option to Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed and click OK.

Slow computer getting you down? Wish you could speed up your system so that games won’t crawl by like a slide show permanently set to slow? Well look no further! I shall share five easy steps that you can take to improve your system’s speed! Most of them are free of charge, and all of them should have some effect on your system. So without further ado, we begin with:

1. Remove spyware and adware from your system. Have you noticed recently that ads seem to pop up whenever you go to a Web page? Or that Internet speeds are about that of diseased livestock? Your system’s probably chock full of spyware. What to do? Well, thankfully there are several things you can do. First, download either Spybot-S&D or Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, and run it. This should remove most if not all of the spyware and adware on your system. Neither of these are particularly robust, however, so we move on to: (more…)

Nowadays everyone needs to have a little eye-candy on their desktop and, although most of the people that use the Mac Terminal can easily be considered as being a little bit on the geek side and will always prefer functionality over good looks, I’m pretty sure that none of them will refuse having a really nice looking and always ready Terminal at their disposal, just a key shortcut away.

And, by saying it will be just a key shortcut away, I don’t mean that you’ll be able to launch a Terminal windows each time you’ll push the magic button combination. No! The Terminal will just slide down over your Mac’s desktop and will hide again under the menubar when you will not need to use it anymore. Just like the Quake-like console I mentioned in the title.

SIMBL and Visor

How can this be achieved, you ask? Well, it couldn’t be any simpler! All you will have to do is to install SIMBL, download a plug-in and place it in the right location on your Mac’s hard-drive. (more…)

How would you like to completely protect your PC from viruses, malware and the myriad of nasties floating around the Internet? Of course you would, but even with the best security software available there’s always the chance something will get through, but maybe there is a solution…

What we have here is a freeware program called Returnil Virtual System that creates a sacrificial ‘mirror’ or clone of your system on a virtual partition on your hard drive. Your PC boots into the virtual system, so your original system remains isolated and protected. If something does make it through your defences no harm is done, you just reboot and any changes the malicious software has made are automatically erased and you reboot into a newly created system. (more…)

How much do you know about your PC? Yes, I know Windows tells you about the hardware and you can see what programs you have on the All Programs list, but that’s just scratching the surface. What, for instance, is the make and version of your PC’s BIOS, what peripherals are attached, how much of your memory is in use, when was your PC first switched on and how many times have you booted it up, what is the make, model number and size of your hard drive, and just how many programs are still on your PC that you’ve forgotten about? (more…)

There are two ways to run several operating systems on your computer. You can run them with virtualization inside one another, or you can install them alongside each other and boot each individually, this is the easiest method for most users.

You don’t even have to create a dual boot system with Linux, in this case, Ubuntu. It can be installed by itself without Vista or any other operating installed first. Most users purchasing a new computer will find Vista installed so this is the route I will take for this tutorial.

Let’s take a look at installing Ubuntu alongside Vista on a computer, assuming Vista is installed first as this will cover most instances. (more…)

In this tip you will learn that how to improve the printing quality. Today most of the printers provide you the method to improve the quality of the printing. In the following section you will find step by step instructions on how to improve the printing quality.

* Go to Start > Control Panel
* In the control panel click on the “Printers and Other Hardware” or “Printers and Faxes”.
* Double Click the Printer’s Icon.
* Click the printer preferences in the printer menu.
* Select high quality or best print option in the printer preferences.

In the Windows based operating systems you can improve the quality of your printings through the above mentioned steps. (more…)

You may be able to free up some valuable space if you’re using two disk partitions, using two physical drives, or dual-booting between XP and Vista on the same machine.

I’ll show you several steps you can take to eliminate duplicate files and get more out of your disks.

Decide on your multiple-partition strategy

Years ago, it was common for users seeking more reliability to divide a hard drive into two or more partitions: portions of a disk, each with a different drive letter. Back then, recovering data from drive d: was easier than from drive c: if the primary partition (containing Windows) became corrupted.

That configuration is rare today, because backup programs and disaster-recovery services have improved. But there are still three situations in which you might find yourself handling two or more partitions or physical disks: (more…)

My tips explained how to set up a Vista machine to dual-boot between that OS and Windows XP.

But booting to XP on a dual-boot system has the negative side-effect of deleting any Vista restore points, in addition to all but its latest backup file, and a Registry workaround is required to prevent this.

XP dual-boot is not system-restore friendly

Ian Brown was the first to describe an unfortunate fact of dual-booting XP and Vista: (more…)

Sooner or later most of us have to confront the problem of running out of hard disc space. Usually there’s no alternative but to bite the bullet and delete some files and applications, upgrade to a larger hard drive, install a second hard drive, or if the PC is coming to the end of the road, buy a new one. However, it may be possible to delay the inevitable by scanning your drive with this freeware utility. It’s called DoubleKiller and its job is to track down and eradicate duplicate files. You would probably be surprised how many duplicate files you accumulate over time, I found several hundred megabytes worth on a quite modestly well-used office PC. (more…)