PCTips Box

If you are one those firefox users who want to clean all the traces of your browsing history, then let me tell you there is very simple way to do it with firefox itself without any extension.

here is how you can automate the cleaning of your browsing history and cookies..

1. Open Firefox

2. go to File Menu >> Tools >> Options , click on privacy tab

3. check the option which says: Always clear my data when I close firefox (as shown in the image below) (more…)

If you have a tablet PC and are running Windows Vista you have some new options to customize your pen flicks that will help you become a pen power users.

1. Click on the Start Button and key in Pen and Input Devices and hit Enter.
2. Click or tap on the Flicks tab.
3. Enable flicks by checking Use flicks to perform common actions quickly and easily if it is not already enabled.
4. Select Navigational and editing flicks.
5. The Customize button will now be active. Click it.
6. Customize away and hit OK when you are finished.
7. Hit OK once more to exit

Sometimes instability problems with your video card occurs. To see if the problems are caused by the card itself you’ll have to test it in the DirectX menu.

1. Click Start and then open ” RUN ” .
2. Type in the box ” dxdiag ”
3. In the menu that appeared click on the ” Display ” tab.
4. Now in the ” DirectX Features ” section click the ” Test Direct Draw ” and ” Test Direct 3D ” buttons. You’ll be asked if you see some boxes and logos spinning answer with yes or no, after you finish all the tests you’ll see the results, if you had any errors or not.

If you had errors the problems usually come from a instable video card or corrupted drivers.

1: Start > Right Click on My Computer and select properties.
2: Click on the “Advanced” tab
3: See the “Perfomance” section? Click “Settings”
4: Disable all or some of the following:
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Tabs are one of the best new features in Internet Explorer 7. I like them because they keep my task bar clean of extra Internet Explorer instances. The only problem I have is with pop-ups that are on my allow list such as when I write a new message in Outlook Web Access.

Follow these steps to configure Internet Explorer 7 to always open up pop-ups in a new tab instead of a new browser window: (more…)

Do you have a SATA disk drive in your computer? If so, you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hard disk. This speeds up the performance of your hard disk by enhancing write caching. However, if your computer is not connected to a battery backup and you loose power you have a increased risk for data loss or corruption. If you have a laptop your chances are data loss or corruption are dramatically less since your laptop battery will kick on if your power source is lost. Let’s get started: (more…)

Windows Vista, Microsoft’s first new major operating system (OS) since the launch of the Windows XP line in 2001, is due to hit stores on January 30. Vista’s launch has already generated some questions about upgrading, new features, tech support, and whether now is a good time to migrate your computers to this new OS.

To help you make an informed decision about Vista, we’ve answered a handful of questions that we think nonprofits will be most concerned with. You may even want to use our answers to assess the potential pros and cons of upgrading to Vista at your nonprofit.

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Files that have been protected using EFS are encrypted at the file-system level. The benefit of this is that the files can only be opened by the user with the appropriate private key and certificate. Even if you were to reinstall the operating system, the files would still be inaccessible.

You can encrypt a file using the steps listed below. An important point to remember is that a file can not be both encrypted and compressed. If compression is enabled, it will be disable when encryption is enabled.

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If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2. Select the Advanced tab
3. Under Performance choose the Settings button
4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.
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You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

Open My Computer
Click on Tools menu
Click on Folder Options
Click on the View tab.
Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
Click Apply
Click Ok
Reboot your computer