Tag: Utilities
October 09, 2009 by
Jason
The purchase of a record-breaking windows 7 operating system to make it faster, better one day before the start of the second series I share with you.
21. Presentation Nirvana. Press Windows+P to access the new Presentation mode, and easily turn on your projector and laptop screen at the same time. No more messing with vendor-specific utilities and arcane keystrokes. (Windows+X accesses the Mobility Center, with additional presentation options.)
22. Cut the Clutter. Press Windows+Home to minimize all but the current window, removing background clutter and letting you focus on that report your boss has been bugging you about.
23. Be a Mouse-Click Administrator. Windows 7 makes it easy to gain admin rights with a keyboard shortcut. Click on Ctrl+Shift on a taskbar-locked icon, and voila! You’ve launched it with appropriate admin rights.
24. Faster Installations. If your computer is capable of booting from USB, try this: XCopy the Windows 7 installation DVD to a sufficiently large USB drive, boot from that drive, and install Windows from there. It’s faster than a spinning platter.
25. Burn Discs with a Click. Or two; double-click an ISO file to burn it to your CD or DVD writer. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | 2 Comments »
USB flash drives have become really handy in storing different files of various sizes including, backups, personal documents, music, pictures, portable applications and more. Flash drives turned out to be so convenient that people start pouring in files of any kind without sorting them.
Because of these habits, flash drives end up getting real messy quickly and it becomes difficult to figure out how to clear up disk space to accommodate more files.
Deleting unnecessary files is a good solution, but can be tough to do when files aren’t properly organized. If you want to clear up disk space the fastest way possible, the best problem solver to this is by formatting your USB flash drive directly.
The advantages of doing this is that your flash drive is wiped completely clean, removing all files regardless of their attributes (including hidden files). Here are the basic steps in reformatting your USB flash drive: Read More»
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
November 06, 2008 by
Jason The Games for Windows Branding tool is one of the evolved aspects of the DirectX software development kit launched on November 5, 2008 for a variety of Windows releases, including Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3.
The November 2008 DirectX SDK delivers the Runtime, along with the additional software (updates to tools, utilities, samples, documentation, and runtime debug files) set up to enable developers to create content compliant with DirectX. Both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows are covered by the DirectX SDK update.
The November 2008 DirectX SDK has taken the Games for Windows Branding tool (offered initially in the August 2008 release of the SDK) to the next level. “This tool helps developers and publishers test their compliance against the Games for Windows technical requirements and test requirements,” revealed Microsoft. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista, Windows XP | No Comments »
As I am sure you know I have been waffling on for years about how your PC monitors your web surfing activities and logs every website you’ve ever visited, from the day you switched it on, in a hidden and protected file called index.dat. Regular readers may also recall a couple of utilities I’ve been recommending to wipe these files. Back n the days of Widows 98 my cleaner of choice was Spider, sadly it was never updated for XP but then along came Crap Cleaner CCleaner, as it is now known which does a brilliant job. Now we have a new utility that works with CCleaner, called Click&Clean, Basically it lets you put a quick-launch icon appropriately enough a toilet roll on your Internet Explorer or Firefox toolbar. You need to have CCleaner installed on your PC first, and the new icon has to be added manually, so don’t forget to read the instructions. One click and it launches CCleaner and your tracks are covered. Read More»
Posted in Software | No Comments »
This second and final part of our quick tour through the world of portable applications will focus mostly on programs that are not necessarily needed by the common user, but may come in handy in certain situations or to the more experienced Windows fans.
Compressing and decompressing files may be a very easy task, but things change when you have to use another computer that doesn’t have a compression utility installed, so here are some of our suggestions. You can try using the trial version of popular archivers WinRAR and PowerArchiver, or consider giving 7-zip, IZArc2Go and PeaZip a go, which are free for both personal and commercial use.
An organizer is not very helpful if you need to access your agenda from more than one computer. To overcome this inconvenience, feel free to install any of the following portable organizers and personal information managers: Sunbird, EverNote, EssentialPIM Pro, Avignon Concept or MSD Organizer. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Software | No Comments »
The Microsoft acquisition Sysinternals that is famous for their useful Windows utilities has a new site up that allows you to easily access any of their utilities for free over the internet in your command prompt. This allows you to run any of their utilities without first downloading it to your computer. Just open an administrative level command prompt and type in:
\\live.sysinternals.com\tools\toolname.exe
For example if you want to run Autoruns (a great program to see what starts up automatically) type \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\autoruns.exe and hit Enter.
Every Sysinternals utility is available for “live” use. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 1 Comment »
February 15, 2008 by
Jason No one ever bought a car or a computer because it could go slower. If your hard-disk drive seems to take forever to go about its business, or if it’s having trouble keeping up with your CD-R burning software, chances are it’s time for a tune-up and defragmentation.
Step 1: Close any open applications. Disable antivirus utilities, screen savers and other background programs. Make sure you’ve quit all programs in Windows by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete once (don’t press it twice or you’ll restart the computer).
Step 2: Windows will show you a list of applications running. Highlight each application (one at a time) and click on End Task to close each one. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Hardware, Mac | 2 Comments »
December 07, 2007 by
Jason There are literally hundreds of freeware applications and utilities that you can download for Windows XP to tweak and improve computer performance, however, it’s still hard to find really good ones for Windows Vista. If you’re looking for some good free programs to configure, customize and tweak Windows Vista, check out the list below. The programs range from system configuration tweakers to Windows Vista boot screen modifiers. Enjoy!
1. MZ Vista Force is a full-fledged tweaking machine! It’s broken down into Performance Tweaks, Windows Tweaks, Internet Optimizer, StartUp Manager, Services Manger, and Backup Restore. Use it to easily clean up junk files off your hard disk or speed up Internet browsing in Vista. You can also modify lots of esoteric settings like the speed at which the Start Menu displays and clearing out the page file at shutdown. Lots of options and a definite download! Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 2 Comments »
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