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Archive for the ‘Tutorials’ Category

5 Simple Ways to Speed Up Your PC

July 30th, 2009

There are loads of ways to perk up computer performance, from hardware upgrades to editing the Registry. But upgrading hardware can be quite expensive and editing the Windows Registry can dangerously damage your computer if you do something wrong. This piece of writing focused on simple and safe tweaks that will not cause any dilemma and will make your computer run faster. 1) Speed Up Windows Explorer Occasionally opening Windows Explorer can take a while. This is because Windows without human intervention looks for network files, shared network folders, and devices when you start Windows Explorer. It is likely to make it open faster by changing the settings: Open Windows Explorer Click on Tools menu Then click on Folder Options Click on the View tab Find Automatically search for network folders and printers check box and uncheck it Click Apply, then click OK Reboot your PC From now on Windows Explorer will start faster, as it will no longer automat... Read More

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The Fact about Defragmentation

July 22nd, 2009

As long as there have been hard disks, there has been disk fragmentation. If you’re troubled about your systems at all, you should be defragging them on a regular basis. This most likely reminds you of that flossing conversation your dentist has with you every year—you know the one. Well, defragmentation is just as important. Unless your computer is sitting in the corner for all time turned off, it’s getting more and more fragmented. In a moment, I’ll show you how this happens, but first let’s go over a little defragmentation history. NTFS was built with optimization in mind, and it did not suffer from fragmentation as dramatically as a comparable FAT volume might have. But over time, even NTFS performance can suffer due to less-than-optimal file placement. This gave birth to a thriving market of third-party defragmentation tools. One of the most popular products among IT pros was the Executive Software (now Diskeeper Corporation) Diskeeper product. The Windo... Read More

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How-To: Analyze Blue Screen of Death (Windows Only)

July 21st, 2009

Windows machines are often the subject of jokes within the computer geek community, and much of that bad credit is due to cryptic error messages that reveal very little information even to the veterans of this operating system. Of those type of errors, BSODs (Blue Screen of Death) are the worst and are often caused by poorly written device drivers, kernel extensions or faulty RAM (Random Access Memory). You can’t recover to the normal software environment without either a soft or hard reset. Soft resets are usually the case, as the computer will try to automatically reboot or display the error code and require the user to initiate the restart sequence, the infamous “Ctrl-Alt-Delete” or “Press Any Key” prompts. Many of you probably have encountered this type of error and know that any files that weren’t saved at the moment of crash have either lost changes or have been corrupted. Personally, as a writer, I consider this to be one of Windows’ greatest flaws. I have lost a l... Read More

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Administering DNS Server­-Dependent Applications

December 18th, 2007

Administering systems that run DNS server­-dependent applications can be challenging if the DNS server is unavailable. For DNS-dependent applications to run, you usually need to switch name resolution services to another DNS server. To change a local or remote DNS client computer’s DNS server, you can use the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit’s Regfind utility. First, open a new command window or telnet to the remote computer. Run ipconfig /all to obtain a list of configured DNS servers (save the output to a file if necessary). To change the DNS server, go to the command line and enter regfind -p HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current ControlSet\Services\Tcpip\parameters -r Rerun ipconfig /all to verify that the new DNS IP address is validated. Optionally, run ipconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS resolver cache. You don’t need to reboot the computer. If you need to configure the system with multiple DNS servers, simply add the second server after the first serv... Read More

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Lookup Unknown Files

December 9th, 2007

When was the last time that you checked your Task Manager for potentially dangerous files? I’ll admit that I don’t do it all that often because I put a lot of faith in my antivirus software, but I have been known to Google apps that I don’t recognize. I’m sure you’ve done your fair share of Googling filenames, right? Today I finally decided that there had to be a good site out there that I could use to lookup unknown files, in particular I wanted something that wasn’t popup infested! I went through dozens of sites before I came across WhatIsThatFile.com. It has a somewhat slick interface that shows matching filenames as you type in the search box. It will highlight files that are potentially dangerous, such as a virus or malware, and give a brief description of each. It will even let you know if an application is a prime target for infections, such as Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe). Right now it is home to information on over 3,000 files, which is a rather large selectio... Read More

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Windows Tip: Middle-Click to Close Programs

December 9th, 2007

I can’t even begin to count how many people have become addicted to closing tabs in their browser using the middle mouse button. If you’re one of those people I’m here to tell you that you can carry that feature outside of your browser and onto the Windows Taskbar! One of my favorite free apps, Taskbar Shuffle, has had this feature for quite some time now. It’s enabled by default, but I didn’t realize it came with this it until about a month ago. With it you can middle-click on any Taskbar button to quickly close the program! Now how cool is that? For those of you not familiar with Taskbar Shuffle it is well known for its ability to reorder the items in your Taskbar using a simple drag-and-drop motion. One of the more recent releases also made it possible to rearrange icons in your System Tray, and when you put all of this together you get one amazingly small, free, and powerful application. There are two versions of Taskbar Shuffle available, one that is bundled with an ins... Read More

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