COMPUTER STUFF

[SOLVED] Windows 7 Tiles View Missing

2012-10-17T21:48:00.003+07:00

Problem

After fixing my computer that lagging and cpu usage up and down, I noticed that view inside Windows Explorer got changed. The difference clearly noticeable especially on 'Computer' folder. Usually the folder shows the amount of free space of each partition. But it's gone. Turns out the problem is the folder view mode is no longer 'Tile' view as usual, but it changed to 'Extended Tile' view and 'Tile' view option was missing.

I like the 'Tile' view since I can monitor free space on the hard drive easily by displaying graphs, especially which partition contains less or more data. My initial attempt to bring back the 'Tile' view is 'Restore Defaults' at every tab under Folder and search options. Still, the 'Tile' view didn't show up.

Solution

Finally I found a very easy solution on SevenForums.com. Go to this page, download the number "1. To Restore Default Folder Templates for All Folders". It was a bat file, then run it. Immediately after the bat finished running, I checked the view option inside Windows Explorer and voila! The 'Tile' view successfully restored.

Windows 7 Lagging, CPU Usage Up and Down

2012-10-14T11:06:00.000+07:00

Problem and Troubleshooting

Yesterday, my lovely computer running on Windows 7 acted very strange. I noticed that hard drive led indicator turns on and off in persistently since booting. I felt there must be something wrong. After the desktop completely loaded, longer time than usual, the effect became more clear. Mouse move, page scrolling was lagging. My first assumption, it was infected by virus. So I scan with installed AVG antivirus and Windows Defender. The scanning itself took a really long time, and no virus found.

My assumption then changed. If the two antivirus found nothing, the problem must be something else, it could be a hardware issue :( As usual, to identify any problem, I went to Event Viewer. In the Event Logs - System, there were hundreds of error messages saying "The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block." OMG and bingo!

Immediately I ran scandisk for all partition in the hard drive and restart the computer. Scandisk usually will solve "light" hard drive errors. Unfortunately, even after scanning twice, I was not lucky. The problem was intact.

Solution

So, Google help me finding some forum with people having some problem. It seems likely that my hard disk got bad sector or similar. People in a forum suggest to scan with hard disk diagnostic tool, provided by hard disk manufacture. Since my hard disk is Seagate ST3500418AS, so the diagnostic tool must be available in Seagate web page. Short story, Seagate has a diagnostic tool called SeaTools. For Windows, there are two versions; DOS mode and Windows mode. The tool is packed in bootable CD image, so you need to burn it to blank CD. Since I didn't have any blank CD, luckily I found a way to install SeaTools to USB flash drive.
Google "install seatools on usb" to find a bundle of SeaTools image and utility to make a bootable USB. The instruction how to install SeaTools on USB usually available at the web sharing it.

Short story (again), before running SeaTools from the USB, I have to make backup of the broken hard drive just in case SeaTools can cause data lost. Although I didn't backup all the data, the backup process took a half day with hard disk in such condition. I also suggest you strongly to make backup of your data first.

After backup, it's time for SeaTools to work. Insert the bootable USB drive, SeaTools will loading, select the target drive and do Basic test. If basic test fail, go with Long test. On my 500 GB drive, it took around one and half hour to complete scanning and 2 errors found. The repairing process itself ran "semi automatically", just click repair, Ok, etc. After finally the scanning and repairing finished, I restarted the computer, and the problem had gone. yay!

TL;DR

CPU usage up and down, computer lagging it turns out a hard drive problem. Install a hard drive diagnostic tool to USB drive, make backup of data, run the diagnostic tool. Problem solved.

Shut Down Process Explained

2012-05-19T12:16:00.002+07:00

I always wonder what is my computer doing when it takes long time to shut down? Incidentally I found a brief good explanation on reddit.

Just in case you're too lazy to click the link, I copied down the answer here:

The computer does many things when you shut down. This post is going to cover as many as I can think of.

One of the simplest and most important has to do with memory. The computer has to insure that anything that needs to be written to disk, is written to disk. If you don't do this, you could end up with corrupt or invalid files. If you want more detail than that, you're going to have to take a few years of computer science at a college level.

Your computer also runs some updates that cannot be run during operation, either because they directly involve the kernel, or a critical part of run time operations. Usually if your PC is taking forever to shut down, it's because these updates either a) take long or b) have messed up. Sometimes this can cause your PC to hang during shutdown.

Another thing your computer is doing is prepping itself for the next boot cycle. People like operating systems that can start really fast. So a way to get a computer to do this is to prepare a boot sector with information about what your computer tends to do on boot. Often the changes here are small ones. Information about what was used, how it was used, and what problems occurred are stored here.

Like I started to say with the last point, flags are set depending on problems your computer might have had during its last runtime. If you notice windows always has to "un-set" a flag that tells the PC to run chkdsk (check disk) on boot. This is because if your computer experiences a hard shutdown, you might have invalid files on disk. So your computer has to run the check disk operation. This flag is set to true on boot, and during a proper shutdown is set to false. There are many such flags.

If you have a RAID array, a proper shutdown is very important. RAID arrays, especially ones that require parity calculations (i.e. RAID 5) write to disk very slowly. To compensate for this DMA, or Direct Memory Access, is heavily utilized. This isn't the only time when DMA is used, but it is much greater than other instances. So when you copy a file onto your RAID 5 array, it doesn't directly move into the RAID array. Instead it is moved into system RAM, or a RAM module on your RAID chipset. Once it has been moved here, the RAID Chipset microprocessor will begin to move it to disk, performing the parity calculations for each individual bit. Even though the file has appeared to the user as being moved, it might not actually be valid on the disk yet. (Same explanation for the first point) When you do a regular shutdown of the PC, the computer will wait for the parity calculations to complete. If you perform a hard shutdown, the RAM will lose power and all the data that was still being moved to the RAID array will be lost. You'll often notice that expensive RAID cards (i.e. Intel) will come with an optional battery to keep the on-board RAM module powered in case of a hard shutdown. Your every-day home computer doesn't have this battery, and if you force a shutdown you'll lose the data.

Your computer will not shut down until all processes have terminated, and given their termination codes. Basically telling the OS that they have terminated with such and such final state. This is why sometimes your computer won't shut down until you've saved a document, or answered a prompt. A soft shutdown has a lower interrupt priority than some of these prompts. So the processes will wait until these prompts have been answered, before tending to the interrupt from the OS.

The last things I can think of are all small housecleaning tasks. Update the registry, change values in whatever system records system is being used.

That's pretty much all I can think of.

tl;dr The majority of what it's waiting for is memory to be validated, and updates.

Addition from another answer:

Writing to disk is slow. Writing to memory is fast. Sometimes the computer delays writing to disc and keeps things in memory to save time. When you shut down, it will have to write to disk the things it has been avoiding writing to disk.

It does this because a piece of data may change several times. If you write to disk every time it would be slow. So instead you keep it in memory and update that, and only write to disk when you have to.

Android Welcome Instagram

2012-04-04T12:38:00.000+07:00

After all this time can only be enjoyed by IOS device users, photo editing and sharing application Instagram finally available for Android devices, on Tuesday (03/04/2012).

Instagram allows users to capture images and edit them, using filters gives impression of retro and unique. After that, the image can be shared to social networks; Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare.

Instagram for Android can be installed in devices using Android version 2.2 (Froyo) or above. Unfortunately, at this time "Instagram for Android" couldn't be used in tablet yet.

Android users may download Instagram for Android through Google Play, with a 12.59 MB file size. Download "Instagram for Android" from this link.

Android users will join 30 million Instagram users from IOS users (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) which produces 5 million images daily.

Until now, there are more than 1 million photos have been uploaded to Instagram. These new figures come from IOS devices only. With the addition of millions of users of Android, this figure will certainly increase drastically.

Instagram has been named by Apple as the best application on Apple's online app store App Store in December 2011. This application was developed by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.

Instagram for Android exhibited by its founder in the Conference South by Southwest (SXSW) 2012 in Texas. He said Instagram for Android will be better than IOS.

Sony Vegas Pro Installation Idle Problem

2012-04-04T09:24:00.001+07:00

Yesterday I tried to install a video editing software, Sony Vegas Pro 11 on my Windows 7 32-bit SP1 computer. After trying hours, it won't install. The problem is the installation always got stuck on "Please wait for initial configuration of Vegas Pro 11.0. This might take a few moments". I looked at task manager, the process was completely idle. I even downloaded Sony Vegas Pro 10 and it's the same.

At the time when I almost reach the top desperate point, I decided to do system file checker with "sfc /scannow" command through command prompt. Guess what, it returned error too! The error message is "Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service". So I dug the internet, again, trying to resolve the issue with solution from here and here, they don't fix it. The next problem came up is "Windows Modules Installer" which is needed by System File Checker can't start. So here is the actual solution for the issue:

Open Registry Editor aka Regedit
Go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control"
Find a key named "RegistrySizeLimit" Type: REG_DWORD
Change value to 0xffffff (4294967295)
Reboot

After reboot, the Sony Vegas Pro installation ran smoothly.

Avast Free Antivirus for Windows XP SP1

2011-01-23T09:51:00.000+07:00

Yesterday a friend ask me to reinstall his computer. Unfortunately what he has was only Windows XP SP1 OS. After reformatting and installing the OS successfully, I need to install a free antivirus. It took time to find out a free antivirus supports XP SP1. First I download AVG, install, no success. Second one is Avira Antivir. It only supports XP SP4.

After digging online, I found that Avast antivirus supports Windows XP SP1. I downloaded it, install and it run smoothly. You just need to register the free Avast to get free key in order to be able update its virus database frequently. It could be a reason behind why Avast rank #2 on Cnet's most popular downloads.

Batch Save for Web Photoshop CS3

2011-01-23T09:37:00.000+07:00

Adobe Photoshop has a feature to save an image for web display and transfer called Save for Web also known as Save for Web and Device on newer version. Besides, other feature is Batch for automation process. The problem is, how to combine those two features? How to run save for web in batch? On other words, how to run save for web for multiple images at a time?

I run following tips on Photoshop CS3 and it works like a charm:

First, you need to create an action for Save for Web

Open an image, press Alt + F9 to display Actions box
Click 'create new action' and give it proper name
Press Alt + Shift + Ctrl + S to open Save for Web dialog box
Set the preset and click Save. Choose the location for the future batch process result. Leave the filename by default.
Stop recording

Now, you have a new action at the bottom of Actions box, it's time to batch Save for Web process:

Go to File > Automate > Batch...
Set the action to the action created previously
Choose the folder location of images you want to process
Choose 'Save and Close' for destination and check 'Override Action "Save As" Commands
OK

After that you should see 'flashing' images of the specified folder in step 2.3 being processed. After that, check the output folder you define in step 1.4. To make sure the images had been processed properly, usually I compare the filesize between original and that are in output folder.
PS: I'm not sure whether this step by step guide also applicable on previous Adobe Photoshop versions.

Locking USB Port Easily

2010-10-01T14:36:00.000+07:00

Frequent problems caused by user or malicious software, it seems quite apprehensive. No wonder if the various data protection can be found nowadays, ranging from applications access protection to hardware protection. One of becoming popular hardware protection is the USB port protection.

It is important to applying access restriction to the USB port of client user PC to prevent data theft or virus derived from a variety of USB devices, including USB removable media. To facilitate port access control quickly, you'll need an additional application called USB Port Locked.

As the name implies, this application is able to lock all USB ports owned a PC with password protection. Users do not need to bother anymore to disable or enable the USB port manually which takes more time and process.

Download USB Port Locked here (258 kb)

Desktop iPhone Browser

2010-10-01T14:14:00.001+07:00

Making changes to files stored on removable USB media or better known with USB flash drives are usually easy to do without a complicated process because the user can directly browse the files through Windows Explorer. This convenience is what offered by the Explorer iPhone application to iPhone users.

As an iPhone browser, iPhone Explorer is able to manage files stored on your iPhone easily starting from uploading or downloading files up to the advanced search feature by looking at some file information such as artist, title, genre, album, year and more.

Users can easily drag and drop files to and from iPhone easily. Some existing directory path iPhone can be accessed without difficulty, including photo, sms, email, video, and more. Other interesting feature is the ability to make your own ringtone from mp3, WAV, AIFF and M4A files you own.

iPhone Explorer supports:

iTunes 7.x, 8.x, 9.x, 10.0
iPad
iPhone 4
iPhone 3GS
iPhone 3G
iPhone 2G
iPod Touch
Apple iOS 3.x and 4 firmware devices

Download iPhone Explorer here (1.69 MB)

Backup Games using SaveGameBackup

2010-10-01T13:58:00.001+07:00

Doing backups is important, especially that no one can tell us what will happen in the future. These conditions seem to be quite alarming for everyone, especially gaming fans, because we do not want to repeat the game to the earlier level.

Anticipating these conditions, gamers can try to make backups of some game applications which routinely played by manually copying it into another folder. However, I felt it's so time consuming, when in-game backup numerous. The best solution is using a game backup freeware called SaveGameBackup.

This small freeware is able to automatically detect all the installed games, next you can make backups at once to the desired folder. Users can easily restore the backup simply by double click the backup file, then extract them to the location of the original game.

Download SaveGameBackup here (512 kb)

DNS Benchmark to Benchmark DNS

2010-10-01T13:38:00.001+07:00

Selecting a DNS (Domain Name Server) that perform well are very important for the stability and speed of internet access to a site. And of course, this is a 'hard' process especially for newbie. Ever wondering how to benchmark a DNS speed easily? Various software can be a quick solution for the user, one of which can be selected is a freeware called DNS Benchmark.

It offers accuracy and ease of analysis and comparison process control. Users do not have to bother because of all the automatic process handled by the DNS Benchmark. Some testing of response time are included in this application, includes cached lookup, uncached lookup and dotcom lookups.

To facilitate reading the results of the analysis, DNS Benchmark is capable of displaying a noodle bars graphic, as well as data in tabular form. By looking at the results of the analysis, user can easily choose the fastest DNS to be used.

Download DNS Benchmark here (154 kb)

RegWork Registry Cleaner for Your Slow and Hang PC

2010-02-12T09:42:00.001+07:00

Are you looking for registry cleaner product information? If the answer is yes, you have come to the right place now, because this article will introduced you with Regwork.com. This site will help your PC improved from poor PC performance. Well, just an information for you; there are many hidden corrupt files plus over than 150 hidden errors and bugs in your PC. There is a research tell that more than 94% PC have this problem. This problem will makes your PC get poor performance, your screen pop up with Windows error messages and you frequently experience system freezes and blue screen. Each PC has different experience, but some people ever say that their PC also bogged down with invalid or empty registries. If your PC switching and turning off act taking a very long time to process and you have the entire problems above, your PC is in dangerous. What I can say about your personal computer problems is your Windows registry becomes saturates with redundant files over time. It also added with broken links that makes some errors and even system crashes inside your PC.

You really need your system registry cleaned as soon as possible. If you want to heal your computer, you need to buy a new registry cleaner and registry repair software. You need to clean it up because your registry system is one of the most vital components in your PC. Fixing your registry is not an easy task. You need special knowledge to fix your computer. That’s why you need professional registry cleaner to undertaken this job. If you try to do it manually, perhaps you will cause a permanent and irreparable error in your PC and you will lose all of your important data because it will need a complete format after. As we all knew, system registry holds a lot of information about your computer setup and configuration. If you uninstall data or delete a program, your registry system still keeps a reference of the deleted file and doesn’t remove it yet. That’s why an error will stays in you registry.

Then, the registry gets filled with those errors and invalid data. You will see your computer system will become lethargic and very slow and then you will meet malfunction and system crash plus hang. Well, the best step you should do is don’t make a mistake, little mistake can harm your computer ever. But don’t get frustration now! Thanks to computer improved technology because you can use customized software to clean registry. This is a solution that can safely detect the entire registry errors and repair them automatically. In this time, you have to use Regwork because RegWork can scan your entire Windows registry for all errors and invalid data within minutes. Then you can use registry editor then choose to clean up selected errors and repair all of your data and programs. For protection purposes, Regwork offers a backup feature for all repaired files for easy recovery. If you want to download Regwork, you can go to the official site now.

Update Devices Driver with Driver Access

2010-02-10T12:53:00.003+07:00

Having some problems with your computer machine that it getting much slower that it used to be? Do your old devices are unable to properly connect to the system? Well, if it’s not the virus’ work, then it might be your drivers outdated. We all know that driver always need to be updated regularly, just to keep it following the new improvements been made by the manufacturer, especially if your devices are the old ones. However as since that there should be hundreds of drivers are published in every product’s brand, with some series and types to be matched, this sometimes will spend lots of you time though.

But now a nice solution for such problems is appeared. Instead of getting through all the hassles and time wasting defining the best driver update for your system, now you can find the exactly needed updates just in few clicks of your finger, and this solution is called Driver Access. This is new developed system maintenance software, which focused in maintaining driver update management for all your devices, hardware, and others, and intended to offer the simple and easy way of finding the needed updates for all your computer’s drivers. The software will do the whole things for you, while you may only need in less than 5 minutes to get all problems away from your system.

Once you get it installed to your computer and run the program, it will automatically to scan the entire drivers’ condition, and check whether there are missing updates. And if it so, the software will then automatically to browse through the internet to find you the best suited update to download. There will be more time wasting of browsing through the drivers’ lists from the manufacturers’ website; the software will get driver download processes done in fast and easy way. With the simple operation and easy to understand features, even there is no need to be a computer nerd just to get the needed drivers and get your computer to its maximum performance.

There are millions of drivers are associated with the software, which it ranged in almost all important computer sectors, such as sound driver, motherboard driver, Bluetooth drivers, chipset drivers, and many others. And also references of computer compatible devices drivers to ensure your convenience in multitasking. If you find that your printer device or speakers isn’t recognized by the system, then just simply to run the program, and the problems will be solved just in 5 minutes, so you can get into the work in sooner without any need to wait any longer.

Driver Access is all what you need for your immediate driver update assistance. There will be no more stressing moments of dealing with the slower system run or unable to connect your devices with the system, these all can be solved with this software though. Find out the testimonials from people whom ever experiencing the software at DriverAccess.com, and here you can also get the detailed information about the product, along with the purchasing procedures to be through as you might interested to have it.

Trust Your Data to Long Lasting Media

2010-01-05T15:43:00.000+07:00

The data inside the hard disk has already filled up that there is no more space left to save the new movie from the internet. We do need to get rid of the data, but it is too worthy to be deleted. Moreover, there are movies that we haven’t watched yet and there are also songs from our favorite singers. What should we so now?

The best solution is by finding alternative storage for the data. We can burn the data into discs. But we need high quality disc which means without any doubts we need to get the discs from Verbatim. It is because this brand is the guarantee of high quality discs as the manufacturer has received the ISO Certification. Now, we have already made a choice for the discs, it means it is time for us to start burning the data. Let’s starts with the movies. Since each movie has big sizes, we’d better store the movies in Verbatim DVD-R which has the capacity up to 4.7GB. For the music and song, we should make an mp3 compilation. Verbatim CD-R will become the best media for it. Moreover, it has a printable surface that we can create our own cover for the mp3.

Gotmedia.com has collection for the discs and there are some which are for sale. There is a new portable storage media available at Verbatim.com. Visit the website for further information.

Advantages of Computer Spy

2009-11-11T07:54:00.001+07:00

Computer is one thing that is easily found now. Once people go to official place they will find computer there. Actually, this stuff is not only can be found in formal places, it can also be found in informal places. Computer does really can be found anywhere. There will be many computers found in schools, hospitals, offices, hotels, factories, etc. Nowadays, computer is one thing that cannot be separated from people since it is helpful enough in helping people doing many things.

Dealing with computer, another thing that people need to know is computer spy. For those who have not been familiar with this term, what they need to do is checking Brickhousesecurity.com. This website will give more explanations about what computer spy actually is to the visitors of this website. There are three steps how to use it that are provided in this website. Bt visiting thus website, people will be able to know about the spesifications and about the features of this product.

People need to know that computer spy is very important for many cases. Even for a family this product will be something necessary. One thing that really need to be noticed is that parents do not really know what their children do with the computer.

Two of the most popular advantages of computer spying:

1. Great way to catch cheating spouses.

Like most cheating now days takes place on the Internet, it only makes sense if you want solid proof that your spouse is cheating, then using this type of software is a must. The benefits you receive are proof of actual text messages from your spouse that could implicate him in illegal behavior. Even if no physical meeting (there usually is though), just because you discover he or she engaged in lewd behavior on the Internet may be more than enough reason there.

2. The supervision of children.

Monitoring of children on the Internet can be done with computer spy tool. The Internet is a huge world with lots of dangerous land for children to walk around. Monitoring tool is a necessity so that parents can know the whereabouts of their children as they travel through the web. Most parents are not worried that their children will deliberately go somewhere they are not supposed to, but they worry about how easy it is to be drawn into certain sites. And with the number of disgusting predators out there, parents want to ensure the safety of their children.

Speed Up Firefox by Optimizing Profile Database

2009-11-03T15:55:00.000+07:00

Though Mozilla Firefox is quit fast browser, with lapse of time you'll find it starts working much slowly, especially on old pc. One factor makes it so is fragmentation of profile databases including bookmark, password, history, etc. The solution is to use SpeedyFox to compact the databases without worrying about data loss. It means, SpeedyFox won't speed up your internet connection but it will speed up your slow Firefox browser.

Publisher of this useful tool claimed that SpeedyFox is abel to boost Firefox startup up to 3 times, speed up browsing history, cookies quicker operation etc.

Run SpeedyFox regularly to speed up Firefox depends on your browsing activity frequency. Whenever you feel the browser start slowly, it's time to SpeedyFox!

Download SpeedyFox newest version here.

Copy Bootable CD and DVD to USB Flash Drive

2009-11-03T07:47:00.001+07:00

Generally, we are only able to run bootable CD or DVD from its original media. You cannot just copy the installation files to USB flash drive and run them from the USB drive since bootable CD or live CD contains additional boot loader, different from non bootable CD. Then, here is a program that will let you copy bootable CD and DVD to USB flash drive, USB stick, HDD etc. It means, you can install Windows from the portable media to your computer or netbook. Of course it will certainly facilitate the installation process to netbook since most of netbook not equipped with optical drive.

First, download WinToFlash and extract it to your HDD. Choose newest version. No installation needed, it's a portable software. Run WinToFlash then choose advance or wizard mode. Choose drive of the CD or DVD device and the USB drive. This software using on the fly copy process, means it's able to copy files from CD directly to USB without drop in to HDD. Then just follow the steps until transfer process complete.

Besides copy bootable CD, it can handle several functions such as WinPE to USB transfer, use it as USB media erasing (full of quick) and create the drive with emergency boot-loader. WinToFlash currently supports Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and Windows 7.

Disable Autorun for USB and CD Drives

2009-10-08T21:37:00.001+07:00

Every time you plug a usb drive into pc or notebook, it will run an autoplay or autorun that scan what kind of files contained in the disk than give you choices on what application should used to open the files.

If you don't like this automatic action, you can disable this autoplay/autorun function.

For non-Home versions of Windows (for example, Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate):

Click Start, click Run, enter gpedit.msc (launch Group Policy Editor);
XP users: Open Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | System,

Vista users

Find Turn Off AutoPlay in the right-hand pane and double-click it;
Choose Enabled and set it for All drives.

By enabling this setting, not only disable autorun for USB drives, you can also disable autorun for CD drive.

Or, in any Windows version:

Launch the Registry editor (Start | Run | regedit);
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer;
Double-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun in the right-hand pane and set its value to hexadecimal FF.

By disable/turn off autoplay/autorn ability, you may also prevent spreading viruses and worms infect the USB drive such as Conficker or Downadup.

Technorati Tags: disable autorun, disable autoplay, USB drive autorun, CS autoplay, autorun viruses,conficker, downadup

Find a Device on Your Network

2009-09-16T06:51:00.000+07:00

There are a few reasons to know your connected devices' IP addresses. For one, it's invaluable in troubleshooting. After making sure your unresponsive device is actually plugged in, the next step will nearly always be to point your PC's browser at its IP address and make sure that something having to do with the device appears, such as a configuration page, or at least the device name. This leads to another reason: Often, a device's "home page"—what you see in your browser when you type in the device's IP address—will give you easier access to device options, and in some cases, more settings and extras.

How can you find the IP addresses of your devices? Through your router's configuration screens. In your browser, type in your router's IP address, then find the DHCP client table among the config screens (which vary by router brand). This table shows all devices connected (physically or wireless) through the router. If a device doesn't appear, make sure it's powered on. Not sure about your router's IP address? At the command prompt (Start | Run | cmd) type ipconfig and hit Enter. Note the router's address on the line that reads Default Gateway. —Mario Morejon

Create Meetings in Outlook the Easy Way

2009-09-16T06:48:00.000+07:00

Most times when you need to set up a meeting in Outlook, the process starts with an e-mail you receive. I used to switch to the Calendar and add a new entry, with the date and time, and then paste the e-mail into the new appointment. But there's an easier way: Simply right-click on the original e-mail and choose Move to Folder, select Calendar, and hit OK. This actually creates a new appointment entry, complete with the e-mail inserted in the main window. You still have to enter the date, time, and participants, but you get to that point faster.

— Michael Muchmor

Clear Print Job Without Rebooting

2009-09-16T06:39:00.003+07:00

If you've ever had a print job hang, you're probably familiar with the Windows Print Spooler window. You get to this window simply by selecting the relevant printer from the Control Panel's Printers and Faxes applet (simply Printers in Vista). In the somewhat unusual event of a printer queue jam, you can go to the Print Spooler and simply delete the job. Sometimes, though, the system won't let you cut off print jobs that way: It marks the job "Deleting…" but never quite gets there, and you end up rebooting. Here's a better way to do it.

Open a command prompt (go to Start | Run, then type cmd) and enter the following:

net stop spooler

del c:\windows\system32\spool\printers\*.shd

del c:\windows\system32\spool\printers\*.spl

net start spooler

In Vista you'll need to open an elevated command prompt by right-clicking on cmd.exe and selecting Run as Administrator. For those of you who remember batch files, use Notepad to save the four commands above as a batch file. Save your file with example "clearprintqueue.bat" in notepad save box. Double click to execute the commands in the batch file.

What You Can Do with Firefox 3

2009-09-16T06:35:00.000+07:00

The latest version of Mozilla's popular open-source browser enjoyed one of the most successful launches in software history, with a record-setting 8.2 million downloads the first day it was available. With the ability to drastically expand the browser's functions using plug-in extensions and Greasemonkey scripts, many of Firefox 3's built-in features are overlooked. Here are eight handy things you can do with Firefox, ranging from tiny tweaks to hugely powerful capabilities, all with nary an extension to install.

1. Duplicate tabs with drag-and-drop.
Duplicating tabs is a piece of cake: Simply hold the Ctrl key while dragging the tab you want to duplicate to an empty space on the tab bar.

2. Minimize the toolbar.
Free up a little extra screen real estate by getting rid of the big, round "Back" button and replacing it with a more streamlined control. Right-click the toolbar, choose Customize, and select Use small icons. The new controls are perfectly functional but smaller, allowing the toolbar to shrink and leaving more room for viewing sites.

3. Use smart bookmarks.
Smart bookmarks are live bookmarks that don't just refer to particular sites but actually generate live lists of sites according to parameters you define. For example, you might have a smart bookmark that lists the 10 sites you visit most often, or the last 20 sites you've visited with a particular keyword in their title.

To create a smart bookmark, select Organize Bookmarks from Firefox's Bookmarks menu. In the window that opens, select Bookmarks Menu in the left-hand pane, then click Organize in the toolbar at the top and New Bookmark in the drop-down menu. Give your smart bookmark a descriptive name, such as "10 Most Recent Bookmarks." In the Location field, you're going to enter in a line of code telling the smart bookmark what to do. For the 10 sites you bookmarked most recently, you'd enter: place:queryType=1&sort=12&maxResults=10 . There are dozens of parameters you can use; Mozilla's developer site includes a list of commands you can use in smart bookmarks. Here are a couple of the most useful:

The 10 sites you've visited most recently (some installations of Firefox come with this smart bookmark already in place on the Bookmarks toolbar): place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10
The 10 most visited sites with some search term in them: place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10&terms=keyword (replace "keyword" with your desired term)

4. Send e-mail via Yahoo! Mail or Gmail by default.
Normally, clicking on an e-mail address on a Web page will open up a new e-mail using your default e-mail program. If you'd rather use Yahoo! Mail, open up Options under Firefox's Tools menu, select the Applications tab, and scroll down to the mailto: entry. Select Use Yahoo! Mail and click OK.

Gmail is not included as a built-in option in every installation of Firefox, but if yours doesn't have it, you can add Gmail easily enough. Skip the Options dialogs for now and instead type about:config in Firefox's address bar and hit Enter. In the Filter field, type gecko.handlerServiceAllowRegisterFromDifferentHost. Actually, you can simply type gecko and find the entry in the filtered list. Double-click the gecko.handlerServiceAllowRegisterFromDifferentHost entry to change it to True.

Next, cut-and-paste this line into the address bar and hit Enter: javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto", "https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Gmail")

A message will appear at the top of the browser window asking if you want to add Gmail as an application. Now, repeat the process above for choosing Yahoo! Mail, but select the new Use Gmail option instead.

5. Change or remove the Close tab buttons.
By default, Firefox 3 puts an X on each tab, similar to the X button that closes an application. You can remove this button, or see it only on the tab you're currently viewing. Open about:config again and enter browser.tabs.closeButtons in the Filter field. Enter one of the following values depending on the behavior you prefer:

0 (Zero) Close button only on the active tab.
1 (Default) Close buttons on every tab.
2 No close buttons.
3 Single close button at the end of the tab bar, instead of on the tabs themselves.

6. Change the behavior of the Awesome Bar.
Mozilla has dubbed Firefox 3's address bar the "Awesome Bar" because of the useful suggestions it makes as you type. By default, the Awesome Bar bases its recommendations on your recent history, pages you've tagged, and your bookmarks. You can change the way the Awesome Bar acts in the configuration page. Open about:config and change the following values, depending on the features you want:

To disable the Awesome Bar entirely and revert to Firefox 2–like functionality, change the value of browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to -1.
To allow the Awesome Bar to recommend only sites whose address you've typed directly into the address bar, change browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped to TRUE.
To remove unvisited bookmarks from the pool of recommendations, change places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus to 0 (zero).
To remove all bookmarks from the Awesome Bar, change both places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus to 0 (zero).

7. Search any site from the address bar with smart keywords.
The smart keyword function allows you to create searches for any site with a search engine, and trigger the search from the address bar using your choice of keyword. For example, you could create a smart keyword "me" to search the archives of your own site. If you wanted to see if you'd ever written about cat juggling, you'd type me cat juggling into the address bar and Firefox would return the results from your own site's search page. Visit the site you want to search and right-click its search box, selecting Add a keyword for this search. In the window that pops up, add a short description of the search and enter a short, memorable keyword that you'll use to trigger it. For example, to create a smart keyword for PCMag.com, I visited the home page, right-clicked the search field, opened the smart keyword window, entitled my search PCMag.com and then entered the keyword pc as my search keyword. Now, if I want to search for something—say, laser printers—I just type pc laser printers and the search is run.

8. View your saved passwords for any page.
To view the passwords associated with any site, go to the log-in page and right-click anywhere on the page. Select View Page Info, and then the Security tab. Click View Saved Passwords. Another window will pop up showing the usernames associated with that site. Click Show Passwords to see the passwords for each username.

If you want to view all of your saved usernames and passwords, open Options under the Tools menu and select the Security tab. Click Saved Passwords to open a list of every site you've ever saved a password for. Again, click View Passwords and the list will display all of your passwords. You can't print this list, but you can just as easily take screenshots if you want to print out your passwords for safekeeping. Isn't this a huge security hole?, you may ask. Why yes, it is. Knowing how easy it is for anyone with access to your PC to view all your passwords, maybe you'd like to password-protect your passwords. In the Options | Security tab, click Use a master password and enter a password. Now this password will have to be entered any time you or anyone else tries to view saved passwords. You'll be asked to enter your master password every time you open Firefox; without it, Firefox won't automatically enter saved passwords for you. Make sure you don't forget this one!

Source: PCMag

Resize Multiple Images With SNS-Resizer

2009-09-15T21:33:00.003+07:00

The easiest way to resize multiple pictures is using a batch program named SNS-Resizer. Besides resizing multiple images, with this application you can add 'Picture taken on' data, frame, and watermark to images you want to modify.

First, download SNS-Resizer here (853kb). After download, you don't have to install anything because this is a portable application or no installation needed, so run it.

Select the scaling method, target size, and image quality. Choose also the process option. If you check 'Save in a separate directory', SNS-Resizer will create new folder on the image directory you processed.

To add 'picture taken on', check it to activate the option. the date displayed taken from metadata (EXIF) of the images. If you would like to add frame, check also the Frame option. You can add watermark and set the watermark position under the frame option. To make watermark, make an image file and name it 'watermark.png' in the same location/folder with SNS-Resizer. After all finish, click 'Add current setting to the list' on the top right corner. If you don't do the last action, your configuration won't be available on the send to menu. Why send to menu? because to resize these multiple images, you just need to select the images, right click, send to and choose the configuration you set. Last, save it.

Technorati Tags: resize images,image resizing,batch process,portable,no installation

Duplicate CD and DVD That Match Your Need

2009-06-15T14:59:00.003+07:00

Nowadays, CD and DVD is a common media to deliver most digital media. Digital media could be anything regarding to digital thing such as digital audio, video, pictures, presentation, software, etc. There are two ways to duplicate your CD and DVD; first duplicate them by yourself; second is using CD and DVD duplication service.

To duplicate CD and DVD by yourself, here are the checklist you must have:

CD or DVD burner
Burning software
Blank CD or DVD

CD or DVD burner, also known as CD-RW and DVD-RW is an optical hardware that has ability to write files into blank CD or DVD. From the physical appearance, there is no differences between CD-RW or DVD-RW with CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. Even though CD-ROM or DVD-ROM hasn't ability to write files, they only read written CD or DVD.

Since Windows XP support to burn CD or DVD, actually you don't need additional software. But if the CD you need is more complicated such as Video CD, you need more than that. There are a lot of CD or DVD software, either paid or freeware.

Last but not least, you need blank CD or DVD as media you burn your files to. One box of 100 CDs priced at around $7 - $15. While DVD usually more expensive. When all you need is complete, you now ready to duplicate your CD and DVD.

With above method, you'll able to duplicate CD and DVD with limited number. If your office need to duplicate dozens or hundreds of CD and DVD, it's better to go to the CD and DVD Replication Service. If you live in US, especially Chicago you can go to CD Duplication in Chicago. Besides that, there is also Chicago Video Production Company is other place to go when you need to produce video and spread them to you customers.

Download Multiple Files with Free Download Manager

2009-06-14T22:36:00.002+07:00

Free Download Manager, besides can download single file, it can also download multiple files in one download action. It means you don't have to download those multiple files one by one. Here I give example on how download NOD32 antivirus update from an online directory.

Make sure you've installed Free Download Manager
Go to the directory contain multiple files you want to download.
Right click anywhere on the screen and click Download All with Free Download Manager
'Add list of downloads' box will appear and remove the file you don't need. In this case we will download only files with extension *.nup and *.ver and remove the rest.

Select destination folder of downloaded files. OK. Wait until download process finish.