Good Boot

Add Standalone programs to your All Programs menu

2011-12-06T10:42:00.000-05:00

When you click on your Start Orb and select ‘All Programs’ you are presented with a list of all the programs Windows 7 installed and all the programs you have installed.

But what if you have programs often referred to as ‘Standalones’ or ‘Portable Applications’ that do not require installation. Programs you simply copy to your computer or removable storage device e.g., a CD, USB flash drive, flash card or floppy disk and execute by clicking on its .exe file. An .exe file more often than not accessed via a Desktop shortcut.

The following is an example of how to include all Standalone programs on your ‘All Programs’ menu rather than having to access them via a Desktop shortcut?

1. Create a Windows 7 Explorer sub folder ‘Standalone Programs’.
2. Create an individual sub folder of your ‘Standalone Program’ folder for each of your standalone programs.
3. Add the standalone programs files (usually only an .exe file and maybe a readme file) to its appropriate folder.
4. Open each standalone program folder, right click on its .exe file and create a shortcut.
5. To be able to conveniently copy all the shortcuts, relocate them as individual files into your ‘Standalone Programs’ folder.
6 ‘Copy’ all of them.
7. Click on the Windows 7 Start orb, right clicked on ‘All Programs’ and select ‘Open’ from context menu.

Note: By selecting ‘Open’ you’ll be taken to Local Drive ( C ) > User > (your computer’s name) > Roaming > Microsoft > Start Menu.

8. Right clicked on ‘Programs’ and clicked on ‘New’ and ‘Folder’. Named the folder ‘Standalone Programs’.
9. Clicked on the ‘Standalone’ folder to open it and ‘Paste’ the shortcuts you copied from your Windows Explorer Standalone folder.

When you’re done you can click on ‘All Programs’ and ‘Standalone Programs’ to access all your individual standalone programs.

You can add new standalone shortcuts to your ‘Standalone Programs’ folder anytime or using my steps, add new folders to ‘All Programs’ that can include anything you want.

I’ve a confession. In a past Good Boot I bragged about overcoming my addiction to Desktop shortcuts. Well know I’ve fallen off the wagon.

Fortunately at my local Desktop shortcut anonymous meeting I was made aware of a super little Windows XP, Vista and 7 utility download - Toggle Desktop Icons (www.softwarecandy.com).

For only $7.46 I’m now able to make my Windows Desktop icons disappear and reappear instantly by simply pressing my keyboard ‘Pause’ key.

Embarrassed about your Desktop icon addiction? Hide them with Toggle Desktop Icons!

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

Let’s do it! A reinstallation of your dinged up perhaps malware infected Windows 7 that’ll not make any changes to your current data, settings, preferences, installed programs and drivers.

2011-11-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

Let’s do it! A reinstallation of your dinged up perhaps malware infected Windows 7 that’ll not make any changes to your current data, settings, preferences, installed programs and drivers.

Step 1: If your Windows 7 has been updated to SP1 and your installation DVD does not include SP1 you must uninstall SP1.
1. Click Start > Control Panel > ‘Programs and Features’ or ‘Uninstall a Program’ under ‘Programs’.
2. Click ‘View installed updates’.
3. Select > Service Pack for Microsoft Windows (KB976932) and click > Uninstall.

Step 2:
1. Click Start and type in ‘msconfig’ and click on ‘msconfig.exe’.
2. Click ‘Services’, then click on the ‘Hide all Microsoft services’ checkbox and click ‘Disable all’.

Note: Only non Microsoft services will be disabled.

3. Click ‘Startup’ and ‘Disable all’.
4. Click ‘Apply’ and ‘OK’.

Step 3: Turn off your anti virus program.

Step 4: A not absolutely necessary step: Access your Disk Cleanup utility and select ‘Clean up system files’

Step 5: Place DVD in player and run ‘Setup’.

Note: If you’re currently running a genuine copy of Windows 7 and a have a valid serial number it’s okay to borrow a same version Windows 7 installation DVD.

1. Windows will ask whether you want to allow the program to make changes to your computer. Click > Yes.
2. In the next windows click > Install.
3. Windows setup will proceed with copying temporary files and running a compatibility check.
4. Select ‘go online and get the latest updates’.
5. Accept the license terms and click > Next.

Step 6: Very Important! Select > ‘Upgrade’ when asked which type of installation you want.

Note: You’re not actually upgrading. You’re installing the same operating system over your existing installation. By selecting ‘Upgrade’, the installation will not make any changes to your current data, settings, preferences, installed programs and drivers.

The installation can take an hour or so and will re-boot your system several times.

Step 7: You’ll be asked to enter your product key.

Finally after going through a few basic settings and re-starts, you’ll be able to log onto a repaired and rejuvenated Windows 7.

Note: On your first logon, activate your account!

Step 8: Click Start > All Programs > Windows updates and reinstall SP1.
Step 9: Go to ‘msconfig’ and enable your non Microsoft ‘Services’ and reactivate the ‘Startups’ you disabled.

Note: If you’re unsure which non Microsoft ‘Services’ you disabled, the ‘Services’ panel will indicate those you turned off.

Step 10: Turn on your anti virus.

A healthy and perky Windows 7 is a good thing.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

If you’re the proud owner of a Windows 7 installation DVD, have a 25-character product key and an installed bootable Windows 7, you have all you need to repair Windows without wiping out your installed programs, personal settings and ‘Irreplaceable Stuff’.

2011-11-28T13:21:00.000-05:00

If you’re the proud owner of a Windows 7 installation DVD, have a 25-character product key and an installed bootable Windows 7, you have all you need to repair Windows without wiping out your installed programs, personal settings and ‘Irreplaceable Stuff’.

However, know that repairing Windows 7 should be considered only after you’re sure the dings it’s experiencing can not be repaired by:

1.Executing a System File Checker.
* Click Start, All Programs, Accessories.
* Right click on ‘Command Prompt’ and click ‘Run as administrator’.
* If you’re prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password or click ‘Allow’.
* Type sfc /scannow. Note: there’s a space between sfc and the ‘/’.
* Press Enter.

The scan may take a few minutes. All your protected system files will be scanned and if Microsoft discovers an incorrect version, corrected. If it cannot replace or repair a file(s) the file(s) will be listed in a log. For additional information and how to access the log go to: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833

Note: I recommend performing a periodic ‘just in case’ Windows 7 or Vista system file check.

2. Going to: http://support.microsoft.com/fixit/.
* At the Fix it Solution Center you can select a problem area e.g., Windows, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Entertainment, Office or Other.
Or
* Select from a list of ‘What are you trying to do’?

You might be pleasantly surprised at the options and recommendations the Fix it Solution Center offers.

If your System File Checker, Mr. Fix it or your technician cannot come up with a solution for your troubled Windows system or you just want to restore Windows to its trouble free, perky self, perhaps it’s time to use your Windows installation DVD to repair your system.

But first:
1. Keep in mind Murphy’s Law: ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong’. Always’s backup all your ‘Irreplaceable Stuff’ before doing anything that involves configuring your Windows system..
2. Check your Windows Installation DVD. If you have installed Service Pack 1, does your installation DVD include Service Pack 1? If not you’ll either have to delete Service Pack 1 and reinstall it after repairing Windows or borrow a DVD with service pack 1.

Note: It’s okay to borrow an installation DVD if you’re currently running a genuine copy of Windows 7 and a have a valid serial number.

3. Between now and next week’s Good Boot decide whether or not you really want to repair your Windows 7.

If you do, we’ll do it!

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

There may come a day when you have serious thoughts about reinstalling your dinged up perhaps malware infected Windows 7, but would like to be able to do so without any changes being made to your current data, settings and preferences to include installed programs and drivers

2011-11-28T13:19:00.002-05:00

Last week I discussed using Windows 7's Control Panel ‘Create a system image’ which if kept current is a far more convenient way to restore your system than having to reinstall your Windows, programs, hardware, their updates and all your backed up ‘irreplaceable stuff’ should your hard disk fail or your operating system become so corrupted it cannot be repaired.

However there may come a day when you have serious thoughts about reinstalling your dinged up perhaps malware infected Windows 7, but would like to be able to do so without any changes being made to your current data, settings and preferences to include installed programs and drivers.

Well guess what? For some of you it can be done.

For many of you however it cannot be done as you do not have a Windows installation DVD.

Why don’t you have an installation DVD? Because rather than providing a separate Windows installation DVD your computer manufacturer includes Windows 7 as part of a system image located in a hard drive partition or included on a recovery DVD.

Whether a computer manufacturer provides access to a recovery image located on your hard drive should your Windows become corrupted beyond repair or a recovery DVD or a way for your to create a recovery DVD to be used should your hard drive fail, the restore will be to the manufacture’s original settings. Your current settings, programs, personal preferences and ‘Irreplaceable Stuff’ will be deleted.

All will not be lost if you have your program CD\DVD’s and\or an off computer backup of your downloaded program setup files. But alas should you not have a recent backup of your ‘Irreplaceable Stuff’, as Willie Nelson sang - turn out the lights, the party’s over.

However if you’re fortunate enough to be the proud owner of a Windows 7 installation DVD and an installed bootable Windows 7, you have all you need to repair Windows without wiping out your installed programs, personal settings and ‘Irreplaceable Stuff’.

Note: If you do not have an installation DVD for your edition of Windows 7, it’s okay to borrow one. The important thing is you’re currently running a genuine copy of Windows 7 and a have a valid serial number.

Next week I’ll discuss how to repair your Window 7 using a Windows installation DVD.

In the meantime a thought. If you have a tendency to abuse your Windows and might want to periodically repair it, think about investing in a Windows 7 installation DVD.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

I must confess I was in error in not mentioning in my most recent backup tutorials Windows 7's ‘Create a system image’ backup utility (Control Panel > Backup and Restore > Create a system image).

2011-11-12T12:18:00.002-05:00

A System Image (often referred to as a Disk Image) is an exact copy of a hard drive. It includes Windows and your system settings, programs and files. The image can be used to completely restore the contents of your computer if your hard disk fails or your operating system is corrupted beyond repair.

Note: When you restore your computer from a system image you cannot choose individual items to restore. All of your current programs, system settings and files are replaced with the contents of the system image.

The reason for this rather tardy review of Windows 7 System Image is that until recently I was not convinced keeping a system image file current was worth the effort. With the number of updates and configuration changes made almost daily to my Windows system, I figured if I lost my hard drive or corrupted Windows beyond repair I might just as well reinstall Windows, my programs and then all my backed up irreplaceable Stuff.

Recently however I was challenged by a Microsoft technician to give Windows 7's System Image backup a try.

I took the challenge and did a System Image backup and restore of my lab rat. The adventure was all she promised it would be. It was easy to access: Control Panel > System and Security > Backup your computer and ‘Create an image backup’. And selecting the proper backup settings was a no brainer.

I was even reminded when the System Image backup was competed to create a recovery CD that would allow me to restore the image using a bootable recovery disc.

I’m now a believer!

However, there are a few things to keep in mind:
1. Like a backup of any file, a system image is only as current as its last backup. So I suggest you establish a frequent system image backup regimen.
2. To not forsake a strict traditional backup regime of your ‘irreplaceable files’. By doing so should a system image restore fail, you’ll still have the option to reinstall Windows using your Windows 7 installation disk, your programs via their installation disks or downloaded installation files and then restore your ‘irreplaceable files from their backup media.
3. To keep your virus and malware software up-to-date. A System Image of infected Windows system files is no better than the original.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

This is my second Good Boot ‘file away for future reference’ tutorial.

2011-11-06T11:39:00.000-05:00

Recently a number of Good Booters asked for assistance restoring their Control Panel’s ‘Display’ applet they claimed vanished after an Adobe Photoshop Elements deletion. Losing their ‘Display’ applet also prevented them from adjusting their ‘Screen Resolution’ via a right click on the Desktop.

Quite frankly I’m not all too sure deleting Photoshop Elements was the cause of their problem but as I have experienced the loss of my Control Panel’s ‘Display’ applet and for that matter other Control Panel applets for a variety of reasons, I thought a quick tutorial on how I regenerated them might be appreciated.

Although this tutorial is appropriate for repairing, restoring and adding most Control Panel applets, for the purpose of this tutorial I’ll use restoring the ‘Display’ applet.

Solution One: Execute a System File Checker.
1. Clicking on Start, All Programs, Accessories.
2. Right-click on ‘Command Prompt’ and click ‘Run as administrator’.
3 If you’re prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password or click ‘Allow’.
4. Type sfc /scannow. Note: there’s a space between ‘c’ and /.
5. Press Enter.

The scan may take a few minutes but all your protected system files will be scanned and corrected if Microsoft discovers an incorrect version.

If this does not solve your problem try Solution Two: A benign, novice friendly adjustment to the ‘Registry’.
1. Create a Systems Restore Point.
2. Click on your Start Orb and type regedit in your Start Search box.
3. Click regedit.exe at the top of the list.
4. Backup your Registry when you arrive at the Registry Edit pane. (Click ‘File’ and ‘Export’. Give the Registry backup file a name and Save it to a My Documents subfolder.)
5. Now go to following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\don’t load
6. This key contains ‘.cpl’ entries in the right-side pane that do not appear in the Control Panel e.g., hdwwiz.cpl, appwiz.cpl, ncpa.cpl, sysdm.cpl, desk.cpl, joy.cpl, firewall.cpl, collab.cpl, irprops.cpl, tabletpc.cpl, bthprops.cpl, infocardcpl.cpl. You can Google the .cpl’s for their definition.
7. Right click on and delete ‘desk.cpl’.
8. Exit Regedit.
9. Click the Control Panel’s ‘View’ and ‘Refresh’ and/or reboot.

The ‘Display’ applet should reappear and be functional.

Note: I suggest you do not delete the whole ‘don't load’ key in Windows 7 as you might get some duplicate items in Control Panel e.g., 2 Keyboards, 2 Mouses, 2 Sound entries. Rather delete only missing or malfunctioning Control Panel applets from the right-side pane.

Here’s wishing you a Good boot.

My next several Good Boots will be dedicated to how you can expeditiously resolve common annoyances if your technician is on vacation.

2011-10-27T11:31:00.002-05:00

Many Good Booters have discovered after installing or reinstalling Windows 7 or after installing or uninstalling an application that has a CD/DVD filter driver they receive an error message ‘No compatible drives found’ and their CD, DVD and/or Blue-ray drive does not appear in their Windows Explorer Navigation pane.

The technical reason may be:
* The filter drivers in the CD/DVD/Blue-ray storage stack did not migrated successfully to Windows 7.
* An uninstalled application failed to properly remove itself from the registry.
* An installed application added filter drivers in the CD/DVD/Blue-ray storage stack that interfered with existing filters.

The non technical reason may be - ‘you’re simply experiencing a ‘you may never know why computer glitch’.

If you do experience a Windows Explorer CD\DVD\Blue-ray no-show I suggest your first attempt at resolving the problem should be to click your Start button and Control Panel. Click ‘Troubleshooting’ and in the left pane click ‘View all’ and ‘Playing and Burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs’.

The troubleshooting Wizard may solve your problem.

If it doesn’t try the following.

Note: Do not be overly concerned about this Registry modification. It’s simple and benign.

1. Create a Systems Restore Point. (Start > Control Panel > System > System Protection > Create a restore point right now.)
2. Type regedit in your Start Search box.
3. Click regedit.exe in the Programs list.
4. Backup your Registry when you arrive at the Registry Edit pane. (Click ‘File’ and ‘Export’. Give the Registry backup file a name and Save it to a My Documents subfolder.)
5. Locate and then click on the little triangle to the left of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. You’ll see a list of subkeys.
6. Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\ {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
7. To verify you’re in the appropriate registry subkey, make sure the (Default) data value is DVD/CD-ROM and the Class data value is CDROM.
3. In the right pane if there’s an UpperFilters and possibly a UpperFilters.bak entry, right click on them and click Delete. Click ‘Yes’ to confirm their removal.
4. In the right pane if there’s a LowerFilters and possibly a LowerFilters.bak entry, right-click on it and click Delete. Click ‘Yes’ to confirm their removal.

Exit Registry Editor and restart your computer. You should be back in business. If not, best you wait for your technician to return from vacation.
Keep this article tucked away. It’s a novice friendly remedy for a common computer illness.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this Part 4 of my Windows 7 Control Panel tutorial, I’ll provide an example of a Windows 7 expanded source of information.

2011-10-27T11:23:00.002-05:00

Recently a Good Booter asked why if I suggested in a Good Boot that after upgrading to Windows 7 one could begin their normal computing adventures without first having to master Windows 7, was I dedicating so many Good Boots to Windows 7 tutorials?

There are two reasons. One, I know from experience most Good Booters like their tutorials in a Good Boot single subject novice friendly vignette style and two, most important when there’s a release of a new version of Windows I try to seed their memory with ‘I remember Al mentioned that’ recollections about what new and upgraded feature might assist them in obtaining information and\or help with a new or expanded Windows adventure.

In this Part 4 of my Windows 7 Control Panel tutorial, I’ll provide an example of a Windows 7 expanded source of information.

Most XPers are probably familiar with XP’s Control Panel ‘Add or Remove Programs’ feature and might assume that
until they were going to add or remove a program, Windows 7's ‘Programs and Features’ feature (where uninstall is now located) would not have additional features important enough to warrant a visit.

But they would be remiss as they would not be aware that in addition to uninstalling or changing (to include repairing) a program by selecting it and clicking on Uninstall, Change or Repair, they can:

* If Details View is selected (far right on Organization bar) discover on the Columns Header bar a program’s publisher, installation date, size and version.
* By right clicking on the Columns Header bar and selecting ‘More’, discover many additional Column Header bars to include ‘Support telephone number’, ‘Registered owner’ and ‘Product ID’.

Note: The Column Headers bars can be arrange for convenience up or down on the ‘More’ panel.
Note also: The current Column Header bars can be arranged by right clicking on any one of them and Dragging it left or right.

* By clicking on Organize > Layout > Details pane, discover at the bottom of the pane a products version, Support link and Help link and in some cases a specific product Comment.

On the Navigation Panel you can also:
* Access all your Windows Updates with the dates they were installed.

Note: Right click on the Windows Update Column Header and ‘More’ for additional features.

* Access and select or de select specific Windows features available to your version of Windows.

Note: By passing your pointer over a Windows Feature you’ll be provided with a description of that feature.

See what you might have missed!

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this Part 3 of my Windows 7 Control Panel tutorial, I’ll review Devices and Printers.

2011-10-13T13:24:00.002-05:00

When you open ‘Devices and Printers’ from either your Control Panel or Start menu you’ll discover all the devices connected to your computer.

From the panel you’ll be able to install, view and manage your devices and printers as well as troubleshoot one that isn’t working properly.

Devices displayed are typically:
* Portable devices you occasionally connect to your computer e.g., mobile phone, portable music player, digital camera.
* Devices you plug into a USB port(s) e.g., external USB hard drives, flash drives, webcams, keyboards and mice.
* Printers connected wirelessly or via USB cable or network.
* Wireless devices e.g., Bluetooth devices and Wireless USB devices.
* Your computer.
* Compatible network devices e.g., network - enabled scanners, media extenders, Network Attached Storage devices.

Devices and Printers does not display:
* Devices installed inside your computer case e.g., disc drives, video cards, sound cards, RAM (memory), processors, and internal hard drives.
* Older devices such as keyboards and mice connected through a PS/2 or serial port.
* Speakers connected to your computer with conventional speaker wires.

Note: USB and wireless speakers may be displayed.

From the presentation of Devices and Printers you can:
* Add a new wireless or network device or printer to your computer.
* Determine if a specific device is working properly.
* Find information about your devices e.g., make, model and manufacturer.
* Troubleshoot a device with a problem.
* Fix devices that aren't working properly.
* Perform tasks with a device.

Note: When you right-click a device icon in Devices and Printers, often you can select from a list of tasks. They may vary depending on the capabilities of the device e.g., you might be able to see what's printing on a network printer, view files stored on a USB flash drive or open a program directly from the device.

Note: To troubleshoot a device - right-click a ‘device’ or ‘computer’ with a yellow warning icon and click Troubleshoot. If the troubleshooter detects a problem it may provide instructions to solve the problem.

Important: If after you’ve right clicked on your ailing printer in Devices and Printers, clicked on ‘Remove’ and then re booted to see if Windows will re install the printer trouble free and if Windows 7 Troubleshooter cannot determine a solution for your printer problem, I recommend unless you’re an experienced user you contact your technician. Further attempts on your part to administer a solution may only add to the problem.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this Part 2 of my Windows 7 Control Panel tutorial, I’ll begin a presentation of the Action Center.

2011-09-12T17:51:00.000-05:00

In my opinion Windows 7 Control Panel Action Center is far more useful and informative than Vista’s Security Center. It provides maintenance features as well as a one stop location to view the status of your computer security settings and services. It also continually monitors Windows 7 security settings and informs you via pop-up notification balloons if there’s a problem.

Note: If your Control Panel is set to ‘Viewed by’ Category, click System and Security. If it’s set to ‘Viewed by’ Large or Small icons, click on Action Center.

Novice users - please pay attention! When you open your Action Center for the first time, be sure to click on the Security. The current status of all your most important settings will be displayed.
To include the status of your:
1. Network Firewall and what firewall is currently protecting your computer.
2. Windows Update and how it’s installed.
3. Virus Protection.
4. Spyware and unwanted software protection. Click on the link to view your installed anti spyware program(s).
5. Internet security settings.
6. User Account Control with a link to change settings.
7. Network access protection if it applies.

Obviously the status of your system’s security is important enough for you to schedule a periodic visit to your Action Center. Important enough for you to right click on Action Center and send a shortcut to your Desktop if you are a bit memory challenged.

Next, click on Maintenance. It includes settings for:
1. Check for solutions to problem reports.
2. Backup.
3. Check for updates.
4. Troubleshooting: System Maintenance with a link to Change troubleshooting settings. Note: Go there! Make sure you are satisfied with the settings.

Action Center will notify you when items need your attention.
* Red items are Important. They indicate significant issues that should be addressed ASAP.
* Yellow items are suggested tasks you should consider addressing e.g., recommended maintenance tasks.

To quickly see whether there are any new messages in Action Center, place your mouse over the Action Center icon in the Notification area at the far right of the taskbar. Click the icon to view more detail and click a message to address the issue.

If you’re having a problem with your computer and it has not been identified, click on the Action Center Troubleshooting link. It has multiple troubleshooting features. Though they’ll never replace a qualified technician, they are safe and novice friendly.

Here’s wishing you a good Boot.

Part 1 of Windows 7 Control Panel - Screen Resolution

2011-09-12T17:50:00.000-05:00

Now that I’ve finished my annual Backup Nag but before I go on to Windows 7 features I’ve not mentioned, I want to remind those new to Windows 7 that although Windows will attempt to select the best display settings for your particular Monitor to include screen resolution, refresh rate and color, a quick trip, their ‘every so often’ housekeeping duties should include a visit to their Screen Resolution panel.

Right click on your Desktop and click on ‘Screen resolution’. First be sure Windows has correctly identified your display. Be aware that some programs, particularly games have been know to reset displays to Windows default settings and made unwanted adjustments to screen resolution.

Next, just to see what happens, try adjusting your screen resolution. For example, Windows recommended and set my screen resolution to 1920 x 1200 but I found that 1600 x 1050 was just right for me.

Note: If you do adjust your screen resolution, I suggest you open a few of your programs to be sure that changing your screen resolution has not had an adverse effect on their desktop presentations.

If you’re a bit more adventurous, click on ‘Make text and other items larger or smaller’. You can adjust the size of the text and other items such as icons on your screen to make them easier to see without changing the screen resolution of your monitor or laptop screen.

And while you’re at this panel, there’s no harm in checking out the other available settings.

Note: Because a resetting to ‘Smaller’, “Medium’ or ‘Larger’ will not take effect until you reboot, Windows provides a preview pane and if you select ‘Larger’, a warning that ‘Some items may not fit on your screen’.

For a quick sizing and alignment of you icons right click on your Desktop and select ‘View’ to make a selection. And while you’re at ‘View’, note the feature ‘Show desktop icons’.

I’m a recovering Desktop icon junkie. But know that before I went cold turkey and, with the exception of my Recycle Bin, deleted all my the Desktop shortcuts to programs and Web sites that hid my Desktop themes, my peers were forever ridiculing me for inappropriate Desktop clutter. So when my detractors were about I became adept at a right click on my Desktop and a left click on ‘Show desktop’ icons.

Next week I’ll cover a few more viewing settings.

FYI: My September Windows 7 seminar will be Thursday, September 8th at 6:00 PM at Lee Memorial Hospital Auditorium on Cleveland Avenue.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

If you would like to participate in my Good Boot Backup Nag for novices - Part 5, you can download a trial version of Second Copy at www.secondcopy.com.

2011-08-30T13:32:00.002-05:00

Why am I touting Second Copy? Because it meets all the criteria I recommend to novices last week to insure their backup program is novice friendly and their backup regimen is not so intrusive it’ll encourage procrastination.

See if you agree.

1. On your external hard drive, make two folders - ‘Exact Copy Backup’ and ‘Archive Backup’.
2. Open Second Copy from either All Programs or your Notification Area and click on ‘New Profile’ and ‘Custom Setup’.
3. Click ‘Browse’ to find and enter your ‘Source folder’(Windows 7 users - C:\Users\(name) or Xpers - My Documents).
4. Check the ‘Include sub folders’ checkbox.
5. Click Ok and Next.
6. Click ‘Only selected files and folders’ and ‘Select’.
7. Click on the folders you want to back up e.g., Xpers need only click on My Documents while Windows 7 users should click on Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Music, Pictures and Videos as well as any folders they’ve created.
8. Click OK and Next.
9. Click on ‘Browse’, go to your external hard drive and highlight your ‘Exact Copy Backup’ folder.
10. Click OK to enter it into your ‘Destination folder’.
11. Click Next and select a backup frequency. I suggest clicking on the little down triangle and selecting ‘manual’.
12. Click Next and ‘Exact Copy’.
13. Click Next and Type in ‘Exact Copy Backup’ or a name of your choice.
14. Click ‘Finish’

Now for those like me who are backup freaks - initiate a second ‘New profile’ and follow the steps above substituting ‘Archive Backup’ for ‘Exact Copy Backup’ and ‘Simple Copy’ for ‘Exact Copy’.

The first time you click on ‘Exact Copy Backup’ and ‘Archive Backup’ all the folders and files you checked will be backed up to your external hard drive.

Thereafter when you click on ‘Exact Copy Backup’, before Second Copy copies new and changed folders and files to your external hard drive, it’ll delete from your external hard drive’s ‘Exact Copy Backup’ folder any of the checked folders or files deleted from your ‘Source folder’.

And when you click on ‘Archive Backup’ only new and changed files checked in your ‘Source folder’ will be added to your external hard drive’s ‘Archive Backup’ folder. However unlike an ‘Exact Copy’ no folders or files deleted from your ‘Source Folder’ will be deleted from your external had drive’s ‘Archive Backup’ folder.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

So best in this Part 4 of my Good Boot Backup Nag for novices I’ll discuss more specific backup recommendations

2011-08-22T11:27:00.002-05:00

My previous 3 backup nags have been ‘perhaps you’d be interested’ articles. So best in this Part 4 of my Good Boot Backup Nag for novices I’ll discuss more specific backup recommendations.

1. Your Backup regimen should never be so intrusive it encourages procrastination.
2. Novices in particular should select a software backup program that alerts them a backup is due by perhaps a pop up reminder or by an ever present, easy to access icon in their Taskbar Notification Area.

Note: I do not recommend novices set their backup program to backup automatically unless the backup program is an online backup e.g., Carbonite. One because an automatic backup might fail for whatever reason to backup as scheduled and do so without warning that the backup has failed and two, because I would prefer a novice take it upon themselves to become responsible for maintaining an appropriate backup regime and when they do, be in a position to observe that in fact it initiates.

3. That the backup file not be a proprietary file. Most proprietary backup software files can only be read by the backup software that created them. This requires that the backup program always be available and installed to restore the proprietary file. And an even more important reason not to rely on proprietary files is that should they be corrupted there’s no alternative way to restore the data.

In fact I recommend to all novices that the presentation of their backed up data files look as close to their Windows Explorer data file presentation as possible and that those backed up data files can be read and manipulated as though they were Windows Explorer data files.

4. That backup data be backed up to an external hard drive. I personally do not recommend flash dives because if by mistake data is deleted from a flash drive it does not go to the Recycle Bin where it can be reclaimed.

Note: Although backing up to CD’s and DVD’s is perhaps the best way to permanently archive and store data, because most users have data files that far exceed the capacity of a reasonable number of multiple CD’s and DVD’s I suggest for most an external hard drive is more practical.

5. If you’re as paranoid as I am about losing data, you initiate both an Exact backup and a Simple Copy backup.

I’ll demonstrate both types of backups next week. If you’d like to follow along, download a free trial of Second Copy at www.secondcopy.com.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

Good Boot Backup Nag Part 3 - Disk Imaging

2011-08-18T10:38:00.002-05:00

Periodically a subscriber to our User Group bulletin board will become enamored with the idea of being able to create a disk image of their hard drive and should they experience the Blue Screen of Death or their hard drive fail, be able to restore their Windows system, programs and data files with a minimum of effort. The intrigue of being able to do so initiates enthusiastic postings until most discover the demanding rules for safe disk imaging and abandon the idea of using it as their backup regime of choice.

A disk image is an exact copy (a snapshot) of your hard drive which by default is the drive on which your Windows is installed. It includes Windows and your system settings, programs, and files. If your hard disk fails or all or part of your Windows is corrupted a disk image can completely restore the contents of your computer.

Note: When you restore your computer from a disk image it will be a complete restoration. You cannot select individual items to restore. All your current programs, system settings, and files are replaced with the contents of the disk image.

Although I caution novices about becoming involved in disk imaging, let me assure the more experienced user that properly administered it can be a valuable backup option.

My rules for safe disk imaging.

1. It goes without saying your initial disk image should be error free, but you must also be confident it’s virus and malware free.
2. Because your Windows Registry is updated almost every time you access your computer, if you want to be sure the disk image of your Windows system is current you must adhere to an almost daily full or incremental backup.

Note: Be aware that your Registry will reflect not only significant changes e.g., those associated with a program installation or a Windows update but will also reflect even the most minor changes to your system e.g., adding or deleting a Desktop shortcut.

3. It’s absolutely critical you verify a disk image backup. An ‘I think my disk image is error free’ is a potential recipe for disaster.
4. I recommend you perform a test restore from an image backup (outside of Windows) using your disk imaging software to insure everything works and that you’re familiar with the restore process. It’s far too easy to make serious mistakes while under the stress of trying to restore a bad drive.

Here’s wishing you a God Boot.

Good Boot Backup Nag - Part 2.

2011-08-08T09:26:00.002-05:00

My Rule of thumb is: Your Backup regimen should never be so intrusive it encourages procrastination.

Although I’ll discuss disc imaging in a future backup nag, as far as I’m concerned all a novice or even a bit beyond a novice really needs to be concerned about is backing up their ‘Irreplaceable Stuff’ on a timely bases.

So.... if you’re willing to reinstall your Windows system and all your programs should you experience a Windows Blue Screen of Death and tend to be shall we say, a wee bit lazy - do I have a backup solution for you!

Carbonite! A secure set it and forget it automatic backup via the Internet of all your ‘Irreplaceable Stuff”.

Carbonite Home costs $59 a year per computer for ‘unlimited’ storage of all the irreplaceable files on your computer’s internal hard drive. Your files are encrypted before they leave your computer and then sent to one of Carbonite’s data centers using the same security technology used in online banking and e-commerce transactions. And they’ll remain encrypted on their servers ready 24\7 to be downloaded individually or entirely to any computer of your choice.

When you’re ready to download a file or all your files Carbonite provides an automated Restore Manager feature that walks you through the process. The files will be placed back exactly where they were copied from or where you want them copied back to. And should the restore be interrupted for any reason, when you’re ready the Restore Manager will continue the restore where it left off.

Once Carbonite begins its backup a Carbonite Backup Drive will be added to your Windows Explorer. It will contain two Folders. One contains a Windows Explorer type view of all your backed up files and the other a Windows Explorer view of all the files pending backup.

To download files to an alternative computer all you have to do is access your Carbonite account online and initiate the download from there.

Carbonite has two additional valuable feature. It keeps old versions of all your files for up to three months and if for whatever reason there has been no recent backup received by Carbonite, you’ll be alerted.

The initial backup of your files will take a bit of time, but once completed the ongoing continuos backup of new and changed files takes no time at all.

Hope you’ll take advantage of my Super Nag Backup seminar August 11th at 6 p.m. at LMH Auditorium, Cleveland Ave.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

Good Boot Backup Nag - Part 1

2011-08-01T13:09:00.001-05:00

Each year with the arrival of the hurricane season I nag Good Boot backup procrastinators and naysayers. So for those folks expecting a Windows 7 tutorial, know that when I finish my backup nags I’ll be back with my Windows 7 tutorials.

This year I’m prefacing my backup series with a recommendation to those who currently faithfully practice a quality backup regimen. If you’d like the assurance that should your hard drive fail you’d not experience for even a nanosecond the inconvenience of not being able to compute, consider installing RAID 1 (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks).

When you implemented RAID 1 it’ll write to your Raid drive all the current data, System files, and programs on your C: drive. Then by writing to your Raid drive exactly what you’re writing to your C: drive as you’re writing it, should your C: drive fail, your computer will be able to automatically switch to the RAID drive and continue computing without missing a beat.

When you replace your C: drive, RAID 1 will automatically write back to it all the current data, System files, and programs written to your RAID drive. Your C: drive will again become your primary hard drive and do so without you having to reinstall Windows, your programs and data.

RAID 1 is relatively inexpensive as all you need is a RAID 1 Controller and a hard drive with the same capacity as your current C: drive.

Note: Because RAID hardware has become a popular built in feature of many current motherboards, you may discover your motherboard has a hardware RAID controller built in.

In support of my recommendation to considering RAID 1, know that from out of the box to whenever there’s no guarantee how long a hard drive will last. And if your hard drive is seven years old or older, most technicians will tell you to anticipate a possible failure.

Although I’m prefacing my backup series with a discussion of RAID 1, technically it’s not a backup technique. Please know it’s in no way a substitute for a quality backup regimen. RAID 1 is not a protection against viruses, accidental deletion of files, and\or any other data loss that’s not caused by a hard drive failure.

On August 11th at 6:00 PM in Lee Memorial Hospital Auditorium on Cleveland Avenue I’ll be presenting my annual Backup seminar. I’ll discus what in fact you should consider your ‘Irreplaceable Stuff’ and demonstrate just about every way you can effectively back it up.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

In this part 18 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue with part 6 of a tour of Windows Explorer.

2011-08-01T13:05:00.002-05:00

Last week I discussed using a Windows Explorer Library to organize data on internal and external flash and hard drives. But know that Libraries can be just as efficient organizing data on just a lone internal hard drive.

For example, in addition to my default My Pictures folder I have three additional Windows Explorer My Pictures subfolders.
1. My Pictures - For Droid (my smart phone)
2. My Pictures - For Photo Picture Frame
3. My Pictures - For Specific Sorting Projects

Prior to Windows Explorer Libraries when sorting pictures from my default My Pictures folder to my project subfolders I would have access each project subfolder individually or open all the project subfolders and Tile or Cascade them to be able to move expeditiously from one to another.

With Libraries I can organize all My Pictures subfolders under my Pictures Library by:

1. Clicking on Start and Pictures (the default Library folder that points to my C Drive ‘My Pictures’ folder where I locate all my unsorted downloaded, scanned, and e-mailed pictures).
2. Clicking on the (0 locations) of ‘Pictures Library includes: 0 locations’ located in the upper left of the Pictures Library pane.
3. Clicking on ‘Add’ and then scrolling down and clicking on ‘My Pictures - Droid’ subfolder and on the Pictures Libraries Location panel, clicking on ‘Include folder’.
4. Repeating steps 2 and 3 to add my other two My Pictures sub folders.

Now when I click Start and Pictures my Pictures Library includes all my Drive C: My Pictures sub folders.

There’s no end to the ways you can organize your data using the default Windows Explorer Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos Libraries.

But there are also no end to the ways you can organize your data using Libraries you create.

Example: I have three Good Boot My Documents subfolders - ‘My Good Boots - Completed’, ‘My Good Boots - Pending Final Editing’, and ‘My Good Boots - Published’.

By clicking on ‘New Library’ on my Organize bar and typing in ‘My Good Boots’ I created a ‘My Good Boots’ Library.

I then clicked on the ‘My Good Boots’ Library and then clicked on ‘Include a folder’. I scrolled to my My Documents, ‘My Good Boots’ sub folder and clicked on ‘Include folder.

I completed my ‘My Good Boots’ Library by adding my other two ‘My Good Boots’ subfolders by following steps 2 and 3 above for each.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this part 17 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue with part 5 of a tour of Windows Explorer.

2011-07-18T11:09:00.002-05:00

For me, of all the Windows 7 new features Libraries is by far its most useful.

Libraries is best described as a way to organize data located in multiple folders on various internal hard drives and/or external hard drives and flash drives.

You can create Libraries of your own or expand on a default Windows Explorer Libraries.

Libraries can be found at the top of your Windows Explorer Navigation pane. By clicking on the triangle to the left of a Library the Windows Explorer folder or folders it points to is listed.

To demonstrate how useful a Library can be I’ll recreate how I expanded my Music Library.

I’ve a many gigabyte collection of music singles and albums. And although I very seldom listen to most of them, I’d not feel comfortable knowing they were not but a mouse click away.

My favorite singles resided in Windows Explorer’s Music folder. The remaining singles and albums are sorted into four collections (folders) based on their popularity.

Unfortunately the four collections collectively require over 90 gigabytes of disk space. Too many gigabytes to include on my C: drive. So I’ve relegated them to an internal hard drive - D.

Prior to Windows 7 if I decided to play a selection(s) from one of my four individual collections I’d have to open my D: drive, try to remember in which collection the selection was stored, and then had to open and search through that collection for the single(s) or the album(s).

But now with Windows 7 I can expeditiously find any single or album in my collections because I added my four collection folders to my Music Library by:

1. Clicking on Start > Music (the default Library folder that points to my C Drive ‘My Music’ folder where my favorite music is stored).
2. Clicking on the (0 locations) of ‘Music Library: includes 0 locations’ located in the upper left of the Music Library pane.
3. Clicking on ‘Add’ and then scrolling down to my D: Drive, clicking on Collection 1 and on the Music Libraries Location panel clicking ‘Include folder’.
4. Repeating steps 2 - 3 to add my other three collections.

Now when I click Start and Music or click on the Windows Explorer icon on my Taskbar and Music, my Music Library includes my default Drive C: My Music folder followed by my four internal Drive D: music collection folders.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this part 16 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue with part 4 of a tour of Windows Explorer.

2011-07-10T12:01:00.002-05:00

Open any sub folder of your documents folder that includes a number of text files e.g., Word.

In the upper right-hand corner of the subfolder pane is ‘Arrange by: Folder’. If you click on the little down triangle to the right of ‘folders’ you can rearrange the files in the subfolder by Date Modified, Tag, Type, and Name. An expeditious way to arrange your files to simplify finding a particular file.

Example: You forgot the name of a file but you do remember the approximate date you created the file. By clicking on ‘Arrange by: Folders’ and clicking on ‘Date Modified’, all the files will be listed by their modification date. Then by clicking on the ‘Show the preview pane’ on your Organize bar, you can quickly view their content and hopefully find the file you’re looking for.

Music files can be arranged by Album, Artist, Song, Genre, and Rating, Pictures files by Month, Day, Rating, and Tag, and Videos by Year, Type, Length, and name by clicking on ‘Arrange by:’.

If you’re of the super organized persuasion, rather than using ‘Arrange by:’ you can right click on a folder’s column header bar (by default it will have ‘Name’ as the first column header) and select from over 250 different ways to arrange your files.

Note: To be able to access the many file arranging options, your Documents, Music, Pictures and Video folders must be viewed in ‘Details’ view. To adjust your view to ‘Details’ view, click on ‘View’, ‘Details’ on your Menu bar or ‘Change your view’ on your Organize bar.

To arrange the order of your column headings regardless of the number of column headings you have selected, place your Pointer over the column to be moved and holding down your left mouse button relocated it as far left or right as you want. Or, right click on the Column bar, click on ‘More’, check the column headings you want displayed and use the Move Up and Down buttons to relocate the particular column heading you have selected to the place on the Column bar you want it.

Just a reminder. On July 14th at 6:00 PM at Lee Memorial Hospital Auditorium on Cleveland Ave, my Windows 7 seminar will be dedicated to demonstrating all you’ll need to know about Windows Explorer and its Libraries, Folders and Files. No registration required. First arrive, first seated.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this part 15 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue with part 3 of a tour of Windows Explorer.

2011-07-03T12:48:00.002-05:00

If as I suggested you selected all the Windows Explorer Layout options (via ‘Organize’ and ‘Layout’), below your Organization bar will be your Navigation pane.

To demonstrate just how dynamic your Organize bar is in relation to your Navigation pane.

1. Click on Libraries. Your Organize bar will include - Organize, Open, Share with, and Burn.
2. Click on the little triangle to the left of Libraries and click on Documents. Your Organize bar will include - Organize, Share with (ignore this option for the time being), Burn (to burn all the files and folders in Documents to a CD/DVD), and New Folder (to create a new folder).
3. Click on any one of your Documents subfolders. Your Organize bar will include Organize, Open, Share with, E-mail (if you have an e-mail program installed on your computer when you click on E-mail all that folder’s sub folders and files will be attached to an e-mail), Burn, and New Folder.
4. Click on an individual file in a Documents folder and you’ll have the same options as described in #3, plus ‘Open’(a suggested program to open the file). Click on the down triangle for additional ‘Open’ options.
5. Click on a Music subfolder of your Music folder and your Organize bar will include Organize, Share with, Play all (play all songs in that folder), Burn, and New folder.
6. Click on an individual song in your Music folder and you’ll have the same options as described in #5, plus ‘Play’ (a suggested program to play the song. Click on the down triangle for additional ‘Play’ options.
7. A Click on a Pictures sub folder of your Pictures folder and your Organization bar will include Organize, Share with, Slide show (a slide show of all the pictures in that folder), Burn, and New Folder.
8. Click on a Picture file and you’ll have the same options as described in #7, plus ‘E-mail’ (size and attach a picture(s) to an e-mail if you have an e-mail program installed) and ‘View with’ (a suggested program to view the picture. Click on the down triangle for additional programs to view the picture.

Note: The options for Video are the same as those for Music.

Please do not become frustrated by all the Organize options. Just walk and click about your Navigation pane and enjoy discovering how truly dynamic your Organize bar is.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this part 14 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue a tour of Windows Explorer.

2011-06-27T09:06:00.002-05:00

I’m sure for most, the selections available on the Windows Explorer ‘Menu bar’ will be familiar.

But the Menu bar does provide an opportunity for me to mention one of Window 7's most useful features - multiple ways to do ‘stuff’.

Note: If you’ve not done so already, you can display your Menu bar by clicking on ‘Organize’, ‘Layout’, and clicking on the Menu bar check box.

If you recall, my Personalization tutorials demonstrated how programs, files, folders, and Web pages can be ‘Pinned’ to your Start menu and/or your Toolbar or located on your Desktop as a Shortcut. Three ways to insure you can access what you want to access the way it’s most convenient for you to do so.

Well when it comes to viewing files (text, photos, music and videos) not only does Windows provide multiple ways to view a file, Window provides convenient locations to access a list of views - even a slide show of views if you’re not sure which view suites you best.

When you click on ‘View’ on your Menu bar you’re offered eight views - Extra large icons, Large icons, Medium icons, Small icons, List, Details, and Content. When you select any one of the views, that view will become the default view for viewing text, photos, music, and video files. But viewing let’s say a text file with a view set at Large icons is certainly not the most useful view.

However, know that Windows provides a way to quickly adjust a file’s view even if you’ve opted not to display your Menu bar.

Click on your Menu bar’s ‘View’ and click ‘Large icons’. Now click ‘Organize’, ‘Layout’ and uncheck ‘Menu bar’.

Now highlight any text file in your My Documents.

Although a Large, Medium or Small view of your Photo, Video, and Music album covers files would be revealing, they would not provide any significant information about the highlighted text file.

So to quickly find a more appropriate view, look to the top right of your viewing panel and click on the ‘Change your view’ icon. Each time you click on the ‘Change your view’ icon a new view of your text file will appear. Obviously ‘Details’ will be your best view.

Note: You can also click on the little down triangle to the right of the ‘Change your view’ icon. A list of view with a slider to access each view will appear.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this part 13 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll begin a tour of Windows Explorer.

2011-06-13T06:44:00.000-05:00

For those who organized their Windows Explorer viewing options as I instructed last week, your Windows Explorer view should include from top to bottom:
Address bar, Menu bar, Organize Bar, Favorites (to include Desktop, Downloads, and Recent Places), Desktop (to include Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos), Home Group, and then an on down complete view of all your Windows Explorer subfolders.

If by chance you do not see the subfolders of your ‘Favorites’ and ‘Desktop’ folder, simply pass your pointer over the folder(s), highlighting them and click on the little white triangles to their left. The triangles will turn black and open their subfolders. To close a subfolder click on the black triangle.

Let’s begin our Windows Explorer adventure with the Address bar.

On the left side of your Windows Explorer highlight Libraries and click on its white triangle to open its subfolders. Now do the same to open ‘Documents’ and ‘My Documents’ as well as a folder of your choice in your ‘My Documents’.

Notice how the names of the folders you’ve opened appear in your Address Bar.

By clicking on any:
Address Bar folder name, you’ll be taken back to that folder.
Little black triangle to the right of any Address Bar folder name, a drop down list of its subfolders opens. Click on any one of the drop down subfolders and it’ll open and appear in the Address Bar.

Should you want to search for something in any folder listed in the Address Bar click on the folder name in the Address bar. That folder name will appear in the ‘Search Bar’ to the right of the Address Bar’. Type in what you want to search for. If it’s found, you’ll be taken to it and its location will appear on the Address Bar.

Note the little down triangle between the ‘Forward’ arrow and the Address Bar. Click on it and a list of all your recent visitation locations (pages) will appear. Click on anyone of them to return to that folder or search location.

FYI: I’ll be covering Windows 7's Windows’ Explorer in future Good Boots. But if you’ve time for a Windows 7 Explorer cram course, know that on July 14th at 6:00 PM at Lee Memorial Hospital Auditorium on Cleveland Avenue, I’ll be dedicating my entire seminar to all of Windows 7's Windows Explorer features . No registration necessary - first come first seated.

Before I begin discussing Files and Folders, in this Part 12 of my Windows 7 tutorial I thought a quickie ‘My Documents’ history and philosophy lesson would be appropriate.

2011-06-06T12:26:00.003-05:00

Microsoft first introduced the ‘My Documents’ folder in Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 because they discovered that by not having a standard location for storing user-created files in Windows 95, software programs were storing them willy nilly in various subdirectories of their program files. And by doing so not only made it difficult for a user to find their ‘Save As’ files but because they were so difficult to find, many users never initiated a serious backup regimen.

Also it quickly became evident to Microsoft that novices searching for their ‘Save As’ files in Windows System folders was a disaster waiting to happen. So by creating a My Documents folder and encouraging all software vendors to use it as the default location for their user-created files, Microsoft provided a special place for users to go to find all their ‘Save As’ files as well as hopefully preventing users from mucking about in system folders.

As new computing adventures became popular e.g., digital photography, music, and video, individual subfolders of My Documents were added. In fact, by the time XP was released most digital photo, music and video files downloaded from whatever source where placed by default in the appropriate My Documents subfolder.

With the release of Vista ‘My Documents, ‘My Music’, ‘My Pictures’ and ‘My Videos’ lost their prefix and because of their ever increasing size, became individual Windows Explorer subfolders rather than subfolders of ‘Documents’.

Windows 7 added a ‘Libraries’ to Windows Explorer. Now a user can organize all their files and folders on all their hard drive(s), Jump drive(s) and external hard drives(s). It’s an extraordinary feature!

Next week I’ll begin my Windows Explorer tutorial that will reveal all the important Windows 7 Explorer Files and Folders features as well as how to create Libraries.

For those who are interested in participating in my Windows Explorer tutorial and have not done so already, please click on your Start Menu Documents tab, then ‘Organize’ and ‘Layout’.

Be sure ‘Menu bar’, ‘Details Pane’, ‘Preview Pane’, ‘Navigation Pane’, and ‘Library Pane’ are checked.

Note: You must open ‘Layout’ and check each check box individually.

Windows Explorer can be opened from its shortcut that’s ‘Pinned’ to your Taskbar, by right clicking on ‘Start’, and via Start, All Programs, Accessories, Windows Explorer.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

Before I move on to discussing Files and Folders, in this part 11 of my Windows 7 tutorial I want to review four of Windows 7's most useful Desktop Aero features.

2011-06-06T12:25:00.000-05:00

And they are:
Aero Peek: It provides a thumbnail preview of a window(s) without actually opening it by simply hovering over the icon in the taskbar. Click on a thumbnail and you’ll be taken to that window. Peek also works with Internet Explorer tabs.

Show Desktop: To quickly preview or to go back and forth to your Desktop, click on the Show Desktop bar at the far right end of the Windows Taskbar and Notification area.

Aero Shake: If you have many windows open on your desktop and only want to look at one, left click on it, hold it and shake it! All the other windows will minimize. Shake it again and all your other windows will restore.

Aero Snap: If you click and drag a window up to the top of the screen it’ll automatically maximize itself. If you have two windows open and want to view them side by side, click and drag one to the right edge of the screen and the other to the left. They’ll both resize automatically to fit the screen

If you find you’re not able to access all of these Aero features or for that matter any other of the many Windows 7 visual effects, it may be because by default Windows 7 is set to automatically adjust its Aero effects based on your system’s Windows Experience Index Rating (Start, Control Panel, Systems).

So if you would not mind a wee bit of a performance slow down, you can enable some or all of them by:
1. Depending on how you view your Control Panel, Click Start, Control Panel, System and Security, System or Start, Control Panel, System.
2. Click on Advanced system settings and then Performance settings.
3. Under the visual effects tab you should see that the option ‘ Let windows choose what’s best for my computer’ is by default checked.
4. Below it will be a list of all available visual effects. If any are unchecked you’re not experiencing the full range of Aero features.
5. Select the Custom option and then select all the effects from the list below it. Click Apply and OK.

All your Aero effects will be enabled.

Note: Conversely if you become disenchanted with an Aero effect you can uncheck it.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this part 10 of my Windows 7 tutorial I'll continue my discussion of the most important Desktop Personalization settings.

2011-05-24T13:51:00.002-05:00

I’m aware of very few users other than the visually impaired or those whose hand mobility is limited by arthritis or stroke who have explored the many ways their mouse can be configured to make their computing adventures more pleasurable and often more productive.

Right click on your Desktop and click on Personalization and click on ‘Change mouse Pointers’.

There are 5 Tabs:
1. Buttons: You can switch your left and right click buttons, adjust your mouses double click speed, and enable highlight or drag without holding down your mouse button.
2. Pointers: Here you’ll find an extraordinary number of ways to configure your mouse to include Windows Aero, Windows black, Windows Inverted, and Windows Standard Schemes with standard, large and, extra large pointers.

Note: If you decide to experiment with Pointers you can always return to the default setting by clicking on ‘Use Default’.

3. Pointer Options: Motion (Pointer speed), Snap to (Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box), Visibility (Display Pointer trails, Hide Pointer while typing, and Show location of pointer when CTRL key in pressed).
4. Wheel: Vertical Scrolling (Roll the wheel one notch when scrolling the following number of lines as a time or One screen at a time:), Horizontal Scrolling ( Tilt the wheel to scroll the following number of characters at a time:).
5. Hardware: Your installed mouse devices.

The reason I’ve included a detailed list of possible mouse configurations is because most users have no idea of the number of possible helpful configurations that are available. And by providing an in-depth list maybe I can tweak their curiosity.

Note: If adjusting the configuration of you mouse is of interest because you suffer from arthritis or have experienced a stroke, I can almost guarantee that by personalizing your mouse and investing in a Kensington Turbo Mouse Trackball ($100) you’ll significantly improve your ability to compute.

For specific configurations for the physically disabled, right click on your Desktop, click on Personalization and ‘Ease of Access Center’. In addition to formatting a mouse the physically disabled have a significant number of extraordinary additional formatting opportunities to assist them in improving their computer experience.

I might also suggest that some of the ‘Ease of Access Center’ formatting opportunities may be of interest even to those who are not handicapped. Many can be quite useful.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

In this part 9 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue my discussion of the most important Desktop Personalization settings.

2011-05-15T11:19:00.000-05:00

Right click on your Desktop, left click ‘Personalize’ and ‘Change desktop icons’. By checking or un checking the check boxes of the listed Desktop icons you can add them to or remove them from your Desktop.

You can also change the appearance of the Desktop icons you select by highlighting them and clicking on ‘Change icon’. Scroll through the menu and highlight and click on any icon that interests you and click OK. Should you want to reinstate the default icon but have forgotten which one it was, simply highlight the icon you want restored and click ‘Restore Default’.

By the way, you can change the appearance of any Desktop icon (program, document, Web shortcut and Folder) by right clicking on it, clicking on ‘Properties’, ‘Customize’ and ‘Change icon’.

Note: I recommend you do not remove your Recycle Bin from your Desktop. And this is why.

If you become involved in deleting a significant number of files and photos particularly from an external hard drive, you may want to adjust the size of the space available in your Recycle Bin for deletions. In fact if you’re going to delete an extraordinary number of files, particularly photo files, and you’re absolutely sure you’ll have no need to restore any of them, consider right clicking on your Recycle Bin, highlighting your external hard drive and clicking on ‘Don't move files to the Recycle Bin, Remove files immediately when deleted’ and then click Apply.

By not moving the deleted files to your Recycle Bin, when you delete the files from your external hard drive the deletion will take much less time and you will not be in danger of overfilling your Recycle Bin.

I suggest that by having the Recycle icon on your Desktop, you’ll have a better chance of remembering to adjust the Recycle bin settings before you make a significant deletion.

Once your purge is complete you can return to Recycle Bin Properties, highlight your external hard drive and click on ‘Custom size’ to return to collecting deletions in your Recycle Bin.

Also I recommend if as I am you’re paranoid about permanently deleting files and appreciate the security of having your deletions linger as long as possible in your Recycle Bin, you highlight your local Disk C and increase the space available for deletions by clicking on ‘Custom Size’ and adding MB’s.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

ShapeShifter

2011-05-13T12:44:00.000-05:00

Shapeshifter is a clipboard manager for the typical Windows power-user. That’s not to say than novices couldn’t use it but, power users will find this application very helpful. It allows you to have several items in your clipboard (copying several items), and easily swap between them. Furthermore, it improves the way Windows handles copied information, by compressing it in the memory. So it is functional as a speed utility, an item utility, and an application utility. It’s nice to think of this program as something that can make working with some of you office products even easier.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

Photo Magician

2011-05-13T12:26:00.000-05:00

There's no shortage of free tools for resizing your digital photos and other images, though they range in size and complexity from command-line DOS tools to applications sophisticated enough to rival Photoshop. Photo Magician from Sheldon Solutions is extremely easy to use, but where it excels is in converting batches of photos to the same size and format for easy storage and display. With what amounts to one-click, set-and-forget conversion, Photo Magician may be the simplest such app we've tried. There's no red-eye correction or color adjustment, just the basics.

Photo Magician's sparse but efficient and attractive interface signals right away that this program is all about doing a specific job as quickly and easily as possible. There's a simple tabbed dialog with a wizard-based process for configuring Profiles that save your preferred settings. We browsed to and selected our Input and Output folders and moved to the Profile tab. Clicking Select a Profile opened a drop-down list containing preconfigured settings for everything from iPods to HDTVs, with custom options, too. Simple controls let us scale our images, and the Profile Editor let us access and change all our saved Profiles. The Conversion Settings tab includes check boxes and brief but clear explanations; for instance, the EXIF data option explains that the conversion process is faster with preview turned off. The Options tab let us change the interface language, set TIFF output compression and the output format for other file types, check for updates, and access command-line parameters. When we had our profile configured and saved, all we had to do was select our images and click Quick Convert Mode. Photo Magician processed and saved our images without any fuss.

It's not uncommon for people to end up with several folders full of duplicate images of various sizes and formats, mostly digital snapshots uploaded in bulk from a camera. Other free tools do more, of course, which can just mean they're less useful because they're too complicated or take too long.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

Mailinator is a Quick and Easy Disposable E-Mail Address

2011-05-13T11:59:00.000-05:00

Mailinator, a free and easy service that gives you a temporary, Web-accessible e-mail address.

What I like about Mailinator is that it requires no registration or setup of any kind. You just think up an e-mail address on the fly, tack on @mailinator.com, and then type it in. For example: TisI@mailinator.com.

To check your e-mail, just head to the Mailinator site, enter your invented address under "Check your inbox," and then click Go. Presto: there's your mail. There's no password required (meaning this is a highly non-secure system, so use it only for things that don't require absolute privacy).

This is a great little service, one that can really help cut down your spam.

Here's wishing you a Good Booy.

ImgBurn - a lightweight CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning application

2011-05-05T14:25:00.000-05:00

ImgBurn is a lightweight CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning application that has several modes, each for performing a different task: Read - read a disc to an image file; Build - creates an image file from files on your computer or network (you also can write the files directly to a disc); Write - write an image file to a disc; Verify - ensure that a disc is 100% readable (you can also have ImgBurn compare it against a given image file to ensure the actual data is correct); and Discovery - used in combination with DVDInfoPro, you can check the quality of the burns your drive is producing.

Part 6 and 7 of my Windows 7 tutorial were dedicated to Personalizing your Desktop with ‘fun stuff’. So best in this part 8 I begin familiarizing you with the practical Desktop settings you should be aware of

2011-04-28T11:39:00.000-05:00

Right click on your Desktop and left click on ‘View’. You’re offered three options - Large, Medium and Small icons. I suggest you try each setting to determine which one is best for you.

If you have many Desktop icons and have arranged them yourself by the ‘Align icons to grid’ menu selection setting and want to keep them that way, do not experiment with ‘Auto arrange icons’. For if you do Windows will assume the responsibility of arranging all of your carefully placed icons and do so alphabetically. Moreover once you select ‘Auto arrange icons’, until you re select ‘Align icons to grid’ Windows will not allow you to relocate Desktop icons to where you want them.

However if you do want Windows to arrange your Desktop icons you can maintain at least some control of how they’re arranged by clicking on ‘Sort by’ and then Name, Size, Item type, or Date modified.

Back under ‘View’ you have a choice as to whether or not to ‘Show desktop icons’ and\or ‘Show desktop gadgets’. I guess the option of not showing desktop icons and gadgets was designed to allow for a more panoramic view of Desktop slide shows, backgrounds, and screen savers or perhaps to prevent Sally Snoop or Nosey Ned from checking where your Desktop icons take them.

By clicking on ‘New’ you can create a Desktop folder or a Shortcut.

A Desktop folder can be named by overwriting its ‘New folder’ highlight or right clicking on the folder and selecting Rename. The folder can be used for organizing files, other folders, and shortcuts.

Creating a Desktop Shortcut deserves a walk through as it can be very handy if you want to recreate a deleted shortcut or create a new shortcut to a program.

Click on ‘New’, ‘Shortcut’
1. Type in the location of the item

Or If you do not know the path to the program:

1. Click browse.
2. Click on Local Disk (C).
3. Click on the little triangle to the left of Program Files.
4. Scroll down to and click on the Folder of the program to which you want to create a Shortcut.
5. Look for and highlight the program’s .exe file.
6. Click Okay.
7. Click Next.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

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Flash Cookie Cleaner

2011-04-26T14:43:00.000-05:00

Unlike standard cookies which can easily be controlled and cleaned by your respective browser, cookies set and used by Flash are a different animal altogether. Because Flash works outside of your browser, it has the ability to store cookies (aka LSO’s) in various folders throughout your system which is the foundation of how the "super cookie" you may have heard about works.

So essentially, when you are deleting browser cookies, Flash cookies are not deleted and can easily be "respawned" as browser cookies. To get rid of them, you have to clean them separately. Firefox offers the BetterPrivacy add-on which does this automatically, but if you don’t use Firefox a utility which can do this for you is the appropriately named Flash Cookies Cleaner. (As a side note, I believe CCleaner will remove Flash cookies, but I am not 100% sure.)

If you are concerned about your online privacy, cleaning Flash cookies has become a must.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Awesome Duplicate File Finder

2011-04-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

Duplicate images can take up a lot of space on your hard drive, but identifying and deleting them can be a major hassle. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder promises to make this process easier, and it does, to some extent. Depending on the number of duplicates you have, this may or may not be the program for you.

The program's interface is attractive and intuitive. Users simply select the folders they want to scan for duplicates and then click the Start Search button. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder scanned our hard drive quickly and then displayed the results as a list of file names, with duplicates listed side by side. A preview pane let us visually compare each set of images, and a similarity rating let us know exactly how similar the program found the images to be. This part of the program worked great; it was fast, and the results were thorough and accurate. The problem came when it was time to start deleting images. There's no way to delete them in batches, and if you're working with a large number of duplicates, it can get quite tedious to delete them one at a time. That said, those who don't mind deleting each duplicate individually will find little to complain about with Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder; the program works great otherwise. We also liked the fact that it supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP images. A Help file would have been nice, but it's not really necessary; anyone with basic computer literacy will be able to figure it out without problems.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

FrameSize 2.0

2011-04-26T13:39:00.002-05:00

A digital photo frame file resizing application. Format and optimize your digital pictures for your digital photo frame. Avoid black bars, cropped images and fit many more photos into the frames memory. Preserve and stamp EXIF data onto output. Zoom in on areas of your digital photos for frame display without compromising quality. Maintain settings for multiple photo frames on the same computer. Adjust the output quality to store even more photos on a frame.

Digital Photo Frames are great, and becoming increasingly popular. However, typically they come in widescreen (16:9) sizes , which is great for movies, but less great for digital photos which are commonly taken by digital cameras in a non-widescreen format (usually 4:3). This results in the photo frame having to display the image with ugly black bars down the sides, or having to crop the image losing the top and bottom of the picture.

FrameSize is an application that allows you to quickly overcome these limitations and produce high quality images from your digital photographs that are formatted properly and perfectly optimised for your digital photo frame.

Using FrameSize provides the digital photo frame user with several benefits:

The photos being displayed on the frame will be in the correct aspect ratio for the frame; The photos being displayed on the frame will contain exactly the correct number of pixels for the frame, making each image file much smaller than the original - fit many more photos into the frame memory; The photos can be saved with a specified output quality allowing even more photos to be saved on a frame; Multiple sets of options can be saved and loaded allowing several photo frames to be maintained on he same PC; Information about the original photo can be written onto the output image.

FrameSize allows these transformations to be performed on individual photos as a one off operation, or on multiple photos if, for example, you need to reformat many photos in one session.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

John's Background Switcher

2011-04-26T13:36:00.000-05:00

Switch your desktop wallpaper periodically

Do you get bored of your background wallpaper? John's Background Switcher periodically changes the background image on your computer to ensure it's always looking fresh.

John's Background Switcher allows you to configure when you want to change the background (such as every hour or every day) and you can specify which pictures to use in a number of ways. For example, one way is to select a list of specific pictures on your computer. Alternatively, you can direct John's Background Switcher to point at a particular folder such as 'My Pictures' and it will select random pictures...
Read more

Pros
* Allows you to select several different sources
* Can use Flickr photos as background images

Cons
* Doesn't work with all image format types

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Ditto

2011-04-26T13:14:00.000-05:00

This free clipboard manager looks straightforward at first but ultimately lacks cut-and-paste simplicity. The system-tray icon's Quick Paste option displays recent clipboard items, which you can drag and drop or double-click to insert in the current document. The 10 most recently copied items are numbered and can be accessed through hot keys; others appear in the order they were copied. You can sort clips in ascending or descending order, but the Filter box at the bottom of Ditto's window didn't work in our tests, and managing clips became more difficult with each new entry. The multitabbed Options window looks drab and cluttered, and while some settings, such as keeping the program on top, are easy to understand, others need explanation the meager help file doesn't provide. Ditto covers the basics, but many users--especially novices--will be disappointed by its lack of guidance and limited clip-management capabilities.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

FixWin: Solve Common Problems in Windows 7

2011-04-26T13:00:00.001-05:00

FixWin is an amazing free application that can solve your common windows 7 within seconds. This is a must-have application for the users of windows 7. Some of its notable features are highlighted here.

FixWin has a system file checker that analyzes the system to detect corrupted or missing system files. If there is any such file, it automatically replaces it and installs a fresh copy.

FixWin can solve a lot of explorer problems. Some of the problems it can solve are:
* Missing Recycle Bin.
* Problems in games Explorer.
* Missing Folder Options from menu.
* Thumbnails not working.
* Unrecognized removable devices.

Similarly, it is really useful in solving internet and connectivity issues. Some of the issues it can solve are:
* Missing Internet Explorer icon.
* Missing Internet Options.
* Problem in changing the home page.
* Runtime error while browsing.
* Blurry font style and text of source code.

Besides these problems, it can solve lot more other issues related to System Tools and Windows Media Player.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

FoxTab PDF Converter

2011-04-26T12:44:00.000-05:00

FoxTab PDF Converter is a free tool that lets you create and convert any file to PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format).

The most stable and comprehensive PDF converter available and is very easy to use.

License: Freeware Free
Operating system: Windows XP/Vista/7/2000

Description:
FoxTab PDF Converter easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. this tool enables you to create PDF documents from almost any application (Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and more) The easiest way to create and convert any file to a PDF file format.

What can you do?
Easily create PDF files from any program that is able to print.
Extract data from almost any type of PDF file
Sign your PDF files.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

DosBox: Run DOS Programs from Win Vista and Win 7

2011-04-26T11:42:00.000-05:00

Windows 7 does not support the DOS programs. DosBox is an application which can fairly solve this issue. It is used to run DOS programs in Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Here is how to use DosBox application to run DOS games on windows vista and windows 7.
* Download the DosBox from http://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/ and install it on your computer.
* Put all your DOS programs in a single folder. To better organize programs, you can create subfolders. Keep the folder names simple.
* Launch the DosBox either from desktop shortcut or from start menu.
* Give the command on as “mount (drive letter)(folder location)” in the DosBox command. The drive letter is that which you want to use as a virtual drive.
* This will virtually mount your desired drive. Go to C drive by typing C: and then to see the content’s list type Dir. To access contents from a sub folder type CD (foldername).
* Find the .exe file. Type the name of the file to launch the program.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.
Read more: http://beingpc.com/2011/04/dosbox-run-dos-programs-from-win-vista-and-win-7/#ixzz1KeFEjlhG

DeskTube Lite

2011-04-26T11:26:00.002-05:00

By Steve Horton, PCWorld

One of the biggest bottlenecks to watching videos in YouTube is your Internet connection. The page has to load in your Web browser, then the video has to queue up, and other browser tabs can steal priority and bandwidth away ... it's not ideal. DeskTube Lite is a free, separate app solution that requires Adobe AIR, an application environment that DeskTube Lite will install onto your Windows system for you if you don't already have it.

Launching and viewing videos is fast in the DeskTube Lite app.DeskTube Lite is very easy to use and fast for playing, searching, sharing (via e-mail) and making playlists for videos. It doesn't download the video, but rather streams it from YouTube, so the video may still buffer from time to time.

If you're looking for an interface to upload and manage your own videos, which is what a lot of people use YouTube for, DeskTube Lite can't do that, yet. Developer e-works promises an upcoming paid version that will include this and other features. DeskTube Lite also comes in versions for Mac, Linux, Android, and iPhone.

You may also run into videos that won't play in DeskTube Lite. Sometimes a YouTube publisher will disable viewing through the interface that DeskTube Lite uses; in this case DeskTube Lite will provide a link to the YouTube website. One other limitation I noticed is that high-def videos play at the maximum resolution possible with no way to bump it down on slow Wi-Fi connections, as you can on YouTube's site.

On the upside, DeskTube Lite's search works much more quickly than the Web site version and found the video I was looking for right away.

If you're strictly after a YouTube player, DeskTube Lite runs better than vanilla YouTube, and it won't cost you anything, so if you watch a ton of YouTube videos, you're going to want this. If you upload a lot, you'll need to use YouTube's own Web site for the time being.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

How to Clear the Jump List History in Win 7

2011-04-25T09:18:00.000-05:00

Jump List is a very unique feature in Windows 7 that allows the users to manage the programs directly from taskbar. Jump list also aids the users by storing the recent history. This feature is really good for private computers, but for shared computers it can create privacy issues. However, there is a way by which one can control the storing history of jump list.

The given procedure should be followed to manage the history data of Jump List.
* Open the Jump List for the application whose history you want to disable.
* Select any recent item and select the option of Remove from this List.

Here is another simpler method.
* Right-click on taskbar and open properties.
* Select the Start Menu tab and deselect the option of Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar.
* Press the Apply All button to erase the Jump List history.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

In this part 7 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue my Desktop Personalization walk about with part 2 - how to create Desktop slide shows using pictures of your choice.

2011-04-23T11:38:00.002-05:00

In this part 7 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll continue my Desktop Personalization walk about with part 2 - how to create Desktop slide shows using pictures of your choice.

1. Place all the pictures you want to include in your slide show in a sub folder of your Pictures/My Pictures folder.
2. Right click on your Desktop and left click on Personalization.
3. Click on ‘Desktop Background’ on the lower right of the Personalization window.
4. Click on Browse and browse to and click on the sub folder of the Pictures/My Pictures folder in which your pictures are located.
5. By default, all of the pictures in the folder will be selected and included in your slide show presentation. If you decide you do not want all the pictures in the folder to be included, clear the check box for each picture you want to remove from the slide show.

Note: It goes without saying you must select more than one picture. If only one picture is selected the slide show ends and the selected picture becomes the desktop background.

6. Click an item in ‘Picture position:’ to adjust the appearance of your pictures in the slide show. I suggest you start with ‘Fill’, then save the slide show and see how your slide show pictures appear. If they need adjusting try Stretch, Tile, or Center.

Note: Be sure to ‘Save changes’ each time you make a change.

7. Now adjust ‘Changes pictures every:’ to a time of your choosing.
8. Check the ‘Shuffle’ check box if you want the pictures to appear in a random order.
9. Click ‘Save changes’.

You can create as many personal slide shows as you want and vary them as you want, when you want.

A heads up for those who appreciate and collect extraordinary photography.

Now that you know how to access the Desktop Themes that came with Windows and those that you can download, perhaps you would like to collect some or all of the Theme photos as individual pictures.

Go To: C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Theme.

The individual photos that appear in each of your slide shows will be located in folders. Select and copy the photos to a folder in your Pictures\My pictures folder.

If you do become a slide show enthusiast you can combine theme photos in current Theme folders or using the directions above, create a new slide show using selected Theme photos.

I’ve created many spectacular personal slide shows using these extraordinary photos.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

How To Resize Icons And Text Easily In Windows 7

2011-04-22T15:46:00.000-05:00

A very simply trick you may not know about is the ability to easily resize text and elements in Windows with a simple shortcut: hold the Ctrl key while scrolling the mouse wheel up or down.

Here are some examples of what happens when you do this in particular location:
•On the desktop: Icons grow or shrink accordingly.
•In a Windows Explorer folder: File view is toggled between
icons/detail/list views.
•In a browser: Font sizes grow or shrink.

I have tested these cases in Windows 7, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it works in other versions of Windows (or other OS’s) as well.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

In this part 6 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll begin my Desktop Personalization ‘fun stuff’ walk about with a discussion of how to create a Desktop ‘Theme’ slide show.

2011-04-17T14:49:00.002-05:00

In this part 6 of my Windows 7 tutorial I’ll begin my Desktop Personalization ‘fun stuff’ walk about with a discussion of how to create a Desktop ‘Theme’ slide show.

It may interest you to know the reason Windows terminology includes so many business related terms such as desktop, folders, and files is that when Windows 1.0 was released Microsoft believed it would be installed primarily on business computers and by using terms familiar to secretaries the transition to computers would be less daunting.

Keep in mind Windows 1.0 was released in 1985 when Personal Computers were but a gleam in Bill Gates eye.

Be as it may, today’s Windows Desktop is designed so that you can personalize it as you would the desktop of your home or office desk. It can be free of clutter or filled with icons and gadgets. Anyway that meets your needs and/or satisfies your aesthetic sensibilities.

Unlike my News-Press editor who has a need to discover how may icons can fit on his Desktop I have but one, my Recycle Bin. This allows me to personalize my Desktop with unobstructed slide shows.

If you’re of the artistic persuasion, right click on your Desktop and click on Personalize. You have the option of selecting slide shows from ‘My Themes’, ‘Areo Themes’ or ‘Basic and high contrast Themes’.

For the purpose of this tutorial I’m going to assume your Areo is active.

By clicking on any one of the Areo Themes it will appear as ‘Desktop background’ at the bottom left of your Personalization panel.

Now click on the ‘Desktop background’ icon and select all or just the photos you want to appear in the side show.

Note: I suggest keeping the ‘Picture position’ as ‘Fill’.

Next, set the ‘Change picture every:’ setting. I have mine set to 3 minutes. Three minutes turns my monitor into a spectacular digital slide show picture frame.

If you wish you can also customize the ‘Windows Color’ and ‘Sounds’ associated with the slide show.

One of the most exceptional slide show themes I’ve found can be downloaded by clicking on ‘Get more themes on line’ in the Personalization panel.

Click on ‘Get more themes’ and click Download ‘Sailing’. Select ‘Open’ and Sailing will appear as your ‘Desktop Background’ icon. Click on it and configure it as you wish.

If you become as addicted to side shows as I have, go back to ‘Get more themes’ and download all the themes that tweak your artistic curiosity.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

Shellexview

2011-04-15T09:42:00.000-05:00

Shell Extensions are in-process COM objects which extends the abilities of Windows operating system. Most shell extensions are automatically installed by the operating system, but there are also many other applications that install additional shell extension components. For example: If you install WinZip on your computer, you'll see a special WinZip menu when you right-click on a Zip file. This menu is created by adding a shell extension to the system.
The ShellExView utility displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

FILEminimizer

2011-04-15T09:36:00.000-05:00

Do you find image files are taking up too much disk space, or want to send large images by email? FILEminimizer Pictures is designed to compress and optimize your images, saving you space while maintaining quality.

If you want to compress Microsoft Office files, however, check out our FILEminimizer Office download instead.

That sounds quite unlikely, but surprisingly FILEminimizer Pictures works very well. The simple interface features a 'to optimize' window, that you can drag and drop any image file into. Before optimization, you should either choose one of three compression settings, or customize your own. High compression gives you reduced quality, but tiny file sizes, whereas low compression keeps quality high while still reducing file size impressively. In our tests of FILEminimizer Pictures, file size was reduced from anywhere between 65% and 80%, which really makes a difference when optimizing in bulk.

Results are impressive, so for bulk compression for things like email or saving to a USB for a presentation, FILEminimizer Pictures is really useful. There is little to criticize with FILEminimizer Pictures, except that the interface has too many buttons that repeat the same function. It's not necessary to have three for the same function! However, this odd design choice doesn't harm functionality.

FILEminimizer Pictures offers impressive compression of image files, without the inconvenience of having to decompress them for viewing. A great space saving app.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Soluto

2011-04-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

Soluto is a unique startup manager that can help you make your PC boot faster by disabling or delaying certain auto-start items. Unlike similar applications that merely list the programs that are set to start automatically whenever your computer starts, Soluto actually analyzes the boot process and shows you exactly which applications are starting on boot and how they influence your overall boot time. Based on community feedback and internal data, Soluto can classify programs into groups that suggest which applications can be safely disabled (No-Brainers), which require some advanced knowledge and which are required by the operating system and cannot be disabled. Whenever available, Soluto provides detailed information for each program as well as statistics that show what other users did with it. You can choose to disable (pause) a startup program or delay the start until after the boot process is complete. Other features include long-term boot time statistics and optional participation in the community Wiki.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Fresh Diagnose

2011-04-15T09:23:00.000-05:00

Fresh Diagnose is a utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, hard disk performance, video system information, mainboard / motherboard information, and much more...

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

LookInMyPC

2011-04-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

Are you the kind of person who has to know everything that's going on in your system, and I mean absolutely everything? Then the free LookInMyPC is for you. It reports on the state of your system in exceptionally fine detail. Sure, it has the usuals, such as manufacturer, serial number, amount of RAM, hard disk space, and so on. But that's just a start. Want to know the part number of your RAM chips? It'll tell you that. How about all of your installed printer drivers, the name and address of your ISP, all of your installed updates and patches, your installed services....well, you get the idea. LookInMyPC does what it says--it looks in your PC in what seems like microscopic detail and then reports on the results in a local page in your default browser.

Install the program, click Generate Report, and LookInMyPC goes about its work. Be aware that the program needs a bit of time to do its analysis. In fact, you may think that it's no longer working, because after an initial notice that it's doing its job, you get no feedback and nothing seems to be happening. But be patient; after a few minutes, the report will appear in your browser. If you'd like, you can also have a report e-mailed--handy if you'd prefer to start LookInMyPC and then leave for a while.

If you want to spend less time and get a less-than-comprehensive report, that's an option, too. Before you click the Generate Report button, uncheck boxes for information you don't want, such as battery information (largely irrelevant for a desktop), or keyboard information (which is usually pretty obvious).

Especially useful is that after you generate the first report, LookInMyPC will also show you what changes have been made to your system. That report is used as a baseline, and for subsequent scans, you can see what's been changed.

It's also handy that you can install LookInMyPC as a portable installation, directly on a USB flash drive, memory card, or other removable media. You can then carry it around with you, plug it into any PC, and use it without making any changes at all to the system.

Any techie who wants to know everything going on in their system in great detail will get a lot out of LookInMyPC. For others, it may be overkill...but it's free, configurable, and so simple to use, it might be worth it, anyway.

Here's wishing you a Good boot

Clip Cube

2011-04-15T09:14:00.000-05:00

ClipCube is a tiny clipboard history tool under development for Windows: it sits in the system tray, recording copied text for later use. Allows viewing saved items and re-copying them to the clipboard. It has an easy interface, and fits in a pocket: a self-contained program that does not need installation.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

ClipX

2011-04-15T09:09:00.001-05:00

ClipX is a tiny clipboard history manager. It is sweet, it is free, use it.
Also Download Plugins ClipX Stickies Plugin 1.9

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Evernote

2011-04-15T09:04:00.001-05:00

Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your notable life using your computer, phone, and the web. Get started today with a free account.

Capture everything.
Chances are, if you can see it or think of it, Evernote can help you remember it. Type a text note. Clip a web page. Snap a photo. Grab a screenshot. Evernote will keep it all safe.

Organize it. (Or let us do it.)
Everything you capture is automatically processed, indexed, and made searchable. If you like, you can add tags or organize notes into different notebooks.

Find anything fast.
Search for notes by keywords, titles, and tags. Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Five tips for using Ccleaner to degunk your system

2011-04-11T09:12:00.000-05:00

By Jack Wallen, TechRepublic

Takeaway: Ccleaner is one of the best all-around tools for keeping your computer optimized and free of the junk that accumulates from Internet surfing, obsolete apps, and other fragments that clog up your system.

There are a lot of tools out there that handle a lot of tasks, from antivirus tools that also clean your drive of temporary files and make you coffee to tools that promise to “make your computer faster.” But as far as I’m concerned, few tools can make as much of a difference as Ccleaner, at least on a machine that’s not infected by a virus or malware. Ccleaner is easy to use and will keep your computer cleaner, more secure, and running faster. It achieves this by safely removing temporary Internet files (and other means of tracing Internet activity), cleaning up the Windows registry, and removing temporary files and recent file lists (MRUs) from various applications.

But even though Ccleaner is a simple tool to use, that doesn’t mean you should just jump in and start cleaning everything without a bit of thought. Here are some things all users should consider before and during the use of this powerful tool.

1: Analyze before running the Cleaner
I know a lot of admins who just fire up Ccleaner and hit the Run Cleaner button without doing an analysis first. Yes, this is a fast method of getting rid of temporary Internet files. But there’s no way of knowing what’s going to be deleted (until it’s deleted) and there’s no way of knowing how much free space the deletion is going to create. Make sure you hit the Analyze button first. Then, after you read the report, hit the Run Cleaner button. Using Ccleaner this way ensures that nothing is deleted that shouldn’t be deleted. Also, after you run the analyzer, you can look at detailed information (by application) and then add exceptions directly from the list.

2: Set up cookies you want to keep
When you run the Cleaner, cookies are deleted. By default, cookies are retained from Google and Yahoo, but other cookies might need to be retained. To manage this, click on the Options tab and then on the Cookies button. From that window, any cookie currently on the system can be selectively added to the exclusion list. By adding these exclusions, you don’t have to worry about important cookies disappearing after each run of Ccleaner.

3: Always back up the registry
No matter how reliable Ccleaner is and no matter how many successful registry cleanups it does, never do a cleanup without first backing up the registry. Ccleaner will go so far as to remind you to back up the registry every time you run a registry cleanup. If the registry is not backed up, one of those corrupt or missing registry keys that Ccleaner fixes might not really have needed fixing. If that key is then broken and was not backed up, the issue caused by Ccleaner could become catastrophic. Fortunately, Ccleaner makes backing up the registry as simple as a couple of clicks.

4: Use the tools to manage startup applications
Ccleaner comes with a bonus: It lets you enable, disable, or remove programs from startup. I have always found this method of managing startup applications far easier than using the standard Windows method. What I like most about this feature is that startup applications can be enabled and disabled without removing them completely. This means if you need to temporarily prevent an application from starting up, it’s easy to do by going into the Tools tab, clicking the Startup button, selecting the application to be enabled/disabled, and clicking the appropriate button. When the application needs to be re-enabled/disabled, reverse the process.

5: Use the uninstaller
One of the best aspects of Ccleaner is the ability to remove applications from within it. It typically just starts the uninstaller, but I have found that running the application uninstaller this way ends with fewer registry issues than when I uninstall from the Windows Add/Remove Programs tool. And if there are registry issues after the uninstall, registry cleanup is only a couple of clicks away.

Great tool, used wisely
Ccleaner is more than just a tool to clean the registry or empty a computer of temporary Internet files. It also makes it easy to remove applications from startup and remove applications from the machine. Just make sure you use this powerful tool intelligently to avoid rendering your machine unusable.

Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer

2011-04-10T10:50:00.000-05:00

Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer will allow you to customize Windows 7 taskbar thumbnail previews in detail. You can change the size of the thumbnail, its spacing, top, bottom, left, right margins and mouse delay time too!

Find the spacing or margin not to your liking? Go ahead and change them! Or maybe you want to customize the text height! You can do that too.

Once you have made your choices, click on Apply Changes. The explorer.exe will restart to apply the changes.

Here's wishing you a good Boot.

Unlocker 1.9.0

2011-04-10T10:45:00.000-05:00

If you've ever been unable to delete a file in Windows, and can't figure out what program's using it, Unlocker is the solution. Have you ever seen these Windows error messages?
* Cannot delete folder: It is being used by another person or program
* Cannot delete file: Access is denied
* There has been a sharing violation.
* The source or destination file may be in use.
* The file is in use by another program or user.
* Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

Unlocker can help! Simply right-click the folder or file and select Unlocker. If the folder or file is locked, a window listing of lockers will appear. Simply click Unlock All and you are done!

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker

2011-04-10T10:41:00.000-05:00

Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a freeware TweakUI Utility for tweaking and optimizing Windows 7 & Windows Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit. It can simply be downloaded and used as a portable application to customize your Windows to meet your requirements. With judicious tweaking, it can make your system faster, more stable, and more secure with just a few mouse clicks. The tweaker detects whether you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista installed and accordingly offers you the relevant tweaks only.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

TCPEYE

2011-04-10T10:30:00.002-05:00

TCPEye is a network and Internet connection monitoring tool that shows you which applications are currently using your network connection, the server they are communicating with and the country where the server is located. The list also includes information about the process path and, if available, the product name, description and company name. You can right-click on any connection to view file properties, terminate the process that is using the connection or close the connection for that specific process. If you find a suspicious connection, you can use the integrated VirusTotal Uploader to check if the process is a known malware, virus or Trojan. Other features include optional system tray alerts for new connections, integrated Whois lookup, GeoIP Tool, country flag icons, and more.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

Sounds You Don't Want To Hear: Failing Hard Drives

2011-04-10T10:28:00.000-05:00

Failing hard disk drives will often (but not always) make distinctive noises. Here's an excellent compilation of the sounds they make.

This is a great list of the various kinds of sounds that hard disk drives make when they are failing.
The sounds are grouped by manufacturer, with the sounds that you really don't want to hear listed for each vendor - Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi/IBM, Maxtor, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and Quantum.

Just click on the circle with the triangle inside next to the link to hear the sound for that manufacturer.
You can listen to stuck spindles, bad heads, bad bearings, failing heads, and seized spindles.

Many of the sounds appear to be somewhat amplified so they can be easily heard.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

ClipCube

2011-04-10T10:01:00.000-05:00

SearchMyFiles v1.71

2011-04-09T15:57:00.000-05:00

SearchMyFiles is an alternative to the standard "Search For Files And Folders" module of Windows. It allows you to easily search files in your system by wildcard, by last modified/created/last accessed time, by file attributes, by file content (text or binary search), and by the file size. SearchMyFiles allows you to make a very accurate search that cannot be done with Windows search.

For Example: You can search all files created in the last 10 minutes with size between 500 and 700 bytes.

After you made a search, you can select one or more files, and save the list into text/html/csv/xml file, or copy the list to the clipboard.
SearchMyFiles is portable, and you can use it from a USB flash drive without leaving traces in the Registry of the scanned computer.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Speckie

2011-04-09T15:53:00.002-05:00

Ever since Internet Explorer was created, it has lacked an essential feature; Real Time spell check. Versoworks proudly brings you that feature, say hello to Speckie!

The first and only dedicated Real Time spell check for IE, now works with IE 9! Download your FREE copy now.

Here's wishing ou a Good Boot.

Stalled Printer Repair

2011-04-09T15:51:00.000-05:00

Sometimes print jobs get stuck in the queue, and it's not always obvious why. It could be the result of a driver issue, it could be because you're using a Wi-Fi connection to the printer, and so forth. Even more vexing, Windows won't let you delete a stuck print job, which blocks subsequent items from printing. Usually the only solution is a reboot, and no one should have to endure that kind of a hassle just to print a document. Salvation! Stalled Printer Repair is a free utility that purges any stuck jobs it finds, meaning you should be able to resume printing again right away.

What I especially like about SPR is that there's nothing to install (if you download the Zip-file version, that is): Just run the app, click Purge Print Jobs, and you're done. That makes this a perfect addition to the USB Flash drive you use for system-rescue utilities. (You do have one, right?)

If you've been plagued by stuck print jobs, I definitely recommend giving Stalled Printer Repair a try.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

ShellExView v1.65 - Shell Extensions Manager

2011-04-09T15:46:00.000-05:00

Shell Extensions are in-process COM objects which extends the abilities of Windows operating system. Most shell extensions are automatically installed by the operating system, but there are also many other applications that install additional shell extension components. For example: If you install WinZip on your computer, you'll see a special WinZip menu when you right-click on a Zip file. This menu is created by adding a shell extension to the system.

The ShellExView utility displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension.

ShellExView can be used for solving context-menu problems in Explorer environment

Here's wishing you a good Boot.

Screenpreso

2011-04-09T15:41:00.002-05:00

Screenpreso is a freeware utility for Windows that allows you to capture, edit and save screenshots, scrolling windows, video and share it directly to social networking sites.

Here's wishing you a Good boot.

PhraseExpress

2011-04-09T15:40:00.000-05:00

Do you frequently have to type the same lengthy phrases? Ever wish you could add different signatures to e-mail sent from different accounts? You can save considerable keystrokes by installing PhraseExpress, a freeware auto-complete utility that automatically inserts text when you type simple abbreviations.

For example, suppose you often end your e-mails with, “Thanks for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.” With PhraseExpress, you could simply type “tft,” and the program would automatically insert the full text in its place. For custom signatures, you could use the abbreviations “sig1,” “sig2,” and so on, and PhraseExpress will insert the appropriate signature.

The software works in any application. To create a new phrase, just copy any selected text to the clipboard, then click the PhraseExpress icon in the System Tray. You can create an AutoText tag like the above examples or simply assign a hotkey.

PhraseExpress also includes a global spell-check feature and a clipboard history tool (which stores all recent clipboard entries, not just the most recent one). It can even import existing AutoCorrect entries from Word, then use them across all applications.

It’s hard to believe such a robust utility is a freebie, but it’s true: PhraseExpress doesn’t cost a penny.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Process Explorer v14.1

2011-04-09T15:32:00.000-05:00

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

PhotoScape

2011-04-09T15:30:00.000-05:00

Add another name to the roster of feature-rich freeware image editors: PhotoScape. Although it eats and leaks about as much memory as Firefox, this editor is perfect for those making the jump between JPEG and am-pro dSLR work.

It supports RAW, as well as all other major image formats from JPEG and PNG to animated GIFs. It comes with prebuilt templates for users to create photo collages, fumetti, and Web comics, and has a standard set of red-eye removal, light/shadow, and contrast-editing features. One warning about the RAW processing: although it looks like you can drag and drop, the converter doesn't change RAW to JPEG unless you load the RAW file from within the native file navigator. It's a minor bug, but one that can lead you to believe that there's no RAW support at all. You can also batch edit images, combine them, and print them out one at a time or several at once.

The program loads fast and possesses an interface completely different from those familiar with Adobe's industry-leading tools. Users are greeted by circular navigator complemented by a tabbed nav on the top of the main screen. Most but not all main features are accessible from either nav. It might take some people time to get used to the unusual layout, but it's only unusual for an image editor; otherwise it's intuitive, fast, and lacks only the most advanced of image editing features.
.

Read more: PhotoScape - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com http://download.cnet.com/PhotoScape/3000-2192_4-10703122.html?tag=recommendedDownloads#ixzz1J3m1y92V

PDF To JPG

2011-04-09T15:27:00.000-05:00

PDF To JPG is a 100% FREE windows application that quickly converts PDF documents to image formats like JPG, TIF, BMP, PNG and GIF. Users are able to customize DPI and Page Range in conversion setting. Also, PDF To JPG supports Batch Mode that converts hundreds of PDF documents into images at a time.
Size: 2.14MB Version: 2 OS: Windows XP/2000/Vista/7/2003/ME

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Paint.net

2011-04-09T15:24:00.000-05:00

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

OpenOffice.org 3

2011-04-09T15:09:00.002-05:00

OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

Multiple Image Resizer .NET

2011-04-09T15:06:00.000-05:00

With Multiple Image Resizer .NET, you can resize, add borders, add text, overlay images, crop, rotate and flip - with a few simple mouse clicks.

And what's more, Multiple Image Resizer .NET is FREE for personal and educational use! Commercial users of Multiple Image Resizer .NET should buy a commercial use license from us.

Multiple Image Resizer .NET also has a completely customisable user interface that you can arrange to suit yourself.

Features

Multiple Image Resizer .NET is a batch image processor. The software was originally designed and built to batch resize images but now features a wider range of batch image processing functionality.

Batch Image Processing Features
•Resize images
•Rotate images
•Flip images
•Add single or dual borders to images
•Add text to images (including file and EXIF information)
•Crop images
•Overlay / Watermark images with another image

Other Features
•Support for multi-core processors (CPUs) speeding up image processing
•Flexible command line batch image processing scripting engine
•Preview of unprocessed and processed images
•Ability to save and load image processing settings
•Ability to alter the order in which batch processing features are applied to images
•Customisable user interface, including the choice of three themes
•Fully integrated help documentation
•Check for updates feature
•Multi-language - English, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, French, Portuguese, Czech, Galician, German, Italian, Hungarian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Greek, Catalan, Polish, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese (Traditional), Russian and Ukrainian

Supported Image Files

Multiple Image Resizer .NET can open images in 31 different image formats, and save processed images in 16 image formats:
•Windows Bitmap (.bmp) - [Open and Save]
•Dr. Halo (.cut) - [Open]
•DirectDraw Surface (.dds) - [Open]
•Enhanced Windows Metafile (.emf) - [Open and Save]
•Exchangeable Image File (.exif) - [Open and Save]
•Graphics Interchange Format (.gif) - [Open and Save]
•High Dynamic Range (.hdr) - [Open and Save]
•Windows Icon (.ico) - [Open and Save]
•Amiga IFF (.iff) - [Open]
•Deluxe Paint (.lbm) - [Open]
•JPEG Network Graphics (.jng) - [Open]
•JPEG Format (.jpg, .jpeg, .jif, .jpe) - [Open and Save]
•Commodore 64 Koala (.koa) - [Open]
•Multiple Network Graphics (.mng) - [Open]
•Portable Bitmap (ASCII & Binary) (.pbm) - [Open and Save]
•Kodak PhotoCD (.pcd) - [Open]
•Zsoft Paintbrush PCX Bitmap (.pcx) - [Open]
•Portable Graymap (ASCII & Binary) (.pgm) - [Open and Save]
•Portable Network Graphics (.png) - [Open and Save]
•Portable Pixelmap (ASCII & Binary) (.ppm) - [Open and Save]
•Adobe Photoshop (.psd) - [Open]
•Sun Rasterfile (.ras) - [Open]
•Truevision Targa (.tga, .targa) - [Open and Save]
•Tagged Image File Format (.tif, .tiff) - [Open and Save]
•Wireless Bitmap (.wbmp) - [Open and Save]
•Windows Metafile (.wmf) - [Open and Save]
•X11 Bitmap Format (.xbm) - [Open]
•X11 Pixmap Format (.xpm) - [Open and Save]
•Macintosh PICT (.pct) - [Open]
•Silicon Graphics SGI File Format (.sgi) - [Open]
•RAW Camera Image Files (supporting most manufacturers) (.3fr, .arw, .bay, .bmq, .cap, .cine, .cr2, .crw, .cs1, .dc2, .dcr, .dng, .drf, .dsc, .erf, .fff, .ia, .iiq, .k25, .kc2, .kdc, .mef, .mos, .mrw, .nef, .nrw, .orf, .pef, .ptx, .pxn, .qtk, .raf, .raw, .rdc, .rw2, .rwz, .sr2, .srf, .sti, .x3f) - [Open]

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Moo0 SystemMonitor

2011-04-09T15:02:00.002-05:00

Tracking how your system uses its resources can help you determine what may be limiting your system's performance. This free utility monitors 29 resources--including CPU, memory, network, and HDD usages--so you can pinpoint where your system needs optimizing.

Moo0 SystemMonitor launches a vertical bar you can drag anywhere on your desktop. You can specify its transparency or modify as a toolbar button through a right-click menu. Resizing the bar by turning the middle scroll button of the mouse made viewing and hiding the bar easier. Its color coding--light green for satisfactory or optimal usage, red for spikes and resource issues--quickly provides a visual flag for areas to investigate.

This little freeware utility performed very well in our tests. The information was brief but useful, and we liked that an error report could be saved as a text file for easier follow-up or tracking. Our favorite feature was the Bottleneck display, which turns red and displays item-hogging resources at the moment problems occurred. We also liked the real-time graphic display of hard-drive input/output performance and network speed.

Power users may prefer a few more bells and whistles, but SystemMonitor's ease of use and helpful data make it an excellent choice to add to your optimizing toolbox.

Here's wishing you a good Boot

SearchMyFiles

2011-04-09T13:47:00.000-05:00

The built-in Windows search tool can stand improvement. Fortunately, excellent third-party tools like NirSoft's SearchMyFiles can pick up the slack. It's a free search tool that improves on the standard Windows process. It can search by file attributes, content, and size,; by the time a file was last modified, created, or accessed; or by wild-card searches. You can create extremely specific and accurate searches, such as every file created in the previous five minutes that is over 400KB. You can copy your search results to the clipboard and save them as text, html, csv, or xml files. It's completely portable, too; you can host it on a USB drive, search a computer, and remove it without leaving a trace in the Registry.

SearchMyFiles downloads as zip file but runs without installing. It opens with two dialogs: Search Options, in which you configure searches, and the main window, which displays results and contains the file menu and other basic settings. The Help file links to the developer's Web site for further information, but an extensive user's manual is included with the download. However, the program is easy enough to use as is, despite its extensive options. You simply specify a standard search or the extremely handy duplicates search, which folders to search or exclude, and other attributes. SearchMyFiles does the rest.

SearchMyFiles is freeware, and it works in all versions of Windows, from 2000 to 7. The latest version adds a Start Search command-line option for initiating searches without displaying the Search Options window.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

In this Part 5 of my Windows 7 tutorial, I’ll discuss Taskbar icons and Jump Lists

2011-04-09T13:40:00.000-05:00

Open Word, Excel, PowerPoint and\or Publisher and several of the documents you’ve created with each. Then open your Internet browser and several Web sites.

Now pass your Pointer over the icons of the programs you’ve opened. You’ll be presented with an image(s) of your opened document(s) and Web site(s).

Note: Not all program icons offer multiple Window images, but those that do not will offer an image of the program’s current open Window.

Now right click on the icons of the programs you’ve opened and you’ll be presented with a menu. All menus offer the name of the program (to open the program Window or open another Window of the program), ‘pin or unpin this program to the taskbar’ and ‘Close all Windows’.

Depending on the program, you may be offered additional menu options e,g.:
* Word and WordPerfect offer Pinned and Recent.
* Internet Explorer offers Pinned and Frequent.
* Firefox offers Pinned, Frequent, and Tasks.
* Chrome offers Most Visited, Recently Closed, and Tasks.
* Windows Media Player offers Pinned, Frequent and Tasks.

As with the Start Menu Jump Lists, you’re also offered an opportunity to pin a document, Web site or tune from the Jump List to the Pinned List by simply clicking on the little push pin to the right of the document, Web site or tune.

You can unpin a selection by clicking on the ‘Unpin from this list’ push pin.

Note: Just about all programs offer an opportunity to pin or unpin their icons to the Taskbar, but not all icons will offer jump lists.

Start menu pinning and/or pinning an Icon to your Taskbar can best be defined as a way to eliminate time consuming searches for recently opened documents, Web sites or tunes as well as a way to conveniently make a document, Web site or tune available permanently or for as long as needed.

I want to thank all the Good Booters who e-mailed me thanking me for my Windows 7 tutorials. Many were snowbirds who will soon be returning home and wanted to know how best to find my future Windows 7 tutorials.

It goes without saying my most recent Good Boots can always be found at www.news-press.com, Opinion and Columnists. However for an archive of all Good Boots, Freeware recommendations, Good Boot Quickies, and to sign up for the Good Boot newsletter go to www.goodboot.net.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

The Magical Jelly Bean

2011-04-09T13:36:00.000-05:00

The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install windows from your registry. It also has a community-updated configuration file that retrieves product keys for many other applications. Another feature is the ability to retrieve product keys from unbootable Windows installations.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

LogMeIn

2011-04-09T13:34:00.000-05:00

LogMeIn Free gives you remote control of your PC or Mac from any other computer with an Internet connection.

Simply install LogMeIn on the computer you want to access (it takes about 2 minutes), log into your account from another computer and click the computer you want to control. You'll see its desktop and be able to use all the applications on your remote computer as if you were sitting in front of it - even if you're across town, across the country, or across the world.

•Works with Windows PCs and Mac OS X
•Two-minute set-up
•100% free

KarenWare Directory Printer

2011-04-09T13:28:00.001-05:00

Print the names, and other information, of all folders and files on your computer.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

IrfanView

2011-04-09T13:25:00.001-05:00

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 , 2008, Vista, Windows 7.

It is designed to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

IrfanView seeks to create unique, new and interesting features, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole "creativity" is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example: XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 10+ years).

IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support.
One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support.
The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support.

Some IrfanView features:
Many supported file formats (click here the list of formats)
Multi language support
Thumbnail/preview option
Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
Toolbar skins option
Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
Fast directory view (moving through directory)
Batch conversion (with image processing)
Multipage TIF editing
File search
Email option
Multimedia player
Print option
Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF
Change color depth
Scan (batch scan) support
Cut/crop
IPTC editing
Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
Screen Capturing
Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
Lossless JPG rotation
Unicode support
Many hotkeys
Many command line options
Many PlugIns
Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like "I Agree" or "Evaluation expired"
No registry changes without user action/permission!
and much much more

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

Instant Elevator Music 2

2011-04-09T13:21:00.000-05:00

Instant Elevator Music will automatically play elevator music while you wait for programs to open, files to copy, and downloads to download.

* Elevator music playlist - now you can have a set of music files, so you don't get bored of hearing the same song over and over.
* Ignore list - if a program triggers elevator music when it shouldn't, now you can tell it not to play for that program ever again.
* Music player muting - now elevator music won't play if you're listening to music in iTunes, Winamp or Foobar2000 (with a plugin).
* Better file format support - now you can use M4A files (like from iTunes), Windows Media Audio files and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files as elevator music.
* Portable mode - take your elevator music with you! Run Instant Elevator Music from your USB drive.
* New program support - including Free Download Manager, Microsoft Office 2010 and Photoshop CS5.
* API - trigger elevator music from your own applications or from the command line. Great for build scripts.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Image Resizer 2.0

2011-04-09T12:08:00.002-05:00

Image Resizer 2.0 is a clone of an original Image Resizer Powertoy build for Windows XP. This clone has been created to extend the support to non-XP and 64-bit versions of Windows (including Windows Vista and Windows 7). What are Powertoys? They are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released. This tool adds Image Resizer in the Windows right-click context menu making it easier to resize an image with a click of a button.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

iCopy

2011-04-09T12:06:00.001-05:00

When you're setting up a home office, chances are your budget doesn't include springing for a photocopier. But it may include a scanner and a printer. If so, an open source utility called iCopy can help you get the copy machine you've always wanted.

A tiny (554 KB) app, iCopy can either be installed on your PC or run off of a USB drive--no installation needed. It should find both your scanner and printer automatically, and with the click of a button, lets you scan pages and then print them back out. It's almost like a photocopier, albeit a bit slower.

You can choose to scan single or multiple pages, and can scan in color, grayscale, or text mode. iCopy also lets you adjust the resolution, brightness, and contrast of any images you scan, and lets you enlarge or shrink images, too.

Beyond simply printing pages back out, iCopy has additional uses. Once you scan documents or photos, you can print them to a file--and if you have a PDF writer like the free CutePDF, you can use it with iCopy to scan files and create PDFs, for free.

Despite its many good points, iCopy is not without its flaws. It didn't recognize my printer automatically; I had to manually direct the app to find it. And although it found my HP scanner and worked with it seamlessly, it's not compatible with all scanners. But since it works relatively well--and because it's free/donationware--iCopy is worth a try. Especially considering you don't even have to install it to take it for a test run, there's nothing to lose.

Note: This program is donationware. It is free to try, but the author accepts and encourages donations towards further development.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

Microsoft Image Composite Editor?

2011-04-09T12:04:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images. The stitched panorama can be shared with friends and viewed in 3D by uploading it to the Photosynth web site. Or the panorama can be saved in a wide variety of image formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to the multiresolution tiled format used by Silverlight's Deep Zoom and by the HD View and HD View SL panorama viewers.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Process Explorer in Windows 7

2011-04-09T12:01:00.000-05:00

•You can view system and local process in the left pane and get its related information such as Process ID, Size, Description, Company Name, User Name etc.
•You can right click on any process and set its Priority. Further, you can Kill Process, Kill Process Tree, and Suspend and Restart the process.
•You can go to process properties and see very detailed information about it such as Performance, Performance Graph, Location, Threads, Environment Variables and other information’s
•You can Shutdown, Restart, Hibernate, Log off, Lock and Standby your computer by clicking on “Shutdown” Menu bar item under File Menu
•You can set its configurations from Option Menu bar
•You can view the DLL’s and Handles related to the process by clicking on “View” and going to “Lower Pane View” and selecting “DLLs” or “Handles”.
•You can also use the search feature, which lets you fine any DLL or Handle associated with any process. You can do this by clicking on “Find” Menu bar and then clicking on “Find DLL or handle”. Type the name of DLL/Handle you want to search and press “Search”.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

How To Recognize A Failing Hard Drive Sound

2011-04-09T11:34:00.001-05:00

There are those who thankfully take the time to record quality audio of what failing hard drives actually sound like, and moreover what certain sounds mean when you hear them. If you think about it, how would you know the sound of bad HHD heads from a stuck spindle from a bad preamplifier clip to bad bearings?

Data Cent, a data recovery service, has put together a rather large list of just about every ‘bad’ sound a hard drive can make when it’s failing – sorted by manufacturer. Included in the make list are drives by Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung and several others. Also included are laptop ‘bad’ drive sounds in addition to regular 3.5-inch sizes.

If you have a hard drive that’s failing, starting to fail or even if you suspect it of showing the signs of failing, this site is definitely worth a look – and listen. Each drive listed has a simple play button next to it where you can listen in.

Note: It’s recommended you listen to the sounds with headphones on, because some drive-fail sounds are on the quieter side.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Fresh Diagnose

2011-04-09T11:30:00.000-05:00

Fresh Diagnose analyzes and benchmarks your computer system. It can handle many types of hardware, including CPUs, hard disks, video systems, and mainboards. Use this free software to learn more about your computer and its components, detect or diagnose problems, and increase performance. Features sensors module enhancement that will support motherboard with Winbond 83627hf, 83697hf, 83627thf, 83637hf sensor chip, adds PCI busses module enhancement with a lot of PCI devices support, display monitors module that contains all of informations about your monitors.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

Filerfrog

2011-04-09T11:26:00.000-05:00

Working with files in Windows can be a cumbersome proposition, and I've seen a variety of different programs that aim to simplify this process. But I can't say I've ever seen anything quite like FilerFrog (32-bit). This utility adds an incredibly helpful set of functions to the Windows context menu, making it easier than ever to organize and maintain your files.

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Free Online OCR

2011-04-08T10:32:00.000-05:00

Convert scanned images into editable text.

Free Online OCR is a free service that allows you to easily convert scanned documents, faxes, screenshots and photos into editable and searchable text, such as DOC, TXT or PDF.

The service is completely free and you don't need to register or install anything on your computer. Just select an image file and click Convert. You can immediately download the resulting document.

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Ultra File Search

2011-04-08T10:26:00.001-05:00

If you miss the old Windows search interface, with its up-front search criteria and the various ways search results can be listed e.g., file location and creation date, I recommend Ultra File Search.

This “free” utility offers many of your old familiar search options and displays results. And does so without requiring Vista/Windows 7 background indexing. It does not waste system resources and does not use extra space on the disk.

Ultra File Search has four tabs - Files and Folders, Containing Text, Date and Size, and Attributes. Each tab controls several criteria. Default settings are user friendly and easy to adjust with only a click of ones mouse.

For example: Default settings under “Containing Text” are for whole words and no hidden, system, media, or image files. However you can search by phrase, add case sensitivity, and exclude certain words.

Other tabs are equally flexible. You can search by one or more folders or media (optical, hard, or flash drive) by simple full or partial text or with wildcards and then as needed adding more restrictions.

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Easy Way to Select Files in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with Check Boxes

2011-04-08T08:13:00.000-05:00

Suppose you want to select only certain files from a folder list in Windows Explorer. Maybe you want to delete certain files or copy a few files to another folder. You may know the old trick of holding down the Ctrl key and single-clicking each file to make a group selection but Windows Vista/7 has an easier way. It isn’t enabled by default, however, and you have to turn the feature on by going to Folder Options.

There are several ways to open Folder Options but here is one way to do it:
1.Go to the Start-Search bar
2.Enter “folder options” (without quotes). Actually, just “fol” works on my systems.
3.Select "Folder Options" from the list
4.In the dialog box that opens, select the View tab
5.Scroll down the list of advanced options and place a check by “Use Check boxes to select items”.
6.Click “Apply” and “OK”

From now on, a check box will appear to the left of a file name whenever the mouse is hovered over it. Click the file to put a check in the box and select the file. The file will stay selected until you remove the check or close the Explorer window.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

7stacks

2011-04-07T16:16:00.000-05:00

7stacks is an easy to use, free app that lets Windows 7 (and Vista and XP) users have “stacks” of icons in their Taskbar (in 7) or QuickLaunch Toolbar (in Vista and XP).

By using stacks, users can reduce icon clutter, and combine a group of related icons into a single icon. For instance, if you use application suites such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or Adobe CS4, you can have all the suite’s icons combined into one icon!

You can also use it to browse and access documents within a folder very quickly. Usually, when you want to edit a series of frequently used documents, you’d have to either launch the app, and go to File|Open, or open the (My) Computer icon and go into your (My) Documents folder and pick the file you want. With 7stacks, just create a stack to that document’s folder, and open that document in a couple of clicks.

7stacks is incredibly easy to use, and has a variety of looks and features, allowing anyone to customize the look of their stack however they’d like. And using Windows 7, its easy to create new stacks by right-clicking on any stack, and selecting “Create New Stack” in the JumpList. 7stacks will place an shortcut icon on your desktop to this new stack, which you can then pin to your Windows 7 taskbar, or Vista or XP QuickLaunch bar.

7stacks even solves the problem other similar apps have had: forcing users to “hack” the executables and shortcuts to allow multiple stacks on the Windows 7 taskbar. 7stacks solves this by using 10 identical executables (numbered 0-9) and assigning the shortcuts slots based on which ones are used. The end result is that you can just pin up to 10 stacks on the taskbar, with no need to even think about hacking or reconfiguring or adjusting .. it just works!

Check out these features:
•In 7 and Vista, 7stacks uses Aero, making the stacks look like part of Windows itself.
•Browse subfolders within a stack, just like in OS X Snow Leopard.
•3 different styles of stacks: Normal, Grid, and Menu •Normal displays a stack of icons vertically, with a text description next to it.
•Grid displays a “squarish” grid of icons only; useful when displaying a large number of items like document folders.
•Menu displays a cascading menu of items, with a very small icon and a name next to it. Hover over subfolders to browse inside those folders.
•In Windows 7, create a new stack by right-clicking on any stack and selecting “Create New Stack” from the JumpList entry.
•In Menu mode, 7stacks doesn’t even need to be in a toolbar. You can use it right from your desktop, or any other folder.
•Pin up to 10 different stacks on the Windows 7 taskbar

Best of all, 7stacks is completely free!

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

FastStone Photo Resizer 3.0

2011-04-05T11:02:00.002-05:00

FastStone Photo Resizer 3.0

An image converter and renaming tool that intends to enable users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermarks to images in a quick and easy batch mode.

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FastStone Image Viewer 4.4

2011-04-05T10:59:00.001-05:00

FastStone Image Viewer 4.4 Freeware

An image browser, converter and editor that supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO, TGA and camera raw files. It has a nice array of features such as image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments, musical slideshow and much

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AmoK Exif Sorter 2.56

2011-04-05T10:52:00.002-05:00

AmoK Exif Sorter is the easy but powerful solution for renaming your photos. All pictures of a digital camera can be renamed by AmoK Exif Sorter based on the pictures' metadata (EXIF and IPTC). Meta data are stored in every picture automatically by the camera. The data include information about the date when the picture was taken (year, month, day, hour, second) but also information about camera model, aperture, exposure, picture's size, and many more.

AmoK Exif Sorter cannot only rename pictures. The software can also move or copy them to arbitrary folders. These folders again, can be named according to the exif data. For instance, all pictures taken in February 2007 could be moved to c:fotos2007February and the pictures named according to the template "year-month-day_time_some-text" which would result in a file name such as 2007-02-27_18:34_New_York.jpg.

To ease work, AmoK Exif Sorter offers a live preview of the file names, an integrated picture and exif data viewer, drag & drop, thumbnail view, automatic update check, and profiles for different cameras and users. Complete directories including sub directories may be processed or single files. In addition, the exif date may be changed (plus/minus X years/days/hours/...) and also non-exif files such as video files may be renamed according to their file creation date. Beside the exif data the IPTC format is supported. Both type of data can be exported to a Text or xml file.

Features
+ Fast renaming of pictures based Exif- and IPTC data
+ Support of all Exif / IPTC data ( date picture taken, year, month, week, day, hour, second, size of photo, camera model, camera manufacturer, exposure, aperture, original filename, description, place, keywords, and many more)
+ Easy definition of rules for renaming via Tags (%year%, %month%, %day%, ...)
+ Photos may be renamed, moved or copied
+ Preview of new filenames in real-time
+ Assistant for renaming photos
+ Processing of single files or directories including sub directories
+ Export of Exif and IPTC data as text or xml
+ Integrated picture viewer
+ Handles thousand of pictures at once
+ Drag & Drop support
+ Automatic update check
+ Profiles for different cameras, users and renaming rules
+ 40% faster than AmoK Exif Sorter 1.x
+ Independent of operating system (runs on Windows, Linux and Mac)
+ Free English support via email
+ 100% free for private and commercial use
+ With and without setup/installer available

here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Event Log Explorer

2011-04-04T15:12:00.002-05:00

Event Log Explorer is an effective software solution for viewing, monitoring and analyzing events recorded in Security, System, Application and another logs of Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 operating systems. Event Log Explorer greatly extends standard Windows Event Viewer monitoring functionality and brings many new features.

Event Log Explorer helps you to quickly browse, find and report on problems, security warnings and all other events that are generated within Windows. Thanks to Event Log Explorer, monitoring and analysis of events recorded in Security, System, Application and other logs of Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 operating systems gets much faster and really effective.

Event Log Explorer allows you to view the description of each event without any additional mouse click - all desciptions are displayed in the Event Description box of log window, or even directly in the event list.

Friendly and powerful user interface lets you select between two styles: Multi-document or tabbed-document interface.

Unlike standard Windows Event Viewer, Event Log Explorer can print event logs or even separate events. You can also export your event logs to other formats. At the time, Event Log Explorer supports export to HTML, Microsoft Excel and tab-separated text files.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

33mail - Advanced Disposable Email Address

2011-04-04T15:06:00.001-05:00

Over the years there have been more than a few email alias services that have come and go, but one that stands out more than the rest is 33mail.

Compared to other ways of using email aliases, 33mail has advanced features that are genuinely useful, but before I get into that, how 33mail works is like this:
1. Create a 33mail account and pick a username.
2. Any time you want to use an alias, make one up on the spot. If your username is example, you could use capnkirk@example.33mail.com, mrspock@example.33mail.com, scotty@example.33mail.com and so on. You get the idea. The only thing that has to remain the same each time is what happens after the @.
3. There is no step 3. That’s it.

What makes 33mail different however is what you can do with your aliases aside from just receiving messages from them. In the 33mail "Manage Aliases" panel, you have the ability to block or unblock certain aliases, check to see which are the most used out of the aliases you use (very handy if you use many), and the bandwidth used per each alias. These are features not seen in any other email alias service.

Is there any downside?

Only one. There is a limit to how much email bandwidth can be used per month. If you receive a lot of emails to your aliases that contain file attachments, you’ll use up the monthly bandwidth quickly. But if you only receive emails where the bulk of them are just text, you won’t have to worry about it.

If you do run into a bandwidth limit on 33mail’s servers, there is a Premium Account option which costs $12 a year. Considering Yahoo! Mail charges $19.99 a year to get the same feature, and Hotmail only allows for 5 aliases a year, 33mail’s price is a fair deal for what it is.

Is 33mail reliable?

I have no idea as I just recently found out about the service. My suggestion is that if you think 33mail is a good idea, test the service for a week or so to see if mail does deliver properly for you. From my small tests it appeared to work without issue, but I have no long-term data using the 33mail service.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

DiskSavvy

2011-04-04T15:01:00.002-05:00

DiskSavvy is a powerful, fast and easy-to-use disk space analyzer allowing one to analyze disks, network shares and NAS storage devices. The user is provided with the ability to analyze one or more directories, disks or network shares, detect directories and files holding significant amounts of the disk space, display pie charts, export disk space usage reports and perform multiple file management operations such as file copy, move and delete.

In addition, power computer users are provided with an advanced product version, named DiskSavvy Pro, which is capable of processing significantly larger amounts of files, allows one to analyze specific file types, provides additional report formats and enables execution of user-defined disk space analysis commands using direct desktop shortcuts.

Finally, DiskSavvy Ultimate, which is especially designed for IT and storage administrators, allows one to submit disk space analysis reports from multiple servers or desktop computers to a centralized SQL database, analyze disk space usage per host, analyze the amount of used disk space per user, define custom rule-based disk space analysis actions and perform automatic disk usage analysis operations using the DiskSavvy command line utility.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

In this Part 4 of my Windows 7 tutorial, I’ll continue my Taskbar walk about

2011-04-04T08:41:00.001-05:00

One of the most useful Windows 7 Taskbar features is the new enhanced Notification area.

The Notification area is the area on the Taskbar where your computer clock is located along with other start up programs.

For the most part it provides valuable information and alerts e.g., the availability of Windows updates and virus definitions. But it can also display the icons of useless start up programs you added accidently or were added without your permission during a program installation.

Windows 7 provide three Notification area customization settings.
1. Show icon and notifications.
2. Hide icons and notifications.
3. Only show notifications.

Selecting how you want your Notification area icons displayed can be an important decision. For example: If you choose to ‘Hide Icon and Notifications’ for your network connections icon you’ll not be able to see when you have an internet connection problem or be able to potentially resolve a network connection problem by right clicking on it’s icon and accessing its Properties.

To customize Windows 7's Notification area:
1. Right click on the Start Menu orb.
2. Click on properties.
3. Select Taskbar, Notification area and ‘Customize’.
4. If you’re a bit beyond novice, go down the list of items and customize their behavior - your way e.g., ‘Show icon and notification icon’, ‘Hide icon and notification’ or ‘Only show notification’. However if you’re a novice I suggest you initially check the ‘Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar’ checkbox. By doing so you’ll become aware of all your available notifications and how they interact.

Note: You can always return to the Taskbar, Notification area and Customize panel and reset individual icon behavior.

In my opinion the Taskbar’ cherry on the ice cream sundae is Peek.

Point to the far right end of your Taskbar’s notification area. When you pass your pointer over the non labeled ‘Show Desktop’ Peek button all your open windows will become transparent revealing your Desktop with all its icons and gadgets. Click on the ‘Show Desktop’ Peek button and you’ll switch to your Desktop. Click on ‘Show Desktop’ Peek again and you’ll switch back to all your open program.

You may not find Peek is as useful as Shake and Snap (to be discussed in a future Good Boot), but I’ve grown quite fond of the little fellow.

Oh, and please don’t ask me why there’s no label on the Peek button!

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.

Deferring the delivery of Outlook sent mails

2011-04-02T12:50:00.001-05:00

Deferring the delivery of sent mails proves really useful when one happens to accidentally hit the send button.

To defer the delivery of sent items in outlook, follow the given process.
1. Launch Microsoft outlook. Go to Tools > Rules and Alerts.
2. Tap the option of New Rule.

It will open the window of Rules Wizard.

3. Under the category of “Start from a Blank Rule”, click the option of “check message after sending” and press the Next button.
4. Again click on Next in the next window.
5. Click Yes in the resulting prompt window.

This will again open the Rules Wizard.
6. In the Rules Wizard check the option of “Defer delivery by a number of
minutes”, and to defer delivery time, click the text “a number of”.
7. The window of Deferred Delivery will show up. Specify the time by which you want to defer the delivery of the sent mail. Press the OK button.
8. Press the Finish button to save the rule.

To name the rule, go to Change Rule and click the option of Rename Rule. Rename the rule.

Here's wishing you a Good boot

DevManView

2011-03-29T09:05:00.002-05:00

DevManView is an alternative to the standard Device Manager of Windows, which displays all devices and their properties in flat table, instead of tree viewer. In addition to displaying the devices of your local computer, DevManView also allows you view the devices list of another computer on your network, as long as you have administrator access rights to this computer. DevManView can also load the devices list from external instance of Windows and disable unwanted devices. This feature can be useful if you have Windows operating system with booting problems, and you want to disable the problematic device.

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CCEnhancer

2011-03-29T08:24:00.002-05:00

If you're a fan of CCleaner you'll become a fan of free CCEnhancer. As the name says, it enhances CCleaner's already considerable capabilities

CCleaner deletes unneeded files, erases your browsing tracks, kills unwanted cookies, and kills unnecessary files associated with a variety of programs, including all popular browsers, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, and many others. It also includes a startup monitor, uninstaller, and other useful tools.

CCEnhancer integrates directly into CCleaner. It gives CCleaner the ability to clean the traces of more applications than CCleaner e.g., Microsoft Works, LogMeIn, Ashampoo Burning Studio. CCEnhancer puts asterisks next to any programs in the CCleaner list that it gives CCleaner the ability to clean. Check the box next to any program whose traces you want cleaned, and CCleaner will clean them, along with the programs it normally cleans.

You'll need to keep a few things in mind when running CCEnhancer. During the installation process, you'll almost certainly get a notice that the latest rules haven't been downloaded, so make sure to click Download Latest.

You may also have to run the program as an administrator in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Anyone who uses CCleaner should use CCEnhancer.

Here's wishing you a good Boot.