Reinstall Windows 7 bootloader/Repair Windows Installation without Windows DVD

Recently, I installed Ubuntu on a computer in a dual boot set-up. However, unfortunately, I had to remove Ubuntu because I needed some more space for my Windows 7 install to run a few more applications. Unfortunately this computer (it's a netbook) did not have a DVD drive. But turns out... you don't need a DVD drive to reinstall the Windows bootloader if you plan things right.

First, what you need to do is reinstall the windows boot loader, and only then remove the GRUB bootloader and the GNU/Linux partition along with it.

How do you replace/remove GRUB with Windows' bootloader (or load Window's repair feature without having to search for your repair disks, or remember a bunch of keys to press) ? It's quite simple actually, although it does take a long while:

1. Make sure you back up your computer. I've tried this procedure with Windows 7 Professional, but I'm not sure if it'll work on your version of Windows 7.
2. Start your computer and boot into Windows 7 (has to be Windows 7! This won't work with any previous versions as far as I know, may work with Vista, but I've never tried it.)
3. While Windows is booting, turn off your computer! That's right... hold down your power button for a few seconds and abruptly turn off your computer
4. Turn on your computer again, and boot into Windows
5. Windows should give you a message telling you that it did not start up properly... it should give you two options: "Launch startup repair" or Start windows normally... Select Launch Startup Repair
6. Now let Windows try to find problems. It most likely won't realize that what you're trying to do is restore the windows bootloader. Once it's done, it'll ask you if you want to restore your system using System Restore. You probably don't want this, so hit cancel on the Window and let windows "attempt repairs" (this doesn't do anything really... just tries to find things that are wrong with your copies of windows and nothing more). 
7. Windows should then give you a message that start up repair cannot repair the computer automatically. Simply close the window, and click "View advanced options for system recovery"  on the window behind the one you just closed. It should ask you for the keyboard layout, and your admin password.
8. Then follow the instructions on this page (essentially use the (type in) Bootrec.exe /FixMbr command), and use the command prompt window

Once you restart your computer, it should now boot up in Windows directly without showing you the grub screen. By using the method above, you've used the default rescue files that are installed with every Windows 7 instead of booting into a Windows DVD and choosing the "Repair your computer option".

Copying an Error Message Window in Windows

So, lets face it. Sometimes Windows throws errors. And if you're like me, the first thing you probably do is Google those errors.

What do you search for while Googling those errors? The error code of course. But instead of typing it out, there is a better way to copy text from the error code window.

Although a really old way, what you can do is click in the error window, and press the Control and Insert keys together and Windows will copy the error code for you! Doing control+insert on a "Do you wish to save" message box in led to the following being copied into the clipboard:

---------------------------
Notepad
---------------------------
The text in the Untitled file has changed.
Do you want to save the changes?
---------------------------
Yes No Cancel
---------------------------


Then you can paste this into notepad, and copy the text that you'd like to search for.

Pretty handy huh? Although, I must say that the Mac way of simply selecting text on the message/warning box and copying it from there is admittedly easier.

The New Windows Live Messenger App

The Good

The new Windows Live Messenger application from Microsoft integrates online social networking with instant messaging. With a sleek Metro like interface the messenger application allows you to share what you’re doing right now (sort of like twitter) with your friends who are also using windows live, and stay up to date with your Facebook and Myspace profiles at the same time. To use Facebook or Myspace all you need to do is give it your credentials while you sign in for the first time.

The “Social” window allows you to sort recent “highlights” and other things just photos posted by our friends on Windows Live (MSN) or on Facebook. At the same time you can also add regular Windows Live friends like you could in older versions.

Also, the messaging service provides a way to set privacy while you sign in for the first time. You can also have custom privacy settings for every new person that you add to your friends list. It’s nice to see that Microsoft is paying close attention to the Facebook privacy debates.

While things are still in Beta, I think that Microsoft has done a good job of trying to acknowledge the fact that Windows Live is not the only social networking service out there.

Other Thoughts

As usual I’m pretty sure that all of the Windows Live apps are for Windows only, not a good thing if you use a Mac. Of course, Apple software is also Mac only, but it would be nice to see some platform independent apps for once so that more people will actually use the Windows Live service.

Twitter support would also be a cool thing. Anything you type in the status message window could be automatically posted to your twitter profile, which would make things even easier. While I don’t personally use twitter since I don’t really have the self discipline to update anything, combining status messages with twitter may be a cool idea.

Overall I think Microsoft is on the right track with their “Windows Live Messenger” app that integrates other services with Messenger , although I would be much happier with a “Live” suite that I could use on any operating system of my choice.

Unable to create BootCamp partition with Snow Leopard

Recently I was trying to install Windows on my Mac to run SolidWorks (yes, it's Windows Only). However, for some reason, Snow Leopard's bootcamp assistant refused to create a partition for me. It kept saying:

The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.

I had created a Bootcamp partition once before with Leopard so I was puzzled when something Mac wasn't working! (Okay, no, Apple's computers are just as fallible as other computers). And there was no was I was going to go through formating the hard drive again, installing Windows would take long enough!

However, after trying several different things I was finally able to get Snow Leopard to partition the hard drive so that I could get Windows 7 to work. I'm not sure what worked, but I'm pretty sure that others are likely to have similar problems, which is why I took the time to write this post.

Free Norton Antivirus, Internet Security and 360 download alternatives

Photo Credit: Sophos Germany via flickr.

Security measures every Windows user must take

Let's face it - viruses exist. Whether one chooses to accept this or not, malicious software can do a lot more damage that you can imagine. Your computer can be turned into a zombie to attack other computers (see botnet) and can be compromised so badly that a malevolent person can track every key stroke and every move that you make (yes, this includes all your e-banking passwords, credit card numbers and e-mail passwords). It's almost as though you are leaving a blank cheque in a public place, free for any person with a malicious intent to take advantage of.
Given this scenario, I'm sure you'll agree that virus protection is necessary. So spending a few dollars to protect your information should be justifiable. However, let’s say that you feel that you’re not such a heavy computer user, and would like to resort to using a free antivirus program. In that case I provide a few free alternatives to paying the yearly fees charged by most commercial security companies.

Download Free Windows 7 Copy!

Just like the free Windows Vista copies Microsoft was giving out 3 years ago, Microsoft is now giving out free copies of Windows 7 to anyone who is willing to give it a go. The offer that started a while ago is going to continue on till August 15th apparently, and anyone who has a broadband connection can take advantage of it.

To get your free copy of the Windows 7 release candidate, head on over to Microsoft’s Free Windows 7 download website, scroll down, choose your language under the proper heading and click Go. You’ll need a Windows Live ID (sign up for one here) because it’ll ask you to log in first so that you can get the download link and the product key. Oh and as Microsoft says, do not try it on your main computer, because chances are it isn’t going to work right (so technically Microsoft just wants a bunch of free beta testers, a.k.a. guinea pigs). The Windows copy will stay valid till June next year, so you’ll have a while to see how much you like it.

 

Also, you’ll need to either burn the .iso image that you download from Microsoft, or you can probably write the image to a USB drive and then boot off the USB drive if you’re cheap like me. To burn it either use software like Nero or download (as Microsoft says) ISObuster or some other freeware like CDBurnerXP to burn it to a DVD. You’ll also need to have a DVD burner to do that though, but chances are that you already have one, since you want to run Windows 7 on that machine.

Furthermore, according to Microsoft, you wont be able to upgrade from the Windows 7 RC to the final version. You’ll have to start all over again with a clean install. So keep that in mind as well. But for the purposes of just testing out the operating system and all its little feature, it should work quite well. You could also of course, just use a Virtual Machine like Microsoft Virtual PC to run it on your current Vista or XP installation, provided you have quite a bit of RAM on your computer.

Make opening new windows and tabs in Safari faster

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the fact that opening new tabs and windows in Safari takes way longer that it used to? Especially when you are running a lot of other applications on your mac, or are using battery power? I for one think that Safari is not the fastest browser, to open or to use anymore, and sometimes FireFox even seems faster than it. I remember using the older version of Safari (version 3) and remarking how fast it opened on a Mac compared to Firefox. However, the newer version just seems a whole lot slower.

I think I have stumbled upon the main culprit – Top Sites. It seems as though Apple has tried to imitate the look and feel of Google Chrome and/or Opera. In fact, the beta versions of Safari 4 reminded me of Google Chrome, given the tabs at the top and the top sites feature that popped up when you opened a new window. Unfortunately, in imitating the most visited websites (or as Opera calls it... Speed dial) Apple has slowed down the speed of Safari. Of course, copying ideas is always good, because that means more competition. However, Apple has sacrificed speed for aesthetics, and turned the browser into a resource hog with its almost useless zooming effects and reflections. What I do find cool is the coverflow history pane. Now that is something beautiful and efficient.

However, luckily, there is a way to get rid of the beach ball of death that comes up whenever you open a new window or tab... disable Top Sites. I for one have found that Safari's speed has improved tenfold, and opening a million new tabs doesn't slow it down anymore. Of course, if you don't feel like disabling Top Sites has caused an improvement in speed, you can always switch it back. What I plan to do, as soon as I get some more time is to create a HTML page which you can use as the 'top sites' features. However, you'll have to pick and choose your 15 - 20 sites before hand and hard code it into the html. Nevertheless, that way you can have the top sites feature, and make sure that you wont be getting the spinning rainbow coloured ball as your cursor.

How to disable Top Sites in Safari for new windows and new tabs

Thankfully, disabling this feature is really simple.

1. Open Safari and Click on Safari in the menubar
2. Then click on Preferences...
3. Under the General tab, change 'New windows open with:' to Empty Pages using the drop down menu and do the same for 'New tabs open with:'
4. Close the Preferences window
   

That's all there is to it. Plus, if you still want to use top sites,you can! All you need to do is click on the top sites button in the bookmark toolbar (shown below in the red box with the arrow pointing to it), and top sites will open up in the current tab.

Now Safari should run faster and you'll still be able to use top sites!

How to search the web faster with Inquisitor

Have you ever wondered if there was an easier way to get to your search results without having to actually see the search results page? If you ask me... there is! It's free, download-able for Windows and Mac (and iPhone!) and it's called Inquisitor.

Originally, in order to search the web, you'd have to go to a search engine first. Like Google, Yahoo or MSN for example. Then you'd have to type in a query, and hit enter, and search the best results from a list of 6 billion search results (although you see them 10 at a time, there are a LOT of search results). Then you'd click the 3rd or 4th or may be even 1st link to go to the website.

Then came the advent of toolbars and inbuilt search bars, from where you could search the web without having to go the search engine website first. Plus, with the search query features you didn't even have to type in the full "thing" that you would have liked to search for.

Now there is a better way to search the web faster:

Instead of going to the website, inquisitor (sponsored by Yahoo I must say) takes the place of the normal search tool in your browser (currently it only supports Safari, Firefox and IE). However, the most important feature that inquisitor has is - it displays the SEARCH RESULTS of top 6 results from search results page right in the drop down menu! So, you don't even have to visit the search results page in most cases. You can directly go to the search results page without ever having to visit tie middle man. Plus, it also finishes your queries for you if you want, and gives you the option of searching similar queries in different search engines. Plus, it tells you the websites you've already visited, so if you're searching for the same website again, you can go to it instantly!

So the next time you want to search, you'll not only be saving time, but you'll also be saving some mouse clicks.

Protecting your computer on a public network

Do you own a laptop? Have you ever used your laptop at a public wi-fi (wireless internet) location to use the free (or paid) wireless internet services? Often, places like Libraries (or at least some libraries here in Toronto), Starbucks, Coffee Shops and even some restaurants offer a wireless internet service which anyone can use if they bring along their laptop or mobile computing devices.

Why should you care about protecting your computer while using pubilc wi-fi netoworks?

Although this is pretty cool, one thing that you must be aware of is that using these networks might not always be the most secure thing to do. Using public internet might mean that you are opening up your computer for lots of snoopers and malignant people to take advantage of your computer. In fact, after a recent visit to the library I noticed that many people (unknowingly I presume) were actually sharing the files on their computer with everybody else in the network. As a result, anyone else on the network was also able to freely access these shared files and folders. What’s more? Some people even stored files (fortunately, being the good citizen that I am, I did not open these files or do anything malicious with them!) in these folders!

What does all this mean?

It means that if you use your computer on a public network, you have to be extra secure.Theoretically, someone could delete files, edit files and even transfer malicious files to the computer to execute code (plus, if you never visited any website or downloaded anything… and you get a Windows UAC prompt, you’re likely to just click Confirm and allow the malicious application that some transferred to your computer to happily go on performing its evil tasks!)! If this doesn’t sound more scary than Conficker, I don’t know what will.

How can you protect yourself?

Protecting your computer while using public networks should be the first thing you do, even before you start using the network. In this post, I’m going to assume that most of you will be using Windows Vista. The settings for Windows XP (you might want to make a google search if you are unsure… most things that I mention here for Vista also apply for XP, but configuring them for XP might be a little different) are similar, but since most laptops now come with Vista, I’ll only cover the Windows Vista and Mac OS X in this article.

The first thing that you should do is turn off all File Sharing.

To do so on Windows Vista:

1. Double click on the “Internet Icon” in the system tray in your taskbar. In the picture below, it’s the icon between the “Battery Icon” and the “Volume Adjustment/Speaker Icon”. Doing so should take you to the “Network and Sharing Center”. If there’s no “Internet Icon” then, you’ll have to open your start menu (or click on the “Windows Orb” and type in “Network and Sharing Center”.
2. In the '”Network and Sharing Center”, under Sharing and Discovery click on arrow beside any topic that has a “Green” light (meaning that the sharing for that area is turned on.. and anybody on the network will be able to see whatever you are sharing). Then, simply select ‘Turn Off’ and click ‘Apply’.
3. Then accept the Windows UAC prompt.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for any other feature for which file sharing might be turned on.

Doing so will make sure that no files/folders, be it the Public folder on your computer or any other folder, is shared on the network.

On a Mac, the process is similar. Click the Apple Button on top left hand corner, choose ‘System Preference’ and go to ‘Sharing’. There, uncheck all checkboxes to make sure that your computer isn’t sharing anything.

Step 2: Use a firewall to prevent any direct connections from other computers

Often, although you might disable any sharing of files, other computers might still be able to connect to your computer through any other ports (think of them like ‘doors’) that might be open. So naturally, the best and easiest way to protect yourself, although not the most ‘sure fire’ way, is to turn on a firewall that will try and block most of the attempts to access your computer. If you don’t yet have a firewall, you might want to consider getting a free firewall if your computer is not running too slow (although if it is running a bit on the slower side, you might want to check out this article to speed up your windows computer).

At the very least, turn on Windows Firewall, which will prevent incoming connections (or others) from accessing your computer.

Step 3: Use an anti-virus program and keep your computer updated

Well, there isn’t much you can do after you’ve secured all the entry ways into your computer, so the only other ways to make sure that nothing else malicious is already on your computer and there are no ‘security’ holes in your computer are to run Anti-Virus software and keep your computer updated.

As for the Virus software, you don’t always have to turn on heuristics for it to keep on searching your computer all the time and making it really slow. Like I mention in my article to make your computer a bit faster, just turn on it’s basic settings and let it perform a scan once in a while when you are not using your computer. However, if you do across a suspicious (and when I mean suspicious I mean really suspicious…. like a birthday greeting card from your friend) just manually scan it.

Also, don’t forget to let Windows install the Microsoft updates when it bugs you do.. you don’t always have to do it right when it starts bugging you to.. but it’s a good idea to do it when you have the time.

Best Free Downloadable Firewalls for Windows Computers

With the advent of the internet, it’s really easy for anyone to connect to the internet and access other computers (i.e. servers) across the globe. However, this also means that other computers across the globe can actually access YOUR computer in a similar fashion. By doing so these evil, evil men can actually take control of your computer, insert malicious files that will track your password/credit card number and/or use your computer to do something evil.

How do you protect yourself from other malicious programs or people from accessing your computer? With a Firewall of course! But like most things in the computer software world, Firewalls often come at a price. Although this price might be minimal (around $20 – 30 on average, some times you might have to renew it every year), considering the safety it provides, it might still be worth it to get a free firewall that will be able to do almost the same thing.

Here are a few things that you might want to try out. Keep in mind though that sometimes having a firewall might actually be more annoying, since it will often ask you whether or now you’d like to connect to a server or website. However, in the long run it might save you the trouble of reinstalling your computer or calling up your credit card company to report a fraud. Also, it might slow down the speed of your computer as it constantly monitors your incoming/outgoing connections from every application that connects to the Internet. But given the speed of average computers the speed should be “negligible” or at the most unnoticeable.

Additionally, you might at least want to turn on your Windows Firewall (although this will only prevent incoming connections and not prevent any outgoing connections) if you don’t plan to use a third-party firewall. If you do use a third party firewall, you should disable Windows Firewall.

Some free firewalls, in order of preference

Comodo Firewall – Comodo make a lot of great products that I like, and their firewall is one of them. For the most part it is unobtrusive, but does a good job of notifying you of any incoming/outgoing connections that it thinks are ‘suspicious’. Plus, it has an easy to use interface that doesn’t look like anything from “the Matrix”. If you’re looking for a simple free firewall that does it job quite well, Comodo should probably be your first or second choice. Also, do note that when you download the firewall, it actually might download their firewall AND their antivirus suite. So you you already have an antivirus suite, and you’re okay with it, you should only install their firewall.

Free Zone Alarm – The free version of the Zone Alarm Firewall is not as powerful (or so they say) as it’s paid big brother, but I still thing that it does a fairly ok job of making sure that no internet packet goes unnoticed. It also has a pretty simple interface to use, so if you aren’t an experienced Firewall user, you might prefer to have something like this.

Sunbelt Kerio Firewall  – If you’re using Windows XP (but it also works for Vista now apparently, although I haven’t tested it out) then this firewall is still one of the best ones out there. It does the job of every other firewall out there, and also provides some of its premium features (like ad-blocking) for a period of 30 days. If you don’t want to buy it (you probably don’t need to… unless you’d like to support their software), then after 30 days, it’ll just function in the normal firewall mode.

Tall Emu Firewall – Again, this is a fairly good free product, but doesn’t have all the pro features such as ‘Keylogger detection’ and so on. But obviously, you don’t need these features if you have a little common sense (i.e. if you are getting an incoming connection from some random computer on the internet, you probably shouldn’t allow it to access your system files).

Of course, there are several other Free Firewalls out there, but I’ve never used or heard of any other good ones. So, if you feel like you know about something else that might be worth while… do share!

Tremulous: Free Open Source Online Multiplayer Game

Here's a good computer video games that isn't expensive. It's free You don't need expensive consoles or super fast computers to play it. And you don't need Windows or Mac to play it because it runs on Linux too (You can however, use a Windows and Mac to play it too... if you wish to do so).

Plus, this games also has elements of a first person shooter game, real time strategy and additional multiplayer online game features. It's based on the Quake engine, and has two main skillsets of aliens and humans.

The game I'm talking about here is called: Tremulous.





It's free, open source (yes, that means hackable too...) fast and easy to learn. The objective of the game is this: There are two teams, humans and aliens. Each team has to build their own base and defend it, while attacking the enemy base to destroy it. Plus it looks pretty good too.

Naturally there are several unique elements in the game. For example, you need to be able to shoot (with several different kinds of weapons that work differently), build a base (both human and alien bases are different) and learn how to use an alien (because aliens can't shoot.)

Plus, since its free there are loads of people all over the world playing the game. You too can host your own game server from your very own computer (provided you have a good internet connection and a fairly fast computer) and all you need to play is a regular mouse and keyboard.

We'll instead of me telling you more about the game, why not give the game a try. May be you'll like it, may be you wont. But it's free.. so you've got nothing to loose.

Best Free screencasting/screenrecording software for Windows

I’ve always been one for screen recording/screencast/video capture tutorials. I feel that they help me understand and emulate the ‘tutorial’ better, because I can actually see what the person is try to say. Plus, it’s so much easier as a person who is trying to tell someone something to just show how to do it instead of describing to someone how they can do something. Of course, using things like screenshots (with software like the free and excellent Screenshot Captor) should suffice most of the time, but sometimes, its just easier to do screen captures.

Once you are done recording a screencast, you can easily upload it to a video sharing service like YouTube. Plus, screencasts/screen recordings are useful when you’re doing a presentation and don’t have the luxury of bringing along your laptop or an internet connection. I must mention here that if you are using a video recording for a presentation, please do not make it annoying with all sorts of click noises, and also please make sure that the text is readable. I find that many people just take a screen recording of a screen that is 1900 x 1200 and the mouse cursor looks like an ant moving around on the screen – not good when you want to show people something.

First up –

Free and Open Source screen casting and screen recording software

CamStudio – This is probably one of the most well know free open source screen recording software out there. It has the ability to capture everything on your screen in different file formats (like AVI and SWF) and also has the ability to record audio along with the screen recording. It’s perfect for those tutorials that you might want to do. It also has other feature like mouse highlighting, and mouse clicking sounds. However, I find those two features a bit annoying, so I wouldn’t recommend using them, because I’m sure there are many people like me out there. Recommended for Screencasting Tutorials.

Taksi – A screen recording software that was primarily built to recording video games and other 3d applications. Because of this, it has live compressions systems to keep the size of the files produced down (because video games usually have a high frame rate – which inflates the file size of normal screen recordings). Recommended for Video Game Recordings

Virtual Dub – Another open source screen recorder. It was mainly built for Windows though, so it saves files as AVIs, although it has the ability to use several codecs. This doesn’t have as many options as CamStudio though.

Freeware (but not open source) screen casting/screen recording/video capture software

Wink – This is a program that was specifically created for the purpose of tutorials and presentations. It has many additional features like the ability to add ‘comment boxes’ while the video is playing to tell the viewer about important information, and also saves the output as swf files for easy uploading to your web server. It’s almost like Camtasia/Captivate (both of which are paid software) but it does the same thing for free. However, it does have some limitations when it comes to the video player and the design of the callouts.

Evan’s AVI Screen Capture – Simply captures everything on your screen and your screen cursor. You can then import the AVI into some other kind of video editing software like Windows Movie Maker and then add narration if desired.

Capture Fox – Capture fox is a great little addon for Mozilla Firefox, that can capture video recordings of websites as well as anything else that can be displayed on the computer. It can also capture audio input as well. However, you will require Firefox to be able to use the add-on.

Jing – Although I don’t particularly like Jing, it’s still an application that can record everything that’s on your screen. I can also record system audio or microphone audio (but not both). You can also directly upload screen casts to screencast.com. It’s free for now, but in the future, expect premium services.

The real way to clean up your Windows registry and make Windows Faster!

Have you ever heard of those applications that promise you that they can clean up your registry in only 1 click and make your computer run faster with only 1 use. Well, let me tell you why these applications don’t work and the real way to keep your registry clean and make sure your system works smoothly.

Why do those registry cleaners don’t work?

Well, the truth is, that the way the Windows registry is built, it’s impossible to find out which keys to delete and which keys to keep. Think of it this way:

You have a closet full of clothes. But this closet is really disorganized and you really want to organize the closet so that you can find your clothes much faster. So, you get someone else to clean up your closet. That someone else, doesn’t know who you are, what size clothes fit you best and what clothes you’d like to keep or what clothes you’d like to get rid of. Is it possible for that person to make your closet all neat and tidy? Not likely.

It is possible for the person to organize the closet, and get rid of clothes that are ripped and are out of fashion. But will that really guarantee that you can find the clothes that you want? Not really.

Registry cleaners work the same way. They get rid of keys that THEY think are of no use to the computer and try to optimize the registry. But that’s not really what the system wants. So, it’s impossible for you to buy or use a free registry cleaner and hope that your system will become faster.

Ok, so how can you really clean up your registry?

The truth is, you can’t really clean up your registry. Once you add information to the registry, it’s in there. There’s no way of getting rid of only the unnecessary information to keep the computer running smoothly. So if you uninstall an application and its registry information is left behind in the registry, most of it will remain in there… forever. Until you reinstall the whole operating system.

Therefore, the best way to keep a clean registry is -

1. Start off with a clean slate – reinstall the operating system all over again and start anew.

2. Keep it clean - If you can’t start off fresh with a new install at least don’t install any unnecessary applications that you know you’ll only use once. Just try to stay away from those applications. That’s the only sure fire way of keeping a clean registry.

Wait, so if I can’t use registry cleaners to keep my system fast, how can I make it fast?

Well, just because I’ve said here that you shouldn’t really use registry cleaners, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make your computer faster using other ways. There are many other sure fire ways to make your computer faster, that I’ve also mentioned in this blog several times. 5 ways to speed up Windows should be the place for you to start if you really want to speed up windows without messing it up.

Backing up and restoring your Windows Registry

Well, it seems like I should have written this post a long time ago, before I published posts like:

10 Registry Hacks to Make Windows Faster, Free!

Make Microsoft Windows XP Passwords more secure

Enable/Disable low disk space error message in Windows

Free up disk space and get rid of junk on your PC

5 steps make Windows XP faster in 2 mins FREE!

A note on why you should back up

The registry in windows is like a set of configurable commands that tells the operating system (In this case Windows) what to do. As an administrator, you can ‘hack your registry’ by modifying these set of instructions to the operating system. However, you can also screw up the operating system because of ‘improper’ instructions. Therefore, its important to back up the set of instructions (or registry keys) to ensure that you can always restore them if you accidently change something. To read more about how to back up and why you should back up.. read on!

So, How do you back up your registry?

It seems as though when I say ‘BACK UP YOUR REGISTRY’ in a post, people are still unsure of how they could really back up their registry. Especially when I read comments like this one. Nevertheless, once you know how to back up your whole registry, reverting any changes made to it should be really easy.

First, in order to back up your registry, you have to open regedit. It’s short for registry editor. To do that:

1. Click on the start button and click on Run or simply press Windows Flag Key + R key together. This will open up the Run window (you might have to accept a UAC prompt to continue)
2. In the run box that pops up type in regedit like shown below
3.  
4. Then when the Registy Editor opens, click on File > Export,,, 
5. Type in a file name (I suggest you give it a date or a identifiable name.. like ‘BeforeRegistryHack-Dec11’ or something similar so you know the file that you’d have to use to restore your registry (more about how to restore your registry below). I recommend that you select All for most back-ups. But if you want to only restore a ‘part’ of the registry or only the keys that you are going to edit – choose Selected Branch. Of course, if you choose selected branch, you’ll have to navigate to that branch first by using the sidebar on the Reg edit window and then click File > Export….
6. 
7. Click on Save to export your file,
8. That’s it, you’ve just backed up your registry!

Restoring your backed up registry

How will you know when it’s time for restoring the backed up entries? Believe me, you’re system will refuse to do things correctly, crash all the time, slow down tremendously and might even start hanging all the time as well. You’ll certainly know when the registry entries are incorrect , because your system will start showing the symptoms above and start acting up right after you make a change to the registry. But no worries. Restoring your keys is even simpler.

1. First, find the file that you’ve hopefully saved before making the change.
2. Double click on it.
3. Say yes to the prompt that appears when Windows asks you if you really want to add the stuff to the registry.
4. Reboot your computer.

That’s it. Windows will now restore everything in the registry to how it was when you made the back up.

Installing and removing Fonts on Windows

Windows today has many more fonts that it originally had. Instead of just blobs of aliased text on the screen, windows now comes with several different serif (fonts like Times New Roman and Baskerville), sans-serif (fonts like Microsoft Sans Serif and Arial) and even some display fonts (those fancy fonts that don’t fit into either category). But if you want more fonts on your computer, how can you install them? (Psst… If you don’t know where to find some awesome new fonts for your computer try: Excellent sites for free Windows and Mac fonts)

Here’s how:

Installing or remove Fonts on Windows (The Windows Vista Method will be shown in the screenshots, although I’ll also talk about the Windows XP method)

The Windows Vista Method:

1. Click on Start and Click on Control Panel
2. Type in Font in the search box (like shown below)
3. 
4. Click on Install or remove a font
5. Once you do that, the Fonts window will open. Then, just drag and drop the font file that you want to add to your computer. For example,I have a font that I`d like to install called Whitney, so I`m going to drag and drop that file into the Fonts window.
6. 
7. If you don`t know where you can get some fonts, take a look at my list of `font websites`.
8. If you want to delete a font simply click on the font name in the Fonts folder and press delete, doing so will automatically send the font to your recycle bin and it will never appear in any of the font lists in applications.

The Windows XP Method:

The XP method is pretty much the same, except the way to reach the folder is through clicking Start, then Control Panel, then, clicking Fonts (if you don’t see fonts when you open Control Panel, then Click on ‘Switch to Classic View’ in the left hand side of the window. Then just follow the same procedure as above to drag and drop fonts to install and delete fonts to remove the fonts from the system.

Use a free online virus scanner that won’t slow you down

A while ago, I wrote in my ‘5 steps to make Windows faster’ article that it’s better to stay away from anti-virus programs that constantly scan your computer just because its going to slow you down. Instead I recommended that you turn off the ‘heuristics scanning’ and only scan the files you think are a virus, so that your memory and CPU cycles won’t be taken up by the anti-viruses’ processes. But just now, it struck me, why use a virus scanner at all if you PC is always connected to the internet. Why not just us a online virus scanner, and not have any protection (with the exception of some ‘inbuilt’ tools like Windows Defender) at all. Using an online scanner will ensure that the database against which your file is being checked, is always going to be up to date, and plus it won’t slow down your computer, or even cause it (or other applications on your computer) to crash.

Now, before you start saying how important anti-virus applications are to keep your computer safe… I must say here that anti-virus is absolutely necessary, only if you don’t know what you are doing. If you DO know the way malicious pieces of software work, you probably won’t need any protection at all. So pretty much, if you were to rely on only an online scanner, you shouldn’t be visiting any ‘malicious’ websites (see phishing filter and protecting yourself from malicious websites for free post if you don’t know how to stop yourself from visiting these websites…), you most likely shouldn’t be visiting any bit torrent or private downloading website, and you mustn't open any ‘suspicious’ attachments or e-mails. But if you only use webmail, most web mail providers scan the attachment for your anyway.

Therefore, if you don’t do any of the things above, then you most likely don't NEED an anti-virus program at all, although it might always be a good idea to have it incase someone else using the computer doesn’t fit in the criteria listed above.

In my case, I’m the only one using my computer, so I don’t really have to worry too much about not having an anti-virus on my system. Plus, if I do receive any suspicious attachments and so on, I can always use the online antivirus. Anyway, using or not using anti-virus is completely up to you, but incase you do decide to sacrifice a little bit of security for a lot of speed (and stability) here are some good online antivirus scanners that I find work well (although there is no way in the world to ‘completely’ protect yourself from any malicious program that might be created this instant):

The list of free and recommended Online Virus Scanners

Kaspersky Online Virus Scan – There is a limit of 1MB for files that can be checked, but nevertheless, its fast and efficient. All you need to do is upload your file on their site, and they’ll check it for you. No ActiveX controls needed. The great thing I like about this is that it’s super fast because it’ll only check the files you upload to it – Not your whole system like the scanners below do.

BitDefender Online Scan – Free online scan. ActiveX controls needed. May take a while.

Symantec’s Scanner – Yes, I know. It’s Symantec. But its not necessarily a bad thing when the only thing you have to do is download a little ActiveX control.

ESET’s online scanner – A fast online scanner that does only what it’s supposed to. Again, ActiveX controls are necessary fot it to do its job.

Jotti’s Malware Scan – This is a scanner that claims to check your file against the databases of many anti-virus manufactures and has a 100MB file limit that you can upload to its database so that it can check your file. I wouldn’t recommend using this service, unless it is absolutely necessary (and the file you are checking doesn’t contain any personal information) just because is not a well renowned name in the security business.

Of course, there are others out there too, but I’ve never tested them out, so fell free to try out other options too and post about them in the comments.

Boost Productivity by opening applications faster with Launchers

  We all know that the start menu can be used to open an application or start a process. Even fewer of us know about using the run menu to start a program. But do you know about applications like Launchy or Enso that can change your life? If you’re using Windows (especially if you’re still using XP), then one of the things that should be on your computer right now is launchy. If you’re using a mac then try quicksilver or just plain ol’ spotlight. You can take a look at this wikipedia article that mentions a whole lot of other similar programs that do the same thing.

But, I guess you’re wondering, why use a program like this at all? Isn’t it just easier to find the program in the start menu? Good question. Lets look at a couple of factors here that will help you pick launchy or other similar things over the start menu.

Find and open things faster

First off, the thing you have to do with the start menu, or even on the dock, is find your application. If its not one of the most used applications then it’s probably not even in your quick launch bar or your dock. So you’ll have to spend atleast 5 seconds of your precious time, searching for the application you want. Then, you’ll have to wait for another 10 seconds for the application to open.

But wait, you know what the application is called, right? Why not just type in the first few characters of the application and press enter, and let another application open the application for you? That’s exactly want Launchy does.

Let’s say you want to open Microsoft Word. Now, assuming that you know how to spell ‘word’, all you have to do is press Alt+Spacebar, and type in Word. Launchy will automatically detect that you want to open Microsoft word, and it’ll show the word icon. Then, you just press enter to open the application you want. This even works for bookmarks, or even documents if you tell launchy that you want to index ‘.doc’ and ‘.ppt’ files and so on.

Clearly, Launchy helps you open your document or application in 1 second instead of 5 seconds.

Remove the Middle Man (or extra unnecessary steps)

Say you want to search for ‘beyond teck’ (yes, that’s the name of this blog, by the way) on Google. What you would naturally do is, Open Firefox > Click in the Firefox Search Bar > Type in ‘beyond teck’ > Press Enter and only then you’ll be presented with a screen with all the list of search results.

Wouldn’t it just be easier for you to open launchy > type in your search query and get a list of search results in a browser?

Of course, searching through launchers does take a bit of practice (and a bit of manual reading), but its super simple, and super fast. So why use the browser method when launchy (or other such launching applications) is better?

Plug-ins and expandability

Many application launchers are not just limited to doing the tasks they were initially built to do. There are several plug-ins out there that add more functionality to the original application and make it better and much more useful.

For example, with the runny plugin for launchy, you can create your own batch files (more about that later) and run it through launchy. But that’s just one example, there are several other plugins out there for various other launchers.

 

Its rather clear here that using an application launcher is going to improve your productivity and save you a lot of hair pulling.

Cool yet helpful tricks on Windows XP or Vista

Yes, that’s right this article is going to be all about how to “show off your awesome uber cool windows skills”. Or in other words how to ‘look like a pro’ even if you aren’t one. And yes, I’ve compiled this list from actual videos of Microsoft employees (from Channel 9 if you’re interested) who seem to be every windows/microsoft/computer loving kid’s idols. Also, doing the following tricks might get you the nickname of ‘the smarta**” around your workplace/class, so user beware. Jokes aside, some of the tips below are actually somewhat helpful (especially using the command prompt tip) and can greatly improve your productivity on the computer.

The open using the ‘Run’ window trick

Well, when you think about it there are a bazillion ways of opening an application on windows. You can click on its icon in the desktop… click on the systray icon if (provided the application has a systray icon), you use the start menu, you can even use a program like Launchy/Enso that can open the application. But… have you ever used the run menu? Here, let me illustrate:

Once you confirm that you have admin access (which pretty much rules out any workplace/school or even home setting where you don’t have admin access) just press Windows key + R key. The run menu will pop-up. Then type in the name of the application that you want to open (as shown in the picture below) and press enter. Here’s a quick list of the applications you can type:

iexplore to open Internet Explorer

winword to open Word | powerpnt to open PowerPoint | excel to open Excel | outlook to open Outlook

firefox to open Firefox

you get the idea…

The close a windows by double clicking on its icon in the title bar trick

If you double click on the icon of an application in the taskbar, it closes the application or window. Try it. It even works on windows like an explorer, that doesn’t have a icon.

Maximize the browser window to full screen

This is a trick that pretty much every windows nerd MUST know. Just press F11 in a browser (be it IE or Firefox) and it’ll go full screen as shown in the screenshot below.

Use edit.com instead of Word or Notepad

If you really want to push the limits and show how really geeky you are, try showing off the cool ‘edit.com’ (no, its not a website, its a component that used to be in windows… and still is 30 years later) screen. Just press the Windows + R key and type in edit and press enter. The following screen should pop-up making your computer look like a prehistoric MS-DOS computer (minus the Microsoft bob of course).

Use the Command Prompt

Finally, nothing is as nerdy as using the command prompt to do something ‘cool’. Familiarize yourself with these command prompts and you’ll soon find your self as the top nerd of the jungle.

Use Windows Live Mail or Hotmail with Outlook 2007 or 2003

Now, you don’t need to have a Hotmail Plus account to use your free Windows Live Mail or Hotmail (or even MSN) e-mail account with either Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007. All you need to do is download and use Microsoft’s Outlook Connector to start taking advantage of your Hotmail account in Outlook.

Setting it up is pretty straight forward, and once you set it up, you’ll never have to log into your hotmail account again to see those annoying little ads and face the slow interface.

According to Microsoft, you can do the following with Outlook connector:

With Outlook Connector, you can use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Windows Live Hotmail or Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free! Calendar, tasks and notes synchronization are not available on all services. If your service offers calendar synchronization, tasks and notes will synchronize as well. See the feature list for your service for details.
Outlook Connector enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:

• Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
• Manage your Live Mail Contacts.
• Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
• Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.

With a paid subscription, Outlook Connector enables these additional features:

• Manage, share, and synchronize your calendar in Hotmail from Outlook.
• Access your Tasks and Notes.

Not bad for a free e-mail account. However, there are a few things that I don’t like about this outlook connector thing. What it does essentially is pair up your hotmail and your other POP accounts together if you have more than one account (may be there is an option to turn this off… but I haven’t yet discovered this). So if you receive an e-mail in your POP account inbox, Outlook Connector will automatically upload a copy of the e-mail to your hotmail account. This of course is rather annoying for a person like me who likes to stay organized…

Speaking of staying organized, more on that coming soon. I feel as though I have way to many e-mail accounts and operating systems containing bits and pieces of my work here and there that I need to somehow come up with the ‘ULTIMATE’ solution to reduce the time I spend finding my stuff and sending a little e-mail.

Free software to take better Windows Screenshots – Screenshot Captor

Sure, print screen is alright, but sometimes you just need something more when you’re taking screenshots. This could be the cursor, delaying the time between the screenshot, an arrow pointing to a button or even a helpful note to accompany the screenshot. Obviously, the default Print Screen button in windows doesn’t support all this, nor does the Snipping Utility in Windows Vista. However, there is one piece of completely free software that does help you take great screenshots.

It’s called Screenshot Captor, and although you do have to register to get a licence key (that expires after a while, but you can get a new one for free), it is completely free. Technically, its donation ware, but it’s a great idea to pay the author for creating such a marvellous screenshot tool.

According to the makers of the tool, the software has the following capabilities:

• Optimized for taking lots of screenshots with minimal intervention.
• Smart auto naming of files, and ability to embed textual comments in files.
• Good multi-monitor support.
• Highly configurable to make it work the way you want it to; stays out of your way in the system tray.
• Lots of capture modes: Multimon (multiple monitors), Desktop, Active Window, Region, Windows Object. Each mode has a hotkey for quick access.
• Unique Cool Effects, including automatic active window enhancement (see pictures below).
• Unsurpassed support for 3rd party user configurable tools, including file browsers and image editors; extend the program to do whatever you need by interfacing it with other programs.
• Slimline sidebar file browser provides full shell operations.
• Optional automatic image file versioning.
• Seamless integration with Unicode Image Maker tool.
• Automatically finds boundaries of non-rectangular/themed windows.
• Auto scroll capture for windows too big for screen.
• Deluxe thumbnail maker.
• Quick Post Capture Popup Dialog.
• Quick Screenshot Emailer Menu.

As you can see, you will soon start using this as a tool to take all the screenshots you need and also start annotating your pictures more. This tool combined with Windows Live Writer, which I like by the way, is great for any blogger who wants to write tutorials.