General Information

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Registry Cleaners

This is a tool to scan, identify and fix errors in the system registry.
A good free on is called RegSeeker 1.45 to get it go here.


USB Devices

Ever wondered why you should stop them before removing them? Well read on and find out.

Computers use caching to improve performance. So data can still be stored in a cache and if you remove a USB pen drive or memory stick you can corrupt that device and lose data.

The correct way is to stop the device and in the tool bar at the bottom right of the XP screen you should see an icon which has a green arrow on it. If you linger the cursor over it the words “Safely Remove Hardware” should appear. Double click on it to bring up the device and Stop it.

Alternatively you can disable “caching” on the USB device to enable you to remove it without stopping it. Open Control Panel, System and then hardware device manager. Find the USB device (usually under the hard disk). Click on the device and select properties and then find the policies tab. Set write caching to “Optimise for quick removal”. Once that is done you can safely remove this device anytime in the future.


Disk imaging backup

Acronis True Image 9.0 Home
Complete file and system disk imaging backup and restore software for home and home office users that can protect your entire system and family pictures, videos, music, and important documents stored on your home PC. For more information go here.


Data Destruction

Have you ever wanted to wipe your hard drive securely? A good example of a situation where you would want to do this would be selling your computer.
This is where Darik's Boot and Nuke can be used, for more information and go here.

Hard disk partitioning

Partition Logic
Partition Logic is a free hard disk partitioning and data management tool. It can create, delete, format, defragment, resize, and move partitions and modify their attributes. It can copy entire hard disks from one to another.
Partition Logic is intended to become a free alternative to such commercial programs as Partition Magic, Drive Image, and Norton Ghost.
For more information and to download go here.

HDTV Tuner

DNTV Live! DVB-T Pro
If you’re an Australian this is the PCI HDTV tuner I would recommend if your in the market for one for.

Key features

Digitalnow home page and the link to DNTV Live! DVB-T Pro



Free online Image hosting





OpenOffice

OpenOffice is a fully-featured office suite, similar in functionality to MS-Office. OpenOffice.org 2 does everything you need: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and much more. It can even use MS-Office format files (.doc, .xls, .ppt), so you don't need to re-type your work. What's more, it does things MS-Office does not, such as create PDF files to give to other people. For more information go here.


Pixie

Pixie is an easy-to-use, fast and tiny utility designed especially to fit the needs of Webmasters and Designers. Its a colour picker that includes a mouse tracker. Run it, simply point to a colour and it will tell you the hex, RGB, HTML, CMYK and HSV values of that colour. You can then use these values to reproduce the selected colour in your favorite programs. Go here.


Wallpaper Changer

Wallpaper Changer is a FREEWARE Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP wallpaper manager that can change your background images on every startup, once a day or at regular intervals. It features JPEG, PNG, GIF and BMP support. Several options are provided, including the ability to change your images in random order. Go here.


On line Dictionary


World time and weather


TinyURL

Are you sick of posting long URLs? Well TinyURl can make them more user friendly. Go here.


BitTorrent

BitTorrent is both the name of a peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution client application and also the name of the file sharing protocol itself, both of which were created by programmer Bram Cohen. BitTorrent is designed to widely distribute large amounts of data without incurring the corresponding consumption in costly server and bandwidth resources.
BitTorrent client: Azureus, uTorrent & BitTorrent.



Bandwidth Monitor

emsa bandwidth monitor

Emsa Bandwidth Monitor is program that allows monitoring your current internet/network speed, by offering statistics of total traffic, average download/upload speed, etc. It is very simple to use; runs as system tray icon and shows a small, transparent-able, repositionable window that you can place on your desktop. It also allow viewing extended Net adapter interface settings, like MAC address, speed, etc. It allows viewing traffic data per interface or as a whole. It can be set to autorun at system startup. This program has been designed with simplicity in mind, but usefulness for the user.

You don't need to install Emsa you just execute BandwidthMonitor.exe
If you want it to autorun at startup, double click(run) the InstallAutorun.bat file. To remove autorun, double-click the UninstallAutorun.bat file.
For more information and to download go here.


MWSnap, screen capture utility

MWSnap is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen.
Current version is capable of capturing the whole desktop, a highlighted window, an active menu, a control, or a fixed or free rectangular part of the screen. MWSnap handles 5 most popular graphics formats and contains several graphical tools: a zoom, a ruler, a color picker and a window spy. It can be also used as a fast picture viewer or converter.
MWSnap does not require installation and does not need any special dlls, drivers or system files which can mess up your system.
MWSnap is freeware tp download go here.




Online mapping

Google Earth
Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more.

Windows Live Local
Combines online mapping and local search, uses a scratch pad to take notes, and allows to search questions around the United States in a geographical context.



Make Web Pages bigger

Ctrl-scroll
There are two ctrl keys on a standard keyboard select either one to press while using the mouse. While pressing the ctrl key, click on a website and begin to move the scroll wheel.
You’ll see the print get larger as you move the scroll wheel forwards or smaller as you move it backwards as you move the scroll wheel while holding the ctrl key down. As you make the print larger it will be much easier to read now what you had difficulty reading before you can read with ease.
This works well in FireFox and in some Internet Explorer pages. It will work in most Internet Explorer pages if you change one setting. In Internet Explorer, go to Tools/Internet Options, and click the Accessibility button in the lower right corner. Under “Formatting,” check the box “Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages” then click “OK” to save and that's done..
Ctrl-scroll will work on many Windows programs as well such as Microsoft Office, Outlook etc.

In Firefox, if you don’t have a scroll wheel on your mouse pressing “ctrl” and “+” together will make the text bigger, and “ctrl” and “-” makes it smaller.



Internet Radio

Find New Music, Listen to Free Web Radio.
Pandora is the music discovery service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites. Create custom internet radio stations, listen to them for free. Pandora.


Configure Windows XP to Automatically Login

To do this first Click Start>Run>type CONTROL USERPASSWORDS2 and click Ok or enter. Select the user account from the list (to which account you want to automatically logon). Uncheck Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer option, and click Ok. Type the user account password and complete the process.

NOTE: For Windows XP Home, don't try to auto-login as the built-in Administrator, as you'll receive a restrictions error.



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