Hints & Tips
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Periodical cleaning of your hard disk(s) is a good idea. A pretty good utility for cleaning up the dross on your Disk Drive is Ccleaner (stands for "Crap Cleaner"), download here, and another one, HD Cleaner which is a Windows Cleanup utility that clears out temporary files, redundant registry entries, registry cleaner, cookie cleaner, etc. Download it by clicking here!
Note! If you clear out all your cookies, etc., then you'll probably have to re-enter the details for your on-line banking!
Another nice touch with HD Cleaner is that it will "clean" empty disk space of that important personal data that might be "lingering" on your drive. Very useful utility to run occasionally!
Want to check whether or not your email is a hoax? Then follow this link for further information on the subject.
STD Telephone List - In txt or csv format - enables you to see where the caller's tel no is based. Right click on the relevant link to download and then you can search or whatever you wish. Please report any errors.
Want to create documents in .pdf format? Adobe Acrobat is rather expensive and a cheaper alternative is Expert PDF so go to the Avanquest website for further details. If you do chose to buy it surf the web as you will possibly find it cheaper! I did just that and found it cheaper from a supplier than buying it directly!
If you hold the Shift key down and click on a link when in Internet Explorer you'll open that link in a new window. By way of a demonstration, hold down the Shift Key now and press one of the selections on the left in the navigation area to see what I mean. Close the window after by clicking on the 'x' in the top right corner of the newly opened window.
Disable the Automatic Desktop Cleanup Feature.
Are you fed up with the message popping up periodically prompting you to remove unused Desktop Icons? Let's face it, you don't put icons on there you don't want, do you? I looked up the way to switch it off and here's what Microsoft's Knowledge Base (best viewed in Iinternet Explorer - IE) came up with. NB. The more Icons you have on your Desktop, the slower your system will be to start up, so only keep what you use on there. Don't keep web links on the desktop, but create shortcuts by way of Favourites within the Browser and this is done quickly and easily by right clicking on the web page you want and then 'Add to Favorites'.
To Disable the Automatic Desktop Cleanup Feature
To stop the wizard from automatically running every 60 days:
- Right-click a blank spot on the desktop, and then click Properties to open the Display Properties dialog box.
- Click the Desktop tab.
- Click Customize desktop to open the Desktop Items dialog box.
- Click to clear the Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days check box.
- Click OK twice to close the dialog boxes.
To run the Wizard manually, click Clean Desktop Now on the Desktop Items dialog box. You can perform a manual cleanup at any time, even if you have not disabled the wizard.
Do you have a new Dual Core Processor PC?
Well at least you have one that should easily handle the newer operating systems that come out in the near future and a pretty quick machine.
Having said that it can open a new set of problems, one of which I suffered recently. I have an Hauppauge WinTV Nova T PCI card in my PC and I began to suffer problems immediately. The sound would break up and then disappear with seconds of switching to a channel. I looked on their website and found a new set of drivers which I installed to the letter, but to no avail, and so I contacted the technical support at Hauppauge who did suggest a work around until the new software is released within the next couple of weeks. The only problem with their intermediate solution is that Task Manager has to be opened on each startup of the software, and then right click on the WinTV application, select Set affinity and uncheck one of the processors, which is a little tedious to say the least!
I contacted the technical support guys from where I bought my PC, Cube Enterprises, to tell them of my experiences in case anyone else contacted them with a similar problem, and got a useful reply where they also came across the problem recently and found a more permanent solution to the problem. It basically switches off one of the processors and hence normal service is resumed. I intend to try this solution out on other software that hangs or crashes with a view to resolving problems there and will report back on them in the near future.
For the route to the solution, click here when you will be transferred to a site with full instructions on downloading and setting up a file entitled ImageCFG.exe.
I have downloaded the file and followed the instructions and now I can fire up the WinTV software and it works!
My thanks to Dale of Cube Enterprises for his help on this one, and to Hauppauge for their initial support, and I look forward to their updated software soon to be released they tell me!
If you have had a similar problem then please let us know about both
the problem and the solution as it could easily help others !
Email & Viruses
Thought that you could be infected by an e-mail virus only if you read the infected e-mail and executed or opened an infected file that came as an attachment? Think again!
That's only true if you're using a pretty old e-mail program that doesn't allow you to preview messages. Newer programs, such as Outlook Express, 'render' the HTML code in which many e-mails are written, to show you what the message looks like. Trouble is, this HTML can be used to run virus code, so if your e-mail program provides a preview function, it's a good idea to turn the feature off.- In Outlook Express, choose Layout from the View menu, and uncheck the box marked 'Show preview pane'.
- In Outlook, go to View and select or de-select Preview Pane to switch the option off.
At the end of the day, there is no substitute to installing AND maintaining an Anti-Virus software package on your system, and has already been mentioned elsewhere in this section, there are some perfectly good free ones as well as the proprietary branded ones.
When Modifying JPEG's ..
The jpeg file format employs lossy compression, which means every time it's applied, some data is forever lost. The problem therefore comes when you modify a jpeg image and wish to save the changes. If you press Save, it will be recompressed with a further loss in quality.
To preserve quality during re-saves, an image must be saved in a format which employs lossless compression or none at all. The most popular and compatible option is the tiff, where the optional LZW compression is lossless. The downside is file size, as 3 and 5 megapixel images saved as uncompressed tiffs measure 9 and 15MB respectively. Consequently we recommend all digital camera owners to simply back up their original jpeg's, and only use tiffs to re-save images which have been modified.
Spam E-Mail
Did you know that more than half the e-mails sent throughout the world are spam - unsolicited messages, often containing pornographic material or dodgy financial offers.
In America, it's reckoned that the average office worker spends an hour every week deleting spam - that's more time than they spend in the toilet!
Now the UK government is to introduce new electronic privacy regulations which aim to stop spam messages - but only if they come from Europe!
Some tips to avoid Spam emails …..
- never buy anything from a spammer, however much of a good deal may appear to be on offer.
- never reply to an invitation to unsubscribe from a spam mailing list. If you do, you're telling the spammer that your e-mail address is active, so you'll get even more junk mail.
- use a secondary email address for signing up to any message boards, posting to news groups or online shopping.
Research shows that activities most likely to reveal your email
address to spammers are posting to newsgroups or message boards,
entering AOL chat rooms, and signing up for online sweepstakes
and lotteries.
Online shopping and subscribing to email newsletters are lower risk, but not
risk-free.
Use a secondary email address for signing up to any message boards, posting
to news groups or online shopping.
Hotmail accounts seem to attract a lot of spam & junk email. Microsoft
have put some suggestions up on their web site and I have put this link here
for you to explore accordingly.
Alternatively, you might want to choose a more obscure UK based provider or consider a 'disposable email' service like Sneakemail.
A free download called Mailwasher enables you to preview emails before you download them to your PC.
You can scan a list of messages waiting for you and decide whether to delete them, bounce them back to the sender, or download them to your inbox. If you want to take your personal fight against spam further, a tool called Spamcop will help you identify the real address a spam message has been sent from, and contact the spammer's service provider to get their account shut down.
Double sided printing
....on a standard single side printer from within Word!
Have you ever printed out long Word documents and thought it would be better printed double sided, but it's too difficult?
Well, think again.
Go to File, Print and then in the bottom left of the Print Window it says Print: All Pages in Range.
Click on that drop down arrow and select Odd Pages and then print it by pressing OK. Retrieve the printout and BEFORE you turn it over, etc. to put back into the printer, check it and you'll possibly see that the pages are all reversed, ie page 1 is at the back and should be at the front and so on. When you put it back in the printer ENSURE you place it in the correct orientation so that you print on the white side and not overprint what you've already printed - easy done as I'm sure you'll discover!
Well there's an easy way rather that rearrange them physically in reverse order. Repeat the previous paragraph up to where you selected Odd pages, but this time select Even pages. NOW click on the Options... button in the bottom left of the screen, and then in Printing Options check the box Reverse Print order, then OK and OK again to print the document.
Hey Presto - all double sided and in the correct order!
Although I haven't tried it the same principle may work from other packages and hence if you use alternatives to Word then it may be worth trying, and if you find a it does, then please let us know so that we may add the comment to this sheet for the benefit of others.
Irritating Pop-Ups
These Pop-ups are irritating and annoying at the best of time but I have found that these can be disabled in Google Toolbar add in (freebie), or the Ad-Aware program from Lavasoft (with additional cost add-in I believe), useful, and you'll find the link addresses in Useful Links section.
Beware though that sometimes when you switch the popup off then some web pages don't respond and with Google you can at least enable popups for that particular page which overcomes the problem for that one and allows you to generally block the irritating things!
Some however can even beat these and the following fix may help solve your problem.
This was fed back to me by a guy with a problem and the solution provided by
Lavasoft, as he was using their Ad-Aware Program....
Some Pop-ups may utilise the global Messenger Service to operate, which you can disable and you can re-enable later if need.
For Windows 2000 and XP users;-
- Go to start and click Run
- Type services.msc
- Double-click on Messenger.
- In the Messenger Properties window, select Stop, then choose Disable as the Start-up Type.
- Click OK.
For Windows 95, 98 and ME
- Under Control Panel, select Add/Remove.
- Select Windows Setup.
- Select System Tools.
- Click Details.
- Uncheck WinPopUp
- Click OK
- Reboot
Please give feedback if this works for you or not or whether you have other solutions.
Connecting USB devices
Hint on connecting USB devices (cameras, printers, external CD Writers, etc) to your computers ......
If in doubt, READ the accompanying manual first!
If you have a new USB printer or any other USB device that you wish to add to your PC then note that as a general rule you need to install the software BEFORE attaching the device to the computer.
If in doubt, read the manual or other information that came with the device FIRST!
As a general rule, insert the CD with the drivers for the device, scanner, camera, etc., into the PC and the CD will usually autostart and ask if you want to install the drivers. Answer yes and then follow the on screen prompts and ONLY attach the new device when it tells you to, and not before.
For those of you with Desktop PCs without USB ports on your PC you can purchase USB cards to go in the PC. I would suggest you go for a USB2 card which is also compatible with the previous USB devices, but not the other way round, and for those of you with laptops there is a PCMCIA USB2 card that will then give you two USB2 ports - examples of which I found on the web using the Google search engine with the following words - "USB PCMCIA card".
Create a (sub) directory listing or mp3 playlist.
The easiest way to start this exercise is to use Windows Explorer go to the directory you want to list. Once you are in the relevant directory then go in to the DOS command set and the easiest and quickest way is to go to Start, Run, Command and this will take you to DOS, when you will do one of the following, depending on what you want to achieve. The name of the directory that you are in when you go to the DOS prompt will appear in the command line as such.
Let's assume that you have a drive d: on your PC and the subdirectory music that you have opened under Windows Explorer. You then go to the DOS window as explained and the screen prompt will then look like this - d:music> and then you will type your command following the > (chevron) as such - d:mydocs> dir /b/od > mydocs.txt This will then place a file with the name mydocs.txt into that same directory. Using Notepad or any other text editor you can then edit the file if you wish.
if you want a basic contents listing with just the filenames
then type - dir /b > filename.txt
if want a list in date & time order (useful for getting
files in the order put onto the disk, type - dir /b/od > filename.txt
Where you see filename.txt, put your own title in.
Where the filenames end in .mp3 (music files) and you want to create a playlist, then use the latter of the above examples to create the list and then when you name it ensure the extension is .m3u and then this file will become your playlist. To keep the files in the order they appear on the CD type them in in the same order as they appear on the sleeve etc., and by using the date & time option (/od) you'll maintain this list accordingly.
When in Windows Explorer you then double click on this file it will fire up whatever program you have associated with this extension, and if for example you have created a file with the extension of m3u, Windows Media Player will open and then play all the tunes in the order in which they are listed in the m3u file. If the file ended in .txt then Notepad will probably open and you can then edit the file accordingly if you so wish. You can also edit the file ending .m3u with any text editor such as Notepad if you so wish.
By typing dir /? at the dos prompt, you can see what other options are available to you when creating this listing. Why not have a little play and see what the options offer you, as that's the best way to learn.
When in dos and you require help on any command, the usual thing to do is type a "/?" following the prompt and then press enter and the help text will come on screen. If there's too much to handle at once, try the paging command (/p) to display one page at a time.
On completion of this exercise, type exit at the dos prompt in order to close the window.
Want to buy a PC or upgrade your system?
Well we all want to buy a PC or some accessory, extension, etc at some stage.
If you're anything like me you look for price and service rather than just go for the cheapest, I hope.
I know some people out there have had mixed service from various suppliers as have I, but there are some dealers I tend to use nowadays for several reasons. If you buy local from either a recommended supplier or one you've had experience of, then you know that there is help at hand if it's needed, whereas with some "distance" suppliers, eg buying from either the Internet or via magazines, it's not always easy to get help or to return the goods, albeit it should be according to the law!
A local dealer is usually more helpful and accommodating, even if initially possibly slightly more expensive, and that piece of mind can be very re-assuring.
What I would say before you go out to buy a PC is to list what you want to do on the machine and fix a budget in your mind before you start out on the road to buying a PC. The Internet is useful in looking round to see what you can get, but remember, nothing's free in this world, so the more you get offered for your monies then start to wonder why?!? Are they trying to dispose of "old" models or what? Check they have a decent support and not via a premium telephone number. I would also suggest you do NOT buy an extended warranty either, unless maybe you're buying a laptop, but think before hand.
Buy a magazine and look at the adverts to see what people are offering. Some bundle software and others things like printers and scanner etc., but are they what you really want? Remember, nothing's a good deal unless it's what you want!
Do NOT be swayed by the salesman. If you're not sure, back off and check it out first. It's also recognised that dealers offer good deals before Christmas and sales to rid themselves of their old stock so again make yourself aware of the market before opening their doors!
The latest PCW magazine shows some very keen prices for what appears to be a good starter package, starting at under £500, so that seems to make some of the used systems unattractive, as new systems tend to come with up to 3 yrs warranty rather than maybe 3 months on a used system. Has to be worth a look doesn't it!
To be continued .....
Auto start/run CD's and DVD's
If
you don't want a CD to auto start on insert then just hold the Shift key
down at insertion time, but if you want to switch the auto facility
off more permanently then you have to go into the System settings......
To do this, go to Start, Settings, Control Panel on the bar at the
bottom left of the screen, or hold down the Windows key and press Pause.
If you then double click on the System Icon and expand
the CD ROM icon by clicking on the little '+' sign to the left,
then expand the CD Rom by double clicking on it, click on the Settings tab and
you'll see a tick in the Auto insert notification box, and clicking
on that will remove the tick.
Click OK till all the screens close
and on a reboot you'll find the CD's will no
longer auto start when you insert them in the player.
You may want to repeat the operation for a DVD player if present but this time select the DVD player and follow the above routine.
If you have CD burning software such as EasyCD you will find when that is running a CD won't generally Autostart, but will just sit there and await intervention on your behalf.
Acrobat Reader Tips
Make Adobe Acrobat start faster.
Adobe Acrobat is the standard reader for PDF, but it starts up really slowly because it loads a bazillion plug-ins. You can trim the plug-ins, and hence greatly speed up start up as follows:
Go the directory Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader.
Make a new directory 'skipped_plug_ins', (doesn't matter what
you call it) and move all the files in directory plug_ins into
your new directory, except: EWH32.api, IA32.api, Search.api.
(These three are needed by Internet Explorer, though the last is only needed for search.)
Another user has tried this and has forwarded the following feedback;-
After moving the files to another directory and calling up Acrobat it gave me a couple of errors - (Annots.api and multimedia.api). I found that I had to leave Weblink.api and Acroform.api in the plug-in directory and everything worked OK.
No Dial Tone problems whilst trying to connect
You try to connect to your email or internet connection but get the message "No Dial Tone..." etc. which can be very frustrating, yes?
The very first thing to check is that you have connected the cable up between the modem in your PC and the telephone socket. It may sound fundamental but it is easy to overlook.
One of the major causes of this message is when you have some telephony options set on your account like the 1571 recorded message system from BT, or whoever your provider is, and someone has left a message on there. When you pick your receiver up you find you get an intermittent dial tone that lets you know a message awaits. It's this broken dial tone that confuses your modem and hence you need to amend the modem settings to ignore this.
Like everything else really there are pros and cons associated with this change and one such con is that if someone is on another extension and you aren't aware of it when you try to connect then they will get the dialling sound blasting into their ear, which is uncomfortable to ay the least. However, if you do have these settings on your phone then you need to make the change and it's fairly easy to achieve.
You need to go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Modems and double click on Modems, select your modem and then Properties. Select the Connections tab and uncheck Wait for Dial Tone and then select OK until you get back to the desktop etc. Re-try the connection when it should now ignore the broken dial tone, or anyone holding a conversation on the extension, and dial your connection. Providing no one is on the extension the connection should, hopefully, be made and away you go!
If you feel a screenshot would be useful, hit the Contact Me button and let me know accordingly!
Have you checked your Temp directory lately?
Have you thought to look at your hard disk recently and check for temporary files? No? Then maybe you should.
Over a period of time you'll be surprised how many junk files are left remaining in the temp directory and over a period of time it can add up.
To check, visit the C:\windows\temp directory and see what's in there. You can safely delete ALL files and directories in there if you so choose, but before doing so, close down all open applications leaving just the Windows Explorer open.
Any sub-directories that an application requires will automatically recreated in the temp area as and when wanted.
These files tend to get left in there if your system or the application crashes amongst other things.
If you do experience some strange happenings in applications such as crashing etc., then look in the temp directory first and delete all files before re-booting, as this sometimes sorts out some problems.
For users of Windows 95 & 98 you could add a line into the autoexec.bat file along the lines of;-
if exist c:\windows\temp\*.* del c:\windows\temp\*.*
This will then check for temporary files at Boot up and remove them hence keeping your temp files to a minimum! Very useful.
Windows XP and 2000 users will find these files in other directories, usually under Documents and Settings sub-directory, so you might find it easier to do a search for Files and directories, so look for Temp*.* and then delete any/all files in the temp directory. Some files may not delete, like those associated with open applications so close all open applications prior to running the delete option. Some files associated with Firewall or graphics card will still be open so just leave them at this stage but delete all others.
Having deleted these files they will have ended up in the Recycle bin and hence you'll need to empty that too occasionally. After several of these exercises it might also pay to run defrag and run the defragmentation programme that will concatenate the disk and move all empty space to the end of the disk to improve speed and efficiency - see elsewhere for info on this subject!
Long web addresses that are better shortened
There comes a time when you want to send someone a url (web address) of a site and the address seems to go on and on and stretches beyond one line in the recipients email.
This then becomes a pain to the end user as they have to cut and paste the address into the browser rather than just click on the link, and then they moan to you, etc, etc.
Well help is at hand. There's a useful web site, TinyURL that allows you to paste or type the long address into a line and then it compiles a Short address which you then send to the recipient. They click on that link and it transports them to the site with the long address!
Cool or what? And the recipient no longer moans about the line length which is a blessing on it's own!
