Tech4dummies

Following are the stats taken from w3counter.com. And the analysis is made on last 31,612,302 unique visits to 5,636 websites.Internet Explorer occupies the top slot with 49.54% users.Surprisingly Internet Explorer occupies Second Slot with 16.82% which has got most of its share from Internet Explorer 6.0.Firefox 2.0 Occupies the third slot with 14.47% almost gaining 2% from the previous stats. It clearly indicates the Mozilla firefox is gaining the Market share of Internet Explorer.

Though Mozilla is gaining the market share in the browsers, desktops O/s is completely dominated by Microsoft .

Automatic updates are usually a good thing but there is a serious problem with it. Sometimes updates need to restart the computer to finish the installation. Until SP2 Automatic Updates would not restart your computer automatically. But this is not the case with SP2.Once you scheduled Automatic Updates to be installed (by default at 03:00 AM), if the update requires restart Windows will notify you that it needs to restart. If you are not logged in and do not restart within 5 minutes, Windows will automatically restart your computer.This behavior can cause a lot of problems. Documents you left open and did not save will be lost, downloads you started that have not finished will be terminated, and even hard disk maintenance like defrag that is working will get terminated, which might cause lost of data.Unfortunately Windows XP Home users can not do much to change this behavior, except saving all the data before going to sleep or disabling the automatic updates.On the other hand Windows XP Pro users can tell Windows never to restart the computer automatically.

In the Start Menu go to Run type “gpedit.msc” and press Enter
Now a Group Policy editor will open.

In this window navigate to:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Template -> Windows Components -> Windows Update

Double click on ‘No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations‘. In the settings window Choose Enabled and click OK.
Close Group Policy Editor.

The next time Windows updates your system it will not restart the computer automatically, but will notify you that a restart is needed in order to finish the installation.

Be aware that the computer needs to be restarted for the updates to take effect.

DISABLE INDEXING SERVICES

Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:

1. Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Double-click Add/Remove Programs
5. Click the Add/Remove Window Components
6. Uncheck the Indexing services
7. Click Next

OPTIMISE DISPLAY SETTINGS

Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:

1.Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Click System
5. Click Advanced tab
6. In the Performance tab click Settings
7. Leave only the following ticked:
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons

DISABLE PERFORMANCE COUNTERS

Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea.

To disable:

1. download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/remove404.mspx)
2.Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom.button below.

SPEEDUP FOLDER BROWSING

You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

1. Open My Computer
2. Click on Tools menu
3. Click on Folder Options
4. Click on the View tab.
5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6. Click Apply
7. Click Ok
8. Reboot your computer

IMPROVE MEMORY USAGE

Cacheman Improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.

Once Installed:

1.Go to Show Wizard and select All
2.Run all the wizards by selecting Next or Finished until you are back to the main menu. Use the defaults unless you know exactly what you are doing.
3.Exit and Save Cacheman
4.Restart Windows

A simple guide to turn your xp box to a web server

Now days everybody wants have there own we server. Then the important question. What would be the cheapest way to do it? If you are on a broadband connection (cable/dsl), Windows XP Professional IIS (Internet Information Server) is the cheapest answer.

Step 1 ) Accessing the Win Xp IIS Interface

First you have to check whether IIS is already turned on.

Go to [START] -> [CONTROL PANEL] -> [ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS]
Check to see whether [Internet Information Services] shortcut is already there. If it is skip step 2.

Step 2 ) Installing Win Xp IIS

Go to [START] -> [CONTROL PANEL] -> [ADD REMOVE PROGRAMS]
Click on [Add/Remove Windows Components] Tab
Scroll down to Internet Information Services (IIS)
Check the box on the left and click apply.

Step 3 ) Starting IIS

Click to [START] -> [CONTROL PANEL] -> [ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS]
Click on [Internet Information Services]
Now you will see the IIS user interface
Expand the left tree under (your computer name)(local computer)
You will see Web Sites ? FTP Sites ? Default SMTP Virtual Server
Expand [Web Sites]
You will see [Default Web Site Started or Stopped]
If it is stopped, [RIGHT CLICK] on [DEFAULT WEB SITE] and click start.

Step 4 ) Checking to see whether IIS is actually working

Open your web browser
On the address bar type http://localhost
You will see the default IIS welcome screen
If you see the welcome screen your web server is up and running.

Step 5 ) Pinching a small hold in your firewall

If you have ICF (Internet Connection Firewall) Enabled you will have to open up port 80 to let the world access your web server
Go to [START] -> [RIGHT CLICK MY NETWORK PLACES] -> [CLICK PROPERTIES]
[RIGHT CLICK] on your Lan or High Speed Internet Connection
[CLICK PROPERTIES]
[CLICK] on the Advanced Tab
[CLICK] [PROTECT MY COMPUTER] Check box
[CLICK] [SETTINGS] at the bottom of the dialog box
Under the [SERVICES] tab check the [WEB SERVER]
[CLICK OK]
If you have a router/firewall you will have to enable [PORT FORWADING] to enable access to your web server from the outside world. Make sure [PORT 80] is forwarded to the PC(IP) your running the web server.

Step 6 ) Placing the files

By default your web server directory will be located at C:\Inetpub\wwwroot
Now you can place you *.html, *.htm and *.asp files there

Gmail looks at attachments for file extensions known to be executable (such as.dll, .exe, .vbs, .msi,.ws and so forth), so if someone sends you one of these file types, theirmessage will bounce back. Even if you encapsulate these file into an zip files or archive files ,Gmail looks inside these for executable extensions and the e-mail bounces back to the sender if it contains any. However Gmail doesn’t look inside other archive formats, such as RAR or ACE, so you might want to use one of these formats instead of going through the hassle of the following workaround. 

To get around this annoyance, you can use the same trick that has been used for years. Simply tell the sender to rename the extension of the file to something Gmail will allow (such as .jpg), and when you receive the file, rename it back to the type it really is (for example, change file.jpg to file.exe). 

It seems that Gmail will allow you to send and receive executable attachments between Gmail accounts and from Gmail to outside accounts

Features:
* Functionality
o Change the size of the icons
o Rotate automatically into normal direction
o Fade automatically file names in/out
o Show or hide filenames
o Drag & Drop

* Running behaviour
o No performance losses with resting condition of the symbols
o Very less resources need
o Very efficient, thanks to the “Reality Engine”

* Design
o Reflecting surface
o Different wastebaskets
o Different themes are selectable/changeable
o Icons are reflecting the environment
o Any desired wallpaper as a picture at the wall, which is shown with inactivity
o Different background and icon styles
o Own graphics are integrate able
o Different light directions are selectable

minimum system requirements

* Operating system Windows XP / Vista
* Windows DirectX 9.0c
* Intel® Pentium IV 1500 MHz
* 256 MB main memory
* DirectX able graphic card: 64 MB NVIDIA Geforce™ 3 or better,
ATI® Radeon™ 8500 or better
* Screen resolution 800×600 at True Color (16 million colours)
* Internet connection
recommended system requirements

* Operating system Windows® XP / Vista
* Windows DirectX 9.0c
* AMD ATHLON™ XP 2400+ or higher (alternatively Intel Pentium 4)
* 512 MB main memory
* DirectX able graphic card: 128 MB NVIDIA Geforce™ 6 or better,
ATI® Radeon™ 9700 or better
* Screen resolution 1280 x 1024 at True Color (16 million colours)
* Internet connection

Aston is a new Desktop and Shell replacement for Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista.
It replaces the standard Windows Desktop and provides you with a host of new features, such as Sidebars, clock, weather monitor, animated buttons, transparency effects and much more.Aston also supports Themes, which allow you to change its appearance and functionality according to your mood and needs. No matter what visual style you like: XP, Aqua or something else; you can always download hundreds of Themes, created by professional designers or amateurs from Aston’s homepage or one of numerous other skin sites.
Aston features a powerful and user friendly interface, which lets you change your new desktop’s appearance and behavior in few seconds. No need to learn complicated configuration files, everything can be configured in a simple graphical interface.
A great balance between performance and appearance allows you to launch Aston even on out of the date PCs or its enjoy many advanced features on more modern computers. Aston is very stable and has a small memory footprint and low CPU usage, so you can free your processor time for other tasks.

ASCII Art Studio is a powerful ASCII Art editor. It allows you to make your own ASCII Art quickly and easily.
You can use this tool to make cool Email signatures, as well as add creative text graphics to plain text documents.

Key Features

Support text editing and graphic editing.

Intelligent freehand drawing.

Create Big Text using any installed fonts.

Convert between pictures and ASCII Art.

Print ASCII Art.

View ANSI ASCII Art.

Easy used characters panel.

Flip and Rotate selection.

Multiple undo and redo.

Shell integration.
System Requirements :
Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP

Download any videos on youtube.com site with 5X fast speed

Everyday, plentiful video clips are uploaded to YouTube.com. Somebody say that these videos will disappear soonest, due to obvious copyright infringement issues, and then, why not to download those good video clips and save to our computer before they’re gone forever?

Here I will show you to get around this possibility and copy videos from YouTube.com and watch it on computer, mobile phone, iPod, iPhone, Pocket PC, PSP, Zune etc whenever you want.

Pick YouTube videos –> Download videos –> Convert to different formats –> Transfer to Mobile Device, all these work can be done auto with YouTube Robot, it even support schedule these jobs as you wish, All-In-One, not other software, codecs needed!

With YouTube Robot application you will be able to download any videos on youtube.com site with 5X fast speed.

Manual download is not the only option with YouTube Robot. You may as well schedule the download and conversion tasks to be executed automatically, even when you are not around. Downloading is followed by conversion to the format of your choice and uploading videos to a mobile device (if needed).

For example, you can plug in iPod, select the video, go to bed, and when you wake up next morning, your iPod will be ready to play new YouTube videos.

Here are some key features of “YouTube Robot”:

Support browse video by category,author,time, language,channels, tags and custom keywords.
Built-in scheduler
· You may as well schedule the download and conversion tasks to be executed automatically, even when you are not around. Downloading is followed by conversion to the format of your choice and uploading videos to a mobile device (if needed).
Optimize profile for differnet mobile device
· Such as iPod, Zune, PSP, Creative Zen Vision, Archos,iRiver, Pocket PC, Smart Phone… and more
· Support almost all audio & video format, such as AVI, WMV, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, MP3, M4A…and more
Suited for both veterans and beginners
· If you are a veteran, you will find there are so many options you can set, if it’s the first time you download flv video you don’t have to consider these options, just use default settings and convert video in a few clicks.
Fast downloading
· Increase download speed up to 5 times by Hyper-threading transportation technique.
· Download multiple files at once, up to 4x faster than other software.
Automatically check your CPU type
· Youtube Robot you can check your CPU type automatically, that ensure you can converting video file with the best ripping speed.
· Optimized for Processor(SSE2/SSE/MMX/3DNow!) and Graphics Card Acceleration.Fully optimized for Dual Core, Hyper-Thread processor.
Support preview
· You can preview the movies before you begin ripping them, even you can watch the movies at the same time when you are converting
Easy-to-use user-friendly interface
· Most functions can be called up with a simple mouse click or menu selection. You can conveniently make skins for youtube robot through our color scheme system.
Flexible settings
· Youtube robot is able to automatically detect the input video formats and then set the application’s parameters for the best possible performance. The default parameters work in most cases, but you can change them easily to best suit your needs.
Support batch conversion
· Select all files you want to downloading and youtube robot will automatically copy them one by one.
Excellent video quality
· Using Youtube Robot, you can choose sound quality in options,what you want with excellent image and sound quality.
Requirements:

· Processor (CPU) Pentium III 500MHz
· Memory 128Mb of RAM
· DirectX 8.0 or later
· iTunes software is required to copy/sync iPod audio/movies.

The PDF Password Remover is a useful and reliable software which can be used to decrypt protected Adobe Acrobat PDF files, which have “owner” password set, preventing the file from editing (changing), printing, selecting text and graphics (and copying them into the Clipboard), or adding/changing annotations and form fields.Decryption is being done instantly. Decrypted file can be opened in any PDF viewer (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader) without any restrictions — i.e. with edit/copy/print functions enabled. All versions of Adobe Acrobat (including 7.x, which features 128-bit encryption) are supported.

The standard security provided by PDF consists of two different methods and two different passwords, ‘user password’ and ‘owner password’.

A PDF document may be protected by password for opening (’user’ password) and the document may also specify operations that should be restricted even when the document is decrypted: printing; copying text and graphics out of the document; modifying the document; and adding or modifying text notes and AcroForm fields (using ‘owner’ password).

Download Pdf Password Remover