3 Things to Love About Internet Explorer 9

1. Pinning and Jump Lists. Given I’ve used desktop shortcuts and IE favorites for years I was a bit skeptical when I first heard of the pinning feature. What I found was that after I tried it I quickly got to the point where I can’t imagine NOT having it. Really. If you haven’t tried this out, you really should and once you do you should show your friends too. It’s that good.

When I started using it I realized that there are some sites that I use way more often than apps that I have pinned. Pinning them lets me treat these sites like an app. My favorite example of this is Hotmail. From the Jump List I can start composing an email in exactly two clicks. Being able to see the number of new messages in my inbox is just a bonus. I actually respond to my Hotmail email much quicker than I used to when I had it saved in my IE favorites.

All that you have to do is drag the tab at the top of the IE window to your taskbar and let go. You can pin any site to the taskbar but if the site has made a few simple additions you’ll get the full experience of Jump Lists, notifications (like how many new messages in my inbox) and more. There are tons of sites that have done this and you can find many of them listed in the IE Gallery.

If you’ve got a site of your own it’s now easier than ever to enable the full pinning experience for your visitors.

2. Lower power consumption. This might seem like a small thing but it helps wring the most power out of my ‘always too small’ laptop battery and contributes to reducing overall energy use on any system. Sure I use sleep mode and make my screen dim quicker to save battery but those only work when I’m NOT doing something. Using IE9 as my browser saves some energy while I AM doing something.

Measuring this energy savings goes well beyond my efforts to use a Kill-A-Watt to get my PC’s power consumption down. The IE team has a great blog post on the specifics of how they measured this and the results.

3. Hardware acceleration. This one doesn’t get old but I have started to take it for granted. I’ve found myself using a PC that belongs to someone else and having it feel slightly ‘off’ as I browse the web until I realize it’s not running IE9. The full acceleration really contributes to the overall web experience besides creating truly amazing experiences in some specific scenarios. There are a couple great posts on the IE blog about this including a breakdown of the HTML blizzard demo and a rundown on the hardware acceleration architecture.

If you haven’t taken the time to install IE9 you really should check it out. Once you have it installed try out the pinning on your favorite sites. It’s truly one of those things that’s hard to be without after you experience it.

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• 3 Things to Love About Internet Explorer 9 (thinkanytime.wordpress.com)

20 Things to learn from THE TECH STORE

• As long as the world turns, users will still have problems

• Substance abusers and computer operators are the only folks called users. This isn’t by chance

• When in doubt. Reboot

• Sooner or later you will meet a person who types out the words “back slash” or forgets to plug in the power cord. If you haven’t yet, just wait, you will

• Fear the phone. No one just calls tech support to wish you good morning

• No user will tell you the whole truth at the beginning of a call

• “I didn’t do anything” or “It just happened” Are the users mantra

• As a support tech, it is your job to break down resistance and get the truth

• This is so you can rub the lie in their face, fixing the issue is just a perk

• Some people will never learn

• This means you will always have a job

• Maintain a calm voice, even if you’re screaming on the inside

• The hold button is your friend

• Whatever you do, don’t panic

• The answer to all users questions should be “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” even if this is a bald-faced lie

• Users can smell fear. Once you’ve lost control, all is lost

• A user who is not listening to you anymore, but rather is trying “their own thing” is not worth your time. Simulate a telephone disconnect and hang up. Trust me, you’re better off.

• Sometimes fixing a computer is easier than figuring out why it was broken

• Users always want a reason things are fixed. If you’re not sure just lie. They won’t know anyway. “A stray electron passed through the processor and caused…”

• If possible ask to speak to the youngest person present

Widescreen Desktop Wallpaper Designs

Collections of Dark Desktop Wallpapers

40 Collections of Dark Desktop Wallpapers are showcased below just for you… The wallpapers are themed around dark-colors. Feel free to download these cool wallpapers and make your desktop interesting and inspirational!

Black Cat Dark Room

Download Source

When Will It Stop?

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How’ll you get Faster Removal of Trojan Viruses from your Computer?

Have you been struck by virus attacks in your system? Are you looking for options to rescue your computer out of the abysmal virus threat? If you are looking for a perfect virus removal procedure, choose the online spyware removal software which are proving to be outstanding in data recovery and fixing computers from the threats of the virus attacks.

Do you want to rescue your computer from the virus attack without the help of any computer technician? Then here are some basic points allocated for you to guide you the right track while you are the job of virus removal by your own.

• If you are not that much of a computer expert; but eager to fix the virus issue all by your own efforts then the only way is the websites that can abide you with perfect knowledge to fix your machine in a proper manner.
• Online download the free edition of the AVG anti virus software and let it scan the computer. After the scanning you will find out that AVG has made a list of the virus, malware as well as spyware which are there in the system. Later on AVG will try to remove the viruses by its own but sometimes it is not possible to do because of the tricks of dangerous viruses.
• Do you find that AVG is not removing the virus list which it has made so far after scanning? Then check the virus vault; there the viruses have been stored up.
• Though this is also a fact that AVG is famous for destroying the Trojan virus with fast and convenient manner.
• If you are getting trouble in running the AVG free antivirus you can try the Trend Micro Housecall. This is famous is fixing the Trojans which AVG might have failed to notice.

These are some of the most important functions of the online free antivirus programs, which might help you to fix the virus threat in your machine. Try this process and give us a feedback.

How to fix the problem of a Bluetooth-enabled Dell Travel Mouse?

The increasing popularity of the laptops has also increased the number of peripheral devices. The travel mouse is one of the devices that come in the line of the peripheral devices.  Are you fascinated with a small mouse? Then the travel mouse is the right choice for you. It is a small mouse offering you the ease of transport.

If you are thinking travel mouse from Dell, you can go for the Bluetooth travel mouse with the help of which you can connect your PC wirelessly to your Dell mouse. Enjoy wireless connectivity with your Dell Bluetooth mouse.

The Dell support professionals can help you when you face any problem with your Bluetooth mouse. Following certain troubleshooting methods you can resolve the problem with your Dell Bluetooth mouse and obtain its normal functioning.

Step 1: You should first check the mouse battery by opening the cover of your Bluetooth Dell mouse. When the batteries get exhausted, you should replace this.

Step 2: There may be some error in setting the connection between your Bluetooth mouse and the PC. Restarting the Pc often solves this problem.

Step 3: One very important thing that you need to check is the Bluetooth connectivity of your PC. If you find any issue with the Bluetooth functionality of your PC, refer to the manual for turning the feature on.

Step 4: Finally, you should reinstall the Bluetooth software, in case your PC has Windows XP. Any problem with the installation of the blue tooth connection will prohibit your mouse from working on its normal way.

How to Restrict the Entry of Unnecessary Mails in your Inbox ?

Email – the one name that every PC user understands and makes use of extensively. Contact anyone at any corner of the world at a fast rate now! Send one mail and your message is conveyed. Just like it has advantages, similarly there are disadvantages of this process. Anyone who likes to sell something or have the intention of spreading malware can just send a mail to the receiver.

What you should do then? Contact the PC repair services and know the process of blocking all unwanted email messages. Block the mails which you don’t need in your inbox and secure yourself from identity thefts, spam messages and viruses.

The Procedure of Blocking Emails

Firstly, activate spam filter of the email program. You will get this filter along with the majority of the email programs, whether it is system-based or Web-based. How will you know whether you have a spam filter? In case you have the ‘junk’ folder, you are sure you have spam filter.

Secondly, you should set your email settings to its greatest level. With theremote technical support from the reputed service, you can set this security level for blocking the maximum number of email messages.

Finally, you can visit the email settings and by clicking on Block, you can make your own block list. If you like you can select the senders whom you wish to block. With this setup, you are assured not to receive any mails from the specific sender you have added to the block list.

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Important Tips to Build Gaming PC

Gone are those days when games like Mario or Bubble Bobble served well during our leisure hours. Gaming has reached a new dimension and now it reached billion dollar market and increasing with time.  Everybody loves playing games and as per our likings this industry has produced different types of games depending on age, gender, location and other factors as well. There are many types of gaming devices available like Xbox and Play Station but computer games has retained its position of first choice among gamers as playing games with a PC is altogether a different experience.

Some of the most popular computer games till 2010 are NFS, Burnout Paradise (Racing Games), Prince of Persia, Far Cry, and Max Payne (Action Games), and Age of Empires (Strategy Games). There are also plenty of others beyond these. It doesn’t matter what game you have chosen to play you must first read out the manual about minimum settings and recommended settings to play the game. Most 3D games are pretty demanding in terms of GPU, Processing speed, RAM and other settings. Before playing such games one should check and assure that his/ her computer has settings beyond just bare minimum settings or else he/she must be ready to compromise with frame rates (fps).

Most of these gaming PCs are customized by some enthusiast and not purchased pre assembled and if proper assembling is done the PC can really outperform. Before going to a configuration which will be sufficient enough to play modern games I just want to explain two terms SLI (Scalable Link Interface) from NVidia and Crossfire from ATI Radeon.

These are different technologies from two market leaders NVidia and AMD ATI producing GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) where multiple graphics card(most cases 2) can be used to render graphics and thus share the workload and deliver better performance instead of just a single Graphics Card.

Before buying multiple graphics cards one should check out the motherboard manual if at all it supports the above two technologies. In general motherboards that support SLI does not support Crossfire and vice versa. But there are some chipsets like X58 and P55 from Intel that supports both the technologies.

But utilizing two High End Graphics card instead of one card always won’t give you optimized fps while playing a game unless the game is SLI or Crossfire supported so the game manual should be referred.

A typical configuration for a Gaming PC can be as follows :

1. Intel or AMD Quad Core or Hexa Core Processor
2. 4 GB RAM
3. ATI Radeon HD 5700 series /  5800 series   or Nvidia Geforce GTX 470 / 480
4. 2 x 500Gb HDD RAID 0 configured for optimal performance settings
5. 800 Watts Power Supply
6. Atleast 22” LCD Monitor
7. A Joystick along with keyboard and mouse
8. A good 5.1 Sound Card like one from creative
9. A 5.1 Set of Speakers maybe from Creative or Altec Lancing
10. A good cabinet maybe from Cooler Master or Antec

But if you prefer branded computer surely you can see gaming rigs from DELL such as XPS Series.

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Sony’s PlayStation Network: A gateway to Entertainment Haven

If you are looking for the ecstasy of entertainment, PlayStation®Network from Sony is the choice for you. Termed as the ultimate destination for entertainment, Sony’s PlayStation Network is the gateway to the world of entertainment. Enjoy implausible games, blockbuster movies as well as all the exciting TV series and community in one place. Loaded with plenty of exclusives like new games, add-ons and video, PlayStation®Network is truly the powerhouse of entertainment.

Run by Sony Computer Entertainment, PlayStation Network or PSN is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service. To access the service you need to have the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable video game consoles. All the available services are absolutely free and the user only needs to register for the service. Record shows that there are more than 50 million registered PlayStation Network accounts worldwide as of June 2010.

As mentioned, to access all the alluring features of PlayStation Network registration is mandatory. There are two types of accounts, Master accounts and Sub accounts. With Master accounts you can enjoy full access to all settings, including parental control. The only criterion is that you have to be over the age of 18. Once the Master account is created, then sub accounts can subsequently be created and you can set restrictions for the account.

How to resolve the unresponsive Dell Inspiron Touchpad or Mouse? | Digital Life – http://www.cubesquare.co.cc

Dell Inspiron laptops and desktops have reached every household in the recent times. Are these systems free of errors? Certainly not. Issues have been detected with the touchpad or the mouse. It can become unresponsive, if you have corrupted driver setting. This issue can bug you, if you do not fix it on time. Proper troubleshooting methods are offered by the Dell Support experts. Seek their assistance right away!

Do you think that you have to get a new laptop or mouse? However, this is not the case always. A newly up-to-date driver is the ideal solution to regain the normal functioning of your touchpad or mouse. Here are the steps for you. Follow the steps and recover your lost settings easily.

♦ Don’t think that you can use this method only once. Try it again and again, if required.

Step 1 : Browse to “driversdr.com/dell/index.php?id=madldr1“. Once you have navigated, install Driver Navigator after downloading.
Step 2 : Open up the Driver Navigator and click on “scan now”. Wait for a few minutes. This program will recommend you certain drivers suitable for your purpose. Once you get the drivers, choose “update drivers”.
Step 3 : Once you have done all these, restart your Dell Inpsiron laptop or desktop. Your touchpad or mouse is sure to work in its normal way, if you are successfully in troubleshooting the issue.

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• How to fix the problem of a Bluetooth-enabled Dell Travel Mouse? (thinkanytime.wordpress.com)

How to have Backup of Email Folder in Windows Live Mail?

Windows Live Mail is a new email service sharing all the features of Windows Mail and Outlook Express. This new mailing service has the export wizard that offers you the privilege of having email backup. Do you have multiple folders? Are your email files larger in size? This is not at all an issue with this export wizard! You can backup each and every mail no matter what its size or what numbers of folders you have.

Get all your mails in external device or hard drive with proficient guidance! Again, for restoring all your backup mail files, you have the import wizard from Windows Mail. Want to know the process of backing up your email files? Take a quick glimpse at the steps here:

• Click on blue button in Windows Live Mail at the top left hand corner
• Point the mouse to Export mail > click on Email messages
• Click on your preferred format – Windows Live Mail or Microsoft Exchange
• Click on Next option
• Click on Browse and choose a folder for sending all your exported mails.
• Make a new folder by clicking on Make New Folder > type in the folder’s name > click on OK Click on Next
• For backing up all mails, select All folders and for selective file backup, click on the option of Selected folders
• Click on Next and then Finish

All your Windows Live Mail files and folders will get exported to your selected folder.

How to Send As Distribution / Contact list in Outlook 2011 for Mac

I was so used to using Outlook on a PC to send as multiple distribution list/contacts.

As I wear many hats in my roles as IT man and general web guy I have many Distribution lists that I send from so as to originate email from that group but have that group delivered to my exchange inbox and in some cases other people on the server also.

Now out of the box outlook on a PC allows you to view All Distribution groups / lists / contacts you can “send as” with a From drop down list at the top of composing a new email.

Outlook 2011 on a Mac does not. And this is VERY dissapointing as it was one of the features I was most interested in getting in the latest release to Mac.

In any case I did a quick search and found a readyexchange.net artical that fixed me up. And thought I would share with you all! Saved me doing a writeup so here is the link. Check it out. https://exchange.readyexchange.net/support/kb/default.asp?id=2116

C-Media AC97 Codec Audio Rack 2.11 driver download

Model:	AC97 Codec Audio Rack 2.11
Vendor:	C-Media
Category:	Sound Card
OS:	Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
Download UpdateMyDrivers to get the most current drivers for your computer. Download

Windows help system

Windows provides a help system that most software developers use to provide immediate help to the users of their Windows applications. The help is displayed by pressing F1 or selecting the Help menu in the application. The help windows can remain on screen so that you can try things out while you read the instructions.

Help Compilers
There are several authoring programs for creating help for a Windows application. Help screens can also be developed in Word or a word processor that supports the RTF document format. A help compiler, which comes with various developers’ toolkits, converts the RTF files into the final form required by the Windows help system.

Following are the various help files that are created on the fly the first time Help is used. They are regenerated if the files are deleted.

 File Type Purpose
 GID (Global Index) Hidden master index
 CNT (Contents) Content topics
 FTS (Full Text Search) Index for text searching
 FTG (Full Text Group) Links to other help files
 ANN (Annotations) User annotations
 BMK (Bookmarks) User bookmarks

NorthBright CHM Tool Can Convert Windows Help CHM Files To HTML Format

CHM (Compiled HTML Help) is a format of help files, which is developed by Microsoft for publishing help manuals with their software and application releases. CHM is a compiled file which consists of hyperlinked table of contents referring towards corresponding main content. As it is a compiled HTML help file, users are unable to publish/extract single page or multiple pages from a CHM file. NorthBright CHM Tool is a decompiler which is built especially to let user extract either specific page(s) from the CHM file or decompile all the included content.

The simple interface will let you easily get started with decompiling CHM file. All that is required is to specify CHM file and Output folder to save the decompiled CHM content.

It will immediately decompile the content into HTML files. This procedure will decompile all the CHM file content, if you need to save only a single page, open the CHM file and move to the page which you want to be extracted in HTML format. Now launch the application, it will automatically find the opened CHM page source and allow you to quickly decompile the page’s content. Click Save to specify the location of output folder.

The application worked fine during testing and decompiled one hefty CHM file in couple of seconds.

It runs on all Windows based OS, we tested it on Windows 7 x86 system.

Download NorthBright CHM Tool

Partition a USB Flash Drive in Windows XP

One way to Partition a USB Flash Drive from Windows XP and mark it active “bootable”. Windows detects Flash Drives as “Removable Disks” and flash drives are typically shipped formatted as a “Super Floppy” (USB-FDD without a partition table) . The Windows built in format utility cannot create a partition table on Removable Disks. Furthermore, the diskpart utility in Windows XP will not allow you to partition Removable Media, although diskpart does work for partitioning a Flash Drive from Windows Vista/7.

To address the inability to Partition a Flash Drive in Windows XP, you need to use a third party low level partitioning tool such as BOOTICE, created by Pauly. BOOTICE Home Page

Note: I partition my flash drives as USB-HDD (with a partition table), simply because my computers support booting from Flash Drives formatted to be seen as a USB Hard Disk.

One way to Partition a Flash Drive from Windows

1. Download BOOTICE, unzip, and run BOOTICE.EXE
2. Make sure your “USB Flash Drive” is set as the Destination Disk
3. Click Parts Manage
4. Click ReFormat USB Disk
5. Select USB-HDD mode, and click Next
6. Select Format as Fat32, and click OK

You should now have an active “bootable” USB-HDD Fat32 formatted Flash Drive, containing a partition table with a single partition. You should be able to Boot It as a Hard Drive.

Erase Empty Space on Hard Drive

In this simple solution, I cover one method to Erase Empty Space on a Hard Drive. By default when you send items to the Recycle Bin, Delete Email, Clear Browsing History, Etc, the information that occupied that space on your Hard Drive can still be recovered until that space is overwritten several times with new data.

You can easily prevent deleted data from being recovered by using a tool such as Eraser to Wipe the Empty Space on your Hard Drive and make the deleted data unrecoverable. Eraser does this by overwriting this empty space several times using various techniques.

Eraser Official Home Page: http://eraser.heidi.ie

How to Wipe Empty Space on a Hard Drive:

Note: In Windows Vista/7 you must right click eraser.exe and select to “Run as Administrator”

1. Download Portable Eraser (unzip, then run eraser.exe)
2. Click File > New Task
3. Select to “Erase Unused Space on drive“, Make sure the correct drive is selected, and Click OK to proceed.
4. Now simply Right Click the Task from the Window, and Select Run

Once Eraser has finished, the empty space on your select Drive should be irrecoverable.

Restore GRUB2 after installing Windows

How I Restored GRUB2 after a Windows 7 Install. GRUB2 (Grand Unified Bootloader) is a universal bootloader used by Ubuntu and other Linux Distributions. If you have a Linux Distribution installed on a partition, and attempt to install Windows alongside it, your GRUB bootloader will be overwritten by the Windows bootloader, and your computer will only boot into Windows.

Recovering the GRUB2 Bootloader after a Windows Install is simple. When finished, your Bootloader should detect all installed Operating Systems and automatically add a bootable menu item for each of them.

Note: This GRUB2 Installation process assumes that a Linux Partition still exists. If you overwrote Linux with Windows, this tutorial will not work for you, as there is no Linux system to recover boot.

How to Restore GRUB2 after installing Windows:

1. Boot from an Ubuntu Live CD or Live USB
2. Once up and running, Open a Terminal
3. Type sudo su (press enter after typing each command)
4. Type fdisk -l
5. Note which device contains your Linux partition (IE: /dev/sda1)
6. Type mount /dev/sdx# /mnt (replacing x# with your actual device and partition number)
7. Type mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
8. Type mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
9. Type cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf
10. Type chroot /mnt
11. Type grub-install --recheck /dev/sdx (replacing x with your actual device)
12. Type reboot (to reboot your PC)

Make sure to remove your Live USB or CD. Upon reboot you should be presented with a GRUB2 menu. However, Windows is missing. Now, I show you how to fix that.

Making GRUB 2 detect Windows Installs:

1. Proceed to boot into your Linux environment.
2. Open a terminal and type sudo update-grub (enter your root password when prompted)

If all went well, grub should have updated it’s menu entries to reflect what it detected. Including existing Windows partitions.

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Computer Slow Down Issues And Solutions

If you find yourself getting frustrated and annoyed at your slow computer, you are not alone. Most PC owners are likely to face problems sooner or later. Often within a few months of buying a PC, you may notice that it is not performing like new. Unfortunately, most of the time no action is taken until your PC becomes frustratingly slow and leads to a major loss in productivity.

While some of the slowing down of your computer can be attributed to the burden on its resources, most of the time, computer slowdowns are just symptoms of some other underlying issue. When faced with this problem, your first instinct may be to call up a computer expert to help you resolve it, however, there is no need to escalate the issue and you can take care of most PC problems if you cover a few things on your end.

• Clean and Defrag your Hard Drive: Your hard disk starts getting cluttered from the day you start working on a new computer as all kinds of data gets continuously added and deleted from it. After a while, it may be difficult to find anything on your hard disk. This situation can be avoided by using the Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter tools. While the former will help you get rid of unnecessary clutter, the latter will help you reorganize the files in your hard disk to make them faster to access. These are system tools provided by your operating system and they go a long way in making your system fast.
• Select Programs Carefully: It is easy to get carried away and install many new and exciting applications on your computer. The flip side of this is that every time you do that you put an additional burden on your computer. Also, each of these applications bring along their own specific bugs and errors. For example, installing Norton security suite makes you vulnerable to ccsvchst.exe high CPU usage problems—especially if you fail to update the software on a regular basis. So, you must be judicious in installing applications on your PC and must get rid of unwanted ones immediately. You can use the Add/Remove Programs utility available in your Control Panel to achieve this. If the software is large or if there are some problems with the un-installation process, you may use a good, third-party program uninstaller tool to do the job.
• Maintain a Healthy Registry: It has been observed that slow computers tend to have bloated and cluttered windows registries. In addition to the bad performance of your PC, an unhealthy registry is known to cause numerous registry errors and disrupt your work. Therefore, you must maintain a healthy windows registry. This can be achieved either by manually editing your registry or by simply downloading a popular registry cleaner from the Internet. You must opt for manual editing of the registry only if you are sure of what you are looking for, otherwise, you should delegate this task to a registry cleaner that will clean your registry in just a few minutes.

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Reboot or Shutdown from Remote Desktop Connection

Reboot or Shutdown from Remote Desktop Connection: The following simple solution covers the process of rebooting a machine from a remote location or shutting down a remote computer. The process assumes your using Microsoft’s (RDC) or “Remote Desktop Connection”. By default, Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop Connection only enables a user to disconnect or log off. This solution will allow you to Shutdown or Reboot that remote PC.

How to Reboot or Shutdown a Machine from Remote Desktop

Windows Vista Remote Desktop Shutdown – Reboot:

1. Click Start from the taskbar
2. From the “Start Search” box type one of the following commands and press Enter:

shutdown -f to shutdown
shutdown -r -f to reboot
shutdown -i -f to display the Shutdown Dialog Menu

Windows XP Remote Desktop Shutdown – Reboot:

1. Click Start > Run from the taskbar
2. Type one of the following commands and click OK:

shutdown -f to shutdown
shutdown -r -f to reboot
shutdown -i -f to display the Shutdown Dialog Menu