Fix PC Errors

The new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 will have a new feature known as private browsing, some are calling this feature “porn mode”.

You can probaby figure out what this is all about. Microsoft is including this new feature that will allow users to completely cover their browsing tracks. It will allow for things such as deleting selected cookies, browsing history and much more.

I think this will be a useful feature for users, not just for those wanting to browse porn sites, but for greater privacy in general, especially those using shared computers.

For many users it might be important to keep both Windows XP and Windows Vista running. In our office we have about 4 PCs running both, so lets look at a quick guide to setting up a Windows Vista/Windows XP dual boot. We will assume you already have XP installed and will be installing Vista as the second OS.

For the dual boot setup you will need separate partitions or hard drives. I always recommend separate hard drives as I find it cleaner and easier. Either way, just do not install Vista onto the existing XP partition as that will kill it. If you are going to partition an existing drive, just give it enough space to fit Vista. 20Gb+ will be enough.

Installing Vista

You can start installing Vista either from XP or from bootup. To run from bootup you may need to change the BIOS to boot from the CD drive.

When the installation starts you want to select “Custom”. The upgrade option will upgrade XP. So don’t select that.

The next step requires you to select which drive to install Vista on. Make sure you select your other drive/partition that does not have XP on it. Then let the installation process run its course.

Post Installation

After the installtion is complete and the system reboots you will see the following boot menu. To change this you will need to modify the bootloader in Vista.

To edit the the boot manager in Vista, run the command BCEDIT. Note: BCEDIT is not an easy tool to use and it is completely command line driven. Instead we recommend a tool such as EasyBCD created by NeoSmart.

If you install EasyBCD, then all you need to do is click on the “Configure Boot” button. Here you can change the “Earlier Version of Windows” to Windows XP. Now when you reboot the menu will display correctly.

Have fun!!

Here are a few tips and tweaks you can do to increase the overall speed of your Internet explorer 7, by doing these you should experience faster IE7 browsing.

Phishing Filter

This feature is designed to protect you from being tricked into accessing a dodgy website, but it does also slow down your website. If you do feel safe in turning off this feature just do the following;

• Open tools
• Under phishing filter click phishing filter settings
• Scroll down to the phishing filter section
• Check disable phishing filter
• Click apply and you are done

Turn off your SSVHelper Class

Your SSVHelper Class is a file which is part of the Java plug-in, it is basically a non-essential file and it does slow down your IE7. To turn off this feature just follow this;

• Open tools
• In manage add-ons click enable or disable add-ons
• Go down to SSVHelper Class and click on it
• Now underneath click disable and then click OK

Turn off RRS Feeds

You may not have this feature (automatically checking RRS feeds) enabled but if you do you will find it can slow down your IE7 quite a bit. If you want to disable this feature or check that it is not running then follow this;

• Click tools
• Open internet options
• Click the content tab
• In the feeds area click settings
• Uncheck automatically check feeds for updates
• Click OK and you are done

Disable ClearType

ClearType is a feature on that is designed to sharpen fonts on your Windows display, but it can also slow down the running of your Internet Explorer 7. If you want to disable your ClearType just follow these points;

• Click tools
• Open internet options
• Click the advanced tab
• Scroll down till you see Always use ClearType for HTML*
• Click apply and OK

Run a Registry Clean

One of the simplest methods you can do to improve any application on your PC is to run a registry repair, this will clean up your computer and allow you Internet Explorer 7 to run faster. To run a registry scan just click the link below and follow the prompts;

Run a registry scan for Internet Explorer 7

With Windows 7 on the way, Microsoft has just released a new blog that is dedicated to the engineering of Windows 7.

The blog is headed up by two of the senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product and along with their team they will all post and comment at the blog.

The blog is intended to be a two way discussion with the developers and users of Windows. It will also give anyone interested in software development a good look into the challenges of a very large scale project - picking features, designing them, developing them, and delivering them with high quality. Windows has an added challenge of doing so for an extraordinarily diverse set of customers.

Overall this should be an interested blog to follow and it will be cool to see how Windows 7 will progress.

Windows 7 Blog can be found here

Even the Olympics can’t happen without the dreaded blue screen of death. This was taken during the opening ceremony on Friday night just as the flame was about to be lit.

Here is a cool tool found in Windows Vista that lets you run a quick scan of your computer and checks its overall health. The scan checks the operating system, all hardware and security settings within your PC and offers solutions to any problems found.

The results are shown in an easy to read format with solutions beside each problem, these include;

• Errors
• Informational
• Basic system checks
• Resource overview
• Software configuration
• Hardware configuration
• CPU
• Network
• Disk Memory, and
• Report statistics

These results can essentially solve many problems you have with your PC, the report also takes the guess work and trial and error out of identifying problems. eg: Maybe you think RAM is a problem, but it could just be your CPU consumed by a background process. Run this report before trying any drastic tweaks.

 To run a system health report just follow these steps;

• Open control panel
• Click system and maintenance
• Click performance information and tools
• Click advanced tools
• Click generate a system health report
• It will take a moment to scan and then give you the results

We just recenly posted on some of the new features coming out in MSN Live Messenger 9.0 and now we can happily tell you there are some leaked screenshots.

There are quite a few new features with new colors and headers. All of the dialogs are also styled properly. As far as features go, there is a major new feature called Groups (you can probably figure out how that works). There is also a photoshare feature which looks promising.

You can view some of the leaked screenshots here

Intel announced yesterday that its latest desktop processors will be branded as Intel® Core™. This will be known is i7 and formally branded as Intel® Core™ i7 processor.

Products based on this new microarchitecture will be set to deliver both energy efficiency and high performance.  The Core i7 is also set to be a true quad core processor unlike some previous versions that were more like two dual core processors.

Intel will be focusing much of its future efforts around the Core i7 product and brand. Products based on this microarchitecture should go into production towards the end of this year. These processors will feature Intel Hyper-Threading technology and will be capable of handling eight software threads on four processor cores.

Outlook Express is such a good email program used by millions all over the world, but after a while you may get problems with startup speed and other slow errors.

I used to get so frustrated with the speed of my Outlook opening, it sometimes took up to 2 minutes just to open. This was just an annoyance when I needed to access emails fast. I discovered this cool tweak that you can do that will increase the speed of your outlook startup dramatically.

Basically, every time you get an email your Outlook will store it in a file, so after a while this file will become huge. You need to go through your emails and delete all the useless emails you do not need, this should free up some space and make your startup faster. The startup will become faster because your Outlook has to look through this entire file every time it starts up.

Even after you delete a bunch of old emails you may find that your Outlook still takes a while to start up. This is due to that fact that your outlook still has to look through the entire file for emails, whether it is full or empty, so you need to compact this file to make sure your startup is fast.

Follow these points to compact your personal folders file in Outlook;

• Open up your Outlook
• Click tools
• Open up options
• Click the mail setup tab
• Open up data files
• Click on settings
• Click compact now
• It may take a minute or two
• Done

This should help you increase the startup speed of your Outlook and stop the frustration of waiting minutes to see emails, but remember also to regularly delete unwanted emails to keep your personal folders clean.

For more info on cleaning Outlook Express click here

From time to time we give people advice on how to make backups of their DVDs and for those of new to it, hopefully this quick little guide will put you on the right track.

Note: This info should only be used for backing up your own DVDs and not for circumventing copyright protection.

Backing up DVDs is a little more tricky to CDs. Especially if you are trying to backup certain movies and DVDs with encryption. This is where DVD Shrink comes in handy. This awesome piece of FREE software will allow you to easily backup any DVD.  DVD Shrink overcomes encryption with its own built-in algorithms, it also shrinks DVDs to a size that can fit onto a single DVD-R disk.

Using DVD Shrink is extremely simple. The software is lightweight and installs in less than a minute. Once installed, you simply select a DVD then click the “Backup” button and it will get shrunk to your hard drive or external drive. From here you can then burn the image using something like Nero.

Remember, this software is FREE and it is one of the best around for backing up your DVDs.

Download DVD Shrink here