Archive for the ‘Windows XP’ category

Total PC Health Review

February 2nd, 2011

OK, I started using this product a couple weeks back. Initially i was a bit sceptical. I thought I am just downloading yet another Registry cleaner which would pretty much give me the same old results.

Well I was actually pretty shocked. This software certainly isn’t the run of the mill Registry cleaner, in fact it is kind of hard to explain, but I was completely impressed. First i will try and explain what the product is, then give a breakdown of all the actual features.

Total PC Health is not just a PC cleaner. It is an all-in-one tool that has all the features you need to totally fix your PC and improve performance. The scan model in this product is actually five scans built into one. It will scan the Registry, drivers, processes, privacy and Malware. Overall I think the scan took like 45 seconds, but this was on a decent PC. I expect slower scans, depending on how many errors.

The scan detected about 38 errors and 12 out-of-date drivers. What it also detected were all of my privacy items such as chat logs, internet browsing history, Office history etc. This was pretty cool because I don’t normally use a privacy cleaner, but i can see why it would be useful (i have now shredded some stuff that shouldn’t be seen).

Besides the scan and repair, I also found a bunch of other features in this product. There are disk defrag tools, duplicate file finder, file extension locator, temp files cleaner, startup process manager, restore point manager, etc.  To be honest, I haven’t gone through all of the features yet, as I find the quick scan and repair quite sufficient. But I think as an overall PC optimization tool, this is going to be hard to beat.

Here i will try and list all of the features I located in this application:

  • Registry cleaner and Registry repair
  • Automatic driver updater
  • Disk defrag analysis and repair (with scheduler)
  • Privacy cleaner and shredder
  • Duplicate file finder
  • Process optimizer and process manager
  • Startup manager
  • Browser helper object manager
  • Disk cleanup
  • Malware removal
  • File extension fix

That is a pretty impressive set of tools to have in one interface. To sum it all up, an excellent product that I now have on three of my PCs. I just can’t tell you how handy it is to have a driver updater with Registry cleaner. This saves me so much time and I no longer need to run two different programs.

PROS: Multiple scan models, tons of excellent features. You can easily fix PC errors and optimize with this product. If this doesn’t fix up your PC, nothing will.

CONS: I think the Malware remover needs a bit of work. It does find stuff, but I don’t think it finds everything. Also, some of the menu browsing was a bit confusing. You just need to get acquainted with the green arrows in the top right.

I highly recommend this product. You can get it from the link below, or via Softpedia.

Total PC Health

Total PC Health on Softpedia

Related Blogs

Spyware Reminder

September 2nd, 2009

We have received a few emails lately from users that have had their PCs compromised by spyware, so we thought it would be good to add a quick reminder: Always scan your computer for malware and spyware!

It is very easy to forget about these types of tasks, but you might already be infected without even knowing about it. Malware can get onto your system via malicious websites, emails, from compromised networks, USB drives and much more.

The obvious type of malware known as adware will display random pop-ups and hijack your browser. You will know when you are infected. But things like trojans can sit on your PC and record keystrokes and send this data to a remote location. These threats are far more serious and you can lose important data and financial information.

We recommend that you use a third party anti-spyware tool and run this on a regular basis. At least once per week. The good software will automatically scan your PC on a regular basis and they will download the latest definitions to ensure you are not infected with the latest and greatest malware.

You can try a free scan with XoftSpySE below. This is a great product and will keep your PC safe.

Run a Spyware and Malware Scan Now – Free Download

Need to Recover Lost Photos?

November 20th, 2008

If you need to recover lost photos, images or videos then you need not worry any longer.

There is a great new product that does exactly that. It recovers lost, corrupt and even missing photos from virtually any type of digital camera. It also has the capability to recover photos from hard drives, flash drives and pretty much any other type of media device.

The formats you can recover are not just limited to the typical image files (eg: gif, jpg, tiff, bmp). This product also recovers video files and sound files. So no matter what you have captured through your digital camera, it can be recovered (if necessary). Even if the SD card or flash drive has corrupted the files, there is still hope.

This product is called Stellar Photo Recovery and has become very popular for recovering data. Most of us have lost some important photos at one time or another, and with digital cameras it is all too easy to just press one button and lose data. It is also very common for image files to become corrupt due to the storage media they are on, so this is yet another reason for having this product on hand.

Try the free download below. It will allow you to recover files from any media device and you can specify which type of files to locate. It’s very easy to use.

Free download – Stellar Photo Recovery

Print Selected Text From the Web

November 19th, 2008

Have you ever visited a website and wanted just a bit of content from the page, but ended up printing the whole web page?

Well most users are not aware that they can actually print off just a selection of text. So instead they end up wasting tons of paper printing a whole web site when they could have just printed off the part they needed.

OK, so here is how you can print off a selection of text from a web page.

  • Select the text you want to print, by clicking the mouse and highlighting the text.
  • Right-click on the selected text and choose “Print”
  • On the print dialog, under “Page Range”, check the option called “Selection”

That will just print off your selected text. Now you can save paper and save time!

Disable the CD Autorun

November 13th, 2008

Autorun occurs when a CD or DVD is inserted into a Windows computer. When this happens, Windows looks for a file called autorun.inf. If the file exists on the CD/DVD, the instructions in the file will be followed – generally to run a .exe or other installer type file.

There is malicious software out there that relies on the autorun feature in order to execute and infect computers, so many users these days are turning the autorun feature off. You will have slightly better security with it turned off, but you will then have to manually run the contents on the CD/DVD.

To disable the autorun, you will need to edit the Windows registry. Always be careful when editing the registry and you do so at your own risk.

Click start -> run, type “regedit” to fire up the registry editor:

Browse to the location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

If “NoDriveTypeAutoRun” does not exist, Right click on the “Explorer” folder, select New -> DWORD value. Call the key “NoDriveTypeAutoRun”.

Set the value of this key to B1. To turn it back on, set the value to 91.

Vista and Autorun

In Windows Vista you will be prompted with a dialog asking you what you want to do. You can either choose to run the file or you can set the defaults. When you choose to set the defaults you will see the following options. (these options can also be accessed via the control panel)

Vista autoplay

So for each type of media, you can choose whether it autoplays or whether you should be prompted. For things like software it is a good idea to be prompted everytime. You never know what might be lurking on a CD/DVD.

Uninstalling Annoying Programs

November 7th, 2008

If you want to uninstall a program on Windows XP or Vista, you can do so by going to the Control Panel and selecting the “Add or Remove Programs” option. Then you just browse through the list and select the programs you want to remove.

This generally works pretty well, but in some cases there will be programs that cannot be removed via this method. Quite often spyware/adware applications wont uninstall and some programs that are missing their uninstall file also won’t be going anywhere in a hurry.

The options are to just leave the program hanging around in the program list and delete its folder and related files, however, this does not necessarily remove the registry entries for the program. In the case of some adware, it can reinstall itself if it still exists in the registry.

So for really stubborn programs we recommend something like Perfect Uninstaller. This should be able to uninstall pretty much anything. It’s a very simple program to use and it does the job. If you need to remove something, try it out via the free download trial below:

Uninstally annoying and unwanted programs

Add Items to the Start Menu

October 30th, 2008

When you click the start menu, on the left hand side it shows items that you commonly use. These items can be rotated based on use.

However, you can add more items to this part of the menu and it can make life alot easier.

All you need to do is click “Start”, then “All Programs”, then you just right-click on whatever you wish to add and then select “Pin to Start menu”.

The item will now show up when you click on “Start” in the main menu programs.

Windows XP Virtual Memory Tweaking

October 21st, 2008

If your system has limited RAM, and you can’t update due to hardware constraints etc, then you might try upping the size of the Windows XP paging file.

This is a very simple little tweak and it may prove useful if you are using alot of applications at once and hence consuming lots of memory.

To change your XP virtual memory:

  • Click “Start”, then right-click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”
  • Click on the “Advanced” tab
  • Click the “Settings” button under the “Performance” heading
  • Click the “Advanced” tab
  • Under the “Virtual Memory” label, click on “Change”
  • Here you can select the drive to use for the paging file and size. For size you can set an initial size and maximum

Windows XP Virtual Memory

If you are using up alot of memory and resources, give that a try and see if it helps boost performance!!

Cleanup the Desktop in Windows XP

October 3rd, 2008

This is a pretty simple tweak, but can be very useful for keeping your desktop clean and clutter free. The XP desktop cleanup works be helping you remove shortcuts that are not used very often.

What we will do is set Xp to automatically run the desktop cleanup wizard every 60 days.

  • Right-click on your desktop
  • Select properties
  • Click on the “Desktop” tab
  • Click “Customize Desktop”
  • Then check the box “Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days”
  • You can also run the desktop cleanup immediately by clicking the “Clean Desktop Now” button.

Done. You now have a nice clean desktop.

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Cleanup and Remove PC Errors – Free Scan

 

Download Yahoo Messenger 9.0

September 26th, 2008

Yahoo Messenger 9.0 is now available and integrates with the latest versions of Windows XP and Vista.  Of course it comes with a bunch of new features and redesigned interface and is ready to compete with the latest release of Windows Live Messenger.

One of the new features is the Yahoo Messenger Pingbox. This lets users IM you without the need for Messenger or a Yahoo ID. There will also be a few new skins and more emoticons. Overall it is a better and easier to use product.

The new Pingbox feature:

Yahoo Messenger Pingbox

 

For all of you Yahoo Messenger fans, you can download the latest version below.

Download Yahoo Messenger 9 Here