Techtrends

As you know NTFS is a high-performance and self-healing file system proprietary to Windows XP / Vista / 2003 / 2000 & NT, which supports file-level security, compression and auditing. It also supports large volumes and powerful storage solution such as RAID.
The most important feature of NTFS is the ability to encrypt files and folders to protect your sensitive data.
To enable NTFS on your USB Flash Drive follow the steps

• Right click My Computer and select Manage.
• Open the Device Manager and find your USB drive under the Disk Drives heading.
• Right click the drive and select Properties.
• Choose Policies tab and select the "Optimize for performance" option.
• Click OK.
• Open My Computer.
• Select Format on the flash drive.
• Choose NTFS in the File System dropdown box.
• Device Formatting is completed.

To remove a device safely without data loss use a "safely remove hardware" procedure or Eject function from Windows Explorer.[via - ntfs]
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There are lots of methods to protect your personal files from private access, for example, by using software like folder lock, or by hiding folders, etc. but if you have thousands of confidential files or folders to hide, selecting and hiding every folder would be time consuming. The easiest way is to hide the particular hard drive that has your confidential files.
To do this we can use TweakUI, one of Microsoft’s Power Toy that allows to access system settings that are not available in Windows XP default user interface. With a few click we can hide a particular drive easily.Download the app and install it. Run TweakUI, go to “My Computer - Drives“, and uncheck the drive that you want it to be invisible and click “Apply”.
It will be disappeared immediately. To access your hidden drive again, just type the drive letter in address bar.[source]
Download TweakUI
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Foxit PDF reader is a lightweight PDF document viewer and printer (only 2.55 MB against the more than 20 MB of Adobe Reader) and launches instantly without any delay. It does not install and run any services in the background or starts automatically when Windows starts like Adobe PDF reader and required a very little resources.
If you are using Foxit PDF Reader (standard version), you have surely noticed a banner displayed on the upper right side of the window. You have required a pro version to remove this banner (How to get a free license for pro version of Foxit PDF reader for 1 year?).However the developer provides the opportunity to remove this without a pro version. Just go to ‘View’ – ‘Advertisement’ and uncheck it. However, when you restart the program the banner will return to its place. Repeat the processes for 5 times to remove the banner forever. [Source]
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It is sure that we are all using different kind of antivirus software, free or paid, for our computer’s security. But how can we know how well this antivirus software protects us. It is very dangerous to visit such a malicious web site to test our software. To that Softwaretipspalace has a solution - a very simple test for Windows users.

To test our antivirus software in full safety, we need to create a false virus file Eicar. This file is detected as a virus by the antivirus software, but it is not like one, it does not contain any viral code. If the false virus is detected, it is that your antivirus software is active and protects you.

• To create this virus open Notepad
• Copy the following character string in the Notepad

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

• Name this file as aicar.com and save it
• If your antivirus is correctly activated, it must then alert you instantaneously the presence of the Eicar virus.
• Then ask your antivirus software to remove this file.

If the antivirus does not detect anything, then there might be a problem. It could be because of two reasons: permanent protection is badly configured or there were some problems during antivirus installation. Look in to these and correct it.

And if the false virus is still not detected, you must then seriously think of changing anti-virus software.

In my case, I tested this with Avast antivirus software. Avast detected and removed it completely.

Track - Windowsxlive
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Following are some very simple tips for improving performance of Windows XP and most of you are already familiar with these tips.

>Found that many of my friend’s computers take long time to open ‘My Computer’. This is simply because by default Windows search all network folders and printers before opening ‘My Computer’. To fix this problem, Open windows explorer-select ‘Tools’ – click on ‘Folder options’. From the pop up window select ‘View’ and un check ‘Automatically search for network folders and printers’ and click ‘apply’. Now see the difference.

>May be some of you face such problem like not responding of Windows XP after start up; for example after installing a transformation pack like VTP. There are many reasons for such a situation. A simple fix is here. All of you know how to defrag windows by windows defrag tool and it is necessary to optimize fragmented files. However you can not defrag the page file and registry. The reason is that Windows XP does not provide access these files while operating. Read More….

>You can also use system cleaner software like CCleaner or Glary Utilities to clean junk files.

For more like tips click here

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An appropriate icon is essential for many applications . Visit at Mayosof where you can download many icons in different category for different application. For example, icons for Recycle Bin / Trash , Gmail, Office, Multimedia, etc. All icons are available in PNG and ICO and are free to download and use

To change Recycle Bin icon in Windows XP,
> Right click on desktop- select properties
>Desktop Tab, Customize Desktop Button, then Select the Recycle bin Icon to change, and hit the Change button
> Browse the Icon (.ico) that you want to change.
License: Free
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Index.dat files records all details of your internet browsing habits and you can’t uninstall them in a normal method. Even deleting cookies and internet history files retains these index.dat files.

Here discussing two methods for completely removing Index.dat files.

1. In Windows XP, while booting your computer select ‘advanced booting’ option by pressing F5 or F8 on the key board. Select ‘Safe mode with command prompt’ and log in as Administrator. Now go to root directory and type in “delindex.dat /s” which will delete all Index.dat files.

2. You can delete Index.dat files very easily with a small utility Delete doctor. The software is very small, below 100kb in size and no installation required. Just run the exe file and select the root directory of all Index.dat file (example: ‘my document and settings’) and schedule for deletion upon system restart.

You can also delete other files like files left by Trojans or corrupted files. Select a file to delete from the built-in file browser or drag a file to the application's icon or window from Window's Explorer.

License - Free

Home Page

Download

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To improve your system performance Hard disk should be tune up properly. If your hard disk is fully loaded with large amount of data it struggles to keep pace with other components. There is lot of software available for tune up HDD, but here I am not mentioning about software.

Remember that old computers with less than 256MB of RAM should not try this. The method is optimizing memory to handle the ‘interrupts’ emerged due to the HDD. You can configure the buffer to optimize the memory.

Go to Start - Run - type sysedit and hit enter. This will open System Configuration Editor. Now you can see four windows open namely- System.INI, Config.SYS, WIN.INI and Autoexec.Bat. Now expand System.ini window and look for [386enh]

Now place the courser after it and press 'Enter' button on the keyboard to create a new row under it. Here type Irq14=4096 (These letters are case sensitive so enter it exactly as shown).

Now go to File and save the configuration. Close the System Configuration Editor and restart the

computer.

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The functioning of a half empty system’s hard disk at slow pace, even after you run defrag, is annoying. The fragmentation of saved files by Windows XP throughout the complete disk memory is directly proportional to the space occupied in the hard disk.

You can easily optimize your system by defragging almost all fragmented files for quick access using XP’s defrag tool, but not the page file and registry. The reason is that Windows XP does not provide access these files while operating.

Paging and Registry file fragmentation can be one of the leading causes of performance degradation. The page files and registry files can easily be optimized for quick access using the ‘page defrag’ tool.

You can download it from Microsoft .File size is only 70kb. Unzip the archive in to any directory. Start the file ‘pagedfrg.exe’ and activate ‘Defragment at next boot’. The tool latches itself at the next boot before the operating system starts and defrags the system files.

Windows then boots and the hard disk then start functioning with its usual speed again.

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You may know what is DNS? When you type a URL of a website, the URL needs to be translated into a numeric IP address that Web servers and Internet routers can understand. Here the DNS server does the translation job. Normally your computer will automatically use the default DNS servers specified by your ISP, so you need not set up a DNS server. When you type an URL, for example, if a delay occurred in contacting the DNS server, or the DNS server takes too much time to analyze the address, you'll face a delay in getting to a Web site. So even if you use a fastest broadband, your Web surfing will be slowed down.

Here is a simple way to hack your PC to speed up your web surfing. Just visit OpenDNS that helps you navigate the Internet in a safer, faster, smarter and more reliable way. The service is free and requires nothing to download and is available for all operating system – Windows, Mac or Linux.

For a step by step description just visit Computerworld.com - (for Windows XP and Vista)

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Open the registry editor by going to Start- Run-type ‘regidit’ and push enter. Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem\NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation. Set the value to ‘1’. Exit the registry and re boot the system.

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It is quite easy to set ‘blank’ as Internet Explorer default home page by going to Control panel - Internet option. But, do you want to set IE’s default home page to Google, Yahoo or Live search or anything you want, just follow the method given .

Click Start -> Run -> Type gpedit.msc -> Enter

Click on ‘User Configuration’ from the left side box. Next, in the right pane double click on ‘Windows settings’-> ‘Internet Explorer Maintenance’-> ‘URLs’-> ‘Important URLs’

Here you can add home page URL like http://www.google.com/ or your choice. Click OK.

There are also two options for you to add URLs - Search bar URL and Support URL
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The base of Windows XP is ‘Kernel’. It uses the Slower Paging Executive function which slows down the performance. If we put the kernel in to RAM to run, the performance will increase because as we know anything that runs from the RAM will be faster than that run from hard drive or Virtual memory. Do the following hack. Open the registry editor, go to-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \ Session manager \ MemoryManagement \ DisablePagingExecutive. Change the value to ‘1’ to disable paging and have the kernel run in RAM. Set the value to ‘0’ undo the hack. Exit the registry editor and reboot.

[Only do this if your system has 256Mb or more RAM]

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Our day to day computer usages overload the prefetch folder of Windows XP which may slow down our computer. XP uses a system called ‘prefething’ to organize and preload some of the data necessary for commonly used application.

It is a good idea to clear the prefetch folder that become overloaded with reference to files longer in use.

We can manually delete the older files from the prefetch folder. To do this go to C:\Windows\prefectch and delete all the .PF files that are older than a week or two.

How can you find the older files? Just place mouse over a file and see the date.

Clear out the prefetch folder every few months or so.

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While adding a new hard drive to the system after the installation of Windows XP, the drive letters of the new partition succeed that of the optical drive. For those who like to have the optical drive’s letter last in the list under ‘My Computer’, you need to interchange the drive letters.

>Disable optical drive(s) before interchange the drive letters. If the optical drive is active, you won’t be able to interchange the drive letters of the new hard disk and the optical drive. To disable do the following.

> Right click on ‘My Computer’ à ‘Properties’. Under the ‘System properties’ click ‘Hardware’ à ‘Device Manager’. Expand the heading ‘DVD/CD-ROM’ drives. Right click on the listed optical drives and disable them. Exit the ‘Device manager’.

>Now, right click on “My Computer” and select “Manage” from the context menu to bring up “Computer Management”. Select “Disk management” under the heading “Storage”. All the existing partitions will get listed in the right pane. Right click on the drive letter you wish to change and select the option “Change Drive Letter and Paths”. Click on the “Change” button in the next dialog box and choose the new drive letter from the drop down list.

>Since you disabled the optical drive, you will now get the option to assign the drive letter previously assigned to it. Click on “OK” and exit the “Computer Management” application. Now, enable the optical drives you had disabled. Head back to the “Device Manager” and enable optical drives.

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LocalCooling is an application that automatically optimizes your PC's power consumption by using an effective power save mode. You will be able to see your savings in real-time

LocalCooling is a free power management tool from Uniblue Labs that allows users to optimize their energy savings. It gives you full control over your power mode settings of computers.

You can set to any time to switch off your monitor, spin down hard disk or completely switch off computer itself. And also if you are playing MP3 or Video movie etc you can also instruct LocalCooling to never shut down PC. It gives detailed information about the power consumption of your monitor, CPU, hard disk, graphic card and other peripherals using in the computer. Installation is very simple and settings are easy to do even by a novice.

Software is 2.5Mb. OS-windows XP. Download

“More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we’re not using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion dollars! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent in energy terms to the gas consumption used by one car”. Learn More About PC Power Consumption...

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By default Gmail chat doesn’t work with Opera. This is because Gmail is sniffing out Opera. Here is a simple solution to overcome this.

Open Gmail (gmail.google.com)in Opera. Right click any ware on the page and click on the ‘Edit site preferences’. Under ‘network’ tab, change identification option to ‘mask as Firefox’. Now click on ok and refresh the page to start using Google chat from Gmail.

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First off all use the power management features of laptop to improve battery life. You can set the device to switch off the LCD screen and hard drive after a set interval of time.

Bright screen consumes a lot of battery power .So reduce screen brightness when you are not connected to the power source.

Close any application you are not using when on battery power. Running application increases CPU utilization which reduces battery life.

External accessories like external optical drive, PC cards and USB key board lights draw power from the notebook. Disconnect such devices when not in use.

Booting the laptop draws more current. When it not connects to a power source, instead of shutting down your laptop in the middle of a conference, choose the suspend mode if you wish to use it again after a short period of time.

Playing graphic intensive games, videos, or music drains the battery quickly. Close such application when on battery.

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By default windows uses the spooling technique for print job, which is a background program that writes data to temporary files in C:\Windows\Temp directory. The final print command is send to the printer through the spooler, allowing you to perform other tasks while you print. This might actually slow the printing process that is by writing data to temporary files and then printing.

There must be number of occasions that you only need to print multiple documents or photographs without do any other tasks. So you can disable the spooling technique. This will tie up your application until the printer has all the data, but your print job should finish more quickly.

On most printers you can turn off the spooler. Go to start-settings-printers. Right click on the icon of the printer you are using, Click properties and select advanced tab. Select the print directly to the printer option.

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To capture images from Windows media player press CTRL + I key simultaneously.

Before captures image turned on video mixing rendering from

Tools >Options > Performance >Advanced. Check the box video mixing rendering if not checked.

Captured images saved at my picture directory.

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