How to Lock your PC – but not your screen – with KeyFreeze

If you’re leaving your PC unattended for a while then locking it (pressing Win+L) can be a sensible precaution, as it prevents others from viewing your files or interfering with running programs. The Windows Lock function also hides the current contents of the screen, though, annoying if you want to leave a movie playing, or perhaps monitor the progress of some lengthy task you’re running. And that’s why might sometimes prefer KeyFreeze, which locks your PC but leaves the screen active, just as before. The program is tiny – a single 341KB executable – and portable. There are no unwanted extras here, just unzip it and you’re ready to go. When you need to lock your system, just launch it. You’ll see a five second countdown, just...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Tips

Quickly search and explore thousands of plain text files with Depeche View Lite

Searching one or two plain text files is easy. Windows Search and Notepad will probably be enough. But when you need to browse ten files, a hundred, maybe even thousands, then you’re likely to need a little specialist assistance. And that’s where the free-for-personal-use Depeche View Lite comes in. Point this tiny portable program at a location and it will open every plain text file in that folder tree (up to a maximum of 10,000 in this build, anyway – the $40 commercial version is unrestricted). These are all displayed in a flat view, one above the other, and that alone can be useful as it’s easy to scroll down and browse them all. When you do have a lot of files then you’ll soon want to start searching, of course, and this is...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Tips

How to speed up your internet connection

Does your broadband seem a bit sluggish? If so, there may just be a simple solution.You'll need:    A computer connected to the internet. Follow these step-by-step instructions to find out how to speed up your internet connectionStep 1: Read our guide on How to check your internet speed and discover what speed your broad connection is actually producing.Step 2: Find out what speed you’re paying your internet provider (ISP) for. You may have to phone them to get the answer to this. If you’ve had your broadband for some time, it may be time to upgrade.Step 3: Check what speed is achievable in your area. This is also covered in our guide on checking your internet speed. A number of ISP’s are starting to use Optical fibres instead...

Read more »

Posted in: Internet,Tips

How to hide your important data from other users?

 Normally when you need to secure your important data from other users, then your first choice is to burn it on CD or put it to removable drive instead of hard drive. But imagine if your data size is more than 100 GB then it is not easy to burn it on CD. No worry, you can save your full drive from other users access using this trick.Perform the given steps to hide your system data partition:     To enable this feature, you will need to be logged into your computer with administrative rights.          First click on Start button to open "Run" and type "CMD" (without the quotes) then press Ok button to open Command Prompt. Now type diskpart on the blinking cursor and wait for 5...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Tips

How to increase your system performance?

Window Disk Cleanup is very useful tool to increase the performance of your system. You can increase also the free space on the hard disk, because Disk Cleanup utility searches many unnecessary programs and files on your hard drive that you can delete. This tool perform many useful tasks to cleanup your hard disk. For example  Delete the temporary internet filesDelete the old windows programs that you are not using.Delete all temp Downloaded Program filesDelete Office Setup filesDelete Old Chkdsk fileDelete the Recycle Bin itemsDelete all Setup log filesDelete the windows temporary filesDelete the Web Client or Publisher Temporary files.Delete all Catalog file for the content indexerYou can remove the optional windows components that you...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer repair,Computer Tricks,Tips

How to clear your sensitive information on system shutdown?

During data processing some operating systems use the hard disk as memory, called virtual memory. During processing, operating system transfers some data and programs from RAM to hard disk and reloads again when required. The data or programs are stored in hard disk in temporary file called the swap file. This technique of swapping data between memory and hard disk is called paging. Operating system spends a lot of time in paging process, instead of executing the application software. But the problem is that while working you use different software programs on computer and page file may contain your confidential information...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer repair,Computer Tricks,Tips

How to disable/enable the usage of USB storage devices?

  USB drives (also known as flash drive, mobile disk or pen drive) are becoming the most popular standard in these days to store and move data. USB support is available in PCs of both IBM-compatible and Apple computers. USB port support hot plugging and plug & play. The USB allows up to 127 devices to be connected to the bus via a single port. The driver name "usbstor.sys" is used to communicate any USB drives to the operating system.   USB drives are indeed very useful in these days but a user can easily use to transfer any confidential information from your computer to others and can also upload viruses affected...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Tips

How to Block Websites By Editing the HOSTS File in Windows

DNS, which stands for Domain Name System, can convert the elusive IPv4 or IPv6 addresses to meaningful names, and then translate the characters back to IP addresses. For example, when you want to visit a website, DNS will tell your web browser the real IP address of it, and then web browser will download the web page directly from that IP address. As you may expect, the process of translating IP addresses to website names will consume some time, which could cause access delay. Particularly, if the DNS servers are down, you will not be able to visit most websites through their URL, which isn’t uncommon. Hence, it is necessary to make a list for mapping hostnames to IP addresses. That is what Windows HOSTS file does. On most Windows systems,...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Internet,Tips

How to Burn a Data CD or DVD in Nero

Launch the Nero Kwik Media™ application. The application should be installed and the burning functions should be activated as described in the tha article that focuses on installing the Nero® Burning ROM free version. Insert a blank CD or DVD into your optical drive. In the “Burn & Copy Disc” section, click on the “Burn a data disc” link. Click on the “Add” button at the top navigation bar. On your computer, locate the file or folder you wish to burn and click on the “Add” button. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you add all the data. Click on the “Burn” button located in the bottom right corner. When the burning process finishes, click the “OK” button. Close the application. Congratulations! You have burned your CD or DVD in Windows®...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Program Tips,Tips

How to Burn a CD in four ways

Method One 1. Open your optical drive drawer. On the front of the computer (or side of your laptop), there will be a small "drawer," with a rectangular button to the lower right. This is your CD-burning device (It might be a CD or it might be a DVD, which can burn both). If you don't see this, your computer doesn't have the capability of burning a CD directly. However, an external CD or DVD burner can easily be hooked up through the USB slot.  2. Get a recordable CD disc. There are two types of CDs that you can use. A CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable) can be burned once, and can not be erased. This type disc is usually used for permanent storage. For example; a music CD, a picture CD, or any other type of data that you want...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Software Tips,Tips

50 Windows 8 tips, tricks and secrets

Windows 8 is finally here, and if you're used to previous versions of Windows then you're going to notice that quite a bit has changed. In fact, Windows has seen the biggest changes since the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. Out goes the Start menu, in comes the new touch-oriented Start screen, new apps, new interface conventions - even experienced PC users may be left feeling a little lost. Don't despair, though, help is at hand with the following Windows 8 tutorial. We've been investigating every part of Windows 8, uncovering many of its most important tips and tricks, so read our guide and you'll soon be equipped to get the most out of Microsoft's latest release. 1. Lock screen Windows 8 opens on its lock screen, which looks...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Tips

Running Windows 8 From a USB Flash Drive

You can install the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a USB flash drive and run it from there. The performance of the system when booted from an USB attached device depends on the performance of USB port. This post gives step-by-step instruction on how to setup Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a USB drive. Before we start What we need: PC running Windows 7 or 8 ISO image of Windows 8 Consumer Preview (I only tested the 32bit version of the OS), product key Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) USB drive with at least 16GB (better 32GB) Since we are going to do low level system stuff you should make sure that you have a current backup of the PC you are working on. Preparing the USB drive Connect the USB device to your PC Open cmd.exe in administrator mode Create the boot...

Read more »

Posted in: Computer Tricks,Tips

HowTo: Connect Two Wireless Router Wirelessly ( Bridge ) With Open Source Software

ou can setup a wireless connection between two routers only so that it will link a wireless network to a wired network allowing you to bridge two networks with different infrastructure. You can find wireless access points products that offer either a "bridge" mode or a "repeater" mode. In this post I'm going to explain three popular open source choices that can be used for setting up a wireless bridge. Sample setup Consider the following network diagram: Fig.01: Wireless client setup You connect to the Internet using standalone ADSL2 modem with 202.54.1.1 public IP address. SSID set to nixcraft on wireless # 1 and an IP address set to 192.168.1.2. This router is located in downstairs and connected to ADSL2 modem. SSID set to...

Read more »

Posted in: Network,Tips

How to block Facebook

How to block Facebook in Internet Explorer only 1. Open Internet Explorer and click Tools 2. Click Internet Options and then click on the Content tab 3. Click the Enable button 4. Click on the Approved Sites tab 5. Enter facebook.com in the box 6. Click Never and then OK 7. In the appeared window enter and confirm your new password 8. Click on the General tab and make sure to select Users can see websites that have no ratings 9. Click OK How to block Facebook using the Hosts file The location of the hosts file depends on your operation system. Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts Note! Make a backup of the hosts file and put it somewhere safe, in case you mess up. 1. Open the hosts file using Notepad or other plain text editor. ...

Read more »

Posted in: Internet,Tips

How to set up an ip camera step by step

First to know This tutorial about installing an ip camera covers almost all of our ip cameras,so you can use this tutorial to install any ip camera bought from our website. Three connection ways: Installation in LAN.This is the most popular network access way. As long as there is a router, using internet cable directly connect router to IP Camera, then IP Camera can be connected to Internet as normal PC, as the following picture shows: PPoE InstallationUnder this condition, users need to set PPPoE dialing parameter in IP Camera: input the username and password which ISP supplier�?offer, the users permit to connect the IP Camera to Internet by dialing connects. As to set the PPPoE dialing parameter, you can connect device to...

Read more »

Posted in: Configure Camera,Tips