Windows Tools, Help & Guides

It’s no question about it. As more and more programs take advantage of adding their own features to the context-menu (Right Click Menu), the less useful it gets. Some developers that add their features to your context menu are smart enough to only activate it on certain file types, or when certain services are running. But not everyone does that.

Adding functions to your Context Menu is a synch, but removing them, now that’s another story all together.

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Update: Here’s the list of Best Free Antivirus Software [2012 Edition]

We’ve reviewed a number of Anti-malware programs on Windows Guides over the years but it seems some programs soon become bloated, include stolen definitions from other products, or just get outshined by new (or improved) competition. In this guide, I share the top five free anti-malware programs for 2010.

This is the second part of our series on the Windows Media Center. Did you miss the first part?

In this section we’ll take a look at the ways Windows Media Center can organise and present your movie collection.

Media Browser:

The “bare-bones” WMC movie component is pretty good, but a bit stark.  Fortunately the clever developers out in the world have come up with software packages to add functionality, flexibility, and better looks.

There are several to choose from but my choice for an enhancement to the WMC movie component  is “Media Browser“.  It sits as a separate icon in your WMC start page and handles your music collection as well, but we’ll focus on the movie parts for now. The front page is below. It’s fairly straightforward, adds a lot of functionality, it looks good – and it’s free.

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If you get a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD), your first inclincation may be to turn of your computer, turn it back on again and hope if never comes back. Sometimes, this is a good option because the blue screen may have been a freak accident and, because the stars aligned that one time, may not happen again. However, if you receive more than one blue screen, I suggest you take some time to diagnose the issue and try to come to a resolution. In this guide, I’ll show you what each part of the blue screen means, how to diagnose the problem, and where to go for help when you’re not sure what to do it.

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In other mintywhite tutorials we’ve seen how to make your USB into a functional power house, installing Ubuntu, encryption, portable applications and backups .  There can be some files which change all the time which are essential, such as password storage (Keypass) that has latest details that you need to access from the office, a meeting or school. One of the best ways to make this work is with online backup  and it won’t take you more than 10 minutes. MintyWhite is here to show you the best and make the choice easy.

In this review we’ll look at the free online storage services: Binfire, SkyDrive, Wuala, iDrive and Mozy

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A few days ago, I asked you if you use Windows 7′s XP Mode. Thank you to those who took part in the poll. Here’s what you said:

What Did I Learn from This?

I learned a lot from this poll and I’m glad I asked the question. Specifically, I learned that a lot of you use XP Mode (even in the home) and I also learned that a lot of you don’t know what XP mode is.

What’s Next?

Expect to see some guides in the near future on the following (subject to change) topics:

• What is XP Mode?
• How to improve performance when using XP Mode.
• How to share files between your host machine and XP Mode.

Thank you again to everyone who took part in the poll.