Windows Tools, Help & Guides

In this guest post, Tibor Schiemann, President and Managing Partner of TuneUp discusses how to restore lost data and repair damaged file. Find out more about Tibor at the end of this post.

Have you ever accidentally deleted the wrong photo? Or emptied the Recycle Bin and not realized that an important folder was in it? Unfortunately, it only takes a single mouse-click to lose a file.

So, what is the best way to go about restoring this lost data? It’s important to avoid write operations on the hard disk or flash drive inup anymore.question—if you can. Deleted files are never actually erased or destroyed; only the “pointer” to that specific file is gone, so it will not show

The good news is that the data will remain intact. The bad news, however, is that the Windows file system will mark the file as “overwriteable”. What this means is that the physical space used to store the deleted file is now designated as free space, where new programs can be installed, new files can be saved, or new data can be created. The accidentally deleted file will most likely be fully or partially overwritten, and in the latter case, it will be damaged.

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So InPrivate Filtering has had a dose of steroids and changed its name (confusingly) to Tracking Protection. Tracking Protection helps protect users from being tracked online by blocking third-party content such as images, text & cookies. By importing a Tracking Protection List (much in the same way we used to import .xml files with pre-defined filters in IPF for IE8) we can better lock down our privacy and rid ourselves of ads.

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It’s a good week for Microsoft fanboys!  Microsoft have today made Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate available for download.

We’ve covered some of the great features IE9 has to offer in the past, we’ve also taken a look at tweaking the browser to better suit your needs.

A few enhancements here are there are notable in the newest public release though nothing too drastic from what we already know.

Note that IE9 RC is now feature complete.  Whilst we may see the odd minor UI tweak here and there and undoubtedly tonnes of bug fixes before it goes gold, know that this is it folks!  And I think Microsoft have done it!

Hit the link for the direct download links.

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The windows Clipboard is where the computer temporarily stores text, files, graphics etc. that your CUT or COPY resides until you PASTE the content into its new location. Up until XP you could easily check the contents of your clipboard  using the ClipBoard Manager. For some blurry security reason Microsoft removed this nifty application from Windows Vista onward. If you miss this feature, fear not – the fix is a simple one. If you have access to a Windows XP installation (XP mode anyone ??)  you can copy it to your Windows 8, 7, or Vista machine.

Here’s where to find it

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To make things easier (for the common user) Microsoft decided to Categorize the Control Panel view. I never could get used to the new categories view, thinking that some of the panel applets were in the wrong category. Instead, I always immediately switch back to the “Classic” Control Panel view.

I recently learned that you can re-arrange the category arrangement, making it appear just as YOU think it should. It does involve editing the registry, but I’m sure that won’t scare you … much.

This tweak is generally for PRO and ULTIMATE users, but you may still be able to tweak some of the Control Panel Applets on lower versions.

Open RegEdit

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Once in a while, one of your applications will lock up and you would have to kill it (in the good sense of the word). Of course this will cause you to lose any unsaved data. At least you will learn to save your work more often, right?

But wait, there is something you may try first … before shutting it down “ungracefully”…

Using RESMON

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