Windows Tools, Help & Guides

My last post was about looking for basic signs of malware infections: 6 Signs Of Malware Infections

That post was a little introduction, about how to know if a virus and other sort of malware is on your computer.

Now, we are going to use utilities to look for that creepy software.

I am sure that many of you are thinking, why I need to know all of this stuff if I have an antivirus?

The answer is pretty simple: many times these applications cannot remove the virus, so it is very useful to know other ways to get rid of infections.

We are going to use free utilities that exists in the operating system that can reveal if any undesired program is in your computer.

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Have you ever used Ubuntu?  Love the way you’re able to scroll inactive windows?  Miss this feature when you use Windows?

If so, look no further. WizMouse is a tiny free application that allows you to scroll any window without stealing focus.  It sits in your notification tray, it’s a tiny 578KB download and uses next to no resources from your system.

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Don’t you just hate it when your printer messes things up ?

I do, every once in a while a document gets stuck in the spooler system, resulting in total havoc. No documents will print. And if you don’t catch it right away you end up with a stack of documents piling up in your print dialogue.

Usually that is a lost cause. Especially if you are not able to delete the document that is causing the problems. Cutting power to the printer (and unplug the USB cable) might enable you to delete it. But the worst case scenario is to power off everything. Loosing every print job in the queue, and start all over. Ahh lovely days huh…

If you experience this regularly or every now and then – well, I might just have the very solution you need.

Stalled Printer Repair – portable freeware application to Detect and Repair Stalled Print Jobs

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The usual way of killing Explorer for most users would be to spark up the Task Manager, right click explorer.exe and choose "End process". Previously we’ve covered how to add a context menu item to restart Explorer, which makes short work of the command.

Want an even easier way to kill it?  In Windows Vista and Windows 7, that’s no problem.

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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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If you are the one who always helps your friend to reformat/reinstall Microsoft Windows on their PC or laptop, most likely you will have their Windows equipped with at least a free anti-virus software (so they will not bug you anymore to do the reinstallation due to incurable viruses), and a couple of maintenance tools for some advanced users. However, since there are new threats and viruses appearing everyday, and the security software companies always have their product updated every week or so, you can’t really (unless you have too much free time) keep your downloaded security software installer updated. Not only that, I have actually quite a number of friends having different preferences on the anti-virus/anti-malware software, so again you can’t really satisfy them all (again, unless you have too much free time). Read the rest of this entry »