Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Personally, I don’t see the point in upgrading your hardware if your computer does everything you need it to. However, sometimes it’s nice to improve what you already have. In this guide we will learn how to make the most out of the hardware you have and make Windows Vista run faster. (Here’s a similar list for Windows XP and for Windows 7.)

I highly recommend you create  a system restore point before you follow this guide.

Note: There is a lot of crossover with this guide and the guide to extend laptop battery life; some of the procedures, listed below, will help save power.

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I will assume that many of you have to solve computer’s problems every day.

But, imagine having a list of devil hacks you can use to punish people.

Maybe you are tired to solve others problems, or you want to have fun. If you are in either of these positions this is your post.

1. Cut access to Internet Web Pages.

You can cut internet from certain hours using the following post:

How To Control Access to Specific Website

But if you just want to cut access to a Web, for example www.google.com:

Click on Start Menu, Accesories, look for Notepad, right-click and select “Run as administrator”.

Select File, Open…, and go to %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\ folder. Select open all files, you just add the following line and click save:

127.0.0.1 www.google.com Read the rest of this entry »

Having your internet working is not something complicated but we know from experience that sometimes, for reasons we cannot control, our internet speed is slow.

It is very useful before going crazy to have a list you can check to know what exactly is happening.

As you will understand from every post I write, I don’t like formatting computers to solve problems, for me a problem is just an opportunity to learn about computers. So of course you can always format; however, this will not solve every problem.

Check your cables

As amazing as it could seem most internet problems are due to a badconnection between your computer and the router. Remember to first check if the cable is connected properly and the network card shows an intermittent light. In Windows 7 you will see the following icon appearing from time to time.

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Finding bottleneck is a very complicated task, but it is more complicated if we talk about what happens at boot times.
Have a slow boot computer?  Continue reading and you will find how to solve it
Don’t forget to leave a comment including what process is consuming your CPU.

The post is written using Windows 7 but this work for Windows XP or Windows Vista.

First you have to download the free Sysinternals process monitor utility.

Move the cursor to the downloaded program and press the right mouse button, then you select Extract All as you see on the image:

Extract it in the folder you wish. Now run the Process Monitor Program using Run as administrator:

Once it opens, go to the file menu and deselect capture events:

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If you use iTunes and you have two or more PCs in your house, you will likely, at some point, encounter the 5 computer authorization limit imposed by iTunes. There are a number of times when I’ve either replaced my PC or reformatted my hard drive and I’ve forgotten to deauthorize iTunes before doing so. This really is not the end of the world; however, if you do reach the five computer limit, your only choice is to deauthorize all five computers on your iTunes account, which can be a pain because you need to add them back again. This guide serves as a reminder to deauthorise iTunes on your iTunes account before you reformat your hard drive or get a new PC.

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Yesterday, I shared some steps I take to set up a Windows 7 machine the right way. Windows Guides reader, Gene, recently sent me this really useful guide on how to set up a computer and I’d like to share it with you.

Here’s an excerpt from the guide:

I have had many questions and times when I had to set up a new computer that someone had just bought either from a store or a website and it arrived on their doorstep. The following is the procedure that I use to make sure that the system is ready to put online and available for the internet to start trying to be used in a botnet or hit with all the virus’s that are out there looking for new systems that someone has not set up to stop them. I am not by anyway the expert as this is just the way I do it and there are probably other ways and systems to do it also but I don’t have access to them.

How to Set Up a New Computer (PDF 311 KB)

(Right click and Save as…)