Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Windows Guides reader, TheManRetired, offers two guides to help users who are new to Windows. The first guide covers installation of Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 Free. This second guide covers setting up your first backup to CD or DVD. If you’d like to provide help (simple, advanced etc., let me know.)

Hopefully you have the program installed but if you don’t I have written up an installation document that shows how to install it and where to get the program with a link to site that I know has it, so here we are going to start using the program. The screen shot here are made using the FastStone Capture program. With Burning Studio you can backup just about anything that is on your hard drive but I suggest only backing up what you have created as you can never get all the files and registry setting for programs and it is safer and better to reinstall the programs anyway so they set right and work and you don’t have to try and find out why they are not working like before. Here I am backing some music files that I ripped from my cd’s but the principles apply to all your files, you will just have to change the location of where you get the files to places on your hard drive and sorry this document will not go into all the places on your hard drive that the files are, most of them on a windows system will be in my documents(or just documents depending on your version) and most of them are located under your user account in either Documents and Settings or under Users depending on your version of windows, I am not going into any Linux or Mac systems as I don’t have them but if you want to give me one I would be happy to write up a document like this for those systems.

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In this guest post, James Ricketts explores DLL errors and how to resolve them. Learn more about James at the conclusion of this post.

DLL or Dynamic Link Library is a term that is referred to a particular type of file that can be shared by different programs whenever they need to perform certain general tasks. DLL files eliminate the need for having separate files for the same tasks that are required by applications. This not only reduces the space required by the hard drive, but it also makes the applications more efficient.

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Windows update is an excellent way to keep your computer up to date and protected from the latest vulnerabilities. Sometimes, Windows update will apply a patch that requires your computer to be restarted. Many times, this restart comes at an inopportune time as you may have a lot to get done that day. Windows Vista does not bug you as much as Windows XP, because you can change the interval at which Windows to remind you to restart your computer. Regardless of your operating system, you may just want to stop the notifications entirely and restart your computer the end of the day. Why do not recommend this, I often find myself delaying the restart process. In this guide, you’ll learn how to stop Windows update notifying you until the next time you restart your PC.

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Sometimes, when you connect to a wireless network, that works all the time, you’ll find that the Internet doesn’t work even though you are seemingly connected. I get this on campus and in this guide you will learn one of the simple tricks I use to avoid the need to restart your computer to get the Internet working again.

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If you are like me and never use Windows Messenger, you may want to remove it. In this guide, you’ll learn how to remove Windows Messenger from Windows XP.

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This comprehensive PC-care utility has a one-click approach to helping protect, repair and optimize your PC. Advanced WindowsCare Personal Edition helps protect, optimize, and repair your PC –– with daily use. I have used Advanced Windows Care for over a year now and I highly recommend using it. Update April 14, 2009: many Windows Guides readers have expressed how much they like this program and for all you new readers, I thought it would be good for you take a look. I’ve updated the download link, and Advance SystemCare Pro is better than ever. I run this program on all of my computers and couldn’t recommend it more.

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If you make a change to the group policy on your Windows XP Professional; Vista Business or Ultimate; or Windows 7 Ultimate machine, you will need to restart your computer to make the changes take effect. In this guide, you’ll learn how to avoid restarting with a simple command.

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Some guides on this site will require you to change values in your registry. If you make a mistake and don’t correct it, you may find your computer is not as functional as it was before. To protect yourself from any mistakes, you need to backup your registry. Learn how to back up and restore your registry in this guide.

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This guide is included as part of the Windows Guides security and administration series. In this guide, you will learn what the Windows Registry is, how to access and configure it, and how to backup and restore it.

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This guide is included as part of the Windows Guides security and administration series. In this guide, you will learn what the Group Policy Editor is and how to access and configure it.

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