Windows Tools, Help & Guides

In this guest post, James Ricketts explores repairing PC errors related to audio files. Learn more about James at the conclusion of this post.

We all love to listen to music and play games on or computer; therefore, it is never a pleasant experience to come across errors related to audio files. In today’s world, entertainment is something we all want instantly and uninterrupted, and any delay in this can be frustrating.

The good news is that you can deal with most of these errors on your own, provided you understand what the reasons for the errors are, and how to go about solving them. In this article, we will discuss a few important audio file extensions, and how to deal with error messages related to them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sooner or later you may face the problem of how to change the names of a large group of files. A case in point is a situation wherein you have a group of files – perhaps a group of episodes from a TV series that have been named correctly, but in a non-standard format – and you need to change those file names to conform with an accepted standard, for example, in the form of SXXEYY where XX is the season number and YY is the episode number, followed by the file type suffix. This code is often referred to as the “Sexxyy” standard.

The Files:

The original files may come from a variety of sources, many of them ad hoc and without regard for the standards, or perhaps named for a different standard (there are several to choose from).

Taking a download from the Internet, you might get a list of files that look like this:

Read the rest of this entry »

A computer that is conected to a LAN or Internet usually offers some services. If we talk about a normal network that uses TCP/IP protocol, each of the services is going to use a port. For a PC to use a service, it needs to specify the number of the port.

The first step to know if a remote machine is running a service is testing connectivity. There a lot of programs you can use for this but today I am going to use PortQryUI tool. This utility can be downloaded from Microsoft:

PortQryUI Tool. Microsoft Download Center.

I have selected the application because is very simple to use. If you want to use something more professional try NMAP; you can use Google to find it.

Read the rest of this entry »

As with every complex device, computers are known to experience problems. When you are trying to connect two computers, you have to deal with the machines and what is in the middle. If something is not working properly on any of these systems, the communication could experience performance problems.

Every computer that is connected to Internet that runs a service (usually a web service) needs to be located so the service can be used. For telephones we use numbers to locate people. On Internet we use words, for example to enter on this site you have to use www.mintywhite.com. There are some reasons why on Internet we use words instead of numbers:

• IP addresses, belong to a location and  a country; if we only use numbers and for some reason you change your location, every link will connect to an invalid site.
• It makes it easier to have several machines use the same words. Google uses this technique with www.google.com, which has more than one Internet Protocol (IP) address. If for some reason one is down, the others can do the job.

Domain Name Servers (DNS) do that job. Their work is to translate a name to an IP address. This system is hierarchical so it is not just stored on one server. In this article, we take a look at some DNS problems that can slow your internet speed.

Read the rest of this entry »

The information displayed when a Windows system starts or shuts down is too simple. This makes very complicated to find the sources of a problem. For example, on a normal shut down you will see just two messages, Logging off:

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are on the move a lot, using your computer on many different networks, chances are that, after a while your computer has a pile of unused networks settings stored on your system.

Windows stores these settings so you don’t have to go around keeping track of each and every network you connect to–making it easier to connect to your preferred networks without typing in security keys and passwords every time.

Windows will remember each network you connect to and over time you might find a long list of networks that you no longer use or have the need for. How do you remove the unwanted ones ?

Read the rest of this entry »