Windows Tools, Help & Guides

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.

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When I had Windows 7 installed, I noticed that the standard network icon in the task bar area doesn’t “light-up” when there is data throughput as I have been used to ever-since Windows 98. I suppose some people might argue that we have been spoiled a bit, but actually it gives you a sense of security when you’re busy working and you can see there is activity on the network when you expect it to be. Also, that is the quickest way you can see when something isn’t working correctly.

Taskbar with Windows 7 Network Icon

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Google has announced that is going to start indexing SVG files. SVG, the acronym of Scalable Vector Graphics, is a XML based file format that is used to describe two-dimensional vector graphics.

Right now Google is indexing the following types:

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Some days ago I wrote a post about Hacking InPrivate Browsing, there you find useful information about how to find traces left by Internet Explorer using InPrivate Browsing.

Incognito Mode in Google Chrome, Private Browsing in Firefox, and InPrivate Browsing in Internet Explorer are, in essence, the same. This feature restricts the information that browser stores while using the internet. What information are we talking about?

• History: If you enter a web page, information about the site, title and URL, as well as when that page was entered is saved.
• Cookies: Many sites need to track information about the user, for example a set of books on a library site. One way to achieve this is using cookies that store the information on the user’s computer.
• Cache: If you enter more than once on a website, the browser doesn’t need to download all components of that site every time. It’s clear that these programs need storage  and a way to organize the files.

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A colleague of mine recently asked me to have a look at his personal Notebook. He has a virus infection on the PC and doesn’t know how to get rid of it.

He dropped the Notebook off at my house after work one evening and I had a look. Immediately several screens popped-up at me screaming about all the infections on the machine. I found this strange as I didn’t know the program spewing out these warnings.

After a bit of research on Google I found that this was one of those programs enticing the user to download for free. Once installed, it produces false-positives so the user will be scared into purchasing it. I removed the offending program, and updated the perfectly good antivirus and firewall software on the machine, scanned the entire notebook to find no major threats.

All the user needs to do now is to purchase a new annual license and he is good to go.

My advice is to ensure you have one of the major anti-virus programs installed, preferably with a firewall built-in. It is quite easy to read-up on different antivirus software programs online by simply asking Google.

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The Beta version of Google Chrome 6 was released on August 11, 2010. The browser has several versions as you can read in the post:  Google Chrome – Software channel breakdown, since that post was written, Google even created a new version named Canary but that is a topic for another post.

Chrome uses the source code of an open source project named Chrominum. The project is in version 7 at the moment.

At the time this article was written Google Chrome stable version is 5.0.375.127.

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