Windows Tools, Help & Guides

In this guest post, Tibor Schiemann, President and Managing Partner of TuneUp discusses how to restore lost data and repair damaged file. Find out more about Tibor at the end of this post.

Have you ever accidentally deleted the wrong photo? Or emptied the Recycle Bin and not realized that an important folder was in it? Unfortunately, it only takes a single mouse-click to lose a file.

So, what is the best way to go about restoring this lost data? It’s important to avoid write operations on the hard disk or flash drive inup anymore.question—if you can. Deleted files are never actually erased or destroyed; only the “pointer” to that specific file is gone, so it will not show

The good news is that the data will remain intact. The bad news, however, is that the Windows file system will mark the file as “overwriteable”. What this means is that the physical space used to store the deleted file is now designated as free space, where new programs can be installed, new files can be saved, or new data can be created. The accidentally deleted file will most likely be fully or partially overwritten, and in the latter case, it will be damaged.

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Update: The results are in.

Previously, we showed you what Windows Virtual PC and XP Mode are, how to create any virtual machine with Windows Virtual PC, and how to create a virtual PC with Virtual Box.

I use virtual machines frequently (mostly to write guides for this site when I need to test a tweak in different versions of Windows) and sometimes just to learn how to use another operating system like Linux Mint or Free BSD for example.

Here at Windows Guides, we love your feedback and have a quick poll for you to share your feedback with us:
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Recently, Thomas reviewed a program called InputDirector, which lets you use a single keyboard and mouse across multiple computers. For some time, I’ve been using Synergy, which does the same thing. In this review, I show you the features of Syngery and show you how to use it.

Windows Guides’ Rating	User Rating	Compatible with	System
4 out of 5	(4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)

PROS: Lightweight, does what it claims, can be very useful for Home Theater PC setups as well as multi-PC offices etc. CONS: Can be a little difficult to get working as you expect it to. Cannot link computers on different subnets or networks. VERDICT: If you find you don’t like InputDirector and want to give Synergy a try, I think you’ll find you really like it. PRICE: Free VERSION REVIEWED: 1.3.4 DOWNLOAD: Synergy

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One of the first things to do on a machine running IE 8 is turn off the Suggested Sites feature.
This feature looks at the sites you visit and then attempts to guess what other sites you might like and suggest them to you.
Awe, the thought is nice, but … no thanks.

Here’s how to turn it off

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If you want to use a Ringtone for your iPhone, of your favorite song, you have a few choices:

• Pay an outrageous amount (sometimes up to $3.99 USD per ringtone or $9.99/month subscription to a ringtone service.)
• Buy an App (there are some out there for $0.99 but I haven’t tested them and can’t recommend them.)
• Follow this guide and make ringtones from your songs–for free.

Learn, in this guide, how to make a ringtone with iTunes for your iPhone.

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Today, we bring you a quick tip with which you may or may not be familiar. On it’s own, this tip isn’t useful but this is a supporting guide for tutorials where you’re told to change a file extension without any explanation of how to show the extension (disabled by default in Vista and 7) in the first place.

This guide will show you how to show file extensions in Windows XP and Windows Vista/7.

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