This feature can be particularly useful if you’re opening a file from removable media (CD, DVD, external HDD etc.) and MSE’s real-time virus checker has not had a chance to do a preliminary scan at the file yet. If you’ve turned off real-time virus scanning, this will also help you avoid virus infection.

Caution: Even if a virus checker doesn’t detect a virus, never open a file from an untrusted source.

Realizing I didn’t have an infected file to use for this guide, I went to the source of many viruses: a torrent tracker and grabbed a copy of “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom v3.2″ (don’t worry, I promptly deleted it.)

Scan an File/Folder for Viruses

1. If you don’t already have it installed, download and install Microsoft Security Essentials (learn more about MSE.)

2. Open up Windows Explorer (Winkey+E) and browse to the directory that contains the file/folder you want to scan

3. Right click the file or folder and click Scan with Microsoft Security Essentials…

4. Hopefully your journey ends here and you’re informed the file is clean. If however, the file is infected, continue to the next section.

Remove a Virus with Microsoft Security Essentials

If MSE has detected an infected file, you should delete it immediately.

1. Upon notice of an infected file, click Clean Computer

2. MSE will clean the file from your PC:

3. After the file is clean, you may Close MSE

4. You’re almost done… once you’ve detected a virus on your PC:

• Notify others who may also have the file (did this file come via email?)
• If you run backups, make sure the file is removed from your backups
• If the file came from optical media i.e. CD/DVD, destroy the disc, if possible, to avoid future infection
• Inform the distributor of the file that it’s compromised and should not be shared

If the Virus Can’t be Deleted…

If you’ve followed the steps above but still can’t delete the file, please start a topic in Windows Forums and we’ll help you solve the issue. Beware that some viruses can help identity thieves get your personal information. If you know that a virus is running free on your computer, it might be wise to invest in a LifeLock account as a preventative measure against identity theft. But keep checking back with the Windows Forums, because there aren’t many problems that remain unsolved for long!

Windows Guides’ Rating	User Rating	Compatible with	System
5 out of 5	Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

This new tool is NOT a new antivirus or malware detector, but a tool to use once the problem is a fact. So naturally I would advice you to download it now, and keep it on a flash drive, or a CD. The only problem I foresee is to remember where that CD was put or on which usb pen you stored it.

In addition to help solve boot problems, Microsoft also promise that this new tool can be used to solve problems regarding your current anti-virus program whether it cannot be installed or that windows cannot detect it.

What it does

The Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper Tool first scans your boot sector for any corrupted files or settings. It then scans your system for any known malware or infections.

64 bit and 32 bit

Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper Tool comes in both flavours (32 and 64 bit) and supports XP (SP3), Vista and 7.
Get more information here: http://connect.microsoft.com/systemsweeper

Download

Download 32 Bit Version

Download 64 Bit Version

To make the most of these updates, you should install them when available. We’ve looked at troubleshooting specific Windows Update errors in the past and showed you the System Update Readiness tool. If you’re still stuck with Windows Update errors, you can try resetting the Windows Update Agent (WUA) with a FixIt tool. You can also try installing updates manually, in Safe Mode, or by removing Malware that’s blocking updates first. 4sysops has put together a guide to help you troubleshoot issues with Windows Update and how to take the troubleshooting steps listed above before you take your PC in for a potentially expensive and inconvenient repair.

Windows Update errors – A troubleshooting guide | 4sysops

Microsoft Excel is pretty clever and usually the default choices it provides you are good, but sometimes it can be frustrating when it tries to help you and you can not find a way to alter the choices it makes.

Chart axis options are a common example of these frustrations. People often ask us how to override the default Axis Interval. Here is the solution for how to do that.

Say we have a spreadsheet containing daily sales figures.

The chart produced from this data would look like this:

Now, admittedly, that isn’t bad, but we can make the chart much more meaningful if we tweak that axis, right?

This is a little easier to work with I would say. How did we make that tweak?

The trick is to set up your chart then right-click the axis, then on the context menu that appears we click the axis formatting option.

From there you get to choose from lots of options, switching from the automatic defaults to settings you choose.

These are the settings I used above:

Summary

As you can see, while the defaults are not always exactly what we want, Excel usually does allow you to change them. The challenge is often knowing where the settings are hidden!

About the author

Yoav Ezer co-authors the technology and productivity blog Codswallop. He is also the CEO of a company that produces PDF to Excel conversion software.

For more Excel tips from Yoav, join him on Facebook or Twitter

Uninstalling applications is never as seamless a process as installing them. Although Windows PCs come with a built-in utility, the Add or Remove Programs utility, that allows users to easily uninstall various applications and software, it usually fails to do the required job when you need to uninstall certain applications, such as McAfee Antivirus suite or DirectX.

Incomplete uninstallation may cause errors and complications on the system. Leftover processes of a previously installed program may interfere with other running processes and cause application errors, as well as performance related issues, such as frequent software crashes and system slow downs. This is why it is absolutely essential that when you remove a program you ensure that all its associated processes, files, and registry entries are also permanently deleted.

With the help of two examples, McAfee antivirus suite and DirectX we discuss how to uninstall programs that may not get completely removed using the Add or Remove Programs utility.

Before we discuss this, let’s see how to use the Add or Remove Programs utility to uninstall applications, such as Microsoft Office 2007.

Uninstall Office 2007 using Add or Remove Programs

Uninstalling programs using the Add or Remove Programs utility is simple, as this example shows.

1. Click Start and then click Control Panel to open its corresponding window.
2. Double-click Add or Remove Programs.
3. Locate and select Office 2007.
4. Click Uninstall.

In the following section, we discuss how to completely uninstall applications, such as McAfee Antivirus and DirectX that the Add or Remove Programs utility may fail to remove.

Uninstall McAfee

When it comes to removing antivirus suites, the Add or Remove Programs utility is often found to be wanting. This may be because of the fact that such programs place their files and entries deep into the system and the Add or Remove Programs utility fails to remove them completely.

Most Antivirus software manufacturers, therefore, release an uninstaller tool for their line of products. It is best to use such uninstaller tools – these tools are typically distributed from the software manufacturer’s website for free – to remove antivirus software. In case the software manufacturer does not provide an uninstaller tool, you may use a reliable professional uninstaller tool.

To remove McAfee, first remove the software using the Add or Remove Programs utility – the same way as you uninstall any other application. Next, visit McAfee’s official website and download MCPR.exe, which is the uninstaller tool for McAfee products. After you have downloaded the MCPR.exe file on to your desktop, double-click it to run the uninstaller tool.

Uninstall DirectX

DirectX is an application that is built-in to your Windows system. An attribute peculiar to DirectX is that it cannot be uninstalled using the Add or Remove Programs utility, as the application does not appear in your installed programs list.

If for some reason you need to remove the version of DirectX installed on your computer then simply remove the DirectX entry from the registry and Delete the DirectX folder.

Important: Before making any changes to the registry, always back up the registry first. You can make registry backups either manually or by using a reliable registry maintenance software.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and press Enter.
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DirectX
3. Delete all the keys for DirectX.
4. Right-click the Directx folder in left-pane and click Delete.
5. Restart Windows.

Note: It is not possible to completely remove DirectX from the PC as it is an integral part of the operating system. The above steps uninstall the upgraded version of DirectX from the PC and reinstall the default DirectX version for your Windows operating system when the PC is restarted.

James Ricketts is a writer whose work can be seen at Instant-Registry-Fixes.org. To find out more about his work or to contact him, please visit Instant-Registry-Fixes.org.

Featuring: WIM-images and Diskpart

When I first bought my netbook from Acer it came with the  Windows 7 Starter Edition. Luckily for me I had an extra Home Premium license I could use. Problem was that the graphics driver needed was not available for download, and was not available through Windows. A fact I only discovered once I had re-installed windows. Another irritating thing I discovered was that the bundled software that was pre-installed with my windows starter edition, did not run anymore.

The solution? The hidden recovery partition.

Most new computers today comes with pre-installed Windows and bundled software. These licenses or programs does not come with an installation disk, package or user-manuals. Instead the setup files (or recovery disk) is stored in a hidden partition on your hard-drive, together with various extra drivers and tweak files. At the end of this article I will show you where to look for the files and how to retrieve them, but first lets unhide the partition. To unlock or get access to this hidden partition we need to unhide it. This can be achieved using the built-in DiskPart Tool. You can choose to get access to the disk on a one-time basis or permanently assigning a drive letter for it. In most cases you are able to assign a drive letter using the Windows Disk management tool. The Recovery Partition is normally set to have no drive letter by default. We can override this feature by using Diskpart.

Diskpart

Diskpart is a Command Line Utility which allows us to control every disk and partition on our system. We have shown you different uses for this tool on occasion, and this time we will use it to get access to the hidden partition. To make a hidden partition available we need to assign a drive letter, and this is how:

1. Click Start-button and type DISKPART and press Enter.
2. Click OK when the UAC prompt you
3. In the Diskpart Dialogue Window, type: list disk This will show you a list of the disks  installed on your computer.
4. Type Select Disk 0 (where zero is the disk we want to use, if you have more that one disk you might want to try accessing one by one until you find the right one)
5. Type List Partition. You will see a list of all partitions on the drive, in my case there are two. One large and one small. The small one is the one we want to change. You can also identify the hidden partition by the fact that there are no drive letter assigned to it.
6. Type Select Partition 1 (Where 1 represent your partition)
7. Type Assign If successful you should get an Auto-run dialogue.
8. Type Exit to close the Diskpart Tool.

Hidden on reboot…

On some computers the partition will be hidden again on the next boot. This is due to a setting called “nodefaultdriveletter”, which tells windows that the partition is to be hidden by default. If you would like to keep the partition visible,  you will have to change the setting.

1. Open the Diskpart tool
2. Type Select Disk 0
3. Type List Partition
4. Type Select Partition 1 (Replace 1 with the corresponding letter)
5. Type Detail Partition This will display the settings for your partition. If the Type is set to 27 the partition is set as hidden.
6. Try one of the following commands: Set ID=07 OVERRIDE attributes volume clear hidden
7. Type Assign to assign a drive letter.
8. Type Exit to close the Diskpart Tool.

The next time you boot your computer the partition will still be visible.

Looking through the Recovery Partition Folder

Now it’s time to do a bit of digging inside the Folders. The location of drivers and software will vary depending on your brand or computer type. In my case, everything I need is  hidden inside the ACER-HQ1 folder. You will see many different folders containing everything from Windows Recovery or setup-files, drivers and the licensed software that came bundled with your computer. The content of these folders will most likely be WIM-files or images. The Windows Imaging Format (WIM) is a file-based disk image format (like ISO, RAR and ZIP). It was developed by Microsoft to deploy its latest Windows operating system releases, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, which use it as part of their standard installation procedure. It works equally well with older versions of Windows.

Windows Setup Files Found in the Recovery Partition

Accessing WIM-Images

To access the contents the WIM-files you need a WIM capable reader. I suggest you use WinMount which works similar to WinRAR, but allow you to mount WIM-images temporarily.

Inside a WIM-image you will usually find 2 folders and a xml-file (it may vary). Usually the content you seek is within the folder named 1 (one). After mounting you might need to copy the contents to a new folder before installing the program or driver. Once you have done that, you can install the software as you please.

Bundled software licenses

In order to make sure you don’t install the bundled software onto other computers most setup files have a CMD-file attached to it. This is a scriptfile that will check the identity of your computer before allowing the setup to start. Delete this file to avoid it from running.

The serial is usually found inside an INI-file or a XML-file. And that should be all you need to know. Good Luck

Download WinMount

Download WinMount

A while back we looked at how could disable IE9’s GPU rendering abilities.

As other browsers in the market are yet to fully catch up to Microsoft in this arena, GPU rendering or acceleration will likely not be enabled by default.

If you use Google Chrome and it’s at version 8 or above (Wrench > About Google Chrome) and your hardware can support it, GPU acceleration and rendering can be enabled.

This Quick Tip is going to show you how.

Step 1.

Open Google Chrome, in the address bar (Ctrl+L) type about:flags and hit Enter

Step 2.

Please take note of this warning;

These experimental features may change, break, or disappear at any time. We make absolutely no guarantees about what may happen if you turn one of these experiments on, and your browser may even spontaneously combust. Jokes aside, your browser may delete all your data, or your security and privacy could be compromised in unexpected ways. Please proceed with caution.

If you’re happy with this, scroll down the page and find GPU Accelerated Compositing and GPU Accelerated Canvas 2D.

Click Enable under each one and restart Chrome to see the changes. Maybe even head over to beautyoftheweb.com and compare the 2 browsers.

How do you think Chrome stacks up to IE9 in this department?  Let us know in the comments.

SUPERAntiSpyware

A few weeks ago Mike Duncan, Director of Business Development at SUPERAntiSpyware.com asked me to take a peek at their software. Being the Geek that never sleeps and challenge accepted off we go on passage into the world of SUPERAntiSpyware.

The results of the testing are beyond the scope of where this post leads but let’s say this, SUPERAntiSpyware has replaced the previous Anti-Malware software installed on this geeks PC’s and no computer leaves this shop without a free version installed.

The masses of features that come with the Free Version launch SUPERAntiSpyware right to top of the class adding the features you get from the website itself make the grade an A+.

Never saying SUPERAntiSpyware is the greatest and  should absolutely never be your only layer of protection. Multiple layers of security software should exist and SUPERAntiSpyware is designed to exemplify and accolade other security applications.

Ed note: You can install this right along side your current anti-malware program (i.e. Microsoft Security Essentials) but avoid running scans with both programs at the same time as there will be conflicts.

With SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition you receive:

• Quick, complete and custom Scanning of your hard drives, removable drives, memory and registry.
• Top notch detection and removal of any Adware, Malware, Trojans, Worms, Spyware, Hi-Jack Protection, Key-Loggers.
• Trust items and exclude folder where you can place trusted or excluded folder and files to help speed up scans.

BootSafe that simplifies the process of booting into safe mode and Repairs allow you to fix and or repair items that may have been damaged by the gremlins attacking your system.

Rick’s Tip: The repair option can be used to fix the listed problems on PC’s that are not or previously infected. These applications such as Task Manager just for one reason or another no longer work. Quick fixed for me a few times this week alone.

SUPERAntiSpyware Online Scan detects and removes spyware/malware infections. The scanner doesn’t install anything on your Start Menu or Program Files and does not need to be uninstalled.

The SUPERAntiSpyware Portable Scan is free for personal use. The scanner contains the latest definitions so you don’t need Internet access on the infected system to scan. If your running SUPERAntiSpyware Portable from Portable Apps you can still update.

Threat Research Center is a list of new threats discovered and removed today that were not detected by other anti-malware/spyware programs.

If you don’t like downloading anything from the Internet a CD can be purchased. An extra fully registered copy of SUPERAntiSpyware Professional as well as an Upgrade to a lifetime subscription of SUPERAntiSpyware can be found through the order page.

Volume and site licensing for SUPERAntiSpyware to Corporate/Enterprise as well as special quotes to educational and non-profit organizations can be found at the Volume/Site Licensing Information page.

If you ever need to manually update your definitions exit SUPERAntiSpyware, and then click the link at the bottom of the Database Definition Information page. Save the file to your desktop or where ever you can find it then click it to run the installer. Once the installation is complete, exit and restart SUPERAntiSpyware for the new definitions to be active.

Often spyware will attack the very software you are using to protect your computer. With SUPERAntiSpyware you can download two .exe files, RUNSAS.EXE and SASSAFERUN.COM disguised variably to sham the spyware and launch SUPERAntiSpyware.

Rick’s Tip: Change the name to “iexplore.exe” without the quotes. Most malware wants access to the internet so will allow Internet explorer to run. If a failure to execute dialog box appears, move the box out of the way and try again.

Obviously everything loaded into SUPERAntiSpyware can’t be mentioned here so a complete with screen-shot  documentation and help are available.

Download SUPERAntiSpyware

• What is an Easter Egg?
• What an Easter Egg is Not
• Easter Egg Examples

What is an Easter Egg?

Easter eggs, in software, are deliberately added and not not just “glitches” (see more about that below.) Often these Easter eggs are added by programmers for a joke, to get some attention, or to add some flair to the software you’re using.

A classic example of an Easter egg is a hidden menu on DVD or an animation in a piece of software that can only be seen by pressing certain keys.

What an Easter Egg is Not

There are some common misconceptions with the term “Easter Egg.” An Easter egg is not:

• A bug in a program.
• An imposed restriction.
• A hack in a program made by the end user.

For example, it has been claimed that not being able to create a folder, in Windows, with one of the following names is an Easter egg:

PRN, AUX, CLOCK$, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9

This is not an example of an Easter egg. This is a restriction, that dates back to DOS, to protect certain file names being used that are reserved by the operating system:

Although the first error message (seemingly, still, not updated with Windows 7) makes you think you’ve found an Easter egg (or glitch) in Windows, the second error message states otherwise.

Another commonly confused Easter egg is the ability to generate random text in Microsoft Word. Try this:

1. Open Microsoft Word

2. Type =rand(20,9)

This will create twenty paragraphs with nine sentences each (taken from the Microsoft Help files):

Still, not an Easter egg.

Enough of that though, you’re here to learn about some real Easter eggs…

Easter Egg Examples

Here are some examples of the best Easter eggs I’ve found/heard about in software over the years. Please share others, you know about, in the comments.

Picasa: Teddy Bears

In Google Picasa, press CTRL+SHIFT+Y. Watch the teddy bears rain down on your screen.

Firefox: The Book of Mozilla

If you’re a Firefox user, open any version and type about:mozilla in the address bar. You’ll get a quote from “The Book of Mozilla”:

Firefox: about:robots

Open Firefox and type about:robots in the address bar:

vim: :Ni! and :help!

In vim, if you type

:Ni!

in normal mode, vim shows the error message

Do you demand a shrubbery?

If you type

:help!

vim, reassuringly, says

Don’t Panic!

Source

Excel 97: Flight Simulator

Want to see the credits of Excel 97 in a flight sim-like fashion? Didn’t think so, but you’re welcome to try anyway. If you’re using Office 97 or have access:

1. Open Excel 97 (this doesn’t work in later versions.)
2. On a blank worksheet, press F5.
3. Type X97:L97 and press Enter.
4. Press the Tab key once.
   
5. Hold down Ctrl + Shift and left-click the Chart Wizard toolbar icon.

Click here for a screenshot if you don’t have Excel 97. Otherwise, try it for yourself as a fun surprise.

uTorrent: Tetris

In uTorrent, click Help > About uTorrent. When the About dialog appears, press T on the keyboard to play Tetris.

Are These Easter Eggs?

Here are a few I’ve found, over the years, that I’m on the fence about. What do you think?

Extra Files in C:\Windows on Windows XP

If you’re using Windows XP or have access to a copy of it, go to C:\Windows and look for a file named clock.avi. I’ve not seen any use for this file. I’m not entirely sure it’s an Easter egg, but I bet you didn’t know it was there!

Similarly, there is a file named “quotes”. Open My Computer and go to: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc, open the file named quotes in notepad then look at the quotes put there by the Microsoft developers.

Win Solitaire Every time

Open Solitaire Press Alt + Shift + 2 while playing and see the cards drop.

Acting on the Data

When we start to see trends forming that is when we can build categories and decide a system of actions for those categories. For instance, we might push certain new messages to our support departments to be expedited automatically, while other less pressing issues can sit in a queue for a little longer.

When we have a ‘security’ issue come through we want to send them quickly to be handled by our ‘security specialist’. If a message contains a request that deal with writing Macros we would want one of the developers to help with that.

Does this sound like something you would like to use?

Processing the Results

What we need to do is have a button that launches our macro (download link) and processes the feedback messages.

When the button is hit we will check for various categories (on a second sheet) and list these categories in the next column:

The Macro

Sub WordCount()

    Dim vArray, WordIssue, ElementCounter As Variant
    Dim lngLoop, lngLastRow As Long
    Dim rngCell, rngStoplist As Range

    ElementCounter = 2 'setting a default value for the counter
    Worksheets(1).Activate
    For Each rngCell In Worksheets("Word").Range("A3", Cells(Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp))
        vArray = Split(rngCell.Value, " ") 'spliting the value when there is a space
        vrWordIssue = ""
        ElementCounter = ElementCounter + 1 'increases the counter every loop
        For lngLoop = LBound(vArray) To UBound(vArray)

            If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Sheets("Issue").Range("A2:A" & Sheets("Issue").UsedRange.Rows.Count), vArray(lngLoop)) > 0 Then
            'this is to test if the word exist in the Issue Sheet.
                If vrWordIssue = "" Then
                    vrWordIssue = vArray(lngLoop) 'assigning the word
                Else
                    If InStr(1, vrWordIssue, vArray(lngLoop)) = 0 Then 'a binary of comparison
                        vrWordIssue = vrWordIssue & ", " & vArray(lngLoop) 'this will concatinate words issue that exist in Issue Sheet
                    End If
                End If
            End If

        Next lngLoop

        Worksheets("Word").Range("B" & ElementCounter).Value = vrWordIssue 'entering the final word issue list into cell.
    Next rngCell

End Sub

How it Works

The macro starts by creating a word list for each cell in the list of feedback messages by splitting the cell contents whenever there is a space. This creates an array in memory that we can loop through to test if the word exist in the “Issue Sheet”.

If we find a word that we want to check for, we assign the word to another list for later insertion into the final issue column.

Summary

As you can see, the output of this is we take unstructured data and produce something we can actually work with. That’s huge. This technique can be used for much more than the simple example we demonstrated here but I hope it gives you some inspiration for how you can process the text in your work.

About the author

Yoav Ezer co-authors the technology and productivity blog Codswallop. He is also the CEO of a company that produces PDF to Excel conversion software.

For more Excel tips from Yoav, join him on Facebook or Twitter