Windows Tools, Help & Guides

We do love wallpapers here at mintywhite. This time I bring you 20 of my own photos, taken during the last year. The Spring pictures where taken outside Bergen, which is in the Western part of Norway. Known for its rain, and spectacular nature. The rest are from the Eastern part called Ostfold, which is where I currently live. If these pictures become a success amongst you, I will bring you more Norwegian Nature real soon. Some Fjord Pictures perhaps ?

All photos are 1920 x 1200, except ONE which is made for a Dual Monitor Display.

Until then, I hope you enjoy

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I’m guessing that the screen savers themselves doesn’t need any introduction. Many people like the Mystify, Ribbon or Bubbles screen saver, but secretly wish they could tweak them, ever so slightly. Having just one mystify ribbon scrolling over your screens – it seems lonely. Having a small monitor, the bubbles get too big.

Word has it that the people behind the screen savers did intend to add a settings menu to them, but never got around to it. Nevertheless, they all come with a few hidden settings that you can tweak.

And here’s how…

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Last week I talked about the different shut-down options in Windows. One of our readers (Alexandra) wanted to know how to tell Windows to shut-down or hibernate at a certain time. The easiest way to do this is to set windows to automatically shut-down or hibernate after a specific period of idleness using the Power Option Settings. There might be several reasons why you would opt out the Power Option solution, but one reason might be that you do not want the computer to shut-down at all during the day. If that be the case, you can schedule Windows to shut-down at a specific time, say at 3 am after you have fallen asleep over the keyboard.

This is how you go about to do just that (not fall asleep, but schedule the computer to …)

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There are many ways to shut down and restart your computer, but – which does what, and which should you use when?

The answer depends mostly on you. Are you into saving energy or boot-up time? How often do you leave your computer and for how long?

There are three main shut-down options available in Windows: Shut-Down, Sleep and Hibernate (names may vary depending on the Windows version). In Vista and Windows 7, there is also a fourth option; Hybrid Sleep.

Let’s explore the topic.

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Usually people use the  Hibernate or the Sleep Function when leaving the computer, to save time when returning to it. Mostly, I think, it’s because people feel the computer takes forever to get “work ready”. It may save you some precious time on the day-to-day basis, but there are occasions where a full Re-Boot is necessary.  Especially if you have applied an update or installed a Windows Service Dependent program. – What Then ??

One solution is to reboot when you go to get some coffee (or some other legal “drug”), or when you leave for the day. If you are on a password protected system, this really doesn’t help you any – you still have to wait for that last boot up services to start after typing in your credentials. If this is your case – do I got the perfect solution for you:

Introducing: Boot Snooze

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You may have heard it on the news: the world officially runs out of IPv4 addresses this month. Fear not, Internet will still be there, and it will work as usual. The problem is worse for the manufacturer of IP-dependent products than it will be for you. The problem has been forseen many years ago and the solution is to implement the next generasion IP-Adresses, called IPv6. More and more companies are implementing IPv6 on their system, and operating systems like Windows 7 all have the protocol installed by default. However, Windows XP has not. But of course where there’s an illness, there’s usually a cure.

How To Install IPv6 on Windows XP

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