Windows Tools, Help & Guides

What’s one of the most common ways to get unauthorized access to someone else’s computer – especially that of a friend or family member? By guessing the password!

Someone who knows you well may be able to figure out your password, especially if he can try different possibilities before hitting on the right one.

If you’re running Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate edition (or the equivalent edition of Vista), you can set your Windows account to temporary lock if someone enters the wrong password several times in a row.

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If you’d like to convert your Windows Vista or 7 to make it look like OS X Snow Leopard, you can learn how in this guide. Here’s what we’ll cover in this guide:

1. Create a system restore point.
2. Patch your system files with UXTheme Multi-patcher.
3. Download Snow Leopard for Windows 7.
4. Take Ownership of Your Files.
5. Install Snow Leopard for Windows 7 theme.

Please note: this guide involves modifying system files and you should proceed with caution.

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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:

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If you want to test a downloaded program but don’t want it destroying your data and sending your bank passwords to the other side of the world, you should probably test it in a safe environment that’s not connected to the rest of your home network. You can do this a number of ways; here are two suggestions:

• Download the program on a spare computer that’s not connected to the rest of your home network.
• Download the program in a virtual machine that’s isolated from your host machine.

If you don’t have a spare computer or want the convenience of testing without using a separate machine, you should use a virtual machine. In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up a virtual machine and how to isolate it from your home network so you can test software.

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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.

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Tired of seeing your icons constantly re-arranged ?

Every time you swap between screen resolutions, or turn on (or off) your dual monitor, you will most probably experience that you have to re-arrange your desktop icons.

Many of the applications for dual monitor have a feature for saving and restoring the position (and layout) of your Desktop Icons. But if you don’t already have this functionality at hand, then this is for you.

How to Add the Save / Restore Icon Layout functionality to your Context Menu.

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