Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Like Windows Vista, Windows 7 comes with a suite of Parental Controls tools to help you protect your children from viewing inappropriate content on your PC or from using a computer during restricted hours. In this guide you’ll learn how to do the following:

• Create a new user account for your child.
• Set up Parental Controls for a Windows 7 user account.
  • Set time limits for account access.
  • Control games by rating, content, or title.
  • Allow and block specific programs.
• Restrict access to specific websites.

If you use Windows Vista, the settings are almost identical; however, a Windows Vista-specific series of guides can be found here: Vista User Accounts and Parental Controls Series.

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These days ‘Going Retro’ is all over the place. Fashion, home design, artwork etc. If you’re all Retro Fan, or just feeling nostalgic,  by all means read on.

If you’ve been around computers a while, you should remember the good (well not good perhaps, but) old Windows 98. Back in the days a great piece of software. For the savvy home user, Windows 98 came with a really great enhancement: Windows 98 Plus! Which (if memory serves me right) had to be bought separately.

The Plus! pack was a set of themes to edit the appearance of your windows by changing the system colors, icons and screensavers – fun fun fun.

With Windows going on 8 we are getting used to the idea of changing themes and the graphic layout of our computer, but back then… this was as high-tech as we could get. Funny thing is – these “enhancements” still works today – on your Windows 7.

So if you feel like going Retro, or simply have a stroll down memory lane…

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Operating systems have become more complex over time. For an every-day user, it’s really a hard task to find what programs are slowing down their machine and for what reasons.

The most common performance problems are related with physical memory.

As I wrote in a comment answering a reader, Ben, in another post:

5 Things You Should Know About Microsoft Security Essentials

Programs use more RAM (another name for physical memory) if there is more available. Thus, you cannot associate high memory usage with bad memory usage. If your machine has resources (one of these resources is RAM), there is no problem using them if they’re available for use. But what about when you hit the limits of your physical memory?

What can an every-day user do to find out if their machine is using all of it’s current physical memory and, therefore, needs more RAM?

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In this guest post, James Ricketts explores the best methods for troubleshotting high CPU issues on your PC. Learn more about James at the conclusion of this post.

Best Methods For Troubleshooting High CPU Issues On Your PC

Why does the issue of high CPU consumption occur?

Well, the reasons are aplenty, the common ones are:

• Use of software or processes that by nature consume high system resources.
• Unnecessary startup programs.
• Malware infection.
• Outdated Windows, software, and driver files.
• Damaged registry.

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Windows 7 comes with several features that maybe you haven’t noticed. This post will show you some of these useful tools.

It may seem that operating system utilities are just for system administrators but that is not always true. Windows 7 offers some tools that may not solve great problems but can improve your productivity.

To start these programs we are going to use the search utility that appears when you press the WinKey.

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In this guest post, James Ricketts explores resolving computer error related to printer issues. Learn more about James at the conclusion of this post.

Resolving Computer Errors Related To Printer Issues

How frustrating is it when you give a print command, and instead of a printed document in your hand, you are left staring at an error on your computer screen?

Today’s printers when compared to the ones used in yesteryears seem to have come a long way. Printers used today are savvier, offer more features, require less maintenance, and cost less. But one aspect remains unchanged, printers remain as error-prone as before. The good news is that printer errors are fairly simple to resolve.

The next time you encounter a printer error, such as the hpqgpc01.exe error, perform the following steps to diagnose the cause and resolve the error.

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