Windows Tools, Help & Guides

In this guest post, James Ricketts explores steps to solve common DLL errors. Learn more about James at the conclusion of this post.

When something goes missing you can either look for it randomly or go about your search in a systematic, step-wise manner. Obviously, in the second case, the efforts involved will be much less and the chances of success higher. What if you are asked to search something you have never seen or heard about? In such a case you should first take some time to gather some basic information about the missing item that will help you ascertain its origin and why it could have gone missing.

So, before you go ahead and start searching for a file that may have gone missing on your computer without any prior warning, it is of utmost importance that you begin by understanding a few basic facts. These include knowing the purpose of this file, and usual reasons for a file to go missing. This article will make you aware of DLL files, causes for their disappearance and finally steps to solve such problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

This guide is Part 2 to “Change the Background in WMP12″.  In Part 1. I showed you a simple method to change the WMP12 background using 7 backgrounds MS provided us with.  In this guide I’ll show you how to assign your own images.

I’ve made a background here that goes nice ( I think).  I’ll be using this image for the guide, you can of course, use your own.  Be cautious using dark backgrounds however.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this guide will show you how to change the background in Windows Media Player 12 (WMP12) using ‘7’ backgrounds provided by MS.

It’s a simple procedure that involves editing the registry, however, see here before proceeding.

For those that aren’t keen on editing the registry, you can download this zip file which includes all the entries from background ‘0’ to ‘6’.  Just double-click the one you want to try, restart WMP12 and see the changes!

For those that like to do things the manual way, we’ll start with;

Read the rest of this entry »

By default in Windows 7, there’s a 400ms delay between you hovering your mouse over an open program’s Taskbar icon, and a preview of the open program being shown.

This guide will show you how to shorten that delay.

Read the rest of this entry »

XdN Tweaker is a free tweaking program for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7.

If you like to take more control of your computer and apply tweaks that enhance your user experience, then this tool is for you. Learn, in this guide, what XdN Tweaker does and how to get it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Windows Guides reader, TheManRetired, offers two guides to help users who are new to Windows. The first guide covers installation of Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 Free. This second guide covers setting up your first backup to CD or DVD. If you’d like to provide help (simple, advanced etc., let me know.)

Hopefully you have the program installed but if you don’t I have written up an installation document that shows how to install it and where to get the program with a link to site that I know has it, so here we are going to start using the program. The screen shot here are made using the FastStone Capture program. With Burning Studio you can backup just about anything that is on your hard drive but I suggest only backing up what you have created as you can never get all the files and registry setting for programs and it is safer and better to reinstall the programs anyway so they set right and work and you don’t have to try and find out why they are not working like before. Here I am backing some music files that I ripped from my cd’s but the principles apply to all your files, you will just have to change the location of where you get the files to places on your hard drive and sorry this document will not go into all the places on your hard drive that the files are, most of them on a windows system will be in my documents(or just documents depending on your version) and most of them are located under your user account in either Documents and Settings or under Users depending on your version of windows, I am not going into any Linux or Mac systems as I don’t have them but if you want to give me one I would be happy to write up a document like this for those systems.

Read the rest of this entry »