Vista Firewall Control is a free portable tool that lets a user have complete control over his/her Windows Firewall. Unlike Windows default Firewall program, it lets you easily manage the Incoming and Outgoing connections of each and every app more quickly. Once a program tries to access the Internet, it will immediately notify you as a pop-up message. At the same time it will ask you to edit the application’s zone settings.
Read MoreThere are tons of options and features that you can tweak in Windows operating system, such tweaking requires some serious modifications to the registry and other settings. Apart from tweaking, some features are build deep inside Windows and are difficult to access on daily basis.
Back in January we reviewed an app to tweak Windows Vista, but what if you want to tweak Windows XP and Windows 7 too. There are many tweaking tools available, here is one that has grabbed my attention recently.
TweakNow Powerpack 2009 is a free Windows tweaker that works on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. It is a powerful tool that is build to tweak every aspect of the operating system and web browser. By default you are shown the Windows Secret module which includes tweaking of Applications, Control Panel, Desktop, etc.
Read MoreRecently, I had to scan some photos for my brother, he has an HP all-in-one DeskJet connected to the Sony Vaio laptop. The All-in-one DeskJet from HP contains scanner, copier and printer all in one box. Since he is not a computer expert, he only installed the drivers that came in the CD and did not bother to install other software from HP. And to make matters worse, he even lost the CD.
It is not surprising, since such cases take place almost daily. I too, never bother to install 3rd party apps that come with the product since they are always a piece of crap. So how would you scan documents or photos in Windows Vista without even installing a 3rd party scanning tools? Meet Windows Fax and Scan.
Read MoreHas your internet connection slowed down a bit? Or does your internet lag when connecting to a website or server? Maybe you just tried an Internet Optimizer and it slowed down your internet instead of increasing the speed? If yes, then there could be two possibilities, either you have a malformed LSP installed inside the TCP/IP handler or you have a corrupt TCP/IP and/or Winsock registry entries.
But what exactly is LSP? Layered Service Providers(LSPs) are small bits of software that use Winsock APIs to insert itself into the TCP/IP stack. Once in the stack, they can intercept and modify inbound and outbound Internet traffic, thus slowing down the internet is some cases. According to Wikipedia, it allows processing all the TCP/IP traffic taking place between the Internet and the applications that are accessing the Internet (such as a web browser, the email client, etc).
Read MoreDo you use Windows Quick Launch bar to launch applications easily? It is a great feature that allows user to gain quick access to frequently used apps, but there is one big downside, it does not allow you to sort the shortcuts in groups. When you have lots of shortcuts, it gets quite cluttered and difficult to find an app.
Free Launch Bar is a free replacement for Quick Launch Bar and is fully compatible with it since they use the same folder for shortcuts. The difference is that Free Launch Bar lets you arrange the shortcuts in groups and is fully customizable. It also supports Hotkeys and integrates itself into Windows Shell.
Read MoreLast year I wrote a detailed guide for creating a quick ad-hoc wireless connection between two computers in Windows Vista. The problem is that not everybody has wireless card installed in their computers. So this guide will focus on creating a Local Area Network(LAN) connection between two computers in both Windows Vista and XP.
First go and buy the straight patch Ethernet LAN cable(make sure that ‘patch’ or ‘crossover’ is written on the cord) and connect them to both computers.
In Windows XP: Go to Network Connections Control Panel, right-click Local Area Network connection and select Properties. Now select Internet Protocol(TCP/IP) and click Properties.
In Windows Vista: Go to Network and Sharing Center, select Manage Network Connections, right-click Local Area Network connection and select Properties. Now select Internet Protocol Version 4(TCP/IPv4) and click Properties.
Read MoreWinAutoHide is a free portable and opensource tool for Windows that can hide any active window with a hotkey. Unlike ClickyGone, this tool is portable and can be used to quickly hide/unhide important windows. You can hide upto 4 windows since only 4 shortcut keys are supported(Win+Left, Win+Right, Win+Up, and Win+Down).
Since this tool does not include advanced functionalities, it is recommended not to use it as a security or privacy tool. Instead, it’s real purpose is to hide any window in which you are mostly active(e.g Command Prompt, Graphic Tools, Browser Windows, etc). Once you have hidden your window, you can complete other tasks and come back to it later.
Just extract the files and click winautohide.exe to run it directly, no installation is required.
Read MoreDo you have multiple networks and would like to manage them all in one place? NetSetMan is a free tool for Windows that lets you manage up to 6 different network profiles. Want to change the IP of a network or maybe you want to change the DNS server? Instead of following the extra-long steps in Windows XP and Vista, you can now manage all network settings from one simple window.
Read MoreAre you tired of using Windows Search to find files on your computer? Windows Search has come a long way, but it lacks some decent features. It runs on the principle of indexing, every time you copy a new file to your computer it is indexed. If the file is not indexed, then you will have no luck in finding it. Also note that when a user performs a search, Windows first scans the whole index and then displays the result, this scanning can take a long time if your index is huge.
Super Finder XT is a free search tool for Windows that is both quick and robust. There are two modes: Simple(for starters) and Advanced(for pros). On the main window in advanced mode, you will find option to search for text(Text, Unicode, or Hex), exclude specified extensions or file/folder name, and other useful options.
Read MoreIf you are one of those users who tested Windows 7 beta, you will know that one of the most handy feature is that we can reorganize the tabs in the taskbar. Sadly this important feature(that increases productivity) lacks in older version of Windows, i.e XP, Server 2003/2008, and Vista.
Taskix is a free tool that adds the ability to move and reorder the taskbar tabs easily. Simply drag the tab that you want to move and it will reorganize itself. It is a robust program that has a very small memory footprint. And yes, it supports multiple monitors too.
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Read MoreIf you change the screen resolution a lot, you must have noticed that the icons get mixed up and you have to manually rearrange them all over again. While playing a game at lower resolution or connecting you laptop to an external display, the icons change their position according to the resolution.
Take my example for instance, most of the time my laptop is connected to an external display whose resolution is 1680 x 1050, whenever I disconnect the external display all my icons get mixed up which is very frustrating. I have found two tools that can help solve this problem DesktopOK and DeskSave.
DesktopOK is a free portable tool for Windows that lets you restore different icon layouts for different resolutions. Since it supports different icon layouts for different resolutions, you can also set different desktop icon layouts for same resolution.
Arrange your desktop icons and run this tool. Click Save and it will save your current desktop icon layout for this resolution.
Read MoreDo you have tons of work and want to manage them easily? When you open multiple programs, the desktop gets cluttered which effects the workflow. This is where Dexpot comes in, it is a free virtual desktop manager that lets you create up to 20 different virtual desktops. For example, by default there are four virtual desktops, you can use one for browsing, one for presentation, one for chatting, and one for some important office work. You can switch between these desktops easily with a simple hotkey.
Below is an example of four different virtual desktops running on my computer.
Read MoreDo you like the default Command Prompt screen in Windows? If not, then you can customize it to your needs by changing the layout, font, and color. There are many reasons why users customize their command prompt, some increase the width because they have to write long codes, some change the size of their fonts to look bigger, etc. The default command prompt style is too common these days, to make mine different I changed the background so that it can match the Windows 7 wallpaper on the desktop.
Read MoreIf a virus attacks your system, the first thing you will do is to remove the virus with an anti-virus software. But what then? Your system will still likely to remain corrupted. This is because some types of viruses usually tweak the system registry and file systems. If you remove the virus, your system registry and file systems will still remain corrupted. Virus Effect Remover is a free opensource tool which helps you to remove the effect of viruses from the Windows Registry and File System easily. Also it can detect the registry error caused by a virus.
You must have noticed that some viruses disable task manger, registry editor, folder options, etc, you can use this tool to enable them back instantly.
Read MoreCore Configurator is a free utility that lets you configure and optimize your Windows Server 2008 Core edition and Windows Vista configuration. It is free for non-commercial use only. It has a graphic interface similar to that of control panel which allows you to access networking, firewall, services, registry, task manager, etc from a simple-to-use window easily.
Read MoreNote: It is a very sensitive software and can screw your computer if you disable the wrong system services, so be careful.
If you are using Windows you can check which programs load during startup by going to System Configuration or Windows Defender. What will you do if you want to disable a system service or a program that cannot be disabled by using System Configuration or Windows Defender? This is where Autoruns come in, it is a free portable tool (developed internally at Microsoft) that gives you a complete picture of every startup program and service that run when your Windows boot up.
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