Monday, January 28, 2008
What's the Difference Between Standby and Hibernate?
In Hibernate mode, XP saves the data in memory to the hard disk. Then the power is cut off completely, so this preserves more battery life. When you restart, it takes a little longer because the data saved on the disk must be restored to memory. Of course, this method uses disk space to store the memory data.
HOW TOENABLE THESE OPTIONS:-If you're using the XP theme view, you might not see the Hibernate option when you select to shut down the computer. First try holding down the Shift key to cause the Standby key to change to Hibernate. If that doesn't work, hibernation might not be enabled. Go to Control Panel Performance and Maintenance Power Options (or just Power Options in classic view). On the Hibernation tab, check the box that says Enable hibernation and click OK.
Answer 2 :--Hibernate and Standby are two different sleep options that Windows XP offers. Hibernate saves an image of your desktop, including all open windows and files. Then it powers down your computer just as if you had turned it off. When you turn your computer on again, your windows and files are open just as you left them.
Standby is a more traditional sleep mode, as it reduces the power your computer uses to almost nothing. When you select Standby, the power to your screen, hard drive, and peripheral devices is cut. However, the power to the computer's memory (RAM) is maintained so your open files stay open.
Frequently Asked Questions on RSS
News feeds keep you informed when websites add new content. You get the latest headlines as soon as its published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.
Feeds are also known as RSS. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML-based format for content distribution.
It allows you to view constantly updated headlines from www.hindustantimes.com. You can choose which feeds you would like to display. RSS feeds are free and www. hindustantimes.com currently uses RSS 2.0.
How do I start?
There are a number of ways to access RSS feeds. You can install a news reader that displays RSS feeds from the Web sites you select, enabling you to view hundreds of headlines at once.
Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want it to receive.
For example, if you would like the latest Hindustan Times Cinema stories, simply visit the cinema section and you will notice an orange RSS button on the left hand side.
After installing the news reader, to get one or more feeds, right-click on one of the channels and select "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy Link Location" to copy the location (URL) of the service.
Follow the instructions for your particular news reader, and then paste this location wherever it asks for the location of the service. You can add each feed manually from the Web site by following the aforementioned procedure.
An alternative to downloading a dedicated news reader is to use a Web-based news reader.
Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
The Three Must-Have Antivirus/Spyware Software Free Downloads
Avast Anti-Virus
Unlike antivirus trailwares such as MCAfee or Symantec, it's absolutely free for personal and home use.Also it won't slow down your PC by taking too much RAM or system resources. Despite its lean build, it protects your computer as the bigger programs do. It offers live virus protection to stop your machine from being infected in the first place, virus scanning and virus killing, and various protections against e-mail viruses, Web-borne viruses, and other threats.
Ad-Aware 2007 Free
If you haven't used this before, consider it a must-have.This longtime favorite spyware killer recently underwent a upgrade. After all, not only does it kill spyware, but it's free as well.
It's exceptionally easy to use, and lets you customize spyware scans as well as schedule them. When the program reports what it finds, you can tell it to kill the potential infections, put them into quarantine, or ignore them. The new interface is much slicker-looking and easier to use than earlier versions.
Windows Defender
Spyware is so hard to detect that you should use more than one antispyware app. Windows Defender is a very good choice for a second layer of security. It's free, it does a nice job of finding and killing spyware, and, unlike Ad-Aware, it offers real-time protection.
It also has some extras, such as tools for monitoring all the software and processes currently running on your PC, and for stopping programs from running on startup if you decide you don't need them.
These three software gave you maximux security and that too free of cost .
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Write A Batch File To Start Program In Startup
Here we consider you want to run three different applications (WordPad, calculator, and notepad) and minimized automatically with sequence at windows startup. However, you can write a batch file to do the job for you. Open any text editor like notepad and type the following command.
start /min wordpad.exe start /min calc.exe start /min notepad.exe
Now choose the option, Save As to save this file with .bat extension. For example filename.bat.
Now Right- click on Start button and choose open > Double click Programs > here open Startup folder. Now drag your .bat file in the Startup folder and close the dialog box.
Next time When you restart the computer, WordPad, Calc will start first and then Notepad. You won't see the batch file run because you told it to run minimized.
Logging in as Administrator
If you want to log in as the Administrator of your computer even though it does not show up in the listing when you start up the computer. Here is the tip:
- Hold down the [Ctrl] + [Alt] keys and press [Del] key twice. This will bring up the normal login dialog box and you can log on as "Administrator".
- To unhide the Administrator account so that it shows up every time. Click "Start > Run" and type "regedit"(without quotes) and press Enter. Go to
Unhide the Administrator Key by giving it a Value of "1". You will now see it appearing as an option the next time you log in to your computer.
Moving to a New Computer ? Plan Ahead and Avoid Problems
You’ll soon get rid of that old computer in favor of a brand new desktop or laptop computer with the fastest processor, lots of RAM and hundreds of gigs of storage.
Everyone in the family is excited about the new computer except for mom – she isn’t sure where to keep that old PC as the store room is already crowded and there’s no storage space available in any of the overhead shelves.
You therefore decide to sell that used computer on eBay and if that doesn’t work out (resale prices of second hand computers can be dismally low), you’ll donate it to a school or charity organization that will pass on the machine to someone in need.
Related: Things You Can Do with the Old Computer
Excellent decision but before you dispose the old computer, there are some very important points to take note of – all your important (and sometimes confidential) data like Office documents, family pictures, videos, emails, MP3 audio collection, internet bookmarks, software programs, address book, etc. are still residing on its hard drive.
You would therefore want to transfer all such data from the old computer to the new one and then also ensure (as a security measure) that you have erased everything off the old computer’s hard drive.
Migrate data from old to new computer – Once your new computer is up and running, you can bring the data from the old system to the new one through a USB data transfer cable – they are cheap and easily available at any computer accessories store.
Another option is burn data from old system onto one or more DVD (or CD ROM) disks. I generally put all the required data inside the My Documents folder and burn it to DVD(s).
You can then create a report of all software programs installed on the old computer using a free utility called Belarc Advisor (review of Belarc) – this helps when you want to maintain a consistent computing environment and don’t want to miss using any of these useful utilities that were on the old system.
Related: Backup Your Software License Keys
To migrate all your internet bookmarks, open the web browser (like IE or Firefox) and export favorites to an HTML file. Firefox users can try the Google Browser Sync extension (Browser Sync review) to save bookmarks and even passwords. If you use a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook, Eudora or Thunderbird, export all the emails, contacts and calendar to a file and put in the backup folder.
Also remember to transfer any fonts (file like .ttf) that you may have purchased and downloaded from the Internet. If you use an offline RSS reader like FeedDemon (FeedDemon review), export your RSS reading list as an OPML file else you’ll lose the subscriptions.
And if you share the habit of saving everything on the Windows Desktop, do remember to copy the desktop folder in My Documents because you’ll surely need them in the new PC.
Post-data transfer - Once you have moved all this data to the new computer via DVDs or an Ethernet cross over cable or the USB data transfer cable, don’t call eBay or charity yet. Keep the old PC in your possession for some more time until you are confident that everything you may need from the old computer is now available in the new system.
Related: Synchronize Files, Folders across Computers
And when it’s time to sell or donate, it is must that you spend some time cleaning the old system – I don’t mean wiping dust off the monitor or the keyboard coffee stains, it’s about cleaning your personal information from the computer’s hard drive – that includes information like your medical records, honeymoon pictures, credit card statements, emails, web browsing history, confidential documents, etc.
Simply erasing stuff by hitting the delete key (or emptying the recycle bin) won’t delete your data permanently from the hard drive – it could still exist on the hard drive and experts (or hackers) will have no problems recovering (also called undelete) those private files.
If you skip this step, you are indirectly exposing yourself to the risk of identity theft. Fortunately, there are some excellent tools that can help wipe everything off your hard-disk (so data cannot be recovered) and one such popular utility is Darik’s Boot and Nuke available at Sourceforge.
This program installs on a Floppy disk or a USB drive or you burn it into a CD. When you are ready to say goodbye to the old computer, put the Darik’s Boot and Nuke floppy (or CD) into the computer and change the boot order of the computer to make CD or Floppy drive first in the boot order. Restart and every bit of data on the old machine will be gone forever.
Before donating the computer, you can install a copy of Ubuntu Linux but if your old computer came bundled with an OEM license (say it came pre-installed with Windows XP and other software like Nero, Norton Antivirus, etc), it’s a good idea to reinstall the OS using the disk that came with the system.
OEM licenses are only valid when used on the original OEM machine on which it was first installed so the license will go waste if you donate the computer without installing the OS.
How To Defrag Computer
Every computer has a hard drive that needs to be reorganized and optimized. This is why you need to know how to defrag computer. First of all, you need to know why you would need to defrag a computer. Once you understand why you need to, I will outline the steps to defragging your computer with the standard defrag program in Windows. This article will aim to educate you on how a hard disk get fragmented and then the steps on how to defrag computer.
So why do you need to defrag your hard drive? First of all, a hard drive is composed of several disks or platters. When data gets written to the hard drive, it is written in a continuous fashion. However, when files get deleted and filled with other data, existing data will prevent a continuous stream of data on a disk. Over time, files would get broken up thus resulting in a large amount of fragmented data that is spread across platters on the hard drive. When you defrag computer, you are basically reorganizing the files so that they are continuous stream. This will increase performance by as much as 200% depending on fragmented your PC is. It also alleviates any system errors caused by file fragmentation.
Although there are tools you can buy that do ongoing defragmentation, you can easily do this task manually every so often to keep your hard drive optimized. Here are the steps on how to defrag computer on a Windows 2000/XP/2003 machine:
Step 1: Open "My Computer"
Step 2: Right-click a drive and click properties
Step 3: Click on the "Tools" tab
Step 4: Look for the "Defragmentation" section and click "Defragment Now"
Step 5: This will open the "Disk Defragmenter". Select a drive and click "Defragment"
Step 6: You can see the visual representation of the files in your hard drive. Once they are in continuous colors, you are finished!
I've just told you about the steps on how to defrag computer. Now that you understand how files get fragment, you can see how performance can affected. The steps to defragging your comptuer should be done at least once a month to keep your hard drive optimized. Defragging your computer should be one of the many tasks to having a healthy computer.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Erase Every Byte of Information on Your HDDs Even Without a Computer


One of the most important selling points of the
Drive eRazer is the fact that it's actually faster than comparable software solutions, writing data at a sustained rate of more than 35MB/s, which means that a 250GB drive would be fully erased in under two hours. Furthermore, the device is fairly simple to use, since all the users have to do is simply connect it to a drive and flip a switch.The Drive eRazer writes over every bit of a drive. After it's done, there's nothing left to recover. A standard single-pass mode writes one time across the whole disk, deleting blocks including partitions and Host Protected Areas. Verification is also performed.For those who want even more assurance, several Pro models are also available, these advanced versions being capable of more than one pass with random characters. Thus, they can delete all blocks including partitions and Host Protected Areas, even the ones normally invisible to operating systems. They automatically check for and remove DCOs and write to every sector of the disk using different data each pass. The verification is done after the last pass."As many people discover too late, trashing a file does not erase it from a hard drive," said James Wiebe, president/CEO of WiebeTech. "It is fairly easy for someone else to recover files from used hard drives. As a test, we bought used drives on eBay and recovered everything from corporate data to email conversations to financial data to legal documents. Drive eRazer is the easiest, most economical solution available to prevent others from seeing your files."
Enlarge pictureThe device is available in 4 versions: the standard/pro versions for 3.5-inch IDE/PATA drives, priced at around 100/150 US dollars, as well as a pro version for 2.5-inch IDE/PATA drives (also priced at 150 US dollars) and a pro version that works with both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA or IDE/PATA drives, which retails for around 200 US dollars.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Reasons for Orkut becoming popular among Indians



Listing down some of the reasons for its popularity:
1) Keeping in touch with old friends and distant relatives.
2) Considering the fact Indians stand no’3(Picture2) in the world who search for sex on net and orkut is an ideally destination which has loads of communities related to sex.
3) Typical desi attitude to peep into someone’s personal life, which is not possible in other social networking sites like face book if you’re in another network.
4) Fan club for their favorite celebrities, TV shows films etc.
5) Free download information related to movies, software, ebooks etc.
6) Online dating &people looking for new acquaintances
Microsoft Reached 40 Million Licenses of Vista
The software giant Microsoft has sold 40 million licenses of its Windows Vista operating system in the first 100 days since the product was launched into the market.
The chairman of the company, Bill Gates, mentioned that the fastest sales of the operating system in the history is due to an accelerating shift of the majority of population to digital lifestyles. He outlined that the premium editions had accounted for 78% of the OS sales.
It is worth mentioning that more than 95% computers worldwide run on Windows operating system, which all in all represents the biggest profit increasing engine of Microsoft.
The software corporation introduced its new operating system on January 30. This date marks Microsoft's first big upgrade of the operating system in more than 5 years.
Mr. Gates stated that the next-generation Windows Server software from Microsoft, being known as "Longhorn," now is called Windows Server 2008. It represents a server operating system analogue to the Vista PC operating system, that puts an accent on many of the same features, including an improved security.
The officials from the software giant, which last year was in control of about 2/3 of the world's market of server software, said that Windows Servers 2008 will hit the market this year's second half.
Mr. Gates cited a study made by IDC research group in which the group estimated there would be an economic impact of $120 billion from both products and services going around Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system and the giant's Windows Server 2008.
The company's officials also stated that Gateway, Lacie and Medion, being three new hardware manufacturers, are looking forward to manufacture products for Windows Home Server. The new software has the goal of helping families with multiple PCs to centralize easier and share with and protect digital content, including pictures, documents, audio and video files.
Taking Snapshots of Complete Website

Make a couple of useful settings before you start. Switch to the “Configuration” tab for that. Click on “Browse” in that “Save Parameters”. Navigate your way to the desired target folder for the image file and define it by clicking on “OK”. Select ‘JPG’ or ‘BMP’ as preferred graphic format, under “File Format” and also set the quality setting “Compression quality” for ‘JPG’ with the slider.
Then switch to the “Browser” tab. Write the URL of the desired site which you want to take a snapshot in the “Address field” and click on “GO”. When the webpage is fully loaded, click on “Grab now” and check the preview in the right part of the windows.
Here, you can also select the section of the website that has to be taken. “Save” creates a new graphic file as per your instructions, the name of the file is given automatically. With the right settings in the “Configuration” tab, you can even save websites directly in a PDF file using this tool.
Nivio…the world’s first Windows based online desktop
The race is on for creating the world’s first web operating system. Google, eyeOS, YouOS are the names that get bandied around the most frequently in this regard. An Indian startup is attempting to take an entirely different approach to this problem. Instead of taking the web OS route, it wants to take your Windows desktop environment to the web. Nivio is positioned as the world’s first Windows based online desktop; this is what its website says– “…your personal windows desktop on any computer in the world…when we looked to design a desktop available on the web we thought why change something that everyone uses (windows) ….we want to focus on delivering a better service rather than re-inventing the wheel…”. The service launches in a couple of weeks.
Nivio is a 20 member Delhi based startup and one of its co-founders is Iqbal Gandham. Iqbal is a serial entrepreneur of ‘pre Web 1.0’ vintage, for he co-founded Net4India in 1997-98. The company is registered out of Switzerland and thats where its servers are also hosted, but the founders, the development team, sales & marketing team are all based out of Delhi...
When I first heard of Nivio, the idea behind the product seemed quite ambitious, in fact bordering on the fantastic. Google’s rumored web based operating system (as well as its web equivalent of MS Office) may have been discussed threadbare to the point of being somewhat romanticized, but in reality they are a generation away from being functional in a useful way. Given that scenario, Nivio’s basic intent seems quite pragmatic. While they are likely to confront significant technical challenges, you have to appreciate their attempt at thinking differently.
So how will this work out? Nivio is being offered as a web service; for a monthly fee (Rs 399 pm), you get access to the Windows desktop environment on the web. You can access it from any computer (whether running Mac, Linux, Windows) with a browser and internet access. Nivio requires Active X for working in IE, while on other browsers, it uses Java Applets. What you get as part of the standard package is Windows XP, 5 GB Space, automated backups, virus protection, antispam etc. Some applications are available free e.g. Open Office, Yahoo! Messenger, iTunes, Firefox et al, whereas some software will be available on paying a monthly fee e.g. MS Office. Users will get a synchronization tool that allows them to upload/download docs/files to Nivio from their regular desktop. Specific applications can be enabled in your account on demand, either free or on a paid basis.
This is a highly hardware intensive webapp and the architecture is globally distributed over several locations in category 1 data-centers in Switzerland. As the user base grows globally new nodes will be put in place to satisfy localized demand for Nivio services.
I was given a test account by Nivio to try out the application. Logging into the account was smooth and the Nivio desktop looks just like your regular Windows desktop. I create a sample document using Open Office Writer. Browsing on Firefox (within Nivio) was somewhat jerky on my 256 kbps home internet connection. I feel that the streaming over the internet is likely to be bandwidth intensive and one would need a fast internet connection for a comfortable browsing experience. Nivio’s plans to distribute the hardware across different locations will come in handy in reducing network latencies. Iqbal informs me that the core technology is still under development, so you should expect significant performance improvements.
Overall the service looks intriguing and definitely worth a try. I couldn’t help getting a kinky feeling, while using a web version of Windows. In fact, it would be interesting to know what Microsoft thinks of Nivio, for this could be one of the ways to counter Google’s rumored web OS.
Vidipedia - The world's First Video encyclopaedia
You'll probably know Wikipedia and Youtube, two of the sites most visited in the World. But when you mix the two concepts you will obtain: Vidipedia - The world's First Video encyclopaedia.What do I think of this service at present? It's a rather difficult question to answer. My understanding is that two types of contents can find place in this service:
Videos that have already created for other uses: seems to be the case for those videos present on the current site now. One is likely to see re-uploaded videos on Vidipedia of those that are already present on Youtube, or other such sites
Secondly, Videos created specifically for Vidipedia: it is a little easy to Voice off your thought in the form of audio, but to do it with video appears much more complex.
Several questions can then arise, more sensitive than with other textual contents:
How to validate the “encyclopaedic” range of a video? For example at present, one can see there it video of a man reversed by a shooting with the bazooka. Is one really in the contribution of knowledge? Will a video on a concert of Britney Spears be classified in the cultural contents?
Which is the relevance of the search engine with respect to the video? This one is based on semantics, and the results will depend on the description which the uploader of the video will want to make.
There is also the traditional problem of the royalties and the right to the image.In short, if it is a specifically video encyclopaedia as the site seems to be at present -- then is it really functional? The videos should come simply of illustration from articles already existing, as it is already the case for the images? The future of Vidipedia lies in all our hands!!
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Delete your TEMP files on shutdown
It is really easy to set Windows XP to delete the contents of your Temp folder (or run any other commands) on shutdown. There are numerous reasons why you might want to delete your Temporary files when you shutdown Windows XP. Your Temporary files folder can get extremely large. Take a look at what’s in C:\WINDOWS\Temp.The first step is to install Xecutor. You can download Xecutor from the Xpertdesign homepage.
The second step is to create a batch file that will delete your temporary files on shutdown. To do this open up notepad and type the following line:del /Q G:\WINDOWS\Temp save your file as tempdelete.bat. Alternatively, you can download my tempdelete.bat file if you prefer.
The third step is to configure Xecutor to run the tempdelete.bat file on shutdown. Open Xecutor, and answer no to the stream of questionsit prompts you with the first time you run it. Next choose the shutdown tab and add tempdelete.bat file. This is shown below:
After you hit OK you will now see tempdelete.bat in the shutdown tab of Xecutor.
Now just close Xecutor and it will run in your system tray. The last step is to drag the Xecutor icon from your desktop into your Startup folder located in Start >> All Programs >> Startup so that Xecutor starts when you start Windows.
You are all set, now when you shutdown Windows, your temporary files will be deleted, as well. You can add other commands the same way (i.e., delete cookies, delete My Documents, etc.).
What other commands do you think would be useful to run at Shutdown? Let us know in the comments.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
how to check that window is Activated ?
%WINDIR%\system32\oobe\msoobe /a
