SafeGuard Plus

The following are some of the common differences between CRT and LCD monitors. CRT Monitors have a higher viewing angle, where as LCD monitors have a restricted viewing angle. The aspect ratios are good for LCD monitors. The image quality is better for LCD monitors than CRT monitors. CRT monitors provide us with unlimited colors; mostly LCD monitors offer around 16 million colors. CRT monitors do not have a native resolution, whereas LCD monitors have a native resolution and displays better at this native resolution. The response time is good for CRT monitors, but with the latest developments, LCD monitors are also coping up with faster response times. CRT monitors consume more power, whereas LCD monitors consume one third of the power of CRT monitors. CRT monitors are bulky and consume a lot of your table space, whereas LCD monitors are sleek and slim. CRT monitors are heavier than LCD monitors. LCD monitors cost more than CRT monitors. Heat generation is more in CRT monitors, and LCD

Open any help file. Compiled help files have the extension .chm. For example to open a help file, you can open paint and go to help to open the help file for paint. You will find a question mark symbol at the left corner of the window. Click on it and you will be able to find the context menu “Jump to URL”. Type the URL of the site along with the prefix http:// Click the Ok button. You will now be able to browse the internet using the help file itself.

If you want to hide certain control panel icons, you can easily do it by editing the control.ini file. The control.ini file is present in the c:/windows. Just open the file. Initially the control.ini file will be empty. If you want to hide a control panel icon in control panel, just add the [don't load] tag followed by the name of the control panel file and then save the file. For example : [don't load] access.cpl=no The above will hide the accessibility options from control panel. You can re enable the icon file by removing the corresponding line if you have multiple entries. You can search for all the files with the extension .cpl, to know the names of the control panel file which you want to hide, using the control.ini file. Note that you will have to reboot the system for the changes to take effect.

The thumbs.db file is automatically created within a folder when the thumbnails view is used to view that folder. To disable the creation of the thumbs.db file, follow these steps: Open folder options in control panel. Then navigate to the view tab. Under the advanced settings box, select "Do not cache thumbnails." Click the Apply button.

You might have noticed that there is a hidden file called thumbs.db created in some folders. This file is automatically created within a folder when the thumbnails view is used to view that folder. This is file is not a virus and many people take it so. This file just contains information for windows, to display the thumbnail of a picture as the icon of that folder when the user switches to thumbnails view. If you find this file annoying then you are free to go ahead and delete it or disable its creation.

Many people come across this not a valid win32 application error and the following are some of the reasons for which the error is thrown. The most common cause is the file getting corrupted. Especially, if you downloaded it from the internet, make sure that the file has been downloaded completely. Try re-downloading it again from other mirror sites and see if it works. Another cause is hardware errors. If you run the program file from the CD then, make sure that the CD is in proper working condition and is not damaged in any way. Some times driver problems can cause such errors. In such cases try copying the file from the CD to your hard disk and run it. If the “Not a valid win 32 application” error persists then it may be due to other reasons. If some other program is trying to prevent the execution then this might also result in such errors. For example, consider that the file is a virus. When the file is run, the antivirus scanner may prevent its execution due to the fact that it h

Screen savers are actually to be displayed when you leave your computer undisturbed for a while. But if you want a particular screensaver to be displayed immediately instead of the time delay, (even if the time delay is set in the display properties) then you can bring up the screen saver by just double clicking on the screensaver file (.scr). There are some inbuilt screensaver files in windows. You can search for all the .scr files in the windows search tool for getting their location. In windows Xp the inbuilt screensavers are present in the windows/system32 folder. Just have a shortcut of your screensaver file (.scr) in your start menu or desktop and then just run the shortcut whenever you want the screensaver to be displayed.

The first thing you will have to check, when the dll error occurs is whether the error is caused due to a missing file or a corrupt file or due to a file with a different version. First, run the following command in run dialog box (just copy and paste it in run dialog): sfc /scannow This will restore corrupted files but it is not guaranteed to give complete solution at all costs. After doing the above, if a dll file not found error occurs, then there are a lot of secure websites where you can download dll files. Just Google for them and you will get it. They will mostly come in zip files containing readme files containing information where they have to be pasted. Some even come with registry keys for registration purposes. Merge the keys if needed. Note that this is similar to a first aid mechanism, which might not produce a complete fix. Sometimes copying a dll file with a wrong version may also result in increasing the problem. But this is a good start in handling dll errors.

Many people complain about missing dll files all of a sudden in windows. Dll files are runtime files. That is, when a software runs, it requests the dll file during its runtime. If the software cannot find the dll file or if it finds the dll file with an unrecognized version then they throw a dll file error message. Some times new programs when installed overwrite the older dll files with newer versions. When the older program requests for the dll file and if it is not able to find its older version, then dll file errors occur. These missing dll files maybe the out come of some other softwares , which during their uninstallation remove some dll files along with the other files to be removed. A bad sector in the hard disk at the location of the dll file can also result in errors. Also, the simple reason is the accidental deletion of the dll files manually by the users.

This is quite an attractive feature in Windows as this kind of highlights the icons in the desktop from the back ground. But if you have a white back ground or a back ground similar to that of the icons then this feature may result in difficulty in reading the text under the icons. Hence if you wanted to disable the shadowy appearance under the text in the desktop icons then you can do it easily by following the steps given below. Open control panel (start > control panel) Then open the system properties, by clicking on the system icon. Open the advanced tab, and under the performance section click on the settings button. Find the entry “Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop” and uncheck it and click Ok.

Response time is simply, the time taken by a monitor to go from complete white to complete black or from complete black to complete white. In case of a LCD monitor, it is the speed by which the monitor’s pixels could change from one colour to another. It is measured in milliseconds. A computer monitor with a faster response time will be good for playing fast paced games. In the earlier days, CRT monitors had a lead over the LCD monitors for higher response times. But with the current technology LCD monitors also provide higher response times making them ideal for gaming purposes.

Some times when you move to a different computer then, you may have to transfer your Help and support center favorites to the new computer. Whenever you add a new favourite to your help and support center, it will be added to a file called Favorites.stream. This file is present in the following directory: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\HelpCtr Just copy and paste the above path to the run dialog box (start > run) to open the folder. Copy the Favorites.stream file from the folder and paste it into the same folder( as stated above) in the other computer where you want to transfer your Help and support center favorites. It is also very important to note that, the other computer should have the same primary drive letter. That is if one computer has its copy of windows in C: drive. Then the new computer also should have its copy of windows installed in C: drive.

A service called the terminal service should be enabled for the username to be displayed in the username column in the task manager in the processes tab. To enable this service do the following: Go to start > run and type services.msc and press enter. In the services window, navigate to Terminal Services and then right click it and select properties. Select the startup entry as automatic and click the apply button. Then to start the process from now itself(that is before the next restart) right click it and select start. From now onwards the username entry will be available in the processes tab in the task manager.

If you have a lot of start menu entries then it would be better if they are sorted out for easy identification. You can sort the list if you use the classic start menu as the start menu style. Right click the task bar and then select properties to open the Task bar and start menu properties. You can also open it from start > settings > Task Bar and start menu. Then go to the start menu and then click on to the customize button. Then click the sort button. All your start menu entries will be alphabetically sorted.

You can also hide your files in windows through the command prompt. First open the command prompt (start > run > cmd). Then give in the command: attrib +h d:\filename.txt This will hide the filename.txt file in the D drive. Replace the file path with any file path you want to hide that particular file. To unhide the file use the same command with the –h option like as follows. attrib -h d:\filename.txt This will unhide the file.

An external command is a command which is not defined in the command.com. An external command makes use of external executable or com files to execute and by default only internal commands work directly in windows. To use an external command you will have to specify the executable command executable or the com file with the required parameters. If you run commands which are not recognized in windows then you will get the error message that the command is not recognized as an external and internal command.

You might have seen in a lot of websites like Wikipedia that there are a lot of links pointing to various portions of the same page. This can be done easily in HTML by use of two simple tags. First create the link using the following tag: <a href="#link">Go here</a> Then place the following tag just before the place, where you want to navigate: <a name="link"> (Don’t forget to close tags appropriately) The above link will appear like this: Go here When clicked it will search for the tag with the name “link” and will go there( it will not work here though). You can use any name value in the place of the link tag as used here and the corresponding name should be used in the href tag as well. Note that in the first href tag there is a # symbol which is not present in the second name tag.

Windows Xp has a good inbuilt firewall which protects you to some extent from external hacks. To enable the firewall in windows open the Network connections from control panel. Then right click the local area connection and select properties. In the properties dialog box, go to the advanced tab. Then, under windows firewall, click the settings button. Under the general tab, select ON option to switch on the windows firewall. Similarly to disable the windows firewall, you can follow the same steps and select OFF to switch off the windows firewall.

If you do not want the system to ask for password when you resume from stand by or hibernation, you can disable this prompt in Windows Xp. Note that this means that anyone who resumes your system can use it. If you need much privacy then it is good that you have this prompt working on. For those who do not need this prompt here is how you disable it. Open control panel and open power options. Uncheck the check box “Prompt for password when computer resumes from standby”. Then click the apply button.

If you do not want users to be authenticated before using the system then you can make use of this trick. Note that for Windows with multiple users it is not recommended to disable the start up login dialog box.This will affect privacy. Open the run dialog (start > run). Type "Control Userpasswords2" without quotes and click ok. In the resulting User Accounts dialog box, uncheck the "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer" check box. Click the apply button.

A computer like all the other house hold articles should be cleaned once in a while. The frequency by which it should be cleaned depends upon the environment it is used in. If the environment is kind of dusty where more people walk in and walk out the computer has to be cleaned once every two months. If it is in an isolated environment, it is good to clean it once in 4 to 6 months. For cleaning LCD monitors, be careful as the panel is quite thin. Improper cleaning could do harm. It is always good to clean your monitor with a soft dry cloth which is not wet. That should do just fine. For the outer of a CPU case, use a soft cloth .Make sure that the cloth is not too wet. Do not use vacuum cleaners to clean as they may damage the vital components of your computer. For cleaning the inside of a CPU, you can make use of a soft dry brush for cleaning purposes. Be very careful and avoid contact of moisture with the internal components. Clean your speakers, your keyboards and other utilities. U

Some times the files used by internet explorer may get corrupted and hence it may not work properly. So here is how you can repair the corrupted internet explorer 6. First, go to c:\windows\inf folder. Note that the inf folder is a hidden one, and hence you must at first set the “show hidden files and folders” in the view tab in folder options. Find the file ie.inf in the inf folder. Right click the file and select install. You will be prompted to insert your windows Xp CD. Insert the disc and the repair will be done.

A scrap file is a file which can be created when you select some content in Microsoft word or excel and then drag it on to the desktop. It is very useful when you will have to put a part of a word document to the desktop for further use. Just open a word document select the content which you want to copy and then drag and drop the content in to the desktop to get a new scrap file created automatically. A scrap file is quite handy when you will have to transport copied stuff. The scarp file has an extension of .shs. To bring back the contents just drag the scrap file to another word document and you will get all the copied content from the previous word document in the new word document. The copied content may also content graphical stuff other than simple text. When the scrap file is dragged to a new word document it adheres to the format of the new word document.

This trick is just used to create a file which contains no data but of any size you want it to be. First you will have to convert the size of the file in to hexadecimal notation. For example, if you want to create a file of size 2000bytes, then convert it into hexadecimal. Use the windows calculator in the scientific calculator mode to convert 2000 bytes in to hexadecimal number. 2000 converted to hexadecimal number will give 7D0. Now open the command prompt(run > cmd). Navigate to the folder where you want to create the file. Input the command debug filename.extension and hit enter. (Do not use the file name of any of the files in that directory) You will obviously get a file not found error, just ignore it. The filename can be any file name and you can give any extension you like. Note that there is a space between debug and the filename. In our case the hexadecimal number was 7D0, now put zeros in front of it in such a way that finally the hexadecimal number consists of 8 digits

Adding a new page in visual studio 2005 is similar to adding a new GUI form. First of all open solution explorer. Just right click the name of the website in solution explorer and select add new item. Now in the Add New Items dialog box, select webform. Give the name of the new webform in the name textbox at the bottom. Also if needed change the language you are going to use in that new webform. Click the ok button.

Information about the browsers which the users use will be of good help, since you can tailor your application to work perfectly with different browsers. For example, for mobile devices you might want to give a less bandwidth oriented application. Here I have used c# to give an example. In order to do this, create an object of System.Web.HttpBrowserCapabilities and then use the properties of this object to get various data on the browsers. For example, System.Web.HttpBrowserCapabilities object = Request.Browser; Then in order to get the name of the browser, use the code string name = object.Browser; This will store the name of the browser as a string in the variable name. Other attributes include, Type(gives the type of the browser), MajorVersion(gives the major version), MinorVersion, Cookies( whether the browser supports cookies), VBScript etc.

When you drag and drop controls from the HTML Tab of the toolbox in visual studio, they get rendered as static HTML controls. If you want these controls to be accessed by the server then you will have to convert them to HTML server controls. To convert a HTML control into an HTML server control, right click the HTML control and select, “Run as server control”. Note that server controls also have a property called runat=”server”. The HTML controls will not have this property, but the converted controls will. You can also distinguish a server control by the presence of a glyph( a small arrow head) on it, in the design view tab.

If you find that for some programs listed in Add or Remove programs, the change and remove buttons not available, then you will have to perform a small registry change. Open the registry editor. (Start > run > Regedit) Then navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ There enter into the key of the application for which the change and remove buttons are not getting displayed. Then look for the key “NoRemove” and change its value to 0. Then look for the key “NoModify” and change its value to 0. Now open Add or Remove Programs and you will find that the change and remove buttons appear.(Some times a restart may be necessary).

Cryptographic services are some libraries which provide mechanisms for strong authentications for softwares which are installed. When these get disabled accidentally, you might not be able to install some updates or other programs. To set the cryptographic services to automatic (during system start up), follow the following steps. Open the control Panel. Open Administrative tools. In Administrative tools, open services. Right-click cryptographic services and then select properties. Set the start up type as automatic. Right click it and also select start, for starting the service from that time itself. Note : You can also open the services page directly by going to start > run > services.msc It is recommended to have this service running automatically at startup.

Some times it would be good if some softwares we installed stopped showing up in the Add or remove programs list in windows Xp. This is because of the fact that we may not want others to see the installed softwares in add or remove programs. Sometimes we might install, various softwares and might not want to uninstall them and hence it would be good if they did not show up in Add or Remove programs list at all. This is a really simple trick. Just navigate to the following key in the registry editor. To open registry editor go to start > Run > regedit. Navgate to the key : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Uninstall Remove the unwanted subkeys here to make them not show up in Add or remove programs list. Do not delete the keys, just export them outside and have them in the hard disk for safety purposes, just in case you want to add them back.

Batch files are similar to executable files. Batch files can run a set a set of command prompt commands for you. If you always run a particular set of command prompt commands often, use batch files to run them. You can also make interesting short cuts to various applications. Procedure to make a batch file: Open notepad and type the commands which you want to run. Try typing each command in only one line. Type the next command in another line. Save the file. In the save file dialog box, in the file name text box type the filename followed by ”.bat” without quotes. Now save the file. Now when you double click the file, you will be able to run that list of commands which you have typed in your notepad. Here is an example: Open notepad and type appwiz.cpl. Note that the commands are case sensitive. Now save it as batch file and double click it. It will open Add or remove programs. You can change the icon of the batch file to make it look attractive.

Viewing angle is a property of LCD monitors, since as far as CRT monitors are concerned, the display can be viewed in all directions as long as you are in front of the screen. Viewing angle is the maximum angle through which a person will be able to see the monitors display perfectly. The viewing angle accounts for both horizontal and vertical views. LCD monitors which are used at home may have larger viewing angles and the ones used in office rooms, probably has smaller viewing angles on account of security. So when a LCD television is bought make sure that it has good viewing angle for better visibility for all the people who are watching. Viewing angles is represented by “x/y”. X > the horizontal viewing angle (in degrees). Y > the vertical viewing angle (in degrees). For example , 160/160.

We all might have bought Television sets and computer monitors. But many people still do not know how to identify the screen size by looking in to the monitor. So here is the simple way. Just measure the diagonal width of the screen and this gives the screen size. It is also to be noted that, for the same screen size, a LCD monitor will give a larger display. Computer monitors come in 15 inches, 17 inches, 19 inches and so on.

The recently opened tabs, in a session is a very good feature if you want to open tabs which you have of course closed. To access this feature in Mozilla Firefox go to History > Recently closed tabs and select which tab you want to re open. Note that you can always undo a closed tab by right clicking any tab and selecting “Undo Close Tab”.

When search engines crawl your website, they look for the links in your site as well. The text of the link is also very important, because search engines also note this. Since each and every post in your blog has its own link, you must make sure that these links are quite meaningful. When you publish your post in blogger, the first few words are selected for making up for the link of that post. For example, if the title of the post is “how to blog using flock in blogger”, then the link would be something like http://blogname.com/......../how-to-blog-using-flock.html In the example above, if the blog title does not contain the “in blogger” text. But it would be better if the link were http://blogname.com/......../blog-using-flock-in-blogger.html So to do that, first publish the post with the suitable title which you want to have as the link. Then after publishing, you can change the title to a more detailed one. Note by changing the blog posts title, the blog URL does not change.

The next generation Internet The current Ip address system has around say 9 integer numbers in it and then while having a complete permutation of it we will have only 4.3 billion addresses. Soon this would result in a lot of problems for various countries and people. Because of the no of people accessing the internet keeps on increasing every day by day the current 4.3 billion ip addresses are not enough. If the current situation continues we will have to face a lot of problems with our internet as we may be forced to wait for a i-p address so that we can access the internet, even for very silly issues like blogging or checking your mail etc. This is going to be a great problem so , it is soon expected to follow the ipv6 , which is read as ip address version six which can , by permutation include around sextillion addresses and by implementing this version we will be able to pack the entire population without waiting for one person to logout of an ip address. This is also going to be a

Every browser available now has tabbed browsing features in it. Some popular ones include Internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera etc. The following are some tips which can be used so that the tabbed browsing feature is used to a good extent. The shortcut CTRL + T will open a new tab in the same window. Clicking a link with the middle mouse button will load the page of that link in a new tab in the same window. Click on a tab with the middle mouse button to close the tab. Click and hold on to the CTRL button and press the number corresponding to that tab to open that tab. For example CTRL + 3 will open the third tab. To switch between tabs, just press CTRL + tab keys. Double-clicking on the empty region in the tab bar will also create a new tab. You can bring back an accidentally closed tab by right clicking on any tab and selecting Undo Close Tab. Use these tips for effective tabbed browsing.

If you want to open documents and settings folder in windows, you can easily do it by opening start > run . Now in the run dialog box, type two full stops (..), and click ok. The documents and settings folder will open. This trick also works with windows 2000.