System Restore

Where to find it: Start>Programs>
Accessories>System Tools
This is the fastest recovery
route, since Win XP already does
most of the groundwork for you.
All you have to do is to make sure
that System Restore is turned on.
To do this, open Control
Panel>System.Click on the System
Restore tab and check off the ‘Turn
off System Restore’ box.If you have
more than one hard drive, you will
get a box with each drive and its
setting listed. Click on each one,
then click on Settings and set up
the amount of space it should use.
Now, each time your system
reaches specific checkpoints—
such as software installation, uninstallation
and hardware
change—Win XP will automatically
save important system files
and settings.You can also create a
specific restore point by launching
System Restore and choosing ‘Create
a restore point’.
Now, if the system becomes unusable,
launch System Restore.
Choose ‘Restore my computer to an
earlier time’ and click on Next. Select
the date when you last used
your PC without problems and XP
will automatically restore the files
and settings from that date. Note
that you can only select dates
shown in bold. You would need to
reboot your PC after this is done to
finish recovering your PC.

Backup and Restore

Where to find it: Start> Programs>
Accessories>System Tools
This is a manual method.After
launching it, click on Backup and
check on the specific drives or folders
to back up. To back up the system-
state (same as System
Restore), check on the ‘System
State’ option under ‘My Computer’
in the left-side tree.At the bottom
of the box, select a path and provide
a file name for your backup
(.bkf ) file. Click on ‘Start Backup’
to begin.
To restore, simply return to this
utility in Safe Mode.Select the ‘Restore
and Manage Media’ tab. Select
your backup file from the pane
on the right and click on ‘Start Restore’.
It’s a good idea to reboot
your PC when this finishes.

ASR (Automated System Recovery)

Where to find it: Backup Utility,
Win XP installer
To use ASR, you need to create
an ASR floppy disk.To use this ASR
floppy, you need to boot the Win
XP installer in the Recovery mode.

Hardware profiles

Where to find it: Control
Panel>System>Hardware
Hardware profiles help you
start your PC using a different
hardware configuration. For example,
if you have a notebook that
connects to your office network
and a home LAN,then you can use
the hardware profile system to
store different profiles for each of
these environments.This can also
be used to recover your PC to a
previous profile.What happens is
that for more than one hardware
profile created on your PC, when
XP boots up,you will be prompted
to select a profile to use.
To create a profile, access the
utility and create a copy of the default
profile (‘Profile 1′). If you’re
using a notebook, select each profile,
click on Properties and check
on the ‘This is a portable computer’
box.If you are using a docking port
with this notebook, check on the
‘The computer is docked’.To make
Win XP display this profile when
booting, check the ‘Always include
this profile as an option when Windows
starts’ option on.Click on OK
throughout.
To set up the hardware for each
profile, you need to reboot the PC
after the above step, in one of the
other hardware profiles.Now,go to
Device Manager (Control Panel>
Administrative Tools>
Computer Management).
Select the hardware,
right click on it
and select Properties
from the menu. If you
want to use this hardware
in this profile, select
‘Use this Device
(enable)’ in the ‘Device
Usage’ drop down at
the bottom. If you
don’t want to use it in
the current profile, select
‘Do not use this
device in the current
hardware profile (disable)’.
Selecting the
last option will disable
the device in all profiles,
making it unusable.
Click on OK when done.
Now when booting,XP will display
the created profiles for 30 seconds
(by default). If you don’t
make a selection, it will boot the
one already selected on screen.

Windows File Protection

Where to find it: Start>
Run>SFC
Win XP includes a background
process called ‘Windows File Protection’
to restore corrupt system
files automatically. This software
has a front end named SFC (System
File Checker). To manually
launch SFC, in the Start>Run box,
enter:
SFC/SCANNOW
Click on OK. A small progress
bar will be displayed depicting
scanning and restoring your system
files.You should have your Win
XP CD-ROM handy. To enable
proper working of this tool, start
your PC in Safe Mode (without networking).

PowerToys add value and
fun to the built-in features
of Win XP. You can download
them separately from

http://microsoft.com/windowsxp/

downloa
ds/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx.
Or you can find them on this
month’s PCQXtreme CD.Copy and
unzip all the power toys zip files to
your desktop. Then double click
and install each of them.Now let’s
see what each of them does.

Virtual Windows Manager

This is a very useful tool that
lets you manage four desktops
from your Windows
taskbar. You can open
different applications
on different desktops
and manage them
seamlessly. For example,
on one desktop you
can run a Word application
and on the other
an Excel file. You just
have to select the desktop
you want to work
on. To enable the Virtual
Windows Manager,
simply right click
on the taskbar and select
Toolbar> Desktop
Manager.

Task switcher

To switch between
applications, you generally
use Alt+Tab buttons.
However, after installing this
PowerToy, you can see the running
applications as thumbnails, while
switching between them using the
Alt+Tab buttons.

HTML slide show wizard

This wizard helps you create a
slide show of your digital photos in
HTML. To use it, click on
Start>Programs>Windows PowerToys>’
Slide Show Wizard’. This
brings up a wizard on your screen.
Click on Next. On the screen
shown, select the digital pictures
that you want on the HTML page.
Click on ‘Add Images’ button to
add files individually. Alternatively,
you can click on ‘Add folder’
button to add a folder, which contains
many pictures.Click again on
Next to continue. On the screen
that shows,give a name to the slide
show and also give the path where
you want to save the auto-generated HTML Web page.Now click on
Next and then on Finish. Now you
can use this HTML file on your
website,and run a slide show.However,
you need to upload the folder,
the wizard creates, to your website.

CD slide show generator

This PowerToy is much like the
HTML slide show wizard, except
that it creates slide shows directly
on the CD-R. To use this, you need
a CD-writer. It enables you to view
the slide show of the images burnt
on a CD-ROM. To create a picture
slide show on CD-ROM, add only
images to the CD-ROM using Explorer
and then write these files to
the disc. A new task is now presented
for generating the autorun
file, so that the show is automatically
launched when you insert the
CD-ROM.

Webcam timershot

This allows you to take pictures
from a Webcam connected to your
computer at specified time intervals.
A picture is taken and then
saved to a location with a name
that you specify.You can even save
the pictures to a network share, an
FTP share or an HTTP WebDAV
share.To use it,click on Start>Programs>
Windows
PowerToys>’Timer shot’.This will
open a Timershot configuration
window. Here, under the devices
section, select Webcam. Then in
the same window, set the time intervals
for taking pictures.Also set
the location where you want to save
the pictures. Then, click on ‘Apply
Settings’ to save the settings.

Command here

This is another useful Power-
Toy that adds an ‘Open Command
Window Here’ context menu option
to file system folders.Now you
can quickly open a command window
by just right clicking on the
folder. Else you will have to type
‘cmd.exe’ from Start>Run to
launch a command window and
then ‘cd’ to that folder.

Image resizer

It resizes digital images without
using an editing software.You
can resize one or many image files
in one go.For this,right click on the
picture files and from its context
menu select ‘Resize Pictures’. On
the window you get, select what
you want to resize.

Tweak UI

You can explore system setting
of your Win XP machine with this
toy.You can configure Explorer settings,
taskbar settings, My Computer
settings, and many others,
without going to the control panel.
To use this toy, click on Tweak
UI from Start>Programs>Windows
Power Toys.Here,you will get
an interface consisting of object on
the left and its setting on the right
window panel. For example, if you
want to set (click speed,hover sensitivity,
etc) your mouse to your
liking, select mouse object from
the Tweak UI interface and set its
speed and sensitivity according to
your ease.

Taskbar magnifier

This one allows you to magnify
a part of the screen on the taskbar.
You will see the magnified part of
the area, which is pointed by the
mouse.
To activate it, right click on the
taskbar and then click on the toolbar.
Finally click on ‘Taskbar Magnifier’.

One of Gmail’s “features” can leave you with extra entries in your Contacts list. Gmail has a (debatably) nice feature that automatically adds to your Contacts list the email addresses of those to whom you send emails. While this can be helpful at times, just remember that EVERY unique email address you send to gets auto-added.
Log into your Gmail account and click on the “Contacts” link at the top of any Gmail page. A window will open displaying any Contacts you may have. Any you have manually edited will typically have a “Name” and possibly a “Note” associated with it. By default, any Contact Gmail auto-adds and is unedited will not contain any “name” or “note” information, just the email address. Visually scan down the list and look for any that fall into this category. If you find one, determine what to do with it: Delete is, Edit it, or leave it alone. Obviously what you do with it is up to you,

—————————————————————
New feature! Import Contacts

For the best explanation of just how to Import Contacts, log into your Gmail account, click on Contacts, and click on the new “Import Contacts” link at the top of the Contacts screen.
But what can you import and how do you import? Gmail will let you import address books into Contacts from Yahoo!, Orkut, Outlook, and pretty much any other service by uploading CSV (Comma Separated Value) files to your Gmail account. You can even manually edit and create CVS files for importing using Microsoft Excel.
Just remember that currently, Gmail’s Contacts fields are limited to just “Name”, “Email Address”, and “Notes”. According to the Help screen, all other fields will be imported into the Notes field.

—————————————————————
Find Your Unread Messages

Want a quick and easy way to view all of your “Unread” messages? If you have assigned Labels and archived unread messages, finding them later can sometines be challenging. Simply create a Gmail Label named “Unread”, and you will see all of your unread mail in that folder. Though there are other ways to display unread messages, the nice thing about this method is that it displays the number of unread messages right in the Label list.

—————————————————————
Creating a Pseudo Address Group!

Although Gmail doesn’t currently support Groups in your Contacts, you can simulate a Group list by doing the following:
Create a new Contact
In the “Name” field, enter the name of your Group (eg “My Friends”)
In the “E-mail” field, enter your list of email addresses in the following format

—————————————————————
Improved and New Contacts Features!

The “Contacts” function has been enhanced to provide some additional functionality, and now adopts the familiar Gmail interface.
Gmail now displays a “Contacts” link in the left column under the “standard views” (Inbox, Starred, etc.) and just above the Labels. Clicking on the link brings up a nicely formatted display that matches the style of the rest og GMail. It displays the contact name, email address, Note, and any additional information (see below). At the top are two “tabs” that display “Frequently Mailed” and “All Contacts”. I don’t know what the criteria for “Frequently Mailed” is, but it does contain the most-used contacts.
Here are some new or expanded features:
RECENT CONVERSATIONS
Clicking on a contact displays the contact information as well as “Recent Conversations” associated with that contact. Clicking on one of these entries opens it normally with all options available. Very nice.
ADD MORE CONTACT INFO
Clicking on “Edit” allows you to update the basic contact information (Names, Email Address, Note). But there’s a new link: “Add More Contact Info” which lets you add additional “Sections” of information. For example, by default there are “Personal” and “Work” sections defined. Each section contains a Section Name field, Two user-selectable “fields” and an “Address” block. Each User Field has a drop-down label containing the following selectable labels: Phone, Mobile, FAX, Pager, Email, IM, Company, Title, Other. You can also add additional fields as needed.
SEARCH CONTACTS
Near the top of the Contacts screen is a Search field and a “Search Contacts” button. Entering text into this field and clicking the button returns all contacts that BEGINS WITH the text. This is important to know because it will search ALL contact fields (even the :extended fields) for words beginning with the entered text. For example, entering “Ste” would return “Stephanie”, “Steve”, and “Stewart” but entering “phani” would not return “Stephanie”. Obviously, it would be nice to have extended search capabilities, but this is an excellent start!

————————————————-
Google Gmail Minibrowser

“The Google Deskbar includes a minibrowser that you can use to quickly open your Gmail account in convenient window that automatically hides and can be accessed with a keyboard shortcut. Read on for more information about this tool…
The Google Deskbar is a little Google search tool for Windows taskbar. It can do most of the Google searches using shortcut keys too. (See the link for a picture.) It also include Google’s “Minibrowser” which is fast and cute. If you press Ctrl-Alt-G—by default, you can turn it off—you’ll go right to the bar. Typing a search, by default, will open in the mini browser—again you can turn it off if you want or have it use your default browser (Firefox, etc).
So here’s the tip: Go to Options > Customized Searches > Add. Name it “Gmail” and put in the url: http://gmail.google.com/gmail. For the shortcut I used Ctrl M. So if I press Ctrl alt G, then Ctrl M, instant GMail window in the Google Minibrowser! Awesome.
(Google Desktop isn’t included in the default searches either. (Yet!) But you can also add it in the customize dialogue to search your desktop just as easily. Since the minibrowser vanishes automatically it’s tres convenient to find a file!)

For Definition :-
Type : define:”Name of word”

cache : http://www.website.com/
Google’s cache for website.com

link : http://www.website.com/
List of web pages that link to website.com

related : http://www.website.com/
List web pages similar to website.com

info : http://www.website.com/
Show the info that Google has about website.com

site : http://www.website.com/
List of all web pages hosted at website.com

allintitle : query
Restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title

intitle : query
Restrict the results to the documents containing that word in the title

allinurl : query
Restrict the result to those with all of the query words in the URL

inurl : query
Restrict the results to the documents containing that word in the URL
world * warcraft
The words world and warcraft separated by exactly one word
Nokia Phone $100…300
Search withing a range of numbers for a Nokia Phone between $100…300

But most people don’t use it to its best advantage. Do you just plug in a keyword or two and hope for the best? That may be the quickest way to search, but with more than 3 billion pages in Google’s index, it’s still a struggle to pare results to a manageable number.

But Google is an remarkably powerful tool that can ease and enhance your Internet exploration. Google’s search options go beyond simple keywords, the Web, and even its own programmers. Let’s look at some of Google’s lesser-known options.

Syntax Search Tricks

Using a special syntax is a way to tell Google that you want to restrict your searches to certain elements or characteristics of Web pages. Google has a fairly complete list of its syntax elements at:

www.google.com/help/operators.html

Here are some advanced operators that can help narrow down your search results.

Intitle: at the beginning of a query word or phrase (intitle:”Three Blind Mice”) restricts your search results to just the titles of Web pages.

Intext: does the opposite of intitle:, searching only the body text, ignoring titles, links, and so forth. Intext: is perfect when what you’re searching for might commonly appear in URLs. If you’re looking for the term HTML, for example, and you don’t want to get results such as

www.mysite.com/index.html

You can also enter intext:html.

Link: lets you see which pages are linking to your Web page or to another page you’re interested in. For example, try typing in

link:http://www.hungry-hackers.com

Try using site: (which restricts results to top-level domains) with intitle: to find certain types of pages. For example, get scholarly pages about Mark Twain by searching for intitle:”Mark Twain”site:edu. Experiment with mixing various elements; you’ll develop several strategies for finding the stuff you want more effectively. The site: command is very helpful as an alternative to the mediocre search engines built into many sites.

Swiss Army Google

Google has a number of services that can help you accomplish tasks you may never have thought to use Google for. For example, the new calculator feature

(www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator)

Lets you do both math and a variety of conversions from the search box. For extra fun, try the query “Answer to life the universe and everything.”

Let Google help you figure out whether you’ve got the right spelling—and the right word—for your search. Enter a misspelled word or phrase into the query box (try “thre blund mise”) and Google may suggest a proper spelling. This doesn’t always succeed; it works best when the word you’re searching for can be found in a dictionary. Once you search for a properly spelled word, look at the results page, which repeats your query. (If you’re searching for “three blind mice,” underneath the search window will appear a statement such as Searched the web for “three blind mice.”) You’ll discover that you can click on each word in your search phrase and get a definition from a dictionary.

Suppose you want to contact someone and don’t have his phone number handy. Google can help you with that, too. Just enter a name, city, and state. (The city is optional, but you must enter a state.) If a phone number matches the listing, you’ll see it at the top of the search results along with a map link to the address. If you’d rather restrict your results, use rphonebook: for residential listings or bphonebook: for business listings. If you’d rather use a search form for business phone listings, try Yellow Search

(www.buzztoolbox.com/google/yellowsearch.shtml).

Extended Googling

Google offers several services that give you a head start in focusing your search. Google Groups

(http://groups.google.com)

indexes literally millions of messages from decades of discussion on Usenet. Google even helps you with your shopping via two tools: Froogle
CODE
(http://froogle.google.com),

which indexes products from online stores, and Google Catalogs
CODE
(http://catalogs.google.com),

which features products from more 6,000 paper catalogs in a searchable index. And this only scratches the surface. You can get a complete list of Google’s tools and services at

www.google.com/options/index.html

You’re probably used to using Google in your browser. But have you ever thought of using Google outside your browser?

Google Alert

(www.googlealert.com)

monitors your search terms and e-mails you information about new additions to Google’s Web index. (Google Alert is not affiliated with Google; it uses Google’s Web services API to perform its searches.) If you’re more interested in news stories than general Web content, check out the beta version of Google News Alerts

(www.google.com/newsalerts).

This service (which is affiliated with Google) will monitor up to 50 news queries per e-mail address and send you information about news stories that match your query. (Hint: Use the intitle: and source: syntax elements with Google News to limit the number of alerts you get.)

Google on the telephone? Yup. This service is brought to you by the folks at Google Labs

(http://labs.google.com),

a place for experimental Google ideas and features (which may come and go, so what’s there at this writing might not be there when you decide to check it out). With Google Voice Search

(http://labs1.google.com/gvs.html),

you dial the Voice Search phone number, speak your keywords, and then click on the indicated link. Every time you say a new search term, the results page will refresh with your new query (you must have JavaScript enabled for this to work). Remember, this service is still in an experimental phase, so don’t expect 100 percent success.

In 2002, Google released the Google API (application programming interface), a way for programmers to access Google’s search engine results without violating the Google Terms of Service. A lot of people have created useful (and occasionally not-so-useful but interesting) applications not available from Google itself, such as Google Alert. For many applications, you’ll need an API key, which is available free from
CODE
www.google.com/apis

Thanks to its many different search properties, Google goes far beyond a regular search engine. Give the tricks in this article a try. You’ll be amazed at how many different ways Google can improve your Internet searching.

Online Extra: More Google Tips

Here are a few more clever ways to tweak your Google searches.

Search Within a Timeframe

Daterange: (start date–end date). You can restrict your searches to pages that were indexed within a certain time period. Daterange: searches by when Google indexed a page, not when the page itself was created. This operator can help you ensure that results will have fresh content (by using recent dates), or you can use it to avoid a topic’s current-news blizzard and concentrate only on older results. Daterange: is actually more useful if you go elsewhere to take advantage of it, because daterange: requires Julian dates, not standard Gregorian dates. You can find converters on the Web (such as

CODE

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.html

excl.gif No Active Links, Read the Rules – Edit by Ninja excl.gif), but an easier way is to do a Google daterange: search by filling in a form at

www.researchbuzz.com/toolbox/goofresh.shtml or www.faganfinder.com/engines/google.shtml

If one special syntax element is good, two must be better, right? Sometimes. Though some operators can’t be mixed (you can’t use the link: operator with anything else) many can be, quickly narrowing your results to a less overwhelming number.

More Google API Applications

Staggernation.com offers three tools based on the Google API. The Google API Web Search by Host (GAWSH) lists the Web hosts of the results for a given query

(www.staggernation.com/gawsh/).

When you click on the triangle next to each host, you get a list of results for that host. The Google API Relation Browsing Outliner (GARBO) is a little more complicated: You enter a URL and choose whether you want pages that related to the URL or linked to the URL

(www.staggernation.com/garbo/).

Click on the triangle next to an URL to get a list of pages linked or related to that particular URL. CapeMail is an e-mail search application that allows you to send an e-mail to google@capeclear.com with the text of your query in the subject line and get the first ten results for that query back. Maybe it’s not something you’d do every day, but if your cell phone does e-mail and doesn’t do Web browsing, this is a very handy address to know.

That’s the beauty of this program being open source.
Here’s what you do:
In the URL bar, type “about:config” and press enter. This will bring up the configuration “menu” where you can change the parameters of Firefox.

Note that these are what I’ve found to REALLY speed up my Firefox significantly – and these settings seem to be common among everybody else as well. But these settings are optimized for broadband connections – I mean with as much concurrent requests we’re going to open up with pipelining… lol… you’d better have a big connection.

Double Click on the following settins and put in the numbers below – for the true / false booleans – they’ll change when you double click.

Code:
browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs – true
network.http.max-connections – 48
network.http.max-connections-per-server – 16
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy – 8
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server – 4
network.http.pipelining – true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – 100
network.http.proxy.pipelining – true
network.http.request.timeout – 300

One more thing… Right-click somewhere on that screen and add a NEW -> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0”. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. Since you’re broadband – it shouldn’t have to wait.

Now you should notice you’re loading pages MUCH faster now!

Beware : Make sure that the file you are Deleting is not a System File.

1. Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open.
2. Close all open programs.
3. Click Start, Run and enter TASKMGR.EXE
4. Go to the Processes tab and End Process on Explorer.exe.
5. Leave Task Manager open.
6. Go back to the Command Prompt window and change to the directory the AVI (or other undeletablefile) is located in.
7. At the command prompt type DEL <filename> where <filename> is the file you wish to delete.
8. Go back to Task Manager, click File, New Task and enter EXPLORER.EXE to restart the GUI shell.
9. Close Task Manager.

Or

you can try this

1. Open Notepad.exe
2. Click File>Save As..>
3. Locate the folder where your undeletable file is
4. Choose ‘All files’ from the file type box
5. Click once on the file u wanna delete so its name appears in the ‘filename’ box
6. Put a ” at the start and end of the filename
   (the filename should have the extension of the undeletable file so it will overwrite it)
7. Click save,
8. It should ask u to overwrite the existing file, choose yes and u can delete it as normal

Here’s a manual way of doing it. I’ll take this off once you put into your first post zain.

1. Start Run Type: command
2. To move into a directory type: cd c:\*** (The stars stand for your folder)
3. If you cannot access the folder because it has spaces for example Program Files or Kazaa Lite folder you have to do the following. instead of typing in the full folder name only take the first 6 letters then put a ~ and then 1 without spaces. Example: cd c:\progra~1\kazaal~1
4. Once your in the folder the non-deletable file it in type in dir – a list will come up with everything inside.
5. Now to delete the file type in del ***.bmp, txt, jpg, avi, etc… And if the file name has spaces you would use the special 1st 6 letters followed by a ~ and a 1 rule. Example: if your file name was bad file.bmp you would type once in the specific folder thorugh command, del badfil~1.bmp and your file should be gone. Make sure to type in the correct extension.

While this is perfectly understandable given the unambiguous name of the file, you should remember that not every file is what it claims to be. In the case of Adobe.exe files, what you’re actually seeing is a third party virus, designed to look innocuous with the name of a globally respected company as its alibi.

As you can probably imagine, the hackers who work tirelessly on their virus creations have had to find a way to cloak their malicious files. Particularly in the case of spyware, but also in adware and medium threat viruses too.

If you’ve spotted Adobe.exe, you should take note that there is no such legitimate file – released by Adobe – which has that name. You can take a hint from the name itself. What is Adobe? It’s not a program. It’s not a crucial ImageReady or Dreamweaver executable file. It’s simply a company name.

The same distrust should be applied if you happen to see a Microsoft.exe file floating around your system. Hackers thrive on a breach of trust and by slapping a misleading name on their harmful files; they’re halfway towards doing the damage that they’d love.

You’ll find that a quick scan of your hard drive will swiftly highlight the Adobe.exe file. The problem is that most people opt to assume that the anti-Virus software has made a mistake! Why would it be pointing to a name that you know is safe?

A file doesn’t have to be named Big_Fat_Virus.exe to compromise the security of your computer. In most cases, instances of spyware are designed to replicate system processes in appearance. Of course, you can’t see what’s going on under the surface. And anybody who has had a brief scout around their critical system files is certain to have apprehension about deleting a file which claims to be System32.exe.

The best way to know if you’re affected is to run TWO scans of your hard drive, with two different anti-Virus suites. If both programs return the same Adobe.exe alert – or whatever suspiciously named file that you’re worried about – go right ahead and have the problem rectified.

We’re always being warned about the importance of using the Internet with sufficient protection from malicious users, and it’s because it IS very important.

You should have a strong firewall, capable of dealing with intrusions, and a commercial anti-Virus suite checking email attachments and downloaded files for traces of viruses.

But it’s also crucial that you don’t rely on an anti-Virus suite to do all of the hard work. It’s still a good idea to download a free system clean-up utility – there are many available on the Net – and to run it regularly. This will go a long way to cleaning spyware and adware, and it will also boost your system’s performance.

Always keep an eye out for files which are named after companies and respected IT brands. It’s very rare that one of those organizations will choose to release an executable file with such a vague and misleading name.

Now, just to be safe, we recommend that before you edit the autoexec.bat or config.sys files that you create a copy of the original ones with a different name so that they can be recovered in the case that you make an error and things do not work properly after.

The most common way of editing the autoexec.bat and config.sys files is by using the MS-DOS command Edit. In order to edit these files you simply need to type “edit c:\autoexec.bat or config.sys” into a MS-DOS command prompt. However, on newer computer systems, the more common way to edit these files is to click on “Start” and then “Run”. Now you will want to type sysedit into the dialog box provided and click on the “OK” button. This will quickly display the System Configuration Editor within which the autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini and system.ini files are displayed for easy editing.

If you want to remove a line from one of these files, the most advised method is to use the remark command “REM” in front of the line you no longer want to execute. This will tell the computer to ignore this line when the operating system is loading, but also will allow you to easily remove your remark command to include the line again in the future if you do not get the result that you want or if you wish to use the line again at a later time. This will help you to easily restore that line of code without having to worry about where in the file it should be placed or the syntax that it should be written with.

With the increasing number of programs that are being loaded by an operating system when it first starts, getting additional memory is always as big advantage for any computer user. There is a way in the config.sys file that you can tell the operating system to load the files more efficiently into memory, which will help you have more memor for other programs and games on your system, especially in MS-DOS computers. In order to do this there are three lines that you will want to have at the beginning of your config.sys file:

DEVICE=C:\Windows\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE NOEMS

By using the DOS=HIGH, UMB command on the second line, you can potentially save memory because it is now loading DOS into upper memory before loading the memory manager. The first and third lines cannot be loaded into the upper memory areas however as they are the memory managers themselves. The best technique for saving memory is to load all of your devices in your config.sys file and autoexec.bat file into high memory.

To fix DLL errors, you should know that they can occur at any time and are rarely ever obvious in the message text. That is, when you read the debugging message, it’s unlikely that you’ll know instantly where the DLL error is stemming from. Through trial and error – and a fair bit of experience – we can begin to fix DLL errors manually by simply understanding how Windows relates them.

A lot of the time, DLL errors are triggered by the incomplete removal of programs via the Windows Control Panel. Some software also have their own uninstall scripts written which for obvious reasons, can be about as effective as the developers that wrote them. It depends from program to program. What you need to remember when you fix DLL errors, however, is that not every uninstall is successful – even though it may look it on the surface if you can no longer see the program in question.

Every Windows application comes with its own batch of DLL files, and it needs them to interact with the default operating system files. However, some of these files can linger on the operating system after their parent application has been removed. Attempting to access the same memory and reference points at a later date can trigger DLL errors since Windows thinks the memory should be available, but for whatever reason, it isn’t.

Find yourself a registry scanning utility and run regular registry scans. These will help to stamp out the problems and fix DLL errors before they become a greater issue. How do you know that they’ve progressed in to a greater issue? Well, runtime errors, illegal operations performed and the dreaded blue screen of death are generally great pointers!

In some cases, to fix DLL errors e can simply rename the original DLL file that is calling the problem and then re-run the application’s installation procedure. You will notice that many of these installation scripts come with an “Upgrade/Repair” option after Windows recognises that the app is already present. By renaming the DLL file and re-running through this process, Windows will write a fresh DLL file to the system and you should be able to regain the program’s functionality.

This will help if the problem lies in a DLL file becoming corrupt. But sometimes viruses and spyware will latch on to the files making it quite a challenge to go through manually and fix DLL errors. It’s important to have good anti-virus software installed, as this will prevent malicious third party users gaining access to your DLL resources ad further damaging the operating system. You’ll find it twice as hard to fix DLL errors if spyware is present on your computer so browse the Internet safely!