A corrupt game save for a single player title can set you back lots of hours of game play time. Even worse, you may be demotivated to replay the stages of the game that you have already played and decide to stop playing the game completely. Some games, especially online games, save games on servers [...]
Microsoft Windows Operating System
RunAsDate, Run Programs With A Different System Date, Time
You may know that I’m using the MSI Afterburner software to record game videos on my PC. The software has been in beta for quite some time. One issue I experienced is that the beta versions have fixed expiration dates, which means that they expire at a given point in time. While this is usually [...]
Steam Tool Library Manager, Move Steam Games
Steam is a popular online game distribution platform by Valve Software, the creators of Half-Life. It was definitely one of the first movers in the niche and moved from a rough start to a popular platform used by millions of gamers. Steam for the most part works just fine, the platform does have a few [...]
TED Downloader
I have covered TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, before here on Ghacks. TED is about sharing ideas on stage with an audience and on the Internet. When you look at the list of speakers, you will notice that it ranges from everyday people fighting for a cause to book authors and celebrities [...]
PointerStick, Turn Your Cursor Into a Stick For Presentations
When you are holding presentations on a big screen with a computer mouse you know that it may be quite difficulty to follow the mouse cursor around. That’s fine if you have presentation software that gives you the tools at hand to highlight areas or write on the screen. If you are stuck with the [...]
Defragmentation Software Defraggler Updated, Better SSD Detection
Two of the three hard drives in my main computer are Solid State Drives (SSD) that do not need defragmenting. In fact, running defragmenting software on them could have an opposite effect on the drive’s speed and health. One of my personal criteria therefor is that defragmentation software needs to be able to block those [...]
Flickr Photo Downloader, Download Public Flickr Photos In Bulk
I have reviewed quite a few programs to download photos from Flickr in the past. From Flickr Download and Flickr Downloadr to Flickr Mass Downloader and the more recent Flickr Mass Downloader. All tools have in common that they can be used to download public photos that are hosted on Flickr. They differ in handling [...]
Microsoft Talks Windows 8 Update Changes
Microsoft has announced changes to the Windows Update mechanism of the upcoming operating system Windows 8. When you look at the current state of Windows Update, you will find it to be relatively disruptive to the user experience. This stems from the fact that the majority of updates require a system start before their installation [...]
Add Snow To Your Desktop With DesktopSnowOk
While I’m personally not a huge fan of anything animated on my desktop, I know quite a few people who love some level of activity on their desktop. When it comes to Christmas some users like to decorate their computer desktop much like they decorate the rest of their house and property. Th next best [...]
Last.FM, Aupeo & Vkontakte.ru Downloader
Internet users have lots of options when it comes to listening to music on the Internet. They can tune into Internet radio stations, visit free music repositories like Jamendo, find new and rare songs on YouTube and other music portals or visit music information portals like Last.fm to listen to music. Music downloading is often [...]
Download Unofficial Windows 8 Language Packs
One of the issues that users from all over the world may have experienced with the recently released Windows 8 Developer Preview is that the interface language of the operating system was only available in English. Big problem for users who want to try the release but do not speak English at all, or those [...]
Quickly Benchmark Hard Disk, Optical Drives and Network Servers
Sometimes you may want to benchmark drives or servers connected to your computer system, for instance to compare them to other devices or to test optimizations that you plan to make. Parkdale is a free benchmarking software for the Windows operating system that can be used to benchmark all drives that are currently connected to [...]
Desktop Icon Text On the Right? D-Color Does The Trick
If you are like me you have some documents and files stored on the desktop for fast access. Some users may prefer to pin those files to the taskbar or start menu instead, or use a program and file launcher. When it comes to icons on the desktop you have only a few options to [...]
Save Desktop Icon Layouts With Icon Configuration Utility
One of the things that still has not been fixed or resolved in the Windows operating system is that desktop icons change their position automatically when the screen resolution changes. Most Windows users will probably never come into a situation where their desktop icon positions change, considering that most won’t change the screen resolution unless [...]
Windows 8 Power Consumption, Battery Life
With a focus on touchscreen devices – which are predominantly mobile in nature – comes the requirement to reduce a computer system’s power consumption to increase its battery life. According to a new blog post over at the Building Windows 8 site, Microsoft has made important changes to their upcoming operating system’s power consumption. The [...]
OPA Backup, Microsoft Office Activation Backup
When you reinstall the Windows operating system you may need to reinstall other software like Microsoft Office as well. It may then be necessary to activate the software again which may not be a big problem in most cases, but might be one if the computer Office was reinstalled on has no permanent Internet connection. [...]
Microsoft Patch Day November 2011 Overview
Today Microsoft has released security updates exclusively for Microsoft Windows operating systems. Of the four bulletins released today, one has received the maximum severity rating of critical while the other three have received one of important. Maximum severity means that at least one Microsoft operating system has received the critical vulnerability rating. In this case, [...]
Mourao Image Grabber, Mass Image Host Downloader
My program of choice to download lots of images from image hosts like Imagebam is Bulk Image Downloader, an excellent program to download images from hundreds of image hosting sites. Windows users looking for a free alternative could take a closer look at Mourao Image Grabber which offers the same basic functionality. The program can [...]
Eraser Has Stopped Working, Fix Inside
For a while now I received an error message whenever I tried to run the file deletion software Eraser. Eraser, which I reviewed in 2005 for the first time here on Ghacks (see Securely Delete Files), can delete files so that they are not recoverable anymore on the system. When you delete files regularly in [...]
Keolah Learns Japanese, Japanese Language Tutor
You may remember that I started learning Japanese some time ago. Especially the multitude of different characters make it difficulty to learn the language. Compare learning English with its 26 language characters to learning Japanese which has thousands. Even if you do not have to know all of them, you are still stuck with learning [...]