With the rise of Solid State Drives came software from hardware manufacturers to manage and control those drives in a computing environment. Intel’s SSD Toolbox has recently been released in version 3. We have covered both the initial Intel Solid State Drive (SSD) Toolbox release and Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox 2 release before. Lets see [...]
Microsoft Windows Operating System
Bruce’s Unusual Typing Wizard, Learn How To Type For Free
Most Ghacks readers are tech savvy users who know how to type efficiently. When I visit friends, family or colleagues I sometimes notice that they type very slowly and in no optimal fashion. You have probably encountered the two-finger type users as well who hover with two fingers over the keys to find the next [...]
Microsoft Readies Task Manager For Large Scale Computer Systems
When you look at the performance view of Windows Task Manager on your desktop PC you probably see between two or eight logical processors listed in the interface. On large scale computer systems running Windows 7, the count may be a lot higher. Microsoft showed a screenshot of the performance tab of Windows Task Manager [...]
Why Are There Two Explorer.exe Processes Running?
I check the running processes on my Windows system regularly to find potentially malicious or unnecessary processes. When I looked at the process listing today I noticed that two explorer.exe processes were running. I remembered that this could be a sign of malicious software disguising itself as a system process. When I checked the process [...]
Creating Access to Virtual Box from the Windows 7 Start Menu
VBoxLaunch is a program that assists in managing access to VirtualBox. For those who regularly use virtual machines in Virtual Box, VBoxLaunch will allow you to create a jumplist from the Start menu which will launch virtual machines. This tiny utility does not alter VirtualBox settings and will not interfere with the interface settings. It [...]
Remove Applications from the Context Menu in Windows Manually
Windows accumulates context menu items any time you install several applications. Not all applications end up on the context menu but enough do so over time that the menu can become cluttered. You might find yourself wondering, “How did that get there?” You may not want it on the context menu, but it is there [...]
Haloween Skin Pack Readies Windows 7 For Halloween
Halloween, the night before All Hallows Days, is only a few days away. The holiday usually involves attending costume parties, trick or treating, bonfires, playing pranks and doing other “scary” things. The computer is usually not linked or included in any of those activities. Windows 7 users who want the full experience can download and [...]
DNS Jumper Updated, Switch Domain Name Servers Effortlessly
Back in 2009 I reviewed one of the first public versions of DNS Jumper, a portable program for Windows that allowed you to change the system’s DNS with the click of the mouse button. The application back then was released during the “dns craze” where Google and other big players like Symantec entered the market [...]
Mp3 Quiz, Turn Mp3 Collections Into Music Quizzes
If you like quizzes in general and have a medium to large sized music collection at your disposal, you might fancy running the mp3 quiz software to combine both passions. Mp3 quiz is a free software for Windows that can be used to create mp3 quizzes from locally hosted music collections. It can be played [...]
Ultra PDF Merger, Join Multiple PDF Documents
Sometimes you may download or create multiple pdf documents that you may want to merge into one document. Maybe you have used a program like WinScan2PDF that turns scans into pdf files or Joliprint which turns web pages into pdf documents, or you are receiving reports in pdf format regularly. If you end up with [...]
Web Page Thumbnails, Create Website Screenshots
Sometimes you may feel the need to create a screenshot or multiple screenshots of a website. This can be handy for archiving or reference purposes for instance. While you could create a screenshot easily with tools offered by the operating system, doing so usually involves several steps and is therefor more time consuming than using [...]
Websites Cop, Monitor And Auto-Repair Web Properties
One of the things that webmasters need to ensure is that third parties are not modifying code on one of their websites. Attacks that make this possible include code injection or brute force attacks to retrieve the ftp or database password of a website. The free software Websites Cop can monitor contents hosted on one [...]
Using LiLi to create a Bootable, Portable and Virtualized USB Drive
LinuxLive USB Creator, or “LiLi”, is a quick way to create Live Linux USB drives that are persistent virtualized drives. Typically, Linux USB drives require rebooting to install software. It is possible to create a Linux USB drive that will install without a reboot. This is where LiLi comes into play. By setting drive persistence [...]
Windows 8 Service Configurations
With every new Microsoft operating system, regardless of it being a client or server OS, come new and modified services. System administrators as well as end users who are interested in optimizing their PC and knowing what’s running in the background need to spend time to analyze the changes. One of the best Windows Service [...]
Firefox, Thunderbird Lagging? Lag Fix Inside
For the last days I have been receiving lags and issues both in the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client. With Thunderbird I’m experiencing lags where the window is not responding for some time. I just have to wait and the window becomes accessible again. With Firefox it is another issue. The browser [...]
Batch Renamer And Mover Bram
Renaming files can sometimes be a necessity and other times something that improves the readability on a computer system. Probably the most common example used to explain this are photos taken with digital cameras. These photos often come with cryptic file names like CIMG2350.JPG that tell you nothing at all about the photo taken. Renaming [...]
ReStartMe, Restart Processes Automatically On Exit
Some processes are more important than others. Maybe you like to run an ftp client or p2p software all the time on your system, maybe a backup software or a messenger client. You may also want to make sure that parental controls or other monitoring or security applications are running all the time on a [...]
Copy CMD Output Directly To The Clipboard
The Windows command line prompt can be handy at times and sometimes even the only option to execute a specific command in the operating system. You sometimes may need to copy the output of a command to the Windows Clipboard, for instance to use the output in another application. Most users that I know handle [...]
FSF Criticizes Microsoft For Secure Boot Feature
Hardware manufacturers that want to ship Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system with their PCs need to implement the Secure Boot feature that is part of the UEFI specification. The feature basically determines which code or programs can be started during boot. The core intention here is to prevent malware and other unauthorized code from [...]
Oracle Releases Critical Java Update
Oracle has released a critical patch update for its Java products including the Java Development Kit and the Java Runtime Environment. According to the security advisory the cumulative update fixes a total of 20 security related issues across all Java based products. Java users can verify their computer system’s Java version on this page. Affected [...]