Some users simply don’t get it. They are so careless with sensible data that they publish product keys for Windows Operating systems on the Internet. They probably don’t know what they are doing which is not an excuse but a possible explanation for what they are doing. The Belarc Advisor is a free system scanner that generates a detailed profile of installed applications and missing hotfixes and displays the findings on a website.

Some users had the clever idea to post the complete profile into forums to find some help with a problem they encountered. The problem with this is that the profile also contains the Windows product key which is used to validate the operating system. All that needs to be done is to perform a search on Google with the line “Belarc Advisor Current Profile” “key:” which will list many pages that contain such profiles. Some user blacked out the product key will others simply did not know better than to leave everything as it was.

continue reading "Find Product Keys for Windows using Google"

SysExporter is a free software from one of my favorite software developers NirSoft that is able to explorer standard list-views, tree-views, list boxes, combo boxes, text-boxes, and HTML controls from almost every application to text, HTML or XML files. I think an example would be great at this point to show you what it can do. When you start SysExporter you get a list of all applications and folders that are currently running on your system.

If you take a look at a folder for instance you see all files and subfolders that are listed in it. You could then export that list of files and folders. Another example would be that you could export all registry keys that are currently displayed in the right pane in Regedit. The possibilities are almost endless. It works fine with Microsoft applications but fails when it comes to Thunderbird or Firefox. Not a big problem I think.

continue reading "Export File Lists and more with SysExporter"

Many modern computers have one, two or even more gigabytes of ram that can be put to good use by creating a Ramdisk that is a virtual drive that uses part of the computers ram. The Ramdisk can be used like every other hard drive, you can copy applications and files to it and start them from there if they allow that. It is for instance possible to move portable applications like Firefox, Thunderbird or Audacity into the Ramdisk and use the advantage that those applications are actually residing in memory which speeds up loading times a lot.

One convenient way to setup a Ramdisk is to use the software AR Ramdisk which is easy to setup and work with. Just install AR Ramdisk as usual and start configuring the settings afterwards. Assign a drive letter to the Ramdisk and choose a size for it. I would not suggest to select more than a quarter of your Ram but you can experiment with the settings if you like. Leave everything as is and restart your computer afterwards. You should see a new drive letter after the restart, now copy files or applications to the Ramdisk and start them from there.

continue reading "Use a Ramdisk to speed up Applications"

I use many phrases over and over again. When I write someone an email, a business letter or reply to a private message in a forum. If you are tired of writing “Thank you for your email”, “Yours sincerely” or a signature over and over again you might want to take a look at the free software Phrase Express. You can use Phrase Express to paste commonly used phrases into any text field using defined phrases. The program adds some of its own at the beginning but the real beauty is the flexibility of it. It is possible to create a folder and text structure that works best for you. You could for instance create folders for business, private and forums and add as much phrases as you want to those folders.

You may then use those phrases by either right-clicking the system tray icon and selecting the phrase from the menu or by assigning hotkeys to folders or single phrases. The second method is of course a lot faster than the first. Phrase Express offers several other features that make it a great software. It can automatically expand abbreviations in some programs and append a signature with a random quote as well. The spell checker is another feature which unfortunately does not work in Firefox or Thunderbird.

continue reading "Phrase Express - Paste frequently used text"

Readyboost is a disk caching system introduced in Windows Vista that relies on flash memory to boost system performance. The effect is not that noticeable but some users swear on it and I do not want to discuss the usefulness of Readyboost. The USB device has to meet some requirements before it can be used for Readyboost mainly that it needs to meet certain read speeds. Many older USB devices do not meet these requirements and refuse to be used as Readyboost devices in Windows Vista.

There is however a trick that enables many USB devices for Readyboost even though they did not pass the initial test. To do that do the following. Right-click the device that you want to use for Readyboost and select properties. Switch to the Readyboost tab and uncheck “Stop retesting this device when I plug it in”. The old test values are stored in the registry which means that we have to edit some settings there to make Vista believe that the USB device meets all of the requirements. Unplug the device from the computer before you proceed.

continue reading "Use any USB 2.0 Device for Readyboost in Vista"