Idle Time is the time where the computer is just sitting idle using little to no cpu power. This happens on my computer for instance if I leave it on to finish a download and after that download finishes it wastes some power doing nothing. A good way to put your cpu to good use during that time is to start a program once the computer has been idle for some time.

This could be a maintenance tool like defrag, a distributed computing application like Seti @ Home or to perform other operations that are best done with no user interaction at all.

Idle Start is the software that can start a program after a certain amount of idle time which you can specify during setup. Speaking about setup, the program is a command line tool which means that you can either configure it using a shortcut or the run box.

continue reading "Start Program after Idle Time"

Recently I have a need to format some brand new hard drives in …. FAT32 format. Needless to say, Vista doesn’t like to do that. Nor does Windows XP. But since these hard drives will be going into an old security surveillance DVR unit, they need to be in FAT32, not NTFS. I’m also taking this opportunity to upgrade the security unit from the old 30 gig hard drives to new 250 gig units.

I had first thought of using the virtual OS of Windows XP on my PC to format these drives via a USB to ATA connector. And this will work. But as I am not going to be doing this on an on-going basis, I figured I’ll look for something that may be used by people without virtual OS software. And I found one at Fat32 Format.

This fat32format.exe program is small enough for me to store it on a web email account to access anytime I want. And it’s fast and simple to use. Just open a DOS CMD window and type "fat32format x:" where x is the drive to be formatted. Just be careful and never ever type c:

continue reading "FAT32 Format"

A left-click on a file opens it with the default application while a right-click offers a menu with the option to open the file with a different application. You get the choice to pick another application that added itself during installation to that menu or to browse your computer for another application not in that list.

Sometimes however the choices are kinda strange and do not make sense at all. If I choose the Open With option for a text document on my computer I get to choose between Notepad++ (default), Firefox, Office and Thunderbird. At least two of those applications do not make sense in my opinion.

Open Expert is probably the best application to configure the available applications for the Open With dialog for each filet ype in Windows. A list is populated with all Open With programs after selecting a file type from the list of available extensions.

continue reading "Manage Open With Programs"

I did not think that we would see more of offers like the free Kaspersky or AVG on the Internet which were intended for a local audience but spread widely throughout the Internet because of information leaks. It seems that even Symantec is not protected against this kind of leaks.

The offer this time was directed at the readers of the German computer magazine Computer Bild which would receive a free one year license of the software Norton AntiBot if they purchased the magazine. Unfortunately though the link to generate the serial number leaked and is now available on the Internet.

I discovered it at Raymond’s excellent blog. To receive the free one year license you need to visit this official Norton page. Enter your email address in the form field, check the Ich akzeptiere box and click on the Gratis Produktschlüssel Anfordern button which will send the serial number to the mail address that you entered in the form.

continue reading "Norton Antibot Free 1 Year License"

I’m looking back at the last seven days each Wednesday and write an article listing the software that has been updated in that time so that everyone gets a great overview of software that he needs to update.

Only software mentioned before at Ghacks will be added to the list and since I’m only reviewing free software you can be sure that everything in the list is free to use and download.

This week’s software of the week award goes to Unlocker which is in my opinion one of the applications that every Windows user should have installed.

continue reading "Software Updates Week 10 2008"