The Internet is full of optimization tips for reducing the boot time and making the computer boot faster. Many of the tips described have virtually no effect or even ill-effects. The Boot Computer Faster article tries to bring the relevant elements to the table that have an effect on the computer startup speed.

Many users probably do not care about their computer’s boot time that much, it’s something that is done once or twice a day. This procedure can have an effect on the system performance as well which is where it becomes interesting for those users, too. Boot Computer tries to change this by providing you the tools you need to make your computer boot faster.

Boot Computer

Take the Windows Registry for example. It is loaded during computer startup to the computer memory where it stays until the computer is turned off. A larger Registry therefor takes up more computer memory than needed.

continue reading "Boot Computer"

I was hoping all you gHacks readers could help me out with some feedback on one particular topic; Music jukeboxes. I have written up my thoughts, but I would genuinely like to hear all your opinions.

I’m sure we all have our favourites, so I would love to hear exactly what it is that has made you choose what you have. You may use more then one, I know I do. I also understand there is a great number of media players, so I’ve restricted this to just ‘music jukeboxes’, or music management software. I plan to work my way through all the major contenders, starting with Part 1 (WMP and iTunes) today.

I have narrowed down the list so the software must include several criteria:

• Reasonable level of popularity
• Includes all basic music jukebox features such as:
  • ripping and burning of music
  • music library
  • music tagging
  • Music categorisation
• Has had at least one non-beta, stable release
• Under active development

continue reading "The Complete Media Player Review (Part 1)"

The creator of RapidWareX send me an email about his new Rapidshare Downloading Tool for premium users that he developed and published at Google Code. The first public beta was released just two days ago and it already received some acknowledgment from various websites.

The difference between this Rapidshare tool and many others is that it requires a Rapidshare Premium Account to function. Users without one cannot use it in this state. It’s a pretty advanced application for a 0.1 beta release. The menu and design looks clean and everything works well and without errors.

The username and password of a Rapidshare Premium Account have to be entered into the application before the other options become available. The software program supports simultaneous downloads from Rapidshare, a traffic check of the remaining free traffic of the account and day and secure login using https connections.

continue reading "Rapidshare Downloading Tool For Premium Users"

Before you sell or throw away hard drives you should make sure that the data on the hard drive gets erased properly and impossible to recover because some guys over at eBay love to buy used hard drives and recover their files to see if there is anything valuable to snoop on.

A software that can wipe the contents of en entire hard drive is e-Maxx. The software comes as a installer for Windows or as an iso image. The installer will write the files of the software to a bootable floppy disk while the iso image is ready to be burned and booted.

The user is then - after booting from the device - presented with an easy to follow menu where he can pick the hard drive and a method to delete the data on it. A secure option would be to pick the triple flux mode which would ensure that the data could not be recovered by normal means.

continue reading "Wipe Hard Drive With e-Maxx"

The following article is going to explain how you can convert a video_ts folder into one video file that can be played on the computer or burned to CD. Joshua came up mentioning if I knew a solution to do that and well, here it is.

A Video_TS file is usually created by those DVD ripping tools like DVD Shrink or HD Decrypter. They can also be downloaded sometimes. The tutorial explains how you can convert the full movie including subtitles and additional languages if required.

The only software program required is AutoGK (Auto Gordian Knot) which utilizes a handful of well known tools like Virtual Dub Mod or AviSynth and automates their usage. That’s probably the greatest strength of the video software. It requires minimal input to convert the Video_TS folder to one video file.

continue reading "Convert Video_TS Folder To One Video File"