Outlook is not my main email client and I never really used it that much. Still, I have it installed as a part of my Office 2010 installation, and I tend to use it sometimes to test a new plug-in or feature that I would like to write about. For the past month or so [...]

The display is without doubt one of the most important parts of a computer system. Display related issues, like blurry text, a bad refresh rate or colors that do not really match can impact a user’s work experience on a computer. Imagine having to work ten hours a day on a computer with blurry or [...]

iOS devices are a wonder. This article is being typed on one right now. Sometimes, however, these robust and snappy little things go “boink.” One of the more common issues a user will perhaps encounter is when the iOS device (iPad, iTouch, iPhone) gets stuck in recovery mode. If you are reading this article, you [...]

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 [...]

I just wanted to test the Light Explorer plugin for the notepad replacement Notepad++ on Windows. The plugin itself adds a folder browser sidebar to the Notepad++ interface which can speed up the opening of documents in the program significantly. I previously was using Windows Explorer to open new text documents in Notepad++ because if [...]

When you are using Windows regularly, you likely run into issues eventually. This can be easy to fix stuff like running out of disk space or broken shortcuts to more serious problems like a virus infection or programs that won’t start up anymore. The troubleshooting and repair depends largely on the issue that is experienced [...]

As a work from home guy I rely on my Internet connection. If it goes down, I’m cut off from work which could be disastrous, depending on the downtime. I have a backup connection just to make sure that I can always connect, and if everything goes down at once I have yet another backup [...]

A issue has been confirmed recently by Microsoft that is impacting users of the Windows 7 client operating system and users of the Windows Server 2008 R2 server operating systems even with the latest service pack releases installed. Some customers running those operating system versions have reported that their systems stop responding randomly. Microsoft has [...]

Microsoft has just released a fix for a networking issue that Windows 7 users may experience. Windows 7 users, under specific circumstances, may be unable to click on the location associated with their network connection. The link that is usually clickable is not functional in this case. The issue is caused selecting the checkbox to [...]

While testing a new program I noticed that the Task Scheduler of my Windows 7 operating system was displaying an error message on startup. It displayed “Task XXX; The task image is corrupt or has been tampered with. Up to this point I was not aware of any Task Scheduler related issues. The error message [...]

Windows’ Safe Mode is a bare-bone version of the operating system that is often used for troubleshooting PC issues. It is available under all versions of Windows and can be started by tapping on the F8 key during startup of the operating system. It is for instance handy to uninstall software in Safe Mode that [...]

Sometimes you need to troubleshoot driver issues that go beyond uninstalling and installing drivers on the Windows operating system. A badly programmed driver installation for instance can load a bad driver on the system, which may be even worse if the uninstallation is not properly programmed as well. This could leave a bad driver on [...]

This article is the fourth and final part of a series on the basics of network troubleshooting. The tools covered in the previous articles (ping, ipconfig, tracert and pathping) will be combined into a troubleshooting method. This guide will teach you valuable steps in finding where a problem is on a network connection. One of [...]

If you are following the news on Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 8 you may know that the Redmond company is planning to add a restore to factory defaults option to the OS. When you press the button, the system is returned to its initial state, handy for public systems but also for users who [...]

I recently started to add custom jumplists to my sites. That’s when I noticed that jumplists were not showing up under Windows 7 at all anymore. Even standard programs like Microsoft Office, Firefox or Google Chrome where not showing any jumplists, except for the option to unpin the icon from the taskbar and to launch [...]

This article is the second in a series of the basics of network troubleshooting. Last time, the ping command was demonstrated. Now the ipconfig command will be covered (the Linux/Mac ifconfig & route commands will be touched on too). While this is a basic tutorial, there are some advanced tips and topics included. The Ipconfig [...]

This article is the first in a series delving into the basics of network troubleshooting. It covers what tools to use and how to use them. While this is a basic tutorial, there are some advanced tips and topics included. The focus will be on Windows based systems (with a tip or two for others). [...]

Software may hang or freeze occasionally on a system. Sometimes it is hard to tell why it hangs, while it is more or less obvious at other times. Say you are currently rendering a video which taxes your cpu, memory and hard drive. If you now launch other applications on the system, it may happen [...]

If you like to play poker online you may be a member of the popular online poker room Full Tilt Poker. Users download a software and register an account to play online for cash or play money. The Full Tilt Poker application receives regular updates that increase the application’s functionality and stability. I have recently [...]

Microsoft has decided to remove several context menu entries from Windows 7′s Windows Explorer context menu if more than 15 items are selected at once. The open, print and edit links are specifically removed whenever more than 15 files or folders are selected. This limit may affect context menu entries of other programs as well. [...]

What can you do if the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Update fails? The answer depends largely on the error code that you see directly on the screen or in the Windows event log. Regardless of that code, it is still possible to try two generic fixes before you try to find a solution for [...]

Microsoft has released a new Fix It solution to repair several Windows Media Player solutions. A Fix It solution is a script that runs like any other executable. It will directly repair problems in the Windows operating system or programs running on it without further user interaction. The Windows Media Player Fix It repairs several [...]

You may have seen an increasing number of articles about IPv6 in the past year. IPv6 is an Internet Protocol that has been designed as the successor of the currently used IPv4 protocol. IPv4 has been in use since the 80s and it is quickly coming to its limits. The main problem with it is [...]

In the land of Linux applications have what is called their “nice” value. This value sets the priority that any given application receives. The nice value ranges from -20 to 19. The lower the number the higher the priority. The higher the priority the the more CPU time a program will get. This comes in [...]

One of the main advantages of Solid State Drives (SSD) is their speed compared to conventional platter-based hard drives. They should in theory speed up reading and writing processes on the operating system. Sometimes however SSD seem to run at a slower than advertised speed with users reporting all kinds of problems associated like freezes [...]

When I first installed Windows 7 I was puzzled that my Samsung DVD drive was not displayed in Windows Explorer. Only later did I learn that this was by design. Optical drives with no media inserted do not appear by default in Windows Explorer on Windows 7. That’s fine and users can make a quick [...]

Tony, a new user of the Ghacks forum asked for help regarding a issue with his removable hard disk and Windows 7. While the disk was showing up in the operating system, a click on it to access it in Windows Explorer yielded the error message “Insert Disk, Please Insert A Disk Into Drive” followed [...]

My new book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out from Microsoft Press is now officially on sale (and obviously I had a few drinkies last night to mark the occasion).  You still have time to enter our exclusive competiton to win copies but as a taster, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 13… Why Problems Occur with Windows. So [...]

To mark the release of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out from Microsoft Press, that has been written by Mike Halsey, one of the editors here at your favourite tech website gHacks.net, we have a fantastic competition in conjunction with our sister site www.Windows7News.com and a massive 52 prizes to give away! The prizes here at gHacks.net are…  [...]

Videos on Facebook are highly popular. That popular, that Facebook just took the second place in the world’s largest Internet video hosters listing, just behind Youtube and in front of every other video service on the Internet. The Internet is filled with support requests of Facebook users who cannot play videos on the popular social [...]

I thought I would re-visit one of my favorite topics of late, KDE 4.5. The SC has been out long enough now for some of the smaller issues to pop up and workarounds be revealed. Most of these smaller issues are, by no means, deal breakers, but some of them can be annoying. Not everyone [...]

Ubuntu 10.04 has been out for a while now…long enough so that some of the more pestering issues have been finally fixed. But in some cases those issues continue on. What do you do? Some of these issues are hardly noticeable. Some, on the other hand, are fairly annoying. In this article I am going [...]

Like the control center of a cell, System Nucleus aims to be the core control center for the Windows operating system. The functionality may appear overwhelming on first startup, with more than 15 different buttons to access the program’s features and a menubar with additional options. A short explanation is displayed on mouse over to [...]

You know what it’s like when you’re sitting on really great news for several months but you can’t tell anyone?   This is even worse writing for gHacks every day knowing I’m sitting on a great nugget  :} Well after a long period of frustration I can now officially announce that I’ve been signed by Microsoft Press to write [...]

I tried burning a DVD yesterday and noticed that the DVD burning software was not recognizing the DVD drive. A quick check in the Devices and Printers section of the Windows control panel showed that the DVD drive and the virtual DVD drive had yellow exclamation marks next to them. when I checked the properties [...]

Have you ever been asked to do any Linux desktop remote support only to find out the client didn’t have secure shell (so no tunneling of X) nor did they have a vnc server setup? In these cases, what would you do? You still need to be able to support that client. Or what if [...]

Recently I showed you how to get the open source osTicket up and running (see my article “Install osTicket for a free – open source – help desk tool“). That article only got the tool installed. But now what? How do you make that tool come to life and serve as your one and only [...]

The consulting firm I work for has tasked me with finding a good help desk system for us to use. I have spent quite a bit of time trying to find a solution that both has the features we need and isn’t too costly. There are a LOT of help desk tools available. Some of [...]

PloP Linux is one of those small in size but large in features Live distributions that could, at some point, save your skin. It offers tons of tools to help you out of just about any situation and, because of the necessity to build the live version, allows you to add whatever tool you need. [...]

Recently I came into a client who had a Windows XP machine that contained a nasty little virus that rendered the machine nearly unusable. When the machine would boot the CPU was pegging out at 100%, causing the GUI to be nearly unresponsive. I attempted to run AVG, Avast, Malwarebytes – but all for naught. [...]

I’ve been using Linux for longer than I can remember. Over those years I have written a number of “top 5″ lists for various publications. So I thought it would be fun to share with the Ghacks readers my “top 5 top 5s”. I’ll give the category and a short description of each entry in [...]

If you want to do a thorough system security audit on a Linux machine what do you use? Cobble together a few of the pre-installed tools? Search through the numerous locations for a tool that might give you enough information to determine if your system is safe? Or, do you open up a terminal window [...]

This morning I woke up to find one of the sites I administer down. The error on the page was very clear in that it could not connect to the database due to a corrupt table. I had two choices, recover from a backup or attempt to repair the corrupted tables. I opted to try [...]

On occasion I have a need for a tiny, lightning fast Linux distribution to boot into in order to check various issues on a machine. Either that or I just don’t want to monkey around with someone else’ data. Either way, I will often grab for either a CD or flash drive containing my favorite [...]

Being able to do remote administration is crucial to many system administrators. And there are plenty of tools available for this job. You can use command line tools and full-blown GUI tools. Of course many users prefer to do things as simply as possible. Fortunately Linux has the right tools to make such a task [...]

A new feature in the Windows 7 operating system is the Program Compatibility Assistant which has been designed to detect compatibility issues in older programs. The service displays a compatibility warning window if compatibility issues have been detected during installation or program starts. The computer user usually does have a choice to continue but programs [...]

A friend’s computer running Windows 7 had been recently infected with the rootkit TDSS which resulted in redirects in all web browsers to affiliate sites. The problem is commonly known as Google redirects and the issue had been fixed back then. My friend contacted me again after the cleanup asking for help because Windows Update [...]

One of my True Crypt partitions failed to mount after a recent system crash. I entered the right password and received the message “Incorrect password or not a True Crypt volume”. I knew the password was correct which only left the option that it was not recognized as a True Crypt volume anymore. The drive [...]

Owners of a AMD ATI Radeon video card will notice the four processes ccc.exe, atiedxx.exe, atiesrxx.exe and mom.exe when they open up the Windows task manager. Those processes are installed with the installation of the ATI Catalyst driver package for the Windows operating system. But what are these processes doing or providing and is it [...]

If you are a student, teacher, writer, or anyone who has a need for a bibligraphy then you need to do yourself a favor and make use of a bibliographic manager. A bibliographic manager will organize, query, share, insert, and import bibliographic databases. One tool for this is Bibus. Bibus is an open source bibliographic database that can [...]