A friend of mine was asking me why the boot process of his Windows XP operating system would take this long. I took a quick look at his system and found out that he had more than 700 fonts installed on his system. A in depth analysis by pc spy using a virtual xp system and Microsoft Bootvis confirmed that 1000 fonts would delay system boot time by 30 seconds compared to 5.33 seconds if only 100 fonts are installed on the system.

After finding out what caused the slow system start it was only a matter of what fonts could be uninstalled without problems and which had to stay because they are essential for Windows XP. A nice list of system fonts that are required by Windows XP and other Windows editions can be found at Kays Kreations.

I managed to reduce the number of installed fronts from 700 to 64 installed fonts and the startup time really did speed up a lot afterwards. You can delete fonts by opening the control panel, selecting the fonts entry, marking some of the installed fonts and pressing delete on the keyboard.

continue reading "Why you should check your Fonts Folder regularly"

I regularly work with a lot of applications in Windows Vista at once which should not be a problem because I have enough RAM and a fast enough CPU to handle all of those applications with each. It happens that I experience a strange behavior which can be only be attributed to the number of applications and windows that are opened simultaneously.

Sometimes an out of memory message appears although the task manager reports that enough free RAM is available and sometimes I get a blank window without contents or a windows where elements are missing. This is kinda frustrating and can only be fixed by closing several of the open applications or windows.

Ed Bott from ZDnet found an explanation and fix for this problem.

Windows sets aside a blob of system memory called the desktop heap, which it uses to store user interface objects such as windows, menus, and hooks.

continue reading "Solving a Windows Vista Resource Problem"

Microsoft released a total of nine security patches yesterday fixing six critical and three important vulnerabilities on its August Patchday. Those updates were available on both my Windows XP and Windows Vista system and Microsoft in Windows Update but can also be downloaded as single updates from the Microsoft website.

I decided to list all patches with links to their downloads at the Microsoft website to make it easier to install all those patches if you do not want to use Windows Update. Remember that those patches fix serious vulnerabilities and should be installed immediately:

continue reading "Get your Microsoft Security Patches now"

Free DVD is a small freeware that is able to remove certain protections and other unwanted features of Video_TS folders on your hard drive. The software can remove the Region Code, Region Code Enhancements, Macrovision and so called UOPS (user operation prohibitions) protections.

This is useful if you ripped a DVD to your hard drive with a software that was not able to remove those protections. This might not be that often the case but the small size of only 44K should convince you that this software is worth the download. This application is not necessary if you use the DVDFab HD Decrypter which I reviewed today as well.

Using Free DVD is absolutely easy. (1) Choose a Video_TS folder on your hard drive, (2) select the region code of the DVD and (3) check the remove protections entries and (4) click on Free DVD.

continue reading "Remove Protections from DVD folders"

Not many Windows users now what the Custom Notifications are or where one could take a look at the elements hidden there. Microsoft describes Custom Notifications as the way in Windows to display active and urgent notifications. These icons show if you have new mail for instance.

The real problem that arises is that past icons are kept there as well which means that everyone can access these information which could be a privacy problem.

Custom Notifications can be accessed by right-clicking the taskbar and choosing Properties from the menu. Click on the Customize button next to the Hide inactive icons entry to see all active and past entries in there - you might be surprised about the amount of icons listed there.

continue reading "Remove Custom Notifications information in Windows"