Microsoft has made changes to the taskbar in Windows 7. One of the new features is the ability to pin programs, and with some tweaking files and folders to the taskbar for easier access. The size of open windows in the taskbar has been reduced to the program’s icon. Users can hoover over open windows [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

Can you find out if someone else has been on your PC, has connected an external USB drive to it, and copied data from it to the drive? Tools like USBDeview tell you which USB devices have been connected in the past. The program even tells you when a device has been connected to a [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

You have several options when you are running out of storage space. You could consider uninstalling software that you no longer need, run a temporary files cleaner like CCleaner, search for large files to delete them, backup files to restore space or even buy a new hard drive to extend the available space. One of [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

When you move the mouse around on your system you will soon realize that borders have been placed at the edge of the screen to prevent it from falling off the earth. And while that may make sense to avoid confusion, it may also mean more mouse movement on the screen as you cannot just [...]

Categories: Software

I have not looked at Pandora Radio ever since the service closed down its international access. Before that, I published two guides on saving Pandora music. That was back in 2006; Five years later and the situation has not changed a lot. Pandora is still only available for US Internet users and those who use [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

File verification software can be used to verify the integrity of files. This is for instance helpful when verifying the integrity of data backups, or files on a web server to make sure that attackers did not modify them. All programs that offer the functionality work alike. They process a list of files, create checksums [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

There is not really a lot that users can do to improve the performance of a hard drive on a computer system. This however is changing currently with the introduction of the first Advanced Format hard drives that some PC manufacturers have started to add to their systems. The main difference is that AF drives [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

The Windows operating system saves thumbnails in a file called thumbs.db whenever you change the folder view mode to thumbnail view. This basically caches the image thumbnails so that they are displayed faster the next time you open that folder with that view mode. I personally have disabled the thumbnail creation on my system as [...]

Categories: Open Source, Software, Windows

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 [...]

Categories: Software, troubleshooting, Windows