1. E-Mail Address, Multiple - When setting up your e-mail, it is strongly recommended that you set up a primary account for trusted recipients, e.g. family, friends, others you trust, and one or more other accounts for everything else.  By doing this the likelihood of your primary e-mail address getting spammed is reduced greatly.  If you have several secondary addresses, if one starts getting lots of spam, you can change it without affecting those in your primary account address book.

2. Registry Cleaners  - Q: Are Registry Cleaners worthwhile, safe, and such? 

A: The answer is not simple.  Some Registry problems are a result of poor housekeeping, e.g. uninstalling a program by just deleting the "obvious" files.  In such a case any Registry Cleaner may not be able to do a good and/or safe clean up. 

For most users, it is recommended that they start by using a program such as CCleaner .  Following are some recommendations when setting up:
- Activate the backup option so that you can restore things to the state before you started.
- Do not to activate features you don't understand.

Note: CCleaner includes an easy to configure cookie cleaner which only gets rid of cookies you don't want.

3. Multi Boot - Multi-boot or Multi-booting is the act of installing multiple operating systems on a computer, and being able to choose which one to boot when switching on the computer power. The term Dual-booting refers to the common configuration of only two operating systems. The program which makes multi-booting possible is called a boot loader, (Wikipedia),

Home | Top

1. Notification Area - Q: How do you identify the program associated with an icon?

A: First hover the mouse cursor over the icon, i.e. do not click.   Second right click on the icon.

2. MozBackup - A user is having difficulty restoring Thunderbird using this program. 

MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sunbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird, Songbird and Netscape profiles.  It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc. It's an easy way to do Firefox backup, Thunderbird backup ... 

On the author's website, the following is a check you can do quickly, "If you are having problems restoring a ".pcv" backup file that you created with the MozBackup utility and nothing you have tried seems to work, keep in mind that the ".pcv" file is actually a normal ".zip" file.." 

Check out (lmgtfy).

3. Upgrade to Win 7 - There was considerable discussion about the "USE CAUTION WHEN UP-GRADING TO WINDOWS 7" article by Ira Wilsker which was reprinted in User Friendly, February 2010 starting on page 11.  Copy of this issue will be published (here).

Home | Top

1. Lost Internet - If you have, the following steps will often help restore things:
1. Power everything off. (All PC's connected to the network, plus the Router & Modem)
2. Power on the Modem & wait 30 seconds or until the DSL or ONLINE light is on solid. 
3. Power on the Router (if you have one) and wait another 30 seconds or so. 
4. Power on the PC or PC's.

Reference: Networking - Tips on Jim McKnight's PC Self-Help Tips & Articles, (click here).

2. Free ISPs - Just dial in and do all your surfing with no monthly fee, (click here).  NOTE: You must register before using and most of these ISPs have ads.

3. RadioSure - RadioSure is a free, easy to use Internet radio player.  Some of the many features are:
- More than 12000 of stations in the package
- Supports most of the internet radio formats, e.g. mp3, wma, ogg vorbis, aac+
- Quick and reliable search for your favorite radio stations
- Smooth switching between stations including crossfade effect
- Recording what you are listening to and packaging it into separate song files
- Simultanious recording of multiple stations

Home | Top

What makes SnapFiles different is:
- They download and test EVERY program before listing it.
- They create the screenshots.
- If it's not working for them, they will not list it.
- If it appears to be a waste of your time, they won't list it...
- If they have any doubts as to the integrity of the software and/or author, they will not list it.

3. E-mail IMAP - Q: What's a good way to set up your e-mail when you'll be accessing it from more than one location. 

A: One common method is to use IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol).  Gmail offers an IMAP option.  A good way to get started is to set up a Gmail account (free), check out their Getting started with IMAP for Gmail, and do some testing.  It is likely to take awhile to become proficient in using IMAP.

4. E-mail Permanent Address - Changing your e-mail address can be a hassle.  One way to make your next change your last is discussed in a primer (click here).

Home | Top

How long will it take to index my files?  "Everything" only uses file and folder names and generally takes a few seconds to build its database.  As an example a fresh install of XP SP2 (about 20,000  files) will take about 1 second to index; 1,000,000 files will take about 1 minute. 

For additional information and download, (click here).

2. XP Support & SP3 - Support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) will end on July 13, 2010. This date was established when Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) was released on April 21, 2008.

This announcement is in line with the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy for Windows service packs. This policy states that when a new service pack is released, Microsoft will provide 24 months of support for the previous service pack for products that belong to the Windows product family. 

NOTE: By installing SP3, you will be able to continue receiving security patches until April 14, 2014.  For additional information (click here).

If you don't have SP3 on your XP machine, for a detailed installation check-list (click here).

Home | Top

Home | Top

Home | Top

Home | Top

Home | Top

Home | Top

Home | Top

Home | Top