Windows will always highlight new installed programs at the start menu. This feature is good to some people, but i believe most of us would like to remove it.
To remove this feature, right click your start menu, and choose properties. Switch to the “Start Menu” tab and press “Customize“. Scroll down until you reach “Highlight newly installed programs“. Uncheck it and press “OK“.
For Windows XP, you will find same option under the Advanced tab.
7-zip is a popular free zip tool for us. Unfortunately, the icons are pretty dull for me. So, i decide to patch them with more interesting icons.
Before you start, you need to know the path to 7zip. Normally, it is “C:\Program Files\7-Zip”. After that, you need an application called “Resource Hacker”, which is free. You can download Reosurce Hacker from here. After you prepare everything, lets start to modify the icons.
Open Resource Hacker. Click File -> Open. Browse to your 7zip folder. Mine is “C:\Program Files\7-Zip”. After that, choose “7z.dll” and click Open.
Expand the Icon Group. You will get around 16 nodes.
Expand the first node (0). Click “1033″. You will see the 7zip icon appear. Right click “1033″ and choose “Replace Resource“.
Click “Open file with new icon” to select your icon file.
After that, You can select icon to replace from the right listbox. Press “Replace” when done. Repeat this step to change the other icons.
Previously i cover a handy tool to test your LCD monitor. But unfortunately that application can’t fix the dead pixels. Now, i would like to introduce some methods which can fix/remove them.
Before i start, lets talk about what is stuck pixel and what is dead pixel. Stuck pixel is a dot of colour in your LCD while the background is black. When the stuck pixel become black dot in white background, it become dead pixel. Normally, stuck pixel is easily to fix compare to dead pixel.
Now, lets share some tips on how to fix these pixels:
It is a Java application and you can run JScreenFix through web browser. JScreenFix can be used to fix stuck pixels. You need to install Java Runtime in order to use JScreenFix. It take around 20 minutes to repairs stuck pixels on your LCD.
Similar with JScreenFix, Killdeadpixel is a web solution to dead pixels. It is an animated gif image which will try to massage the dead pixel back alive again by getting it to change rapidly. Simply drag the image to dead pixel and stay there for 1 hour. Although this method doesn’t work for all dead pixels, but you may try it.
Dead pixel tester (DPT) is a free application for users to locate and identify any stuck/dead pixels. It is because most of the LCD manufacturers will replace the LCD free of charge if there are more than certain amount of stuck/dead pixels (within the warranty period). DPT include a pixel exerciser which may fix stuck pixels.
As we know, some of the PDF documents contains restrictions such as not allow users to print, copy and paste. You can use PDF Unlocker to remove these restrictions easily.
Some PDF creator will add restrictions to the PDF documents to protect the contents from being copied or printed by users. Users still can print, copy and paste the PDF documents, if they have the passwords to unlock the documents.
However, with PDF Unlocker, you can easily remove these restrictions. After installing the application, a shortcut will appear on the dekstop. Simply drag and drop any PDF documents to PDF Unlocker’s icon and all restrictions will be removed.
If the PDF documents required password to open/read, you can use PDF Unlocker to remove the password. But, you need to know the password before unlock them.
Source: Techtrends
Foxit Reader is definitely best Adobe reader replacement. However, we are not able to enable the thumbnail preview in Windows Explorer if we set it as a default PDF viewer. This tip will help you to turn this feature on.
A lot of Foxit reader users request this feature, but unfortunately they haven’t implement it, even in the latest 2.3 version. I try to search through internet and i found a great article which can do this.
After your finish these steps, you can view the PDF thumbnails in windows explorer while still set Foxit reader as your default PDF viewer.
Bookmarks are very important for everyone. We use it to store important URL and a lot of interesting websites. Without bookmark, i can’t imagine how we are going to remember the URLs.
So, what happen if our Firefox’s bookmarks suddenly disappear? One of my friend’s bookmarks suddenly disappear (i am not sure the actual reason, but i suspect is cause by improper PC shut down). So, how are we going to restore the bookmarks?
Firefox actually do the job for us. So, where are the backup bookmarks and how we restore them? Follow the steps below and you can easily retrieve them:
BootTimer is a free application which can measures Windows startup times.
BootTimer will not calculate the time taken to go through BIOS, and will start immediately when your PC starts loading Windows. Currently, BootTimer works on Windows NT, Windows XP and Windows XP 64 bit Edition, and yet to support Windows Vista.
To use BootTimer, launch the application and a messagebox will appear and ask you to reboot your Windows. After you click “Yes”, your computer will restarts. After your computer restarts, you will get another messagebox that show you the total time taken to start Windows.
download BootTimer | download from MediaFire
Source: gHacks
There were some companies/countries which try to block access to certain websites. I had cover a tip to bypass them. But unfortunately some people complain that it doesn’t work. Today i had go through this issue and found an interesting article which extend this topic and provide 2 more solutions.
1. GhostFox – GhostFox is based on Firefox and it provide a list of proxy for users to choose. Users can try different proxy until they successfully enter the site.
2. Use Google cache – Enter the URL of the site in Google and search. After that, visit the cache copy of the website. You can found the cache link beside the results’ URL:
Enjoy your browsing with these techniques!
Piky Basket is a handy tool which will help us in copying/moving files in Windows. It is created to save our time when working with copying/moving files in Windows.
Piky Basket allow you to select files/folders and then place them into a “basket”, then proceed to select different files/folders. After you had finish selecting, you can then copy/move them all at once in the target location. If you want to place them individually to different locations, you can use the “Select” feature to manually select files/folders which you wan to drop.
Lets see how this application works.
Right-click on any document and select Piky Basket -> Drop into the Basket. Repeat this action for few times with different documents.
Go to different folder, right-click and choose Piky-Basket -> Copy All.
Now, you had all documents being copied to your destination folder.
There are some other usage of Piky Basket, but i am not going to cover here. Download and try it yourself if you interested (it is a freeware!).
Jedi Window Dock let user to dock any numbers of windows inside a tabbed window, so that these windows don’t take up your taskbar space.
Almost all modern browsers will have tab feature, so that user can open different website at one time. But, what happen if you want your windows applications open in different tabs?
Jedi Window Dock is a handy application which will help you on this. This is a portable application, and you can create different dock windows for different group of applications. For example, you can create a dock window for your IM conversations and another dock windows for your Word documents.
After you launch the application, you can start add any opened windows to the tabs. Remember to press the Refresh Window List after you open new program/window so that the application can get the latest opened windows.
You can switch to other tab by press Ctrl + tab button. This application doesn’t consume much memory and works fine with most of the applications.
Note: You need .NET Framework 2.0 to run this application.
