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Free Lightweight Alternatives to Bloatware
2008-01-25 15:33:00
We have to install many programs to open the variety of files we are sent or download off the Internet, and we have to install more programs to keep in touch with people on the Internet.These programs are often quite large and the install files can take a while to load, even on broadband connections. Thankfully there are some free lightweight alternatives to these bloated applications.Foxit Reader is a fully featured PDF (Portable Document Format) reader and a much slimmer alternative to Adobe Acrobat.I have already mentioned Real Alternative, which enables you to play RealMedia files without installing RealPlayer, in a previous post, and in a recent post I drew attention to the slim image editor Paint.net; although, you may have install Microsoft's .Net Framework, which is quite bloated too.Meebo is the slimmest of all these sveldt options, as it doesn't require the installation of any new software at all. This website offers an alternative to various messenger clients such as Mi...
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: jump up a level
2008-01-22 17:16:00
When you are using Windows Explorer - the file management program that opens when you double-click on 'My Computer' and the like - you can move to the parent folder by clicking the back-space key.By 'parent folder' I mean the folder that contains the one you are looking at. In the following image we see that the 'parent folder' of Adobe is Program Files.Another way to achieve the same thing is to press the F4 key followed by the up arrow, and then Return.
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Five freeware image manipulation tools
2008-01-21 15:57:00
The GIMPThis is a fully featured image editor with an interesting name - it stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program (apparently). This is an incredibly powerful application with features that rivals professional software like Photoshop. Whilst this software was originally developed for a Linux environment there is a Windows version available; however, in my experience it does not work well on Windows. Nevertheless many people do use it on Windows machines and enjoy its powerful features although for the novice user it's stark interface may take some getting used to.Paint.netWhereas the GIMP's interface may take some getting used to Paint.net's is friendly and intuitive, and while Pain.net is not as feature-rich as the GIMP it is still a powerful image manipulation tool with many of the features found in commercial image editing packages. Because it is quick and easy to use it has become my image editor of choice.IrfanView32IrfanView is an image viewer which has few editing fea...
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MS Word: replace, reformat, rejoice
2008-01-19 17:40:00
Here is the scenario, you have copied some text from somewhere and pasted it into Word ; however, the text ends up looking something like this.To see the cause of this problem, press the 'Show/Hide ¶' button. As shown, the original text has carriage returns - as indicated by the '¶' marks - at the end of the original lines. When this text was pasted into word the lines were no longer the same length, so, the carriage returns were in the wrong place.The solution to this problem is to replace the carriage returns with spaces. You can do this manually, or use the replace feature in Word. To open the 'Find and Replace' dialog box, pull down the 'Edit' menu and select 'Replace' - you may have to click the double arrows at the bottom of the menu to display all the entries on the menu - or you could hold down the Ctrl key and press H.Each special character has its own code associated with it. For the carriage return this is '^p', for Tab it is '^t' and so on (you can see the...
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Guest article: Computer Error Basics
2008-01-18 22:05:00
This is the first guest article here at Bloody Computer ! It was written by James Ricketts from Instant Registry Fixes. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. K Windows errors can occur at any time due to several reasons. Most of the time, these errors leave us helpless and may even cause us to lose important data and spend large amounts of money on expensive computer repairs. We end up going through a lot of trouble, when in fact, there are some very simple steps that can easily help prevent these problems from happening in the first place. The top two causes of computer errors are malware and registry errors. Let’s take a look at some of the methods to deal with these problems and fix computer errors. Keep Your Computer Malware Free To keep your computer free of errors and other problems, it is essential for all PC users to have anti malware tools installed on their PCs. Primarily, there are three tools that are crucial for all PC users—Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, and Anti-spam...
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Eject that CD or DVD the lazy way
2008-01-16 17:18:00
After recently writing about context menus and the 'Applications' key, I remembered that you can eject your CD or DVD drive tray using Windows, rather than having to press that little button, which - for some reason - the drive manufacturers put beneath the tray. So if you have to reach down to your PC, you have to whip your finger out of the way so as not to impede the opening tray. To eject the drive right-click on its icon in My Computer and click on 'Eject'. Obvious really, but, no keyboard shortcut.You could try the following combination of keyboard shortcuts though:Windows key + M or D (minimise everything)Windows key + E (open My Computer)Down cursor to highlight CD/DVD drive iconApplications keyDown cursor to highlight 'Eject'Enter keyBut that is hardly a shortcut at all.
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Windows Task Manager Explained: Part 2
2008-01-14 19:55:00
Continuation from part 1Networking TabThe 'Networking' tab provides a visual representation of the amount of data that your network connections are transmitting and receiving over time. Note that the percentages quoted are of the maximum possible capacity under ideal circumstances, and do not take other factors into consideration, such as the amount of Internet bandwidth that is available on your connection. Users TabThe final tab may not be available on your version of Windows . It lists all users that that have recently logged on to Windows. You can use this page to force other users disconnect or log-off if you have sufficient access rights. The disconnect option is available if the user is accessing your machine across a network, the log-off option is available if they are locally logged on to your computer.The 'Users' tab also has an option to send a message to other users. If they are connected to your PC over a network you can message them to warn them if you have to reboo...
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Windows Task Manager Explained: Part 1
2008-01-13 18:07:00
Starting the Task Manager There are a couple of ways to show the Windows Task Manager : hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys and press the Delete key - Task Manager will then open some versions of Windows, in others you will be presented with a small dialog box that has a button you can click to open the Task Manager; alternatively you can right-click on empty space on the Taskbar and select Task Manager from the menu.Applications TabThe first page on the Task Manager lists all the applications that are running on the PC. This mimics the list that you see as buttons on the Taskbar. If you highlight an application in the list and click the 'End Task' button that application will then close. This is particularly useful if an application has a status of 'Not Responding' when normal attempts to close it will fail.The 'New Task' button works in the same way as the 'Run' item in the Start Menu.Processes TabThe 'Processes' page lists all the programs that are running on your computer....
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: So what is this key anyway?
2008-01-13 00:30:00
The 'Application' KeyMost Windows compliant keyboards have a rarely used key between the Windows Key and the Ctrl key to the right of the space bar. This key can be used to bring up what is called a context menu for whatever is selected at the time. Context menu is the name for the menu that pops up when you click the right mouse button.For example if you press the key when you have Word open, you will see the following.Or if you have a drive icon selected in My Computer, you will see something similar to this (although, your menu items may differ from mine):If you ever have problems with your mouse not working, but you still need to use your PC, this key can be very useful. In a future post I will give instructions on reinstalling faulty mouse software using only the keyboard.
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50th post and first for 2008
2008-01-07 10:44:00
After a period of disruption in my life I am hoping to be able to post regularly to Bloody Computer! again. I am going to start with a review of posts from 2007.Top 3 Most Read Post s1. Where has all my hard-drive space gone? (30th August): 51 views2. The mystery of the disappearing Taskbar. (10th December): 47 views3. Keyboard shortcut of the week: control your selections (8th December): 30 viewsData from the excellent Google AnalyticsTop 3 Most Commented on Posts1. "Bloody Computer!" Author Wins Award (27th October): 6 comments2. From screen to video: recording Windows (9th December): 5 comments3. Five tips for buying a new PC (22nd October): 3 commentsThank you for all your feedbackTop 3 Most Dugg Posts1. Bring files back from the dead (5th November): 12 diggs2. Four Hardware Tips: CD/DVD drives and scanning (8th October): 6 diggs=3. I can see clearly now... (30th October): 5 diggs=3. Five top freeware applications (12th September): 5 diggsData from Digg
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: save and backup regularly
2007-12-31 01:36:00
Your PC can crash at any time. Not a comforting thought I know, but one that should prompt us all to save our work as often as possible. So, for this end of the year post I will extol the virtues of saving regularly, and by extension, of backing up your files.Firstly let's deal with saving your files regularly: to do so, simply hold down the Ctrl key and press S.If you wish to use a different filename each time you save, hold down the Alt key and press F then A. This will open up the 'Save as...' dialog box.Now the backing up your files. Since we are fast approaching a new year, now would be a good time to back up all your essential files. There are a myriad of ways of doing this such as using USB flash drives to backup your current projects, or using a DVD writer to back up many of your files in one go.Another option is to set up a webmail account with lots of storage capacity as offered by the likes of Yahoo! and Google to which you can email the files you are working on. Or yo...
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The mystery of the disappearing Taskbar.
2007-12-10 10:45:00
Once in a while, Windows gets into a terrible state and the Task bar and its Start menu disappear. This is because the software that manages these, called the Windows Explorer shell, has crashed. To deal with this, without logging off and on the computer, you have to end any existing sessions of Explorer and run a new one.To end existing Explorer sessions hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys and press the Delete key. On some versions of Windows this will open up the 'Windows Security' dialog box, if so then press the 'Task Manager' button; on other versions you will be taken straight to the 'Task Manager' program.To stop the Explorer shell, go to the 'Processes' page and look for 'explorer.exe'. You can sort the processes into alphabetical order by clicking on the Image Name heading. If you find an entry for 'explorer.exe', highlight it and click the End Process button and click Yes on the warning dialog. If you don't find an entry for it you can go straight to the next step...
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From screen to video: recording Windows
2007-12-09 18:56:00
As you will have seen in my last post I have at last added video to this site. I used a handy freeware application called CamStudio to record what I was doing on my screen.This software has some excellent features that include: recording of vocal commentary; addition of captions; and even picture-in-picture video of yourself if you have a webcam. There is some help for using the software at Nick the Geek's Support Helpdesk, but I will give you a few tips to get you started.Firstly, it is best to select a different video codec (the way that the video is encoded and compressed) than the default one to keep the file sizes small. From the Options men select Video Options. Pick a compressor from the list. There is a lossless video codec available to download on the CamStudio site. You can also reduce the quality of the video on the Video Options page to further reduce the size of the video file. You will have to make sure that the people who view the video have the correct codec instal...
More About: Windows , Screen , Recording , Video Recording

Keyboard shortcut of the week: control your selections
2007-12-08 22:48:00
If you ever have to select more than one item at a time in a Windows program then you can use the control key, generally marked Ctrl. I find this technique particularly useful for dealing with my emails. I can hold down Ctrl and click on each spam email in turn, then take my finger off Ctrl and hit the Delete key so get rid of them all.Using Ctrl to select multiple items also works well in Window Explorer - the software you use to browse files and programs within Windows. To try it out open up your My Documents folder, hold down the Ctrl key, and left-click on a few items with the mouse. Each item should be selected as you click on it. When you release the Ctrl key you are free to drag and drop all the files, or right-click on any one of them to apply a process - such as delete, cut or copy - to them. A much quicker way of performing a task on many files than doing each one separately.You can also use the Ctrl key and 'lasso' items in Explorer. To 'lasso' items hold down the lef...
More About: Week , Keyboard , Control , Keyboard shortcut , Shortcut

Lack of recent posts
2007-12-07 10:31:00
Regular readers may have been wondering why there have been no posts here recently. This is because I have been effectively homeless for a number of days due to a house fire.But fear not, dear reader, there will be more help and advice available soon when I am more settled.
More About: Recent , Posts , Lack

Keyboard shortcut of the week: born to run
2007-11-20 14:20:00
You may have noticed that the Start menu has an item called 'Run'. The Run facility is a bit of a throw-back to the days of DOS, when we had to type commands to run programs rather than double click on icons. Nevertheless, it is still a useful tool in the Windows environment.You can open the Run box by clicking on 'Run' in the Start menu, or you can use the keyboard shortcut: hold down a Windows key and press R. The Windows keys have this symbol on, and are generally located near the Alt keys.Once you have opened up the Run box, simply type in a command and hit return. To get you started here is a list of commands and the programs that they open.calc - calculatornotepad - unsurprisingly this opens the notepad, which is a simple text editoriexplore - Internet Explorerfirefox - Firefoxwinword - Wordexcel - (I think you can guess)powerpnt - PowerPoint[For an exhaustive list of other commands see this article on FixMyXP.com]Another advantage of using the Run dialog is that you can q...
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Putting new buttons on toolbars in MS Office
2007-11-19 16:52:00
A while ago I wrote an article that suggested that rather than printing directly from web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, it is better to copy the information that you want into a word processor and print it from there. In that article I mentioned the use of the 'Paste Special' in Word, which enables you to remove formatting from the information that you paste. In this article I will explain how to put a button for 'Paste Special' onto the toolbar in word. This technique can also be used to add any of the other available buttons onto the toolbar.Open up word and right-click on one of the toolbars, which are at the top of the screen below the menu and look something like this:From the menu, select 'Customize...', which will open a dialog box. Click on the 'Commands' tab.Select 'Edit' from the left-hand menu, because the 'Paste Special' tool is listed in the 'Edit' menu. Scroll down through the list on the right-hand until you see 'Paste Special' then left-click o...
More About: Office , Putting , Ms Office , Buttons

Sounds & videos in PowerPoint on a different PC
2007-11-12 11:44:00
If you are setting up a PowerPoint presentation that has audio or video content, make sure that the media files will be available when you give the presentation. For example, you have a slideshow that plays an mp3 when a certain slide is shown. You must make sure that the mp3 file will be accessible wherever you want to show the presentation, that is, if you are using a USB memory stick make sure that the media files are on the stick before you create the link to them in PowerPoint, or if you are using a CD-Rom, make sure all the media files are in the same folder as the PowerPoint file and then burn them all together in the same folder on the CD-Rom.
More About: Videos , Sounds , Powerpoint , Diff

Bring files back from the dead, continued...
2007-11-11 18:53:00
The authors of PC Inspector File Recovery recommend that you install it on a different drive from the one you want to retrieve lost files from. This may not always be possible, but if you have a second drive or a USB memory stick, then install the software onto one of these.Once installed, run the software.Select your language when prompted.Click on the 'Recover Deleted Files ' tab as shown on the left of this image.As you can see, I have a number of drives on my PC. On most machines there will only be two drives listed in the list. Select the drive you wish to search for deleted files, usually this will be 'Windows drive C:', and click on the tick.The software may take some time to scan your drive, when finished it will present you with a list of deleted files and folders that it has found. Note that each file's condition is listed and even when the file condition is 'good' it may not be restored in totality.Try to locate the lost file in the list. If you find it, right-click...
More About: Back , Dead , Conti

Bring files back from the dead
2007-11-05 15:10:00
Even after you have deleted a file, and emptied the Recycle Bin, you may still be able to recover the file. This is because the data in the file has not been removed, at least until the drive is defragmented, rather Windows just ignores the data that is there, treating it as if it was empty space.The great advantage of this system is that you may be able to recover files that you accidently deleted since the last time that you defragmented, however, you will need a piece of software that will enable you to reconstruct the file from the raw data. My preferred software for this task is PC Inspector's File Recovery. Whilst free to download and use, it is still a fully featured and powerful piece of software. It is not the most intuitive piece of software ever written, so I will be writing a tutorial later this week explaning how to recover a file using it.As an alternative, FreeUndelete, is more user friendly, but because I have not used it as often as PC Inspector's File Recovery I ...
More About: Back , Dead , Files

Keyboard shortcut of the week: what`s on the menu?
2007-11-02 12:40:00
You can open any menu using your keyboard. As you may have noticed, each menu title has one of its letters underlined. To open the menu, hold down the Alt key and press the key corresponding to the underlined letter.In the case of the above menu, Alt & F will open the 'File' menu, Alt & E will open the 'Edit' menu, and so on.Once the menu is open, you can use the cursor keys to navigate: up and down will move the focus up and down the list of menu items; the right and left cursor keys will select the next menu to the right or left (except when you have a sub-menu entry focused - more details below). To select a menu item press the Return key.You will notice that some of the menu entries have letters underlined too. These can be quickly selected by opening the menu and then pressing the key for the underlined letter. For example if you press Alt & E the 'Edit' menu will open, if you then press A then the application will 'Select All' - of course you could just hol...
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I can see clearly now...
2007-10-30 19:11:00
Eye strain is a hazard to anyone who uses their computers for any extended period. So anything that eases the pressure on the eyes is a bonus. To this end, Microsoft have developed a tool for making text more legible called ClearType Tuner.The ClearType Tuner only works on Windows Vista and XP, and is available as a web-based tool here. You will be required to choose which is the clearer text from a variety of options a couple of times, and then - hopefully - text should be clearer on your screen. Windows XP users can also download a Control Panel version from the Microsoft XP Power Toys page.If you are a Vista user and wish to switch off ClearType check out Diana Huggin's instructions on the excellent Lockergnome site.

The Windows Taskbar explained
2007-10-29 15:01:00
The Windows Task bar is usually to be found at the bottom of the screen, although it can be moved to any edge. It includes the 'Start menu' button, toolbars, a button for each application you are running, icons for other programs that are running, and the time.I will gloss over the 'Start menu' button, because all it does is open the start menu, and move straight on to the toolbars. Most versions of Windows will display the 'Quick Launch' toolbar by default. This toolbar will look something like this.To add a new button to this toolbar for a different application, simply drag and drop the application's shortcut to the toolbar. You can drag and drop from the Desktop or from the Start Menu. To delete a button, right-click on it and select 'Delete'.There are a number of other toolbars available, including one that will offer shortcuts to the 'Links' directory in your Internet Explorer favourites. The Windows Media Player taskbar is quite stylish, if you switch it on and minim...

"Bloody Computer!" Author Wins Award
2007-10-28 22:11:00
Last week, Colin at Free PC Security gave me the Community Blogger Award . This prize was recently created by Cellobella at Red Sultana, to celebrate those that reach out to the wider community.I am honoured to receive this award, because it comes from fellow bloggers, and because the ethos of the award is for winners to pass on the award to worthy recipients. As such, I am also honoured to present the award to the following three bloggers:Etienne Teo - for good advice for bloggers wishing to monetise and develop their sites.Mark R. Stoneman - for efforts in promoting the historian blogger community.Shirley Gibson - for the variety of blogs she writes, and for blogging community work.
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Finding lost documents
2007-10-26 12:50:00
We have all done it, saved a document and then immediately forgotten where we saved it and what we called it. Fear not, help is at hand. Some applications will keep a short list of recently opened documents, which can usually be found in the 'File' menu. This should at least identify the name of the file, which you can search for. To save time, rather than search for this file, it may be easier to save it again in a more memorable location.Much of the time, we created the lost file a while ago, and because we have created other files since then, the lost file is not mentioned in the list of recent documents. So, we have to use the Windows search tool.Please note that the following instructions do not apply to Vista. For a walk through of the new search tool that Microsoft implemented on Vista, see this article at PC Magazine.To open the search tool, open the Start menu and click on Search, or simply press F3 when you don't have any windows open. If you are using XP, you may be g...
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: screen capture
2007-10-23 16:48:00
If you wish to capture what you have on your screen as an image you can do so by pressing the Print Screen key (sometimes abbreviated to Prt Scr or similar) - on most keyboards this key will be found next to the F12 key, above the Insert key.This will put an image of the screen into the 'Clipboard', which is the name for the "holding area" where windows keeps things that you have copied. You can then paste this image into any program that accepts pasted images, such as image editors or word processors.Windows includes an image editor, called Paint, which is found in the 'Accessories' folder on the Start Menu program list. This application enables you to edit the screen image, should you wish to copy a section of it, or change its size, and save it as an image file.Most word processors also include a few limited image manipulation features. In MS Word there is a toolbar that includes image manipulation tools, such as brightness and contrast adjustment, and a tool to crop the imag...
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Five tips for buying a new PC
2007-10-22 14:53:00
1) Buy a good monitorThe monitor is the peripheral that you will interact with the most. For the sake of your eyesight and to prevent headaches from extended use, make sure that you purchase a quality monitor. Make sure that the monitor is the right size for you, don't be pressured into buying a larger monitor than you need. For most purposes a 17" screen will serve well. Also, read users reviews for the monitors even if you don't read reviews for anything else.2) Hard-drive capacityThe more the merrier. Hard drive space is like cupboard space: you can never have enough of it, especially in these days of multimedia computing. The capacity of the hard-drive is more important than its speed. 100 gigabytes should be enough for most purposes, but if you know you are going to install many games, or store lots of movies or music files you may decide to buy a PC with a larger drive. Better to buy enough to begin with rather than buy a second drive later.3) Build QualityThis is particular...
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Speed up your PC: streamlined visuals
2007-10-19 13:20:00
Over the years the Windows interface has become increasingly visually appealing, however, these graphic effects can have an impact on performance.The effects of effectsWindows 2000 and XP users can switch off some of these effects in order to get better performance from their PC. To do this, right-click on the desktop - away from any icons and select 'Properties'. This will open the 'Display Properties' dialog box. On this box select the 'Appearance tab'.Click on the 'Effects...' button, and the following dialog box will open. To increase performance make sure that 'Show shadows under menus' and 'Show windows contents while dragging' are not ticked. Click 'OK' on all the boxes when you have made your changes.Pick a better wallpaperAnother factor that may impact performance is the size of the image you use as your desktop background - also known as a wallpaper. You can use any size of image as your wallpaper and Windows will resize it to fit the screen. By picking a sma...
More About: Speed , Speed up , Visuals , Streamline

Keyboard shortcut of the week: the great escape
2007-10-18 19:08:00
The escape key (marked 'Esc' on most keyboards) has a number of functions, but probably it's most useful function is for closing dialog boxes (those small windows that open within a program, such as the 'Save as...' box) where it is the equivalent of pressing the 'Cancel' button or the close button in the top right hand corner - the equivalent of pressing the 'OK' button is the return key.Pressing the escape key also close menus, including the start menu, which can be opened using the windows key (the one with the Windows logo on).
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Toolbars gone AWOL
2007-10-16 16:25:00
There is a bug in Windows XP that causes the toolbars in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer (the thing that opens when you double-click on My Computer etc) to disappear.Doug Knox has written an excellent little program to fix this problem. Download it from his website here.