Free anonymous, temporary and disposable email address service – MintEmail!!!!

Looking for a temporary disposable email address service that is free and that works well? Disposable email addresses are quite useful for many things, such as posting on an auction site or simply for signing up for one of those forced “free” accounts so that you can download a piece of software you were looking for.
If you end up giving your real email address, you never know how many people they will sell it too and eventually you’ll be bombarded with tons of useless offers, deals, etc. Several months ago, I wrote an article on a service called Numbr, which is a free way to get disposable telephone numbers.
MintEmail is the way to go if you’re looking for a free way to get disposable email addresses! So next time you need to post a question to a forum, etc and you want to hide your real email address to prevent spam, make sure you check this site out.

This site may seem like your normal disposable email service, but upon closer inspection you’ll find that it’s way better than most temporary email services. Why? Well let’s go through some of the nice features:

Automatic Temporary Email Generation

The coolest thing about the site is that when you visit it, you automatically get a custom temporary email address! Instantly! It’s shown at the upper right hand corner of the screen. Also, the email address is automatically placed into your clipboard, so you can simply press CTRL + P and paste it anywhere! No need to highlight and press CTRL + C.

Continuous Mail Check

The other really cool thing is that the web page continuously checks for new emails and updates the page automatically when a new email arrives. There is no need to go to another page, click “Check mail” or anything like that. Just send an email and watch it appear on the screen! Also, the title for the page is updated to “New Email” so that you will know when a new email arrives even if you are on another tab in Firefox or IE.

Automatic Email Verification

Another nice feature of this site is that it will automatically verify emails for your from most websites out there. For example, if you wanted to create an account on YouTube, you would type in all of the info and provide you email address. You would then get an email whereby you would have to click on a link to verify your account. Using MintEmail, all of the links inside each email will be clicked automatically so that if there is any verification link, it will be clicked.

Longer Duration Temporary Email Addresses

If you need to have your temporary email address for longer than four hours, you can actually create a MintEmail address that will last all the way up to 3 months! So if you’re hosting an auction or something that will last 6 days on eBay, go ahead and set the duration for one week. Just put in your real email address and all emails will be forwarded there.
Finally, you can always close the browser and still check your emails by simply opening the browser window and heading to http://mintemail.com/username.
MintEmail works wonderfully as a disposable email service and makes it very easy to manage at the same time. Enjoy! Source SiteGuide

How To Use EasyBCD Tool To Create A Bootable Windows 7 USB Drive

EasyBCD is well-known for its ability to add, remove, and edit boot entries. Most of Windows users don’t know that fact that this free tool even lets you create a bootable USB drive with a few clicks.

Here is the procedure to create a bootable Windows 7 USB in EasyBCD:

1. Start off by installing the EasyBCD utility on your machine. If you haven’t already downloaded it, get it here.

2. Next, connect the USB flash drive to your PC, remove all data from the drive, and then format the drive in FAT 32 file system (to format, right-click on the USB drive and select Format option and then select file system as FAT32).

3. Run EasyBCD and click Bootloader Setup button present in the left side.

4. Here, under Create Bootable External Media box, select the USB drive that you want to make as a bootable drive.

5. Next, click Install BCD button and wait for while to see the following dialog-box.

 

Simply click Yes button. Close EasyBCD tool, and insert your Windows 7 DVD into the drive.

6. Copy all files from your Windows 7 installation DVD to the USB flash drive. If you have an ISO file, you can use 7-Zip tool to extract the ISO contents to the USB drive.

7. Your bootable Windows 7 USB flash drive is ready. You can now use the USB drive to install Windows 7 from USB.

Please note that you can’t use this tool to create a XP bootable drive.

Enjoy!!!

99 of the best Windows freeware programs you may not know of

If you search for “best freeware programs” or “top freeware apps”, you’ll get lots of lists, but mostly with programs everyone has already heard of: AVG anti-virus, 7-zip, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc, etc.

That’s all nice and fine, but what about all those little gems programs that work great, but don’t get all the headlines? In this article, I will try my best to mention as many small name freeware programs as I can that can help make you more productive!
As usual, I write for both Help Desk Geek and for Online Tech Tips, so I will be linking to old posts throughout if I’ve written about it or else I will link out to the main website for the program.
These are written in no particular order! Again, I’m sure there are hundreds of programs that I won’t mention, so if you feel I’ve really missed a great program, mention the name of the app and what it does in the comments!
If you like this post and think it would be useful to others, feel free to share it!
1. We’ve all heard of 7-zip, WinRAR, and WinZip, but what about other great zipping programs like PeaZip, TugZip, and Jzip?
2. What’s the best Notepad replacement out there? Notepad++ right? We all know that! Ever heard of XML Notepad? It’s a free XML editor and works great! Or what about PSPad? It’s a very nice code and text editor also.
3. If you use Windows, then you know and love the Windows registry! CCleaner may be the most popular system maintenance tool out there, but what about other registry cleaners and tuners, such as Comodo registry cleaner and Eusing registry cleaner?
4. Ever accidentally delete a file that you really needed? You can try a program called Pandora Recovery to recover lost or deleted files or Recuva, a useful file recovery app. But that’s not all! Ever heard of Recover My Files?
5. Speaking of file recovery, ever accidentally delete all the pictures off your memory stick!? It happens more often than you would think. In that case, you can use Art PLus Digital Photo Recovery to get back deleted photos.
6. Ever forget your Outlook password? Or your email password for Eudora, Thunderbird, or some other email program? If so, you can use a cool program called Mail PassView to reveal passwords and account details for many email clients. You can also use PSTPassword to recover a lost PST password.
7. What if you need to get the password for your or someone else’s Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger IM client? If you’re looking for a cool instant messenger password recovery tool, check out MessenPass.
8. Since we’re talking about passwords, ever run into the case where you forget a password, but it’s still saved in your application, but it’s hidden? If you even run into that situation, use Asterisk Logger to reveal any password that uses asterisks.
9. Continuing on with passwords, did you know you could password protect EXE files? Yes it’s possible with a program called Empathy! Pretty neat eh?
10. What about password protected Excel files? I’ve definitely run into those and you can use a program called Excel Password Remover to get rid of any password-protected Excel workbook or sheet.
11. With all this password talk, ever thought about using a free password manager? Ever heard of Secure Data Organizer? What about Billeo Password Manager? Or Password Safe? Or KeePass?
12. Enough about passwords, let’s talk media players! We’ve all heard of VLC media player and Windows Media Player, but what about KM Player and GOM player, both are great media players for Windows. What about ALSong?
13. Those media players will take care of just about every codec out there, but if not, you can always use a program called CodecInstaller to help you determine which audio and video codecs are needed to play a video.
14. If you take a lot of home videos, you probably need to edit and stitch them together right? Don’t worry about Adobe Premiere, you can use other free programs like Windows Live Movie Maker, a product from Microsoft. If not that, you can also check out VideoSpin and BrushVideo, two great video editing programs for Windows.
15. Speaking of videos, there are many times when you need to convert from one format to another. You can use Pazera Free Video to convert videos to FLV or SWF format. Or you can convert DVDs to iPod format using Movie2X DVD Ripper or HandBrake.
16. But that’s not all! You can convert movies to MP4 format using ImTOO DVD Ripper or convert Powerpoint presentations to DVD video, flash, or PDF using free tools like authorPoint and CutePDF Writer.
17. Work with PDF files a lot? Ever heard of NovaPDF Pro? It’s a free program for creating encrypted PDF files. Or what about PDF-XChange Viewer? It has a bunch of features and is actually better than Foxit!
18. If you want to create PDFs fast, there are a bunch of programs like CutePDF, PrimoPDF, Bullzip, doPDF, and lots more! Check out this post on seven free PDF writers that you might be interested in. One more is PDFCreator.
19. Switching topics, I’m sure you back up your computer regularly right? If not, you should check out Easeus Todo Backup, a free program that lets you backup and clone your hard drives. Another program is Hinx Backup Easy. Ever heard of AceBackup?
20. If you just want to backup your data and not image your entire hard drive, you can use Karen’s Replicator to backup files and folders to network drives or external drives on a schedule.
21. Whether you know it or not, you probably have a bunch of duplicate files on your computer! It just happens. You can use Duplicate Cleaner to find and remove those duplicate files. You can also use other programs like Easy Duplicate Finder and Duplicate File Finder!
22. If you want to save more hard drive space, you should look into a program that will analyze hard disk space usage, like TreeSize or Space Sniffer. Other programs include FosiX Lite and WinDirStat.
23. Tweaking Windows can get you a decent performance boost if you know what you’re doing. Some programs that make it easy are TweakUI, MZ Vista Force, and Tune-Up Utilities. You can also check out a program called Handy Tweakers.
24. Been looking for a good free photo editor lately? Check out Photoscape, Irfanview, Paint.NET, or Phantasmagoria! If you prefer an online photo editor, checkout PicResize and Picnik.
25. Speaking of photos, you can create some cool photo albums using free software. Check out Jalbum and Vicman, both free tools to create web photo albums. Other programs include Photo! 3D Album and Thumb Studio.
26. If you’ve got a ton of pictures and videos like me, you might want to store your data online. MediaFire is a free online file storage service and so is Drop.io, Windows Live SkyDrive and Dropbox. You can even use Gmail for file storage!
27. Ever had to send a large file to someone, but your email client wouldn’t allow more than 10 to 20 MBs? You can share large files with friends and family using a program called Gbridge. Other programs include Docstoc OneClick, HTTP File Server and Fileai.
28. One really awesome notes application is Evernote. It’s free (there is a paid version too) and syncs with your mobile phone and the web. Never forget anything again.
29. If you have an FTP server or a website, you will probably need a good FTP client program like WinSCP, which supports secure FTP also. Another good program is FileZilla.
30. If you’re paranoid about your data, you might want to encrypt your computer hard drive with a program like AxCrypt or TrueCrypt.
31. If you want to be even more careful, you can actually create secured and locked text files using a program called LockNote.
32. If you want to hide specific folders in Windows, you can use a program called Free Hide Folder, which makes it completely invisible.
33. And if you want to hide just a few files, did you know you can hide files inside pictures using a free zipping program?
34. If you constantly use the same programs over and over, it might be a good idea to download a quick program launcher. You’ve all heard of Launchy, but what about RocketDock, FreeLaunchBar, JetStart, and Executor?
35. One of my favorite file and application launchers, however, is Find and Run Robot, aka FARR. Weird name, but awesome launcher.
36. Ever wanted to automate a certain task in Windows? Maybe you want to have your computer turn off every day at 10pm? Or certain keystrokes you want to record and repeat over and over again? Whatever the case, AutoHotKey is an awesome program for automating many tasks in Windows.
37. I personally don’t mind the Start Menu in Windows, but Vista Start Menu is a program that adds a crapload of features to your Start Menu like the ability to use tabs, resize the menu, and much more.
38. Ever needed to sync one folder with another folder on the same computer? If you need to keep two folders in sync, check out SyncToy.
39. If you need to sync data between two different computers, then you might want to check out a free program called Allway Sync.
40. While on the topic of syncing, sometimes it’s really useful to sync your bookmarks between computers also. You can check out a program called Zinkmo to sync bookmarks between different browsers and across multiple machines.
41. If you have a lot of bookmarks, you might be able to manage them much better by using Tidy Favorites. It’s one of the best bookmark managers out there and it syncs, backups, and helps you search through bookmarks!
42. If you have a lot of music, you might want to consider a music management program like Media Jukebox. Another good program is aTunes.
43. If you’re worried your computer might crash and you’ll lose all your music, you can back it up to an online MP3 file storage service like MP3Tunes. What’s cool about this rather than just backing up music files onto a USB hard drive is that you can access your media files from anywhere via streaming.
44. If you’ve recently bought a new computer, you can use a program called PC Decrapifier to get rid of all those useless programs that can come bundled with the PC and slow everything down.
45. After you have a computer for a while, there are always going to be programs that you don’t use anymore and that can be uninstalled. Revo Uninstaller will get rid of any program whether it likes it or not.
46. Even if you use Google for searching the Internet, there are many times when a site listed in the top 10 results is spammy or contains malware. However, I always like using extra tool such as WOT (Web of Trust) or McAfee SiteAdvisior to protect myself when browsing the Internet.
47. If you have sensitive data on your computer that you want to permanently delete from your hard drive, I would suggest using a program called Eraser.
48. Now if you’ve deleted something and need to get it back, then you need to check out a program like Undelete Plus, which helps you recover accidentally deleted files. (in addition to #4)
49. What’s one thing in Windows that everyone does all the time? Open and save files. FlashFolder is a really cool app that adds a small toolbar to your Open and Save dialogs so that you can quickly access favorite destinations on your hard drive.
50. The other most used feature in Windows is probably Windows Explorer. Direct Folders is a another program that enhances Windows Explorer by adding quick links to favorite folders and also a list of recently open folders.
51. If you’re looking for a straight-up Windows Explorer replacement, check out Q-Dir, which adds some useful features to the basic built-in Windows Explorer.
52. Vista Breadcrumbs is a cool app that gives you the Windows Vista style breadcrumbs look in Windows XP.
53. Do you have a lot of programs that load when Windows starts? Does it take several minutes for your computer to become useable? If so, check out Startup Delayer, a program  that delays the startup of programs so that your computer loads faster.
54. In #27, we talked about how to share files by creating your own file server, but you can also use a cool program called Gbridge to share files between two computers easily.
55. In #39, I mentioned using Allway Sync to keep files on two computer in sync, but you can also use a program called FolderShare from Microsoft.
56. You’ve all probably heard of CrossLoop for remotely sharing your desktop, but you can also use Mikogo or Remobo.
57. Everyone knows that FastStone can be used to capture screenshots of your desktop, but you can also check out Screenshot Captor, Screen Hunter, PicPick, and uTipu.
58. If you think you might have bad memory installed in your computer, you can check for bad memory using memtest86.
59. Ever wish you could rearrange the list of open programs on your taskbar? Using Taskbar Shuffle you can drap and drop buttons on the taskbar to any position.
60. Speaking of the taskbar, you can use a program called TrayIt to minimize any application to the system tray instead of the taskbar, thereby freeing up space.
61. And if you want to spruce up your Windows XP taskbar, you can install Visual Task Tips, which gives you the thumbnail previews for running programs in the taskbar like in Vista.
62. If you’re like me, you probably have an IM account on GTalk, Yahoo, AOL and ICQ. If so, you can use Digsby to chat with all your buddies from all networks in one window!
63. One of the worst things that can happen to your computer is for it to become infected with Spyware. HijackThis is an awesome program that you can use to find and remove spyware, especially really nasty spyware.
64. Everyone has heard of Spybot for removing spyware, but another really good program is SUPERAntiSpyware.
65. In #14, I talked about free video editing programs, but you may also need to use a program like VirtualDub to convert a video to another format or to resize it, etc.
66. If you are one of those people that love to arrange icons all over their desktop in pretty patterns, you may want to use Icon Restore to save your desktop layout.
67. If you ever need a free CD/DVD burner program, check out CDBurnerXP. It also has a portable version you can run off your USB stick.
68. If you ever need to burn an ISO image to a CD or DVD, then you should use a free program like ImgBurn.
69. Burning ISO images is cool, but what if you want to create your own ISO image too? You can use Folder2ISO or LC ISO Creator to create an ISO image from a folder in Windows or from a CD or DVD.
70. Ever run into the problem where you are trying to delete a file in Windows and it says that the file is in use and cannot be deleted? You can use Unlocker to delete any file that is locked by a process.
71. Though you might not have to do this often, there are times when you need to change the file extension of many files at once. You can use Extension Renamer to batch change file extensions easily.
72. Speaking of batching, you can also use a program called ReNamer to batch rename thousands of files at once. Useful for digital photos that all start with the same nonsense text like DSC00203, etc.
73. But let’s not stop there. What if you have thousands of images and you want to perform some kind of change on all of them like resizing or adding a watermark or rotating? Use can use MODI to batch modify images. Cool!
74. In #19 and #20, I talked about software to backup your computer, but forgot to mention DriveImage XML, an awesome program you can use to create an image of your hard drive.
75. Windows Live Writer is a free program from Microsoft that you can use to write blog posts in a Word type of editor. It also has plugins that enhance the functionality.
76. Ever head of Blender? It’s a pretty amazing program and it’s free. It lets you create 3D worlds, 3D animations and 3D games. Check it out.
77. Format Factory is one my favorite programs out there because it’s a universal transcoder that can convert between many videos, audio and graphic formats.
78. Looking for a really good partition manager? Check out Gparted, probably the best not-heard-of partition manager out there.
79. With Windows, you normally have to keep your drivers up to date otherwise the OS can crash or blue screen. Use RadarSync to automatically find the most recent drivers for your system.
80. If you need to reformat your computer, you can use a program called DriverMax to automatically backup all your drivers and then restore them after the install.
81. Looking for a file on your computer? Default Windows search sucks? Well, why don’t you try out Index your Files or Everything, two really awesome Windows file search tools.
82. Wish your clipboard could store more than one item at a time? Well you should check out ClipX and Ditto clipboard extension, two cool clipboard manager programs.
83. Most people who work in offices uses Microsoft Outlook for their main email. If you do, you have to check out Xobni, an awesome program for organizing and searching your Outlook email.
84. Speaking of Outlook, ever heard of AttachmentOptions? It’s sweet. It basically lets you configure the list of “blocked” or “unsafe” attachments so that you can receive EXE files, .reg files, or whatever you want.
85. If you like to listen to Internet radio stations, you can use a program called FreeCorder to record music that you play off the web.
86. Since we’re talking about only Windows freeware programs, you might be interested in Disk2VHD, a program from Sysinternals that will let you convert your current PC into a virtual machine that you can then load into Microsoft Virtual PC.
87. If you do a lot of buying online, such as through Amazon, eBay, etc, or checking of your bank accounts, etc, you might want to check out KeyScrambler, a cool program that protects against keyloggers.
88. Ever had to split a large file into a couple of pieces? If so, check out GSplit, a nitfy utility for splitting and re-joining files.
89. Been in a situation where you needed to compare two files and see the differences? WinMerge is a cool program that will let you compare and merge two files.
90. As for merging, ever had to merge several Powerpoint presentations together? Well you can use PowerPoint Joiner for that.
91. Or what about merging multiple PDF files together? If so, check out pdftk, a toolkit that lets you merge, split, and repair PDF files.
92. Wish you could listen to your home music collection while at the office or away from home? Check out Sockso, a personal home streaming music server.
93. Most browsers will download stuff to a default download folder, after which you have to manually move the files to where you want them. Download Mover is a really nice app that will monitor a folder for new files and automatically move them based on the rules you create.
94. Have you ever wondered if there was a way to password protect EXE files? Let’s say you didn’t want your kids to ever open Yahoo Messenger without typing in a password. You can password protect programs using Empathy.
95. Ever needed to figure out the RGB value or hexadecimal value of a color that is on your computer screen? ColorPic is a nice utility that lets you determine the hexadecimal RGB color for anything on your screen.
96. If you have a lot of MP3 files, you probably need to edit the tags and metadata so that everything shows up properly in iTunes or Winamp. You can use MP3tag or Picard to edit MP3 tags.
97. If you have just one monitor for your computer, you can use a virtual desktop manager like Dexpot to have several desktops on one computer. Another good one is 360 Desktop.
98. Have you ever had to copy a folder in Windows that had a bunch of sub-folders and files? You can use Unstoppable Copier to copy folders without any annoying Windows pop up messages.
99. Ever want ted create your own photo mosaic like they do in TV commericals? AndreaMosaic is cool program that will use your current photo collection to create a great looking photo mosaic.
Whew! That was probably way more than a hundred freeware programs, but hope you enjoyed it! I’m sure there are lots of great programs I missed, so if you have a favorite freeware app, add it to the list via the comments!


Enjoy!!!

99 ways to make your computer blazingly fast

Over the last several years working in IT for various companies as a Systems Administrator, Network Administrator, and Help Desk professional, I’ve written and learned about many ways to increase the performance of not only my PC, but also of the many PCs on my networks ranging from Windows 98 to Windows Vista.

In this article, I hope to compile a complete list of all the different methods and tricks that I’ve used to get the last bit of juice out of a slow PC. Whether you are using an old PC or the latest and greatest in hardware, you can still use some of these to make your PC run faster.

Note that since I write two blogs, Help Desk Geek and Online Tech Tips, I have previously written about many performance tips already which I will link back to throughout. If I have not written about it, I’ve throw in a link to a relevant article from some of my other favorite sites. This list is in no particular order, just written in the order that I could think of them.
There are probably a lot of great tweaks and performance hacks that I’ve missed here, so feel free to chime in with comments! Enjoy!
1. Defragment your computer hard disk using free tools like SmartDefrag.
2. You should also defragment your Windows pagefile and registry.
3. Clean up hard drive disk space being taken up by temporary files, the recycle bin, hibernation and more. You can also use a tool like TreeSize to determine what is taking up space on your hard drive.
4. Load up Windows faster by using Startup Delayer, a free program that will speed up the boot time of Windows by delaying the startup of programs.
5. Speaking of startup programs, many of them are useless and can be turned off. Use the MSCONFIG utility to disable startup programs.
6. By default, the size of the paging file is controlled by Windows, which can cause defragmentation. Also, the paging file should be on a different hard drive or partition than the boot partition. Read here on the rules for best paging file performance.
7. In Windows XP and Vista, the Windows Search indexing service is turned on for all local hard drives. Turning off indexing is a simple way to increase performance.
8. If you don’t care about all the fancy visual effects in Windows, you can turn them off by going to Performance Options.
9. You can optimize the Windows boot time using a free program called Bootvis from Microsoft.
10. Clean your registry by removing broken shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths, invalid installer references and more. Read about the 10 best and free registry cleaners.
11. One of the main reasons why PC’s are slow is because of spyware. There are many programs to remove spyware including Ad-Aware, Giant Antispyware, SUPERAntiSpyware, and more.
12. If you have a deeper spyware infection that is very hard to remove, you can use HijackThis to remove spyware.
13. Remove unwanted pre-installed software (aka junk software) from your new PC using PC Decrapifier.
14. Disable unnecessary Windows services, settings, and programs that slow down your computer.
15. Tweak Windows XP and tweak Windows Vista settings using free programs
16. Disable UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista
17. Tweak your mouse settings so that you can copy and paste faster, scroll faster, navigate quickly while browsing and more. Read here to learn how to tweak your mouse.
18. Delete temporary and unused files on your computer using a free program like CCleaner. It can also fix issues with your registry.
19. Delete your Internet browsing history, temporary Internet files, cookies to free up disk space.
20. Clean out the Windows prefetch folder to improve performance.
21. Disable the XP boot logo to speed up Windows boot time.
22. Reduce the number of fonts that your computer has to load up on startup.
23. Force Windows to unload DLLs from memory to free up RAM.
24. Run DOS programs in separate memory spaces for better performance.
25. Turn off system restore only if you regularly backup your Windows machine using third party software.
26. Move or change the location of your My Documents folder so that it is on a separate partition or hard drive.
27. Turn off default disk performance monitors on Windows XP to increase performance.
28. Speed up boot time by disabling unused ports on your Windows machine.
29. Use Process Lasso to speed up your computer by allowing it to make sure that no one process can completely overtake the CPU.
30. Make icons appear faster while browsing in My Computer by disabling search for network files and printers.
31. Speed up browsing of pictures and videos in Windows Vista by disabling the Vista thumbnails cache.
32. Edit the right-click context menu in Windows XP and Vista and remove unnecessary items to increase display speed.
33. Use the Windows Performance Toolkit and the trace logs to speed up Windows boot time.
34. Speed up your Internet browsing by using an external DNS server such as OpenDNS.
35. Improve Vista performance by using ReadyBoost, a new feature whereby Vista can use the free space on your USB drive as a caching mechanism.
36. If you have a slow Internet connection, you can browse web pages faster using a service called Finch, which converts it into simple text.
37. Use Vista Services Optimizer to disable unnecessary services in Vista safely.
38. Also, check out my list of web accelerators, which are programs that try to prefetch and cache the sites you are going to visit.
39. Speed up Mozilla Firefox by tweaking the configuration settings and by installing an add-on called FasterFox.
40. Learn how to build your own computer with the fastest parts and best hardware.
41. Use a program called TeraCopy to speed up file copying in Windows XP and Vista.
42. Disable automatic Last Access Timestamp to speed up Windows XP.
43. Speed up the Start Menu in Vista by hacking the MenuShowDelay key in the registry.
44. Increase the FileSystem memory cache in Vista to utilize a system with a large amount of RAM.
45. Install more RAM if you are running XP with less than 512 MB or Vista with less than 1 GB of RAM.
46. Shut down XP faster by reducing the wait time to kill hung applications.
47. Make sure that you have selected “Adjust for best performance” on the Performance tab in System Properties.
48. If you are reinstalling Windows, make sure that you partition your hard drives correctly to maximize performance.
49. Use Altiris software virtualization to install all of your programs into a virtual layer that does not affect the registry or system files.
50. Create and install virtual machines for free and install junk program, games, etc into the virtual machines instead of the host operating system. Check out Sun openxVM.
51. Do not clear your paging file during shutdown unless it is needed for security purposes. Clearing the paging file slows down shutdown.
52. If your XP or Vista computer is not using NFTS, make sure you convert your FAT disk to the NTFS file system.
53. Update all of your drivers in Windows, including chipset and motherboard drivers to their latest versions.
54. Every once in a while run the built-in Windows Disk Cleanup utility.
55. Enable DMA mode in Windows XP for IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers in Device Manager.
56. Remove unnecessary or old programs from the Add/Remove dialog of the Control Panel.
57. Use a program click memtest86 or Prime95 to check for bad memory on your PC.
58. Determine your BIOS version and check the manufactures website to see if you need to update your BIOS.
59. Every once in a while, clean your mouse, keyboard and computer fans of dust and other buildup.
60. Replace a slow hard drive with a faster 7200 RPM drive, SATA drive, or SAS drive.
61. Changing from Master/Slave to Cable Select on your hard drive configuration can significantly decrease your boot time.
62. Perform a virus scan on your computer regularly. If you don’t want to install virus protection, use some of the free online virus scanners.
63. Remove extra toolbars from your Windows taskbar and from your Internet browser.
64. Disable the Windows Vista Sidebar if you’re not really using it for anything important. All those gadgets take up memory and processing power.
65. If you have a SATA drive and you’re running Windows Vista, you can speed up your PC by enabling the advanced write caching features.
66. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for Windows, Microsoft Word, Outlook, or create your own keyboard shortcuts.
67. Turn off the Aero visual effects in Windows Vista to increase computer performance.
68. If you are technically savvy and don’t mind taking a few risks, you can try to overclock your processor.
69. Speed up the Send To menu in Explorer by typing “sendto” in the Run dialog box and deleting unnecessary items.
70. Make sure to download all the latest Windows Updates, Service Packs, and hot fixes as they “normally” help your computer work better.
71. Make sure that there are no bad sectors or other errors on your hard drive by using the ScanDisk orchkdsk utility.
72. If you are not using some of the hardware on your computer, i.e. floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, USB ports, IR ports, Firewire, etc, then go into your BIOS and disable them so that they do not use any power and do not have to be loaded during boot up.
73. If you have never used the Recent Documents feature in Windows, then disable it completely as a long list can affect PC performance.
74. One basic tweak that can help in performance is to disable error reporting in Windows XP
75.  If you don’t care about a pretty interface, you should use the Windows Classic theme under Display Properties.
76. Disable short filenames if you are using NTFS by running the following command: fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1. It will speed up the file creation process.
77. If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can slow down Explorer. It’s best to create multiple folders and spread out the files between the folders.
78. If you have files that are generally large, you might want to consider increasing the cluster size on NTFS to 16K or even 32K instead of 4K. This will help speed up opening of files.
79. If you have more than one disk in your PC, you can increase performance by moving your paging file to the second drive and formatting the volume using FAT32 instead of NTFS.
80. Turn off unnecessary features in Vista by going to Control Panel, choosing Uninstall a program, and then clicking on Turn Windows features on and off. You can turn off Remote Differential Compression, Tablet PC components, DFS replication service, Windows Fax & Scan, Windows Meeting Space, and lots more.
81. Install a free or commercial anti-virus program to help protect against viruses, etc. Make sure to use an anti-virus program that does not hog up all of your computer resources.
82. Completely uninstall programs and applications using a program like Revo Uninstaller. It will get rid of remnants left behind by normal uninstalls.
83. If you know what you are doing, you can install several hard drives into your machine and set them up in RAID 0, RAID 5, or other RAID configurations.
84. If you are using USB 1.0 ports, upgrade to 2.0. If you have a Firewire port, try to use that instead of a USB port since Firewire is faster than USB right now.
85. Remove the drivers for all old devices that may be hidden in Device Manager that you no longer use.
86. A more extreme option is to choose a faster operating system. If you find Vista to be slow, go with Windows XP. Switching to Mac or Linux is also an option.
87. One of the easiest ways to speed up your PC is to simply reformat it. Of course, you want to backup your data, but it is the best way to get your computer back to peak performance.
88. Speed up Internet browsing in IE by increasing the number of max connections per server in the registry.
89. If you use uTorrent to download torrents, you can increase the download speeds by tweaking the settings.
90. If you have a desktop background, make sure it’s a small and simple bitmap image rather than a fancy picture off the Internet. The best is to find a really small texture and to tile it.
91. For the Virtual Memory setting in Windows (right-click on My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory), make sure the MIN and MAX are both the same number.
92. If you search on Google a lot or Wikipedia, you can do it much faster on Vista by adding them to the Vista Start Menu Instant Search box.
93. If you have a custom built computer or a PC that was previously used, make sure to check the BIOS for optimal settings such as enabled CPU caches, correctly set IDE/SATA data transfer modes, memory timings, etc. You can also enable Fast/Quick boot if you have that option.
94. If you have a SCSI drive, make sure the write cache is enabled. You can do so by opening the properties of the SCSI drive in Windows.
95. If you have a machine with an older network card, make sure to enable the onboard processor for the network card, which will offload tasks from the CPU.
96. If you are using Windows Vista, you can disable the Welcome Center splash screen that always pops up.
97. If you already have anti-spyware software installed, turn off Windows Defender protection.
98. If you are running a 32-bit version of Windows and have 4GB of RAM or more, you can force Windows to see and use all of the RAM by enabling PAE.
99. Buy a new computer!!! Pretty easy eh?
I’m sure I have missed out on lots of performance tweaks, tips, hacks, etc, so feel free to post comments to add to the list!

Enjoy!!!

USB Thief- Password Hacking software!!!!

Wouldn't it be nice if you just plug in your USB drive on victim computer and all victim's stored passwords are automatically saved in text format in your USB drive without victim knowledge??? Yes, this is what our free password hacking software - USB Thief does. Whenever you connect USB drive to any computer, all the stored passwords, history, license keys and other confidential data is hacked, thanks to this password hacking software. I have provided link for USB Thief software download... just read on.

USB Thief- Password Hacking software:

USB Thief is a type of portable stealer software used to hack all locally stored passwords on victim computer. A password is locally stored if the victim hits "Remember Me" while logging in to his account. USB Thief steals following information:

- Visited Links List
- Internet Explorer Cache List
- Internet Explorer Passwords List
- Instant Messengers Accounts List
- Installed Windows Updates List
- Mozilla Cache List
- Cookies List
- Mozilla History List
- Instant Messengers Accounts List
- Search Queries List
- Adapters Report
- Network Passwords List
- TCP/UDP Ports List
- Product Key List
- Protected Storage Passwords List
- PST Passwords List
- Startup Programs List
- Video Cache List

How to use USB Thief as password hacking software:

1. Free Download USB Thief to hack victim passwords.
Password: techotoys.blogspot.com

2. Unzip the file. Connect USB drive to your computer. Format it.

3. In downloaded file, go to: "USB Thief Modified" folder -> "Copy" folder and copy all the files in "Copy" folder. Paste all the files in USB drive.

Note: Don't copy the folder, copy files in the folder (I hope you've got the point).

4. Now, in USB drive, hit on "hideh.bat" file which makes all the files in USB drive hidden. Delete "hideh.bat" file.

5. Move on to victim computer and plug in the USB. Open the USB drive on victim computer and wait for 8-10 seconds. Safely remove the USB from victim computer. All the victim passwords are thus, now captured in our USB drive.

6. Now, to see these passwords, copy "showh.bat" file from the downloaded files. Paste this file in your USB drive and run it in USB. Now refresh. You will be able to see all the hidden files.

7. Open "IMNeoWorld" folder which will contain all hacked passwords and license keys.

Note: I have tried this USB Thief, but sometimes, it does not appear to steal any passwords. This USB Thief is stealing all other data.

Try out this USB Thief to hack victim stored passwords. This password hacking software is really useful if you have physical access to victim computer. If you have any problem in using this USB Thief as password hacking software, please mention it in comments.

Enjoy USB Thief as password hacking software...
Source:    :http://techotoys.blogspot.com

Online Malware Scanner!!!!!!

JottiQ is a free tool that makes it more convenient to use Jotti’s online malware scanner. It acts as a go-between and relays the suspect files to Jotti’s website.

Most of us visit Jotti or VirusTotal, when we want to check up a suspect file with multiple antivirus scanners.

Rather than visit the website and upload the suspect file, JottiQ lets you do it easily with a simple drag-and-drop effort.

Once the queued file is processed, you can also see the results in the app itself.

JottiQ is an investigative tool and not meant to replace your virus scanner.

The latest version as of date is v 1.0.2 and you can download it from its download page. The .exe file is an installer whereas the .7z file is the portable version.

List of Online Malware Scanners using Multiple AntiVirus Engines may also interest you!

Source: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/download-jottiq-a-file-scanner-with-multiple-antivirus-engines#ixzz1BLUIcj00

Enjoy!!!

25+ Best Free Tools To Customize Windows 7

Back in November last year, we listed over 55 free tweaking tools available for Windows 7. Just like tweaking tools, there are tens of good utilities available to customize the default look and feel of Windows 7. In this article, we have covered the best free tools available to customize Windows 7.

1. Windows 7 Boot Updater: One of the advanced tools available for the latest version of Windows which makes the impossible possible. Read our how to change Windows 7 boot screen guide to learn to how to change the default boot screen animation in Windows 7.

Please note that this utility is strictly for power users. We also recommend a complete system image backup before using this tool.

2. Logon Workshop: There are tens of free tools available to change the default logon background. You can even manually change the logon screen background with a simple registry trick.  But this tool offers some advanced options to customize logon buttons, font color, and more.

Beginners can go for Windows 7 Logon Screen Tweaker which is also another good logon screen changer.

3. Windows 7 Start Button Changer: Use this tool to create and change the default Start orb of Windows 7 in a few clicks.

4. Taskbar Transizer: Want to make your Windows 7 Taskbar and Start menu transparent? Taskbar Transizer allows you set a custom transparency level for Taskbar and Start menu.

5. DreamScene Activator: As you know, DreamScene feature is not available in Windows 7. Use this tiny tool to enable the same in the latest version of Windows.

6. Logon Screen Rotator: Unlike other logon screen tweaking tools, this tool changes the logon screen background every time you login.

7. VistaGlazz: A tool that enables you install third-party visual styles in Windows 7.

8. CustoPack Tools: An awesome application to customize icons, cursors, sounds, folder icons, logon backgrounds, and visual styles in Windows 7.

9. WMP12 Library Background Changer: Changes the default library background of Windows Media Player in Windows 7.

10. Media Center Studio: Customize Windows Media Center by applying new themes. It also lets you create your own Media Center themes.

11. Taskbar Color Changer: Another tool to customize the superbar.  Lets you set a custom color for Taskbar.

12. Copy/Delete Animation Modder: An excellent tool to change the default copy, move, and delete animations in the latest version of Windows.

13. Drive Icon Changer: Use this tool to replace the default drive icons in explorer with custom ones.

14. Folderico: Though you can change the default folder icon without the help of third-party tool, it’s difficult to change the color. Folderico helps you change the color of a folder right from context menu.

15. Task Manager Modder: Got bored with the default look of Task Manager? Take the help of this tool to easily change its color.

16. Windows 7 Aero Blur Tweaker: As the name reveals, it enables you change the aero blur settings. Read our review about Aero Blur Tweaker to read more about this tool.

17. Windows 7 Task Pane Changer: Want to change the taskpane background that appear in Control Panel and in some other parts of Windows? Download and use this tool to quickly change the default taskpane background with a custom one.

18. Navigation Button Colorizer: Change the color of explorer navigation buttons with the help of this free tool. It’s portable and easy-to-use.

19. 7Conifier: This is another tool to customize your Windows 7 Taskbar. It quickly replaces the application icons in Taskbar and Start menu.

20. Navigation Buttons Customizer: Another free tool to customize explorer navigation buttons. Unlike Navigation Button Colorizer, this tool helps you replace the navigation buttons with new ones.

21. Windows 7 Start Menu User Picture Remover: Don’t want to see the user picture in Start menu? Use this utility to remove the user picture from the Start menu.

22. Windows 7 Folder Background Changer: Like in XP and Vista, you can set a custom background for a folder in Windows 7 as well. Use this tool to replace the default white background in a folder with a custom picture.

23. Theme Manager: If you want to install a third-party theme in Windows 7, you will need to manually replace a few system files as well. Theme Manager helps you install new visual styles by automatically replacing the default system files with customized ones.

24. Taskbar Thumbnail Tweaker: The thumbnail preview that appears when you hover the mouse cursor over an opened application in Taskbar can be customized using this tool.

25. Windows 7 Tray Icons Changer: A simple tool to replace the default network, firewall and volume icons in notification area (system tray) with custom ones.

26. AeroTuner: Lets you change Aero color, aero stripes, and blur with a few mouse clicks.

27. 7 Library Icons Changer: Replace the default library icons with the help of this free tool.

 

Source:    :http://www.intowindows.com

Enjoy!!!