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I thought I'd install CS:S on my laptop the other day and to my surprise, I experienced some major lag spikes every 60 seconds. Turns out Windows Vista searchers every 60 seconds looking for a better wireless network connection  to connect to. This is quite useless for home use where usually you stay connected to one broadcast for hours. Luckly, some smart Dutch company has come up with a solution. Vista-Anti-Lag. Does exactly what it says, and no configuration required. You just load the program before you go to play your game or whatever activity and your good to go. 

You can download it from Codecase.de. Don't worry, the software is in English. May you never lag again .

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Windows only: Jump Lists are one of the best new features in Windows 7, and since Firefox still doesn't take advantage of them, a small utility called Winfox adds the feature for you.

Using the utility is simple enough—just pin Winfox to your taskbar and you'll have a new Firefox icon with an enhanced context menu—you can open new tabs, view your most frequently visited pages, pin items by simply dragging and dropping, and the items even display the favicon of the page. It's one of those features that most likely will be included into future versions of Firefox, but for now it might be just what you're looking for.

[via LifeHacker.com]

 Sweet, Windows 7 looks promising. Shortcuts make life so much easier.

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If you access or search Wikipedia frequently and if you want to add an option to Search Wikipedia to your Windows Vista Start Menu Instant Search Box, here is what you need to do.

First, click on the Start button and type in the search box GPEDIT.MSC and press Enter. This will open the Local Group Policy Editor. Now you need to navigate to the following policy setting:

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Instant Search > Custom Instant Search Internet Search Provider

Double click on the policy setting in the right side pane and set it to Enabled. Now you need to simple type the settings in the two boxes provided. For “The string or DLL resource from which to load…” option, type in “Search Wikipedia” and for “The URL to use..” type in the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%w

So it should look something like this for your group policy setting:

Pretty simple yeah? Now you would just click OK and restart your computer and you should see the option to search Wikipedia in your Instant Search box.

You can also add other search providers to the Instant Search menu, such as Google or Yahoo. For Google, use the following URL:

For Yahoo search, use the following URL instead:

The only issue you might have is if you’re running Windows Vista Home Basic or Home Premium as they do not have the option to edit the group policy settings in Vista. I believe you have to be using Vista Business or higher.

[Via WinVistaClub]

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The giant software team Microsoft has revealed that it is going to release a free antivirus software for Windows XP SP3, Vista and Seven. They plan on releasing it on July 1st, 2009. This will be a huge blow to all the 3rd party antivirus creators such as Kaspersky, Bit defender, Symantec, McAfee and other antivirus software aimed at the home user.

It is said because the antivirus software created by Micorosft, codenamed Morro, will be light on the computer’s resources as it integrates into the Windows system. For casual the internet user, and for probably for the majority of the home user base, this will be a huge benefit for them as it will be a saving for them.

Granted that it does a good job of keeping the nasties out. If it is sucessful, the other 3rd party antivirus software makers will have to do to something extraudenary or, get into the business level of computer protection. We shall hear much more about morro closer to its release date for sure.

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If you’ve got hundreds of applications (or in other words a lot ) and have trouble finding them, there is a solution. Launchy is a free windows and linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. You must be thinking that this utility looks like a beast to be able to do all that? Well here is a picture for you.

Small and Simple

Had you fooled there didn’t I . Launchy index’s all your files in the background so that when you go to type the thing your looking for, bam it’s there. To bring Launchy up all you need to press is Alt+Spacebar, then type the program, document or whatever in and Launchy will open it. After the file has been executed,  Launchy itself will become hidden again. Neat huh?

Launchy  can also open websites for you in your default broswer. Just punch in the URL and it will go there for you.  You can search Google or Youtube by typing in either Google +tab key or Youtube +tab key and then enter your keyword. If you work it out, Launchy cuts down a fair bit of time for you. If you wanted to search Youtube using your web browser manually, you would have to open Firefox, enter Youtube into the URL bar, then enter the keyword your searching for.

Launchy supports the following keyword websites: google, youtube, msn, yahoo, live, weather, amazon, wikipedia,
dictionary, thesaurus, imdb, netflix, and msdn websearch. I believe this feature can be adapted to more websites if you customize it in the options, however I haven’t looked further into it.

There are many more things Launchy can do but I would be here forever writing about them. So, I suggest, or even better, recommend you download this free software. Launchy is the most efficient way to open files, folders, websites, and programs on your computer. You’ll never have to use your start menu again. Download Launchy today!

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I have to say, I've been living in the dark ages since Windows 95 was released. FreeComander is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager. It blows the socks off Windows explorer big time.

It has a similar layout to Firefox, in that is has a tabbing feature so you can have many folders open and be able to access them quite easily. Ever had to scramble around selecting each jpg to be burn't on the CD, hoping that you get them all and don't add an incorrect file? No problem, just press Alt + Num+ which will select all the jpg files in that folder for you.

Or maybe you've been working on a Wordpress theme that is ready to be uploaded to an ftp. FreeComander has a built-in FTP client allowing you to connect and transfer files to your selected FTP server.

The layout is clean, has many hotkeys to shorten even further your time spent copying/renaming/compressing/searching in this single program. If you would like to use FreeCommander to its full potential, i suggest you read the help guide, which can be found here . You'll learn everything Free Commander has to offer. You can grab your free copy at FreeCommander.com .

Now, if you can recommend an even better file managment program, I'd like to hear about it .

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Have you forgotten your Windows Vista account password? If you didn't create a Vista password reset disk, you still have another option. Trinity Rescue Kit is a small Linux distribution (~100MB) that has the capability of clearing your forgotten password. I've used it and it works perfectly.  Here's how to clear your password:

Trinity Rescue Kit Method

1. Download Trinity Rescue Kit, and burn it to a CD/DVD. http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?pid=1&wpid=5&p_node=1&edit_pid=5&front_id=12 .
2. Boot from the Disc
3. Boot TRK normally. You will then reach a command line.
4. Type 'winpass -u Administrator' or instead of Administrator, your user account name at the command prompt.
5. You will then see Searching and mounting all file system on local machine
6. Windows NT/2K/XP installation(s) found in: /sda1/Windows Make your choice or ‘q’ to quit [1]:
7. Press '1' to clear password.
8. Restart, or if you want, type 'init 0' then power on again, without the disc, and boot into Windows.

Your user account will now have no password on it and you'll be able to log into windows. Thanks to wikihow.com for providing information about the Trinity Rescue Kit. 

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If you have been given or purchased a second hand PC that has Windows Vista on it pre-installed, you may wish to change the registered owner name and/or Organization. It is quite simple to change:

1. Start Regedit.
2. Make your way in the registry to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE> SOFTWARE> MICROSOFT> WINDOWS NT> CURRENTVERSION'.
3. Change the Registered Owner and Registered Organization entries accordingly.   

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