When you’re uninstalling software these days, a lot of it is a bit like when Antivirus and security software is being removed from a machine; there always seems to be at least a few leftover registry entries and/or files that have remained on the system that the programs own uninstaller fails to remove. This is why third party utilities like Revo Uninstaller, IObit Uninstaller, Advanced Uninstaller Pro and even the newer kid on the block, Geek Uninstaller have become highly useful tools these days to help get rid of all the extra junk that gets left behind.

Software developer LeizerSoft seems to have gone in another direction to the uninstall tools I have mentioned above. While they focus more on being thorough and removing leftover data, Menu Uninstaller has gone for making removal of software as quick and easy as possible. This is achieved in a large part by using an Uninstall option on the standard context menu, allowing you to simply right click on a program’s shortcut icon on the desktop or in the Start Menu, and selecting it for removal. Definitely one of the fastest and most hassle free ways you could uninstall a program.
(more…)

There are many keystroke logging software that you can find on the Internet. Most if not all is able to record the keys that you typed on your keyboard and save it to a log file for reference. The difference between the keyloggers are the features that comes with it, the ability to hide its presence from antiviruses and anti-keyloggers and most importantly the method that is used to capture the keystrokes.

Most of the normal keyloggers simply captures the keystrokes using hooking mechanism where it hooks the function that comes with Windows and is commonly being used because it is easier to implement. A more advanced method would be using a low-level or kernel driver where it can receive the keystrokes directly from the keyboard without going through Windows first, hence bypassing protection by most anti-keylogger software.

There are very few driver based keyloggers in the market because it is very hard to implement and the lack of support for 64-bit Windows operating system due to the restriction of only allowing installation of the driver if it is digitally signed. Getting a keylogger driver signed is definitely not an easy task because a keylogger can be used for both good and bad purposes. Somehow WideStep, the company from Ukraine that develops one of the most advanced keylogger software called Elite Keylogger managed to get their driver genuinely and digitally signed making it the first keystroke logging software to officially support 64-bit Windows operating system.
(more…)

While browsing the internet, there are several factors that affect how long it takes to load a website, or whether it even loads at all. These include the current condition of your ISP and its network and how fast the server is where the website is hosted. Another part of the loading process is translating the website address, or domain name, into the correct format to be read and understood by other networks. This is known as the Domain Name System, or DNS for short.

DNS is a third party service that takes a more humanly readable website name, such as Raymond.cc or Google.com, and translates it into the websites real name which is a set of numbers known as the IP address. The IP address is then used to connect to the website. A DNS server sits in between you and the website you want to visit so it’s important the service works reliably and fast. Otherwise connecting to websites will be slow or you might not connect at all if the service is down or has not updated its records.

Some default DNS servers supplied by ISPs are not that fast or not entirely reliable, so it makes sense to use something better and change your DNS server. A number of DNS services also offer extras features like malicious content blocking, blocking content unsuitable for children and even blocking adverts. Dozens of third party DNS services are available so there’s no shortage of options to try.

It’s not difficult to change the DNS for your internet connection although the option is buried several layers down in the network adapter settings. Windows defaults to automatically using whatever DNS is configured in your router or by your ISP. Instead of digging through network settings it makes sense to use a method that can make it far easier and quicker to try out and change your DNS settings, here are 7 way to do it.
(more…)

Readers of Raymond.cc may have previously heard of a version of Kaspersky Internet Security called Kaspersky Security Suite CBE. This special version is fully functional and free for readers of the German PC magazine ComputerBild, with users simply applying for a new license key when one expires. This is done via the ComputerBild website which activates the software for another 91 days. The big problem is the program comes in the German language only.

Knowledgeable users may have heard of a method which is to actually use a DLL file from the CBE version to activate the full version of Kaspersky Internet Security, but we wondered whether it could be done using only the original installer itself. With that in mind, we looked to see if there is a way to get the English language in the latest CBE 2012 using only the native CBE installer files. Oddly enough, the English files for the program are actually included in the package so it is entirely possible.
(more…)

File and folder management in Windows is pretty much the same now as it always has been. For instance, creating a folder in Windows File Explorer is a rather simple process and you just right click and select New > Folder or press the shortcut combination of Ctrl+Shift+N. While this is an easy thing to do it becomes troublesome and time consuming if you want to create multiple folders at once.

File organization on your drives is important and helps you locate and search for files faster and more efficiently. A big part of that is having an efficient file and folder structure on the system. If you want to create just a few folders it’s not a major problem. However, creating many folders quickly in one go is something Windows Explorer can’t do so another method is needed.

There are different ways to achieve this goal so we provide you with a selection of different methods for batch creating multiple folders on your system.
(more…)

Over the years, Windows File Explorer has had different methods to try and make navigating around a bit easier and more efficient. For instance, Windows XP had the Explorer bar down the left of the window where you could switch between common places or a folder tree display. Windows Vista introduced favorite links and then Windows 7 brought Libraries. Windows 10 has added something new to Explorer navigation in the form of quick access which shows frequently used folders.

While general navigation in Explorer is one thing, quickly going to folders when opening or saving a file is different. XP had the places bar that offered quick access to five common locations, newer Windows versions have the same navigation options as an Explorer window. Libraries or frequent folders in Explorer might be enough for general needs but more advanced users will likely require quick access to a number of different folders for opening, saving or general navigation.

One solution is to use a third party program that allows for a menu to be displayed when you click a mouse button or a hotkey. The menu can then contain all your custom locations for quick folder access. It will save time and endless clicks finding the folders you want each time. Here are five free tools to look at.
(more…)

Wireless internet is everywhere these days and you could have several WiFi capable devices connected to your own wireless network. Because of that it’s important the WiFi router is placed in the best available location to give the longest range and strongest signal to as many devices as possible. If the router is placed in a poor location the signal could be weak, intermittent or cause constant dropouts.

There are many factors that can affect the quality and strength of a WiFi network connection. These include walls, floors, ceilings, electrical appliances, anything emitting radiation or electromagnetism, and of course distance to the router. Windows and most bundled WiFi software allows you to see how good the current wireless signal is. To get a better idea how the signal is behaving and whether it gets affected by other factors it’s a good idea to monitor the signal strength over a period of time.

Watching how your WiFi signal behaves over several minutes or even hours could help identify if the current location for it is ideal or causing problems. Here we list 5 free tools that show a graph for your wireless signal so you can watch it over a period of time to see how it behaves.
(more…)

The Windows notification area, also known as the system tray, shows the system clock and other important icons such as network and audio volume by default. It has evolved since it first appeared and is currently split into two parts, visible icons and hidden icons. The hidden icons are shown when you press the up arrow to the far left. Windows decides which icons go in the hidden area and how many are permanently visible.

It’s quite easy to control yourself what icons stay in the main notification area. Simply right click on the clock and select “Customize notification icons”. Windows 10 users need to also click “Select which icons appear on the taskbar” in Settings. In Windows 7 you have the option to show the icons and notifications permanently, hide them and don’t show any notifications, or only show notification popups when they appear. Windows 10 has the option to put the icons into the visible notification area (on), or in the hidden area (off).

The main issue with the window that lists all the notification area icons is unused or even uninstalled software can leave entries behind and it can get a bit messy. Although those redundant icons won’t appear in either the main or hidden notification areas, it’s recommended to remove them if there a number of unused entries. There is no way to remove anything through the select icons window and it has to be done manually. Here are 6 ways in which you can do it.
(more…)

Almost every piece of hardware attached to your Windows computer will show up in Device Manager as an installed device. This includes Graphics cards, CPUs, USB devices, disk drives, network adapters, and just about anything else. When the device is first connected to the computer, Windows will detect it and either install the device driver automatically or you install it yourself from CD or the internet.

After that, it’s not a problem while the device remains connected but can potentially become a problem if you disconnect it. The driver that was installed when the new hardware was connected does not get uninstalled when the hardware is removed. Over time this can leave driver entries on the system for devices that have long since been removed. Some applications also don’t remove software drivers when you uninstall the software.

Even if the hardware or software is no longer available, Windows still looks for it on boot. This can lengthen boot time and potentially cause future driver conflicts so it makes sense to remove what is no longer required. As Windows hides these devices by default, we show you 8 ways to find and remove old and unused device drivers from your system. Make sure to run programs or Command Prompts as an administrator where possible.
(more…)

As you know, whenever you install a piece of software it will install several files and probably registry entries on the system in order to work. And this is fine while you’re using it. When you choose to uninstall the software, you simply use the programs dedicated shortcut icon or go through Add/Remove or Programs and Features in the Control Panel.

Unfortunately, as is the case with just about all versions of Windows, quite often this doesn’t completely remove all traces of the files, folders and registry entries used by the software and these get left on your system. While this might not be a major problem at the time, it can cause potential issues down the line. This is especially true with system utilities and security software or software which installs a large amount of information and data. It’s possibly expected that sometimes a file or two or a registry key is left behind, but sometimes there are literally hundreds or even thousands that remain which isn’t good news for an efficiently run system.

The majority of users will no doubt know about third party uninstall programs like Revo Uninstaller and IObit Uninstaller, a couple of programs I keep in my USB toolkit. These programs and others like them are especially designed to remove leftover registry information, files and folders after uninstalling a program which the Windows built-in tool doesn’t touch.
(more…)

Every home or work network you connect to can conceivably have different settings for the connection. At home you might use a WiFi connection with default or automatic settings, for work you might have a manually set IP address and gateway or custom DNS servers. Each different network configuration you come across requires the settings in Windows to be adjusted to match. While this isn’t a major problem because Windows allows you to change these types of settings, it isn’t the quickest thing to get at and change regularly.

Manual reconfiguration each time through Windows Network Connections is both time consuming and inefficient. It requires you to remember each individual setting or the network might not connect properly. An easy solution is being able to create different network profiles for different scenarios, so you can save IP address, DNS, default gateway and other settings for each network connection you encounter. When you need to change to a different network, a different profile can easily be applied which changes all the required settings automatically.

Here are 5 free tools for you to create and apply network profiles.
(more…)

A lot of PC users get very annoyed when a piece of software access’s the internet without their knowledge and does things like phoning home without consent. And rightly so too, with so many privacy issues to watch out for these days, the last thing you want is software you perhaps trusted do it as well. That’s why there was quite a controversy in 2012 when the well known virtual drive software Daemon Tools decided to include a service called Mountspace starting in version 4.40.1.

This essentially collects usages statistics on all ISO’s you mount in the software like image hash, image file name, disk label, number of mount occurrences and sends it to Mountspace.com to be logged. There was also rumor that it was sending IP addresses too, but that was strongly denied. Although it has been clarified now, there was a distinct lack of any information about this at the time in either the Daemon Tools or Mountspace privacy policies which in many people’s eyes was unacceptable.

Unsurprisingly, this has turned many users away from Daemon Tools even if they have now made this option more transparent. Add to that, the extras that keep getting added and bloating the software out when perhaps all you want is to mount an ISO and nothing more, and you can see why it isn’t the hugely popular utility it once was.
(more…)

If you are a webmaster it’s quite likely you will need to periodically make changes to your website. It could be a small change such as a editing the CSS, Javascript or PHP code on your site. Or you might want to do something more substantial like completely redesign the website. While it’s possible to perform such tasks on the fly and apply them directly to your website or upload the files via FTP, you could introduce bugs, glitches or even security holes to your visitors.

A sensible solution is cloning your website and making changes to the backup first to see if they work. The easiest way is to create a local website on your own computer. You cannot just copy the website files to your computer and expect them to work, as a local web server such as Apache and a MySQL database will be required. There are many server packages around that can do this such as XAMPP, WAMP Server, Uniform Server, UwAmp and more.

When setting up your local web server, one issue that might stop it from running is something else could be using the system port that Apache requires to function. By default Apache relies on port 80 to be free, and if it isn’t, the server won’t start and the local website won’t load. As several programs cannot share the same port, you need to find what is already using port 80, then decide what to do.

Here we show you how to find out what might be using port 80 on your computer and what to do if you have to change the port from 80 to something else in your Apache server software.
(more…)

Wireless networking, or WiFi, is one of the best and most important technological inventions in recent years. It allows smartphones, tablets, laptops, TVs, media streamers, and even vehicles to access a network connection and the internet without wires. The problem with a mobile network connection is every time you connect to a new network it will likely have different settings than the previous connection.

Things like the wireless SSID, whether it’s an ad-hoc connection, the encryption method, and the password will be different each time you connect to another WiFi network. It can be frustrating for example, visiting a family member, friend, or customer only to find they don’t know the information for their wireless network, or a computer has several wireless network profiles and they need to be transferred to another computer or backed up before a Windows reinstall.

Thankfully it’s entirely possible to backup and restore the information stored in a wireless profile, including the password, encryption type, and network SSID. Windows can store dozens of different profiles so it’s useful to have a backup of them for future use. Here we show you 7 solutions to import and export the wireless profiles on your computer.
(more…)

We all obviously have to be careful with our security and privacy these days, both online and offline. One of the most common forms of security is using a password to protect your data. That can be online passwords for website logins and payments or protecting your private and personal files on the local computer. While your files might not contain anything harmful or malicious, they could contain something which is confidential or private to certain individuals.

Not everybody will need to protect a video file with a password, but there may be times when you only want specific people to be able to access and play it. While you can simply add the video file to a password protected archive, such as a zip file, it still means other people can easily duplicate or edit the video if they want to. A better solution is to protect the video with a password, automatically play it, then remove the video from the system once playback has finished.

Here we show you 3 different ways in which you can password protect a video with automatic playback once the password has been entered.
(more…)