Loosing your internet access or having general network connectivity issues is not much fun, especially these days because most of the things you do on your computer will probably require some form of internet access. If the system has recently been infected by malicious software, this often causes at least some damage to Windows, and one of the most common problems after cleaning is that the network or internet connection doesn’t work properly. There are also other reasons why this could happen such as network related or Firewall / Antivirus software not behaving during removal.

There are many parts of Windows that deal with the internet and what connects to it, so finding out yourself what’s wrong could prove an impossible task. DNS settings, IP address conflicts, DHCP service issues, TCP/IP protocol corruption, and a problem HOSTS file are just some of the things you could be trying to repair. Trying to restore your internet connection by running an internet connection repair when given the chance from within Windows might cure some problems but it’s definitely not a fix all solution..

One of the common causes of a problematic internet connection is the Windows Sockets API (Winsock) has been corrupted in the Windows registry. This service provides a communication layer between software that wants to use the internet and the traffic coming from the internet itself. And if there’s any type of problem with it, software cannot access the internet properly.

Here’s a list of 7 tools that can help repair Winsock and also perform a number of other internet related repairs if the issues aren’t completely related to Winsock.
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If you share your computer sometimes with your kids or let other people use it from time to time, something you probably don’t want them doing is moving around or deleting files and folders they shouldn’t be. Even if you have no problem with others accessing your files, you probably don’t want them making changes to anything. It can be a similar situation if you want other users to be able to access all areas of their own computers they need to, but not to easily have the option to copy, rename or delete any files.

Of course we could encrypt the files if we don’t want them copied off the system because cracking an encrypted file is not as easy as point and click. The easiest way to get around this problem is to actually disable the option for users to be able to manipulate these files without affecting the ability to read them. An obvious solution is to stop the user having access to cut, copy, paste, delete and rename.

Here are 3 tools that allow you to do this and also a couple even have their own self protection measures to stop average users from re-enabling the options without your say so.
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The Windows operating system contains thousands of important system files and if any of them get corrupted, some of the functions in Windows would not work properly or can even lead to system instability. Fortunately, Microsoft has implemented the protection of system files and also a hidden tool called System File Checker (SFC.exe) that can be used to scan for corrupted system files and even restore them.

Whenever you try to make changes to the protected file such as rename, delete or move, a Files Access Denied window will be prompted informing you that “You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from TrustedInstaller to make changes to this file”.

Making changes to protected system files is still possible by taking ownership of the files and then assigning the proper permissions. Other than that, lower level tools like IObit Unlocker are able to easily and instantly rename or delete the protected files without the need to reboot the computer.

If you’d like to know what the files being protected in Windows are, here are 2 tools that can list them so you can prevent the core files from being accidentally or intentionally modified by third party programs.
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Knowing how to check for recently created or modified files in your computer is important because there might be a time when someone used your computer for a moment and you need check if there has been any third party software installed without your permission. Or perhaps you’re probably trying to find the document that you read a month ago but cannot remember the file name or the location where you’ve stored the file.

Not only that, sneaky adware can also get into your computer when you’ve accidentally clicked the wrong button on a download wrapper and you won’t even realize it until you find new shortcut icons on your desktop or you get a random browser popup.

You can easily find those files by simply investigating the files that were recently created or modified. In this article we’ll share with you a couple of ways to check for recently created or modified files on your computer.
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For serious downloaders especially those that are frequent users of services such as Usenet or bittorrent, it’s pretty common that you encounter archives that come in multiple parts. One of the many “scene” rules in the world of online file sharing is that files must be archived in a certain way and each file should be a certain size, such as a 4GB movie coming in loads of different files because that’s how they were originally compressed by the creator.

It’s sometimes the case that uploaders often take the original archive files and compress them again perhaps into larger chunks. Also a lot of websites will encrypt the archive with a password so that people would know where the uploaded files came from. Or it can be an identifier to the source when another site leeches the download link. Of course, most archiving tools such as 7-Zip or WinRAR etc can handle this task, but if you have several files to unpack and some don’t have passwords, some have one password and others have different passwords it can become quite tedious.

Here we have 7 free tools that can auto extract multiple archive files, even if they are all protected by different passwords. You supply all the required passwords to the program and it will do the rest.
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If you’re someone who likes to install and try out software or a computer technician, installing new applications is something you’ll probably do a lot and making sure you have the latest version of the setup installer is important. Having the latest setup files for security software or web browsers etc is good for security and also because the program will likely update itself on install and you’ll essentially install the software twice if an older setup package is being used.

There are tools that can update your software in different ways. Programs like SUMO and FileHippo Update Checker scan installed software and let you download the latest installer, others like CNET’s Tech Tracker can silently update your installed programs. When you’re installing/re-installing Windows or installing new software, what you need is the latest setup installers, and the tools above can’t do that. There are online services such as Ninite that can help but you’re still required to download the setup files just before install.
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The original idea to create an exact copy of a CD-ROM disc and place the data into a file which can be stored on a hard drive or USB flash drive was a great invention. This made it possible to store collections or backups of your important optical media in one location. These files, which can also store a copy of DVD or Blu-ray media, are more commonly known as ISO images. Even Microsoft utilizes ISO image files and the Windows install DVD is these days distributed as an ISO.

ISO image files can easily be created using software such as WinX DVD Ripper, all you need is a ROM drive and an optical disc. Or they can be downloaded from the internet. Once you have the file, there are several things you can do with it. The ISO can be burned to a CD or DVD to create a copy of the original disc. It can also be written to a USB flash drive to install something like Windows or Linux faster. Another option is using a program to make the ISO image behave like a real disc. This allows you to install software, read or play the disc contents like it was physically inserted into your computer.

This is known as virtual drive software because the drive isn’t real and it just emulates a real optical drive. The ISO image is then mounted to the virtual drive to create a virtual disc. Windows 10 has basic ISO mounting built in but here we list 10 free virtual drive emulators that you can use to mount ISO images and other types of disc images so they behave like real discs. All tools were tested in Windows 10 and 7 64-bit.
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Usually when software gets installed onto your computer, it copies the needed files and registry entries onto the system for the program to function properly. And when you want to uninstall the software it should but doesn’t always remove everything that was added in the first place. Most of the time there is useless data left over which should have been removed because the uninstaller maybe is corrupted or even badly programmed. Depending on the program and how good the uninstaller is, this could range from one or two innocuous registry keys right up to hundreds of keys and several Megabytes of leftover files.

One way to find out yourself what is getting added to your system during a software install is to actually check the state of your system before the installation, and then check again afterwards to see what has changed. Here’s a selection of 7 tools that can track what file and registry changes are made during a software install by creating and then comparing before and after snapshots of your system, all were tested on Windows 7.
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Windows Live Messenger is one of the most successful free instant messaging clients by Microsoft and they’ve discontinued it after 15 years to move their users to Skype which was acquired for $2.6 billion. Although Windows Live Messenger is still available to download from the Windows Essentials 2012 installer, attempting to sign in will always prompt you that a newer version is available and must install the newer version in order to continue. Clicking the Yes button will automatically download Skype to be installed on your computer.

While it may seem impossible to use Windows Live Messenger, there are third party methods such as Messenger Reviver that can patch the necessary files in order to allow logging in to Windows Live Messenger 2012. Microsoft has recently shut down the MSNP18 protocol in March that prevented the older Windows Live Messenger 2009 from working. It may make more sense to use Skype today because Microsoft will one day shut down all their Messenger services and the Windows Live Messenger program is no longer being updated.

Installing Skype should automatically remove Windows Live Messenger from your computer. However if you still find traces of Windows Live Messenger or Skype is unable to remove it, here are some ways to forcefully uninstall Windows Live Messenger from your computer.
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Because Windows is a multitasking operating system it has several ways to manage running processes to help make your computer run more smoothly. Besides Affinity which controls how many processor cores a program can run on, there’s also the priority at which a process runs. This gives the program a setting while running that tells it how high up in the queue it’s placed when asking for processing time.

For example, if you’re running a processor intensive task such as video encoding, and it has a higher priority than your web browser, it’ll use most of the CPU time and the browser will get what little is left over. Give the intensive task a lower priority and it will only take the CPU time left over, speeding up the browser. Changing the priority of a process is very easy, just right click on it in Task Manager and set it to the level you want.

While this is less of an issue with today’s multi-core CPUs, it’s still a problem on laptops or older PCs with fewer cores. One higher priority process can slow the system to a crawl by hogging all the CPU. Even system tasks like Windows Update or Windows Defender can do it from time to time. Tools like Process Lasso were developed to try and automatically juggle process priorities but they give mixed results.

The problem with changing the priority of a process in Task manager is as soon as the process is closed, the priority will be reset to its default level next time you run it. Here we have 6 free tools that allow you to save the priority of a process so you don’t have to adjust it manually every time the process is started. All options were tested in Windows 10 and 7.
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It’s not that uncommon these days for households to have more than one Windows computer in them with desktops, laptops, ultrabooks, netbooks, and even Surface devices a possibility. If you fit into that category, then it’s probably also the case that they will all be networked wired or wirelessly to a router so they can connect to the internet, and also together so files can be shared between each other.

The problem with having different machines on the local area network is it’s not that easy to find all available shared files and folders, you would normally have to manually browse the shared folders to find what you’re looking for. Obviously, Windows has a built-in search feature that scans your own computer for files, but it doesn’t automatically scan the network for anything.

There are many dedicated search utilities around that give the opportunity to search local files and optionally a mapped network drive. However, there are free tools around that are specifically designed to scan your local network for shared folders so you can see what’s shared on the network. This way you can search the LAN in a similar way you would search your own computer.
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Normally in a local area network, most of the workstations or remote computers use dynamic IP addresses assigned by the DHCP service. Lots of computers connected to a network could be sharing resources such as printers or files and folders, and it’s sometimes useful to get a list of what is being shared across the network.

There are literally hundreds of networking tools available, but what you’re looking for is a network scanner that is able to scan for computers that are connected to the network, and show you what shares are in use. Just because your own computer might be sharing only what’s required, other networked machines could be unwittingly leaving security holes by unnecessarily leaving shares open which aren’t in use or required.

To make things easier, we’ve tried several networking tools and come up with 5 free options that can show all the shared resources on your network, and help you identify what’s not a problem and what you could do without and remove.
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If you’re someone that sometimes needs to show a small low resolution presentation or video on a computer with a monitor that has a resolution a lot larger than the clip, you will know that showing it in full screen will give pretty poor picture or image quality. The next best solution is to show it at the original or only a slightly increased size but that leaves the rest of the desktop free for people’s eyes to wander and they don’t pay full attention to want you want them to see.

Of course, if you’re just worried about someone else seeing what icons are on your desktop and what programs are installed, an easy way to stop that is to hide your desktop icons temporarily. Simply right click on the desktop, go to View and untick “Show desktop icons”. That still leaves your task bar, any pinned programs you have and the system tray visible though.

A simple solution would be to blank out all areas of the screen apart from what you want someone else to see, then only viewing a specific part of the desktop should keep their attention on what you want it to be on. Also it may be useful if you read documents or e-books and would like to concentrate on just the window with the text and want to shut out everything else for a while. Here’s a few tools that can blank out parts of your desktop and only make a selected area or window visible. All tools were tested on Windows 7 64-bit.
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The battery in your laptop might be an important component that makes your computer tick while it’s not plugged in, but Windows doesn’t exactly give you much information about it. The most you will usually get is an icon in the system tray, a charge percentage and a time remaining before it discharges completely. Other than that, the laptop battery status and detailed information is pretty much non existent.

You might also get the battery model and manufacturer if you’re lucky. That might be enough for most people, but sometimes it’s useful to have a bit more information than that. Windows can’t give you any idea why your battery isn’t holding a charge for very long, or if it’s starting to show signs of wear. A lot of laptop batteries actually have a more information to offer than Windows decides to give you, so it’s there but you can’t get at it.

What you need is a 3rd party utility to get hold of this extra information for you, and like most things, there are a few around to help get hold of it. Here’s a selection 5 of freeware tools to extract much more useful information from your laptop battery:
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Back when computers didn’t have much system memory, it was hugely important to have strict control over what software continues to run in the background or starts with Windows. If too much was running the system would quickly become sluggish or unresponsive. Although this is less of an issue these days because computers are equipped with more memory, it’s still a good idea not having too many programs present in the background to keep your system running as fast and trouble free as possible.

A lot of programs that run in the background or start with Windows will have an associated icon in the system tray at the bottom right corner of your desktop. Although officially called the Windows Notification Area by Microsoft, most people refer to this part of the task bar as the system tray. If you’re not careful this area can fill up with tons of icons, some of which give little or no information about what the program associated with the icon actually is.

If you are having difficulty in identifying which program any of your system tray icons are related to, it pays to find out so you can disable it if the program or its tray icon isn’t required. Here we show you 4 ways to help find out.
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