One of the most obvious things that can show the strain of being at your computer for a period of time is your eyes. It doesn’t take a lot for a badly configured monitor or laptop screen to cause problems and put extra strain on your eyes because brightness or contrast settings are set too high. Proper configuration can make viewing more comfortable, especially you are at your computer for prolonged periods of time.

Most monitors should have controls to adjust these types of settings but that isn’t always the case. An old Dell Studio One 1909 desktop we have here, is one such system without external controls for brightness and contrast. Laptops and netbooks should have a dedicated Fn key combination or utility from the manufacturer for brightness. Windows sometimes has a brightness slider in the notification area or the system power plan.

If you don’t have or cannot find brightness and contrast controls to adjust the display to your liking, an option is using a third party tool. Here’s a selection of 10 free programs to adjust the brightness, contrast, gamma or color temperature settings of your computer screen.
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There’s little doubt that Windows 8 caused a huge amount of controversy over the complete exclusion of any kind of Start menu on the desktop, instead opting for the almost universally disliked Start screen. Windows 10 aims to put right that glaring omission although many users are still not convinced that what is essentially a mini Start screen will please the majority of users who miss the traditional Start menu. But even before that, the release of Windows 7 caused quite a stir among many users because it too left out a highly useful option, the Classic Start menu.

The Classic Start menu was around from Windows 95 up to and including Vista, and was a very simple no fuss menu to quickly access your programs and files. A lot of corporations and businesses use it on their machines because it’s very easy for even inexperienced people to use. While some users like new Start menu options such as jump lists, instant search or even live tiles in Windows 10, others like the simplicity and no nonsense approach of the classic menu and would like to see it back, even though the classic style is longer available in Windows by default.

Here we show you three free tools that can bring back a classic style Start menu for operating systems that no longer include it, such as Windows 7, 8 and 10.
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If you spend several hours at a time working on your laptop computer, it is important that you make sure to sit with the correct posture and try to use your touchpad and keyboard from the correct angle to put less stress on your arms or wrists. Many users that do serious work while the computer is in a static position on a desk or table might use an external keyboard and mouse to make things more comfortable.

The problem with trying to use your standard laptop keyboard in a comfortable position is the touchpad happens to be rather inconveniently placed. It’s not hard to often find yourself touching the pad or buttons with the palm of your hand while typing and moving the cursor from the current position to another part of the page. On some laptops, you can use hotkeys like Fn+F7 to disable the touchpad, but many computers don’t have such a function either built in or via the touchpad’s own driver software.

There is plenty of software around to disable the mouse/touchpad and keyboard completely, but less available to only disable the touchpad while you type on the keyboard. Here we have found 5 options for you to try out.
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RAM Disks can be very useful and if you have the memory available, using system RAM as a disk drive can really speed up certain operations. One common usage is storing the system temporary files or cached files from your web browser or other software. Another usage scenario is storing specific programs or data files you use often for faster loading. For example, we’ve talked previously about how Firefox performance can be improved by storing some of its files in RAM.

There are several applications around that can create RAM Disks for you, some are shareware or commercial products but quite a few are free to use. Although you might think RAM disks all work at the same speed because they use the same physical RAM, that is not the case. Better coded and optimized RAM disk software really can make a difference in how well the disks perform.

Here we look at 11 free programs that can create RAM disks and run a performance test to see how fast each program is when reading from and writing to the RAM disk. The popular CrystalDiskMark tool is used to run the benchmark. The 4K scores test small file performance while Sequential (Seq) scores test the speed of transferring larger files. Depending on the intended use for the RAM disk, one set of scores may be more important than the other.

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Not only is email very useful for communication between friends and families and sending messages with attachments such as reports, photos, documents, presentations, video clips and music files, it’s also useful for notification purposes. For example, a website monitoring service such as Pingdom has alerts where you’ll be notified through different methods such as email, SMS, twitter or in-app when your server is down. Third party backup software also normally has at least an email notification feature where you can set it up to automatically email you when the backup process has completed or failed.

If you are writing a batch file and want to send an automated email when the batch has completed running or if you’re faced with a third party software that does not even support email notification, then the simple solution is to use a command line email sending tool for Windows. Here we have 7 ways to look at.
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A useful feature that’s missing in Windows 7 and subsequently Windows 8, is the nice animated network connection icon like the one you get in XP, which flashes whenever there is inbound or outbound network traffic. Even Vista gives you a rather faded but still visible activity animation. Many users find this small option quite useful because it can tell you whether there is any network activity with a quick glance at the system tray.

Although in Windows Vista, 7 or 8 you can get the animated network icon back using a small utility, this obviously won’t help if the computer screen is displaying a screensaver, you’re playing a game, watching a movie in full screen or the screen is even switched off. If that’s the case, you won’t know about any network activity unless you can see the router’s lights. There is though, another solution to display network activity.

If you look at your computer keyboard, you will see it has LED lights on it, usually these are Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock and they come on when you press those keys. But in this case they can be used for a more useful purpose which is using the LED’s to flash on and off to represent network activity. This means you can see if your computer is sending or receiving data even if the desktop isn’t visible. Here are 2 tools that can take over your keyboard LED’s and use them for showing network activity.
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Creating a full backup of a partition or hard drive is essential for quick restoration whenever Windows starts acting up or slowing down over time. This saves you the trouble and time of having to manually install and configure Windows and third party applications. Other than that, you have to go through the hassle of re-activating Windows through telephone if the license key that is acquired via retail purchase has already been activated more than 5 times.

There’s quite a number of third party disk imaging backup software applications such as Macrium Reflect, Aomei Backupper, Clonezilla and System Image Backup from Windows that are available for free, but we will be taking a look at EaseUS ToDo Backup Free which is currently ranked #9 in CNET’s Download.com under backup software category. EaseUS is a company from China that is well known for its disk partitioning, data recovery, backup and transfer software.

Different versions of EaseUS ToDo Backup such as Free, Home, Workstation, Advanced Server, and Technician with different pricing and features are available to cater to different markets. Obviously only the Free version of EaseUS ToDo Backup doesn’t cost a dime and is meant for personal use. In simple terms, EaseUS ToDo Backup Free allows you to backup, restore and clone.
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Clonezilla is a well known free and open source disk cloning/imaging software which is mostly used by professionals, especially in mass cloning of multiple computers using multicast. The free price tag on Clonezilla helps a company or an organization to save a lot of money instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for licensing on a corporate/enterprise edition of a disk imaging or cloning software.

Although Clonezilla is text-based and does not come with a friendly graphical user interface like what you see in Acronis True Image/Macrium Reflect/AOMEI Backupper, it is not really that difficult to use. Most of the options can be selected using the keyboard while only a few steps require manual input such as providing the username, password and path. We’ll show you the step-by-step instructions on how to create a full backup using Clonezilla and save the image to another computer in a network.

Downloading Clonezilla

Downloading Clonezilla can be a bit confusing if you are not familiar with Linux OS or CPU architecture because there is a total of 10 different ISO/ZIP files to download due to the different combination between branch, version and architecture builds. There is no need to worry on running the wrong version because Clonezilla will simply inform you that it is unable to boot.
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There are plenty of fake and counterfeit products around and the world of computers is not exempt. In recent years one area has become more prone to this than any other, and that is flash memory storage. Devices such as USB flash drives, SD/CF cards and even SSD drives have been affected by this problem. Counterfeit USB flash drives seem to be the most common though, there’s so many different types, capacities and speeds that it’s easy to hide them among all the real products.

You may think this problem only affects places like eBay but even Amazon and other legitimate retailers have been caught out too. This is why it’s a good idea to check any flash device you purchase is the product you paid for. Making sure the serial or code number on the stick is legitimate is one way, another is making sure the drive is the size advertised because most fake drives have a lower real capacity than listed by using smaller and much cheaper memory chips. The drive may even be reported as the right size in windows.

Software developers are also aware of this and some have written tools to help you identify if a drive is smaller than you expect and is therefore likely to be counterfeit. Here we have listed 5 for you to try that are designed to check for fake size drives.
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One of the most annoying errors you will receive while working in Windows is the message that for some reason you cannot delete a file. Usually something like “Cannot delete files: Access is denied” or “The file you’re trying to modify is being used by Windows or other application” will pop up on screen. Quite often the reason why this error message has appeared isn’t immediately obvious because you haven’t got any programs running that you think might interfere with the file concerned.

Files become locked because they are still being used by a Windows process or service and cannot be touched until Windows releases the file. One of the worst programs to actually cause this problem is the Explorer.exe process itself getting a lock on a file or even external devices like USB flash drives so you are unable to safely remove them. Other things like malicious software, security software or crashed programs can sometimes be to blame and can stop a file being deleted or moved.

Here’s a selection of 7 different file unlocking and deleting tools for you to remove your difficult to get rid of files and folders.
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It is not that difficult to install Windows operating system from scratch today compared to older versions of Windows because Microsoft has tried their very best in making the whole installation process as easy as possible. However it can be very time consuming because after installing Windows, you may need to search for additional device drivers for newer hardware that isn’t recognized, installing third party software and restoring files/emails/settings from backup. One of the process that can take a long time to complete is the downloading and installing of runtime packages such as .NET Framework, Java, DirectX, Flash Player, Shockwave Player, Silverlight, and etc.

Although these runtime packages are considered to be optional software, but they are becoming a necessity today due to a large number of services or software that requires them to run. Some examples are .NET Framework are required to run TheFolderSpy and Directory Monitor, Java for Screencast-O-Matic, Flash Player to play online flash games, and DirectX for a better gameplay and many more…

One way to simplify the installation of the runtime packages is to integrate them by slipstreaming to the Windows installation disc which will require some knowledge in doing that. An easier way is to simply download a program called All in One Runtimes, extract and run it which will automatically install all the required runtimes without any hassle.
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Sharing an Internet connection via wireless or even through cable is very common because a cheap home based router already comes with these features which are easy to setup. An annoying problem that people who are connected to the network can face is when one of the users is constantly using all the available bandwidth by downloading using BitTorrent, leaving practically nothing for other users. If everyone shares the Internet bill equally, obviously it is unfair for one person to hog it.

There are a few ways to solve this problem. The first method is of course to talk to the person and get them to adjust their BitTorrent program so that it doesn’t aggressively use up all the connection and stress out the router. If they ignore your suggestion, try to check if the router is able to block P2P connections or to specific websites.

If your router is very basic and not capable of blocking certain types of connections such as P2P that are used by BitTorrent, there are some programs that can forcefully cut off a person’s Internet connection when they are connected in the same network through ARP spoofing. Abusing these programs is unethical and can get you into trouble, so use it wisely and at your own risk.
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One of the frustrating things you will come across as a PC user, is having to enter a long serial number to play a game, or when you install Windows, or even when you need to install a commercial application. If that’s not bad enough, it gets even worse when the packaging for the software has become misplaced or damaged in such a way that the product key is not readable or available when it needs to be entered to use the software. Of course, there are ways to retrieve product keys from a running computer, and this is where keeping a backup of your license keys is a good idea.

As many product keys are quite long, it’s a bit tiresome having to enter them in every time you install a piece of software, Windows and Microsoft Office being two products that both come with long product keys. The handy thing about Microsoft’s programs though, is that both of them can have their installations modified to make the install process less interactive or even almost totally silent. One simple trick you can do for Office is have the setup automatically recognize your own license key during install, so you don’t have to remember, look for or try and decipher it.
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Privacy and security is a hot topic these days and users have to be very aware about the dangers of being too open with their personal files and private information like passwords and logins. This is especially so if you use one of those fantastic little inventions, the USB flash drive. Because of their portability and huge capacities, you can store lots of data and information on one and easily mix ordinary files with files that should not be open to anybody else who accesses to the drive.

A few do, but many USB flash drives don’t come with any form of protection or security at all and because a USB drive can easily be lost or stolen, your data could end up in the wrong hands. There’s a few things you can do to make your flash drive data more secure, one is encrypting the data itself and then you can also hide the encrypted data so nobody else even knows it’s there.

Here we show you 5 tools that can encrypt your files and also offer a bit of added protection by hiding the files on the flash drive.
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While most people will think that only old computers would suffer from lag in streaming audio or video in real time due to the slow hardware not able to cope up with the requirements of the operating system and software, new computers with a clean Windows can also experience such problems. When a dropout occur in an audio or video application that requires real time processing, one of the possible cause is the third party drivers of a device being implemented improperly and causes excessive latencies of Deferred Procedure Calls (DPC).

If you know that device drivers can cause such problems, it is quite easy to solve the problem by using the trial and error method. You will just need to disable one driver at a time from the Device Manager which can be launched by typing devmgmt.msc in Start menu. Fortunately the Windows operating system only allows you to disable devices that are not essential for your computer to function. So it is safe to go ahead and disable devices one at a time while the audio or video streaming program is running.

If the dropout stopped occurring after disabling a specific device, then you have found the culprit. To have a better confirmation on the dropout problems, there are third party software that can detect the dropouts and even to the extend of showing which possible device is the cause.
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