Computer Tips and Guides

Posts Tagged ‘Folders’

Taskbar Items Pinner Pins Anything to the Windows 7 Taskbar

Windows 7: Free utility Taskbar Items Pinner adds pre-defined or user-defined folders, files, and even web pages to the Windows 7 taskbar.

Adding one of the pre-defined folders (like, say, your Recycle Bin) is easy enough: Just run the app and tick the checkbox next to the folder. Adding other folders, files, or webapps requires a little more work, but is still pretty simple. Browse to the path of the item you ..read more

Create Synchronicity Is a Tiny, Portable Backup and Sync Utility

Windows only: Portable, open-source backup utility Create Synchronicity is a tiny but powerful way to run backups or synchronize folders on your system, an external drive, or to another PC on your network.Once you’ve launched the utility, you’ll need to click on the New Profile icon and type in a name for the profile, which will open up the settings window where you can choose the source and destination folders and ..read more

Firefox Tab Candy Organizes Your Tabs in Groups, Looks Excellent

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox Tab Candy is a new tab management feature for Firefox that organizes tabs into groups to help you keep your tabs grouped by task. Not only does it offer incredibly handy features, but it looks beautiful.

Watch the video above, by Mozilla’s excellent interface designer Aza Raskin, for a quick overview. The idea is sort of like the new app folders in iOS 4, or like a better ..read more

Many times when trying to remove an unwanted program, especially a piece of adware or spyware, you may run across a file that is undeletable by any normal method. When you try to remove it you’ll receive the error message shown below telling you “access denied” and explaining the file may be in use.  You may also receive one of the following messages.

Cannot delete file: Access is denied There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in ..read more

KeepNote Organizes Your Notes on Any Platform

Windows/Mac/Linux: Portable, cross-platform note-taking application KeepNote stores your notes, thoughts, outlines, and more in a simple hierarchical format, complete with rich-text formatting, images, attachments, and even plugins.The application itself is simple enough to use: just add “Pages” on the left-hand pane, and then write or paste anything into the note itself—but you can organize the tree menu with icons, folders, and add new nodes easily from the keyboard.

Since the notes are each stored in ..read more

How to Make Gmail Play Nicely with Your Desktop Email Client

If you use Gmail as your email backend but prefer a good old-fashioned desktop email client for handling your day-to-day email, you’re probably aware that many clients—like Outlook or Mail.app—don’t play that nice with Gmail. Here’s how to fix that.While Thunderbird no longer needs any extra work to become the ultimate Gmail IMAP client, mail clients, such as Mail.app or Outlook, do not exhibit normal behavior when using Gmail’s servers.

Gmail ..read more

How to Delete Individual Entries from the Internet Explorer Address Bar

Whenever you type an address directly into the Internet Explorer’s address bar, the URL will be saved in IE’s history. If you pull downdown this list later, those URLs will show up.  Because of privacy and security concerns, you may want to delete these entries periodically. Although you can remove the website URLs from the address bar dropdown list by clearing the history from Internet Explorer, its tougher ..read more

Over time, Windows loses stability. If you keep a computer for more than two years, at some point you’re going to have to bite the bullet and reinstall Windows from scratch. But contrary to popular belief, you won’t have to reformat your hard drive (with one exception, discussed below). The bad stuff you need to get rid of is all in your Windows folder.

Before you begin, gather your Windows and application CD-ROMs. Back up your data files (just to be ..read more

Speed Up Slow Firefox 3.5 Windows Start-Ups

Firefox 3.5 pulls data from certain file locations for randomized security purposes. Sometimes, though, that can lead to annoying slow start-ups in Windows. You can speed things up by cleaning out certain folder locations.

For whatever reason, having too many temporary, history, or recent document files sitting in your Windows locations slows down Firefox 3.5’s data generation processes, as has been reported as a bug. The Mozilla Links blog recommends cleaning out these folders to ..read more

Many times when trying to remove an unwanted program, especially a piece of adware or spyware, you may run across a file that is undeletable by any normal method. When you try to remove it you’ll receive the error message shown below telling you “access denied” and explaining the file may be in use.  You may also receive one of the following messages.

Cannot delete file: Access is denied There has been a sharing violation. The source or destination file may be in ..read more