Firefox

Firefox is a very secure and fast web browser. It has the ability to be skinned or "extended" with extensions. It has many features like tabbed browsing that people like it for. If you have not tried firefox yet, press the link to it on the top of the page if you are using Internet Explorer.

Skip Re-Activation When you Reinstall Windows XP

For many computers, a reinstall of Windows XP (even if its on the same PC) requires re-activation with Microsoft. Some versions of XP require you to actually call Microsoft after a certain number of activations have already been performed to get it activated again. This howto shows how to bypass all this by backing up your activation files.

Is 100 MB too much ? Nero 7 Premium Alternatives

Nero 7 has become quite large for a simple CD burning program and now includes many utilities many people see as useless and bloat. It has Nero Scout which is like the Windows Indexing service and especially useless if you have Media Center Edition. There are some free or cheap alternatives to Nero that take up less space too.

Stop PDFs from freezing Firefox

Firefox has the ability to use the Arobat Reader plugin and it is set by default. Whenever you click on a PDF link without realizing, it will freeze your browser for about a minute before it responds correctly. If the plugin crashes, it also crashes your browser. This is really annoying and there is a very simple fix to this.

Video Codecs

A lot of videos and movies you can download use codecs that do not come included with most computers. This can be very annoying, especially for people who do not know what a codec is or where to get one. Cole2k Media has a solution for this annoying problem. They have a downloadable codec pack with most common codecs that are used, but not included with Windows.

To get the codec pack, go to Cole2k's website and download one of the codec packs on the top left. If you do not know much about what you want or need, just get the standard pack and leave all the options default.

Xbox Controller on PC

A lot of people own Xboxs, but most of them do not know that their controller can be used on the computer. All you need to do to make it work is buy an adapter for around $6 shipped from ebay and download some drivers. The drivers support all the buttons, rumble, and even the slots on top for a microphone or something of that sort. A controller for the computer with all the features of an Xbox controller is very expensive, so even people without an Xbox can benefit from this!

To get an adapter, search eBay for "Xbox to USB"
To get the drivers, follow this link and click XBCD

Disable Error Reporting

Windows XP Has a feature called error reporting where it brings up a window after a program crashes asking if you would like to report the error to Microsoft. This is meant to help Microsoft in fixing bugs, but I just find them annoying. Some other people are concerned for their privacy even though it does not send any personal data. Press Read More to see how to disable it!

Hiding Drives in My Computer

If you have a computer that you share with people, you may want to be able to hide a hard drive so that people can not see it. This works only if the person(s) you want to hide it from does not know about it. The drive will still be accessible by entering it into the address bar i.e. D:\. This how to will explain how to hide drives in My Computer so that people unaware of them do not use them.

MediaMan - A great Collection Catalogue

If you are like me, you have a lot of DVD's, games, and other things people always ask to borrow. It sometimes gets hard to keep track of who has what when a lot of people are borrowing something of yours. I set out to find a solution to my problem and found MediaMan, a great cataloguing software. It can display your collection as a virtual shelf, list, by category, and more.