Tech Salsa

Free Portable Windows Drive Manager

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:30:26 +0000

Disk Drive Manager is a utility that enables us to see all the drives connected to the computer either internally or externally, so if you have a habit of taking the drives along wherever you go, this tool is for you.

By default Windows provide us with the utility called Disk Drive Manager to see the drives attached and perform certain actions on them but here is a free tool that works similar to the default utility with the added advantage of being portable.

The tool is called Drive Manager and using this you can not only hide the drive, change the letter and map network drive but do the default actions as well.

Download Drive Manager

Free Task Manager Replacement Tools

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:30:06 +0000

In a virus infected system, it is a common sight that our Task Manager is disabled and thus we are not able to see the processes running in our system.

Well there are ways to solve the problem but in case you are not able to solve the problem then just use the Task Manager Replacement tools.

1. Process Explorer

This is a free and good task manager alternative that can serve you better than the task manager itself.

2. AnVir

Other good and free alternative for Task Manager.

3. DTaskManager

This one is a better task manager than the default Windows’ one, if not equal since it provides more functionality than the default one.

If you know other alternatives as well then leave a comment below.

Solution to No Preview Available for jpg Image

admin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:30:25 +0000

It can happen sometimes that you have some image that you downloaded from internet and which on opening with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer displays an error message “No Preview Available” or “File format is not supported”. The problem happened to one of our readers and here is the solution for it.

Solution:

• According to the MS article, the problem occurs if the graphic file is compressed.

• However to solve this just make sure that you have turned this option off in the web browser.

• Open the Internet Explorer and go to Internet Properties.

• Click the Web Graphics tab, click Never compress graphics, and then click Apply.

• Click the General tab.

• Under Temporary Internet files, click Delete Files.

• Click OK if you are prompted to confirm the deletion.

• Click OK.

The problem should have gone.

[Solved] System Restore Missing in Windows

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:30:18 +0000

One of our readers faced this problem that he was not able to find the System Restore option in his version of Windows. If similar is the case with you then here are few tricks to solve the problem.

Solution 1:

The problem of missing System Restore is due to the corrupted or missing System Volume Information folders in each drive.

1. Go to each drive and look for these folders (these are system hidden and you will need to show hidden as well as system files to see these folders).

2. Rename the folder to something else like System Volume Info and restart the computer.

3. Delete these folders and restart the system again.

4. The new folders would have created by default and the System Restore would get restored.

Solution 2:

1. Type regedit in the Run box to open the registry editor.

2. Navigate to this key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore

3. If a “DisableSR” value doesn’t exist, go to the Edit menu, select New, DWORD value, and create the value. Set the value to 1 to disable System Restore or 0 to enable System Restore.

4. Restart may be required.

What is WinSxS Folder and How to clean it?

admin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:50:23 +0000

This was the query of one of our readers who wanted to know about this folder in Windows 7 called WinSxS. The folder contains thousands of files and occupies Gigabytes of space.

Info about this folder

The folder called WinSxS stands for Windows Side-by-Side and is used to store versions of Windows components that are built to reduce configuration problems with Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL Hell). Multiple versions of components are stored in this folder.

In short this folder usually does not contain any useful data contents of which may be deleted to reclaim the occupied huge space.

However cleaning this is not easy if the folder does not get clean up by executing a disk cleanup then you might have to format the system to get the used space.

Free Regedit Replacement Tool – RegAlyzer

admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:30:56 +0000

The first thing that a virus does in an infected system is disabling the registry editor that is regedit.exe. However the same may be done by the system administrator for preventing some action by the users.

So if it is the same case with you then you can try a replacement tool for regedit that is use another tool that can provide you with the same functionality as with regedit.

The tool is called RegAlyzer and can be used in any scenario whether the regedit is disabled or not.
The tool does not require any installation and can be executed like an application. Isn’t the tool cool?

Download RegAlyzer

2 Simple Ways to Repeat or Loop Youtube Videos

admin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:30:03 +0000

Youtube is a great site to watch videos either for entertainment or for learning, whatever be the case we like watching good videos again and again, don’t we?

But forget using the mouse for watching the videos again and again that is in a loop, you can make the Youtube video to run in a looping fashion that is repeat again and that too very easily.

Method 1:

The first method is quite simple and just requires little bit of URL tweak. For example, you are watching the video with the URL as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceSxEjwXHcM then what you need to do is just append the URL with parameters loop=1 and autoplay=1 at the end and also remove watch? and replacing v= with v/

The final URL would look like http://www.youtube.com/v/ceSxEjwXHcM&loop=1&autoplay=1
The video would play in a looping manner.

Method 2:

This one is bit simpler and requires just typing of a word repeat before the .com that means the URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceSxEjwXHcM would look like http://www.youtuberepeat.com/watch?v=ceSxEjwXHcMM

Rename File Extensions of Multiple Files at once in Windows

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:30:57 +0000

If you have ever come across some files that are in some other extensions and require to be converted into some other file extensions, then this post is surely for you.

Method 1

There are occasions when we wish to rename the file extension of multiple files into some other extension say from .bmp to .jpg, whatever be the extensions, the tool called Extension Renamer will come useful to you.

Using the tool is very simple and will rename all the files that you select into some particular extension at once and in one go (Batch Convert).

Steps:
1. Just run the tool and select the directory.
2. Select the “from” and “to” extensions and press GO.
3. That is all

All the files would be converted at once.

Download Extension Renamer

Method 2
This method is bit simpler and require no tool. Open the command prompt and move to the directory containing the files to be renamed. Use cd command for that purpose.

Now type “ren from to” like ren *.abc *.jpg

This will rename all the files with abc extension to jpg in one go.

2 Free Windows Run Replacement Tools

admin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:30:07 +0000

It is a common sight now a days when one of the viruses have disabled our various Windows services like Task Manager and Run but here is a list of 2 free Replacement tools of Run (Windows key + R) which can be executed in place of the Run dialog.

Tools:

1. The name of the tool is none other than Run itself and needs no installation. Just download it and execute it to run the commands in it.

Download Run

2. RunMimic

This is a great tool to run the commands just like the Windows default run dialog.

Download RunMimic

Note: Using these tools at places like schools or colleges, where these are blocked intentionally, can be risky.

Compress and Reduce Image Size without Losing Quality

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:30:30 +0000

We love taking photographs, don’t we and the size of the pics comes up to be huge. Also there are occasions when we wish to send the images to our relatives or friends but can not because of the size limitation of the images.

Saving the images as jpg is not a solution either as this, no doubt decreases the size but decreases the image quality as well.

The solution to this problem is provided by a tool called FILEminimizer which is a great tool to reduce the size of the image by compressing and that too without compromising on the quality of the image.

Amazingly, the tool was found to compress the image by more than 50% in most of the cases which is extremely useful in many cases.

The only limitation being that the tool is a shareware that is not free and can be used for limited time.

Download FILEminimizer