CyberShredder is a very small portable application whose only purpose is to delete files and folders on your hard disk and remove all traces of the file. It does this by overwriting the file with other characters and changing the file entries in the system file  index.

Why Would You Want It?

When Windows deletes files from your hard disk using the standard delete or cut/paste methods it does not erase all the file details, just the index entry. So the file is still there you just can’t see it. There are plenty of free, portable programs available to recover such files ( see Recuva – Easy and Quick Way to Recover Deleted Photos and Files). Over time the “deleted” file may be overwritten by new files but this could be slow and is a random process. If you need to make sure personal details or other sensitive information is erased, for instance if you want to sell a hardrive or your old computer, then you need a program like CyberShredder.  However see the “Cons” and “What Could Make it Better” sections below.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Securely erases single or multiple files
• Securely erase single or multiple folders
• Uses different methods depending on level of security

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

• Portable
• Easy to Use
• Good Options
• Installer Option

Cons:What’s Not So Good?

• Only drag and drop addition of files or folders
• Does not wipe previously deleted file space on hard disk

This means that if you have deleted files with the Windows OS CyberShredder can’t be used to overwrite the areas of the hardisk which may still contain sensitive information. However there are other programs that will do this for you

More About What it Does in Detail:

Go to Page 2 for details and screenshots

Go to Page 3 for ProReviewer Summary

(see Page Navigation below)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Windows Control Panel provides a means to customize settings for when various power saving options are triggered following a set period of “inactivity” (no use of keyboard or mouse). For a Desktop PC (rather than a laptop) these include:

1. Turn Off Monitor
2. Turn Off Hard Disks
3. System Standby
4. System Hibernate

There is also an option to select what happens when the PC power button is pressed.

Optimizing these settings to suit you personal use can bring benefits in saving electricity, reducing wear on hard drives and cutting costs.

This article is part of a series on power saving.

Why Would You Want to Use It?

Whether you run your PC 24/7 or just switch it on for occasional use you can still make a difference to your bills by using these settings. Laptop users will probably be more familiar with power saving as this is a way to reduce the drain on the battery when not connected to the charger. Laptop manufacturers often provide more sophisticated power saving utilities that allow more options to conserve battery power. Windows Vista also has more options than XP.

This article is based on XP and is for Desktops only. Vista is very similar, but with  more comprehensive options in a slightly different interface. The Laptop version of Power Options Properties provides additional tabs and options for when the Laptop is running on batteries or on mains power.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Turns off monitor after a predefined period of inactivity
• Turns off hard disks after a predefined period of inactivity
• System goes to Standby after a predefined period of inactivity
• System Hibernates after a predefined period of inactivity
• Set Power Button action to:
  • Do Nothing
  • Ask
  • Standby
  • Hibernate
  • Shutdown
• Enable Hibernation
• Configure UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply)

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Part of standard Windows OS

• Multiple Schemes
• Versatile
• Easy to set

Cons:What’s Not So Good?

• No time schedule to change schemes
• Limited options in XP
  e.g. Disable during media playback

More About What it Does in Detail:

Go to Page 2 for details and screenshots

Go to Page 3 for ProReviewer Summary

(see Page Navigation below)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Most users will think of Windows Explorer (Not Internet Explorer the browser application) as the program they use to access their files. In fact Windows Explore is much more than this, in simple terms it provides the graphical user interface(GUI) between the user and the operating system. It gives access to the all the programs including the control panel and various system utilities such as System Information, System Restore and the Management Console. If Windows Explorer freezes or cashes then you no longer have access to the Windows Taskbar and the Desktop icons amongst other important ways that you interact with your PC to make it do what you need. (Windows Explorer is also referred to as the shell which interacts with the core operating system).

Tip 4 may be the most important Tip as this helps to protect against fatal Windows Explorer crashes

Why Do You Care?

For a multitude of different reasons Windows Explorer may freeze or crash at any time. Windows XP is certainly more stable than earlier Windows operating systems but it still happens, particularly if you load lots of programs and give your PC a heavy workload. This is another reason why it pays to reboot your Windows OS fairly frequently, as the longer he system runs in any one session the more likely it is that it may freeze or crash.

Once Windows Explorer is no longer available then how do you access such things as the Shutdown Menu or your open programs that are still running?

What Can You Do?

First of all, except for the most inexperienced of users of a Windows OS will be familiar with CTL-ALT-DEL (or the 3 finger salute) where you press all 3 keyboard buttons at the same time as an emergency “get out of jail” solution.

By the way – if this doesn’t immediately work give it a minute after which you will need to use the powerswitch or restart button with all the possibilities of loosing data or file corruption. So only ever do this as a last resort!!!!

When you use CTL-ALT-DEL from a User Login/Password system you see the following screen:

(Click on Screenshots to enlarge)

This gives you several options which can be seen from the Button text in the screenshot which include shutting down or logging off the computer in an emergency. The one we are particularly interested in for this exercise is the Task Manager button. This activates the following window:

(Note – This shows the processes tab which I have customized to show the columns I want from the View – Select Columns menu item)

In a non-password protected system CTL-ALT-DEL takes you straight to the Windows Task Manager:

Here you can see there is an additional tab for users.

If you have a frozen or “Not Responding” explorer process the following tip should be followed. If Explorer has crashed go to Tip 3.

Tip 1 – CPU Overload – Explorer Frozen or “Not Responding” – End Process

Click on the Processes tab and then click on the CPU column (not CPU Time column) – you may need to click twice to sort the column so that the processes using the most CPU time are shown first. Make a mental note of the process using the most time if they keep changing and then click on the Image Name column to sort alphabetically. You can then click on the process with the left mouse button to highlight it and then use the End Process button in the bottom right of the screen to end the explorer process.

Alternatively you can right click on the explorer process which will show a context menu from which you can terminate the explorer process.

Warnings:

Take care ending some processes will be fatal and crash the OS

Before ending a frozen or “Not Responding” process give it a minute or two as the system may just be temporarily overloaded doing other things. If CPU activity is very high which you can see from the Task Manager overload is the likely cause

Tip 2 – Change Process Priority

Alternatively you can try lowering the Process Priority of the program that is using all the CPU time. So instead of killing the process as described in Tip 1 you can lower the priority by using the right context menu and setting it to Below Normal or Low:

Warning:

Do not set the process priority to “Realtime” as this process may then use all the available CPU time and lock you out from doing anything else with the system until it finishes or you manually reset the PC with the power or restart buttons which could cause data loss or file corruption.

Tip 3 – Restart Explorer Using Task Manager

Now go to page 2 for the rest of the post

(See page Navigation Below)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

A Cautionary Tale With a Happy Ending when You Don’t Backup Regularly

The real point of this post is that to not backup your essential and important personal data is often likely to end in disappointment and loss of perhaps your most precious memories in the form of photos and documents. This is one instance where the bullet was dodged.

So What Happened?

I spent this UK bank holiday weekend with my daughter, granddaughter and new grandson. As usual I was asked to do a few DIY jobs and to sort out a couple of things on her computer:)

It all started with trying to fix a simple wireless networking connection issue. The main problem she was having with her PC was connecting the wireless router and had resorted to trailing wires across the living room to connect the router by the network cable. At least this gave the necessary access to the router and to the Internet if needed. Sorting out the router was basically down to setting the router name and password using the web based settings utility rather than the provide GUI based utility on the broadband providers setup CD. Not that the CD utility didn’t work but it was just more difficult than using the web based setup screens. A triumph of creating complication when trying to simplify things for a less knowledgeable user. Reference was made to the web based utility at the end of the instruction book “For Mac Users” so the average windows user would never realise it was there.

So setting up the user access to the router and connecting to the PC all went relatively easily. We had been out earlier that day and my daughter decided to transfer the pictures she had taken to her PC. Apparently at some point this froze and she turned the PC off with the power button. If only she had said something to me first! We could have at least looked at the options of invoking the task manager with Ctl-Alt-Del before going for the doomsday solution. As to whether anything done in setting up the wireless router caused the crash I don’t know, my personal feeling is that so many things get changed by installation of programs, windows updates, etc. that any OS is often only one or two changes away from “meltdown”

Disaster

The first thing I knew about it was when my daughter asked me what was happening! XP and gone into the automatic hard drive checking routine and at the point when I looked it was busily changing the “security descriptor” on every file chunk on the system. When it eventually finished and rebooted things looked OK but there was no network connection. Going into Network Settings would start the wizard but go no further than the first page. Everything I tried indicated that some critical system files had gone.

OK, try another reboot and see if that will help, but it doesn’t, so now what to do?

Well the options are:

• Last Known Good Configuration
• Load a Restore Point
• Load a Recent Backup
• Repair Using the Management Console
• Repair Using Installation CD

1. Last Known Good Configuration

This was a non-starter having booted the system once since the point of failure meant that the last “Good” configuration was already failing. In my experience this option only ever works for “catastrophic” registry corruption, where the PC won’t boot into the OS at all.

2. Load a Restore Point

Whatever had been corrupted this included access to the system restore interface. Checking System Restore was set up through System Properties showed that it was set up but I just couldn’t get at it.

3. Load a Recent Backup

The most recent backup was nearly a year ago when I transferred all of the data from an old computer to the new one. Not only that but it was physically 200 miles away at my home on an external hard drive. Therefore not an option. (I despair that even my own daughter doesn’t backup properly despite the warnings I have given).

4. Repair Using the Management Console

(By using the OS Install Disk and selecting this option). I have only ever used this to repair some small problems where it was obvious what needed doing. This solution would probably only be an option for someone with a lot of knowledge and even more time.

5. Repair Using Installation CD

I have tried this before without success and usually ended up just installing a new version of the OS to a different system folder. Then trying to rescue the data from the various locations Windows and software developers choose to use.

However this was the only alternative I now had. Luckily I had bought my laptop and an external hard drive with me so the first thing I did was transfer all the important data to the external drive. This backup data was relatively small in size and not widely spread across different directories. It consisted of digital photos, documents and Outlook files.

Warning

Don’t try this method of recovery without backing up ALL your important files. If you can’t access them take a snapshot of the hard drive using a suitable freeware utility such as:

DriveImage XML

HD Clone

So What Do You Need?

A Windows XP Installation CD and your original license key>

Place the CD in the your drive.

Make sure the BIOS is set to boot from the CD/DVD Drive

(Press F2 or the Del key as the PC starts to enter the BIOS – if you don’t know which try pressing each alternately a few times as the PC starts)

Find the screen which sets the boot sequence and make the first boot device the CD/DVD drive. Save the settings and restart the computer.

You will be asked to “Press Any Key” to boot from the CD drive. So press any key

The details are given by Microsoft here:

Perform a Repair Installation

There is also an excellent article by Michael Stevens here, which has a lot more information and warnings regarding backups and possible risks:

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

The Outcome

Well I went through a straight forward “Repair Install” without problems. This took about 45 minutes but the time depends on hardware, etc. At the final reboot the system started and as far as I could check everything was working as before. All the new settings for the wireless network were intact and none of the important documents had been lost.

All in all I consider this a very luck escape and would recommend to everyone to make proper and regular backups of all essential data as a minimum and the entire OS preferably.

Other Relevant Posts:

Recuva – Easy and Quick Way to Recover Deleted Photos and Files

Backup – Identify Where the Data Is – Find the Location of Your Information on a Windows Based PC?

What Are the Tags?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Yesterday I wrote about the basic things you can do with the Windows Toolbar functionality in the taskbar. Today will tell you about some clever little tips and tricks that allows you to use toolbars to help you get more productive and generally make your computing life a little easie

Today will show you how you can go from this:

to this:

(Click on screenshots to show full size/enlarged)

and a lot more!

If you haven’t read the previous post you can find it here:

Tip – Advanced Windows XP Toolbars – Amaze Yourself & Your Co-workers – Part 1

and in case you don’t read it I will repeat this warning:

Loosing settings is easy

Backup needs a third party application or Windows Restore

Warning – You may inadvertently mess up your desktop settings which can be fiddly to get back the way you want it. If this concerns you set a restore point before you start – if you don’t know how click the Start button, then Help and Support type in restore point

(screenshots are included in the original post if you want to see them)

Moving and Resizing the Taskbar & Toolbars

To do some of the more advanced things you need to be able to move and resize the tasksbars and toolbars so this is how you do it.

To make the Taskbar larger move the mouse cursor to the top edge and you will see the doubleheaded arrow appear, hold the left mouse button down and drag upwards to enlarge or down to make smaller

Similarly to change the size of the toolbars within the taskbar hover the mouse over the separator until the double headed arrow appears and then drag in the desired direction:

Finally to move the taskbar or toolbar to another position you must left click in “empty space” near to the separator line (this may need a bit of trial and error) until the double headed crossed arrows appear. You can then drag and drop to a new position.

More Advanced Use of Toolbars

The next step is to create your own toolbars. You will have seen that when you select the right click context menu on the Taskbar that there are various predefined toolbars available.

To set up a new toolbar is really easy again using the Right Click context menu – select the Toolbars – New Toolbar option and this will display the New Toolbar window:

As a simple example to try out select “My Computer” and Click OK, you should then see the My computer toolbar in the taskbar, the exact position and size will depend on the setup you already have, on my PC it shows like this:

Here you can see the toolbar is displayed with the title but you can’t see anything else. The two arrow/chevrons in the top right corner indicate is more detail that is not being shown.

In the following screenshot I have resized the “My Computer” toolbar to show some of the detail but there is still more indicated by the arrow/chevrons (red pointer) . Clicking on these displays a popup of the hidden details as shown by the red box.

Really Important

The blue arrow points to a further arrowhead and this indicates that Windows Explorer has recognised there is further subfolder information. If you now click on one of these you will get a further cascading menu, like so:

Now what you can see is that I have cascaded through My Documents – Barry to FEBE 2008 03-09 00.46.26 to the contents of the FEBE…… folder. Clicking on a folder name/icon will open it in Windows Explorer and clicking on a filename/icon will open the file in the associated application or the Windows “Open With” dialog.

One other thing you should note is that you only have the cascading option in the Popup area not in the basic toolbar area. So the trick is to size your toolbar so that it only displays the title (or nothing if you have Titles turned off) so that everything cascades as so:

What More Can You Do?

The above example using “My Computer” gives you the basic principles of what you can do with toolbars.

Other things you can do are move toolbars to other edges of the scree where you can set the various options of

• Autohide
• Show Title
• Show Text

You can drag more than one toolbar to the top of the screen as shown here which you will recognise as one of the posts opening images:

However you will now understand that this screenshot is not the ideal setup as not all the folders cascade. This can easily be overcome by adding an extra toolbar which can either have nothing in it or not need to cascade. You could create a completely new folder with shortcuts to your most used applications as a sort of subset of the Quick Launch Toolbar and make that take up most of the space> Here is an example:

(This is cropped but actually extends full screen width at the top of the display.)

The My Computer and My Network Places toolbars will cascade through all the folders and subfolders giving quick access to files and folders. The My Apps toolbar gives quick access to most used applications. Further applications can be added by dragging and dropping or opening the folder in explorer and using that. There are numerous ways of changing things and an infinite number of ways you can use this.

You can have toolbars on any screen edge and you can also move the Taskbar to the top or edge of the screen, many people prefer to work with the taskbar on the edge.

Have Fun

What Other Posts are Relevant?

Tip – Advanced Windows XP Toolbars – Amaze Yourself & Your Co-workers – Part 1

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

TIP – Create Your Own Shutdown Tools Shortcuts

TIP – Stop Applications in Windows Stealing Focus

TIP – Disable or Control Windows Error Reporting

GTD – Getting Things Done

TaskSwitchXP – So Much More Than a Task Changer

What are the Tags?

Technorati Tags: Toolbars, Launcher, Taskbar, Free Reviews, Impartial Review, Independent Review, Portable Freeware Applications, TweakUI, Windows, Windows XP

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Going from this:

to this:

(Click on screenshots to show full size/enlarged)

(OK ignore the wallpaper in terms of this post)

I am sure everyone is familiar with the Windows Quick Launch Toolbar as part of the Taskbar. Dragging and dropping new shortcuts to it, or having them automatically installed as part of setting up a new program. Perhaps even dragging and dropping the icons in the Quick Launch area to get them into some sort of practical order. If you are like me it’s soon full of icons and you can’t remember what program they start so you rely on hovering the mouse cursor to get the tooltip. My own experience is that the tooltips don’t always work or take for ever to appear and it all becomes very frustrating. You want to show text and you can but then there isn’t enough space to get everything in!

How many of you know that there are lots of different things you can do with the existing toolbars and how easy it is to create new toolbars?

Not only that, but with a few simple “tricks” you can easily create a full cascading and autohiding menu system like the screenshot above to open programs, files and folders, complete with names and descriptions and without taking up valuable additional resources. It’s all built into the Windows XP operating system (Note to self – Must venture into the Darkside and install a Vista Test System ).

Why Would You Want To Do This?

(I mean experiment with toolbars, not install Vista)

if you are anything like me the answer is because you can, just because you like messing about with programs.

However there are also some sound practical reasons.

Pros:

• In a corporate environment you may be restricted in what you can install by corporate policy or by the way your IT department has tied down Windows. so you can’t install third party applications.
• This doesn’t use lots of precious resources as it’s part of the OS/Explorer
• It’s useful
• It’ increases productivity/getting things done
• It’s simple to use
• It’s easy to set up and change
• It’s versatile

Cons:

Loosing settings is easy

Backup needs a third party application or Windows Restore

Warning – You may inadvertently mess up your desktop settings which can be fiddly to get back the way you want it. If this concerns you set a restore point before you start – if you don’t know how click the Start button, then Help and Support type in restore point as so:

The Basics

I thought I would start with what many people will already know so as not to loose the interest of those who don’t (Remember we all start life knowing nothing, there are no stupid questions only stupid answers).

This will be Part 1 of a 2 part post.

Right clicking on “empty space” on the Windows Taskbar “Open Windows” area will reveal the following context menu:

For the purposes of the following tips/instruction you need to make sure that the Lock the Taskbar option does not have a tick against it

Like so:

Left click on the menu Lock the Taskbar item to change (Right click again to bring back the menu as it disappears when you left click, you will see the tick has now gone)

Also either minimise all open programs or preferably close them. This is because if they may get in the way of some of what we are trying to do – trust me I know through experience!

Clicking on the Properties menu item will reveal the following window:

I always use the autohide feature for the taskbar (where it only shows when you drag the mouse pointer to the bottom edge of the screen, or the edge where it is docked if you have moved it as will be explained later) You can also toggle the lock option, the Quick Launch Toolbar and other options using the checkboxes. (BTW – The Start Menu Tab gives options to the option to use the Classic start menu which I always use and customise – but then I’m a classic sought of guy, or did I mean classy? ).

If you don’t have the Quick Launch Toolbar displayed then click the checkbox in the Properties window or use the right click context menu – Toolbars submenu:

In the above example you will see there are several Toolbar options to choose from some of which are selected. Some of these toolbars such as the X1 Deskbar are added automatically by the installer for the program.

Try selecting some others that are available to you and see what happens, you can always deselect them without problems.

Right clicking on “empty space” the Quick Launch or any other Toolbar area gives a slightly different context menu:

This gives several useful options:

View – Lets you display Large or Small Icons – Try it and see

Show Text – Displays text with the icons – useful to avoid relying on Tooltips but takes up a lot of space:

Without Text:

With Text:

You can also select the title option:

(With or without the text option)

N.B This screenshot also shows the tooltip displayed when the mouse cursor is placed over an icon which gives the same information as the text option. The downside is that this is sometimes slow to display or may not show at all due to vagaries of Windows.

OK so that pretty much covers the basics.

Want to be a bit more Adventurous?

Sorry, you are going to have to wait for the really good stuff – see tomorrows post !!

What Other Posts are Relevant?

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

TIP – Create Your Own Shutdown Tools Shortcuts

TIP – Stop Applications in Windows Stealing Focus

TIP – Disable or Control Windows Error Reporting

GTD – Getting Things Done

TaskSwitchXP – So Much More Than a Task Changer

What are the Tags?

Technorati Tags: Toolbars, Launcher, Taskbar, Free Reviews, Impartial Review, Independent Review, Portable Freeware Applications, TweakUI, Windows, Windows XP

Bookmark It

Hide Sites