Owner: Bloody Computer URL:http://bloodycomputer.blogspot.com Join Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:45:25 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Bloody Computer! provides clear and simple advice to deal with many common Windows problems, drawing upon over twelve years experience in helping people overcome their PC woes. Site statistics:Click here
Weekend website: More anwers than questions 2007-09-15 19:08:00 Yahoo Answers offers you the chance to ask questions
in a user-friendly open forum. The forum is broken down into various categories such as 'Pets', 'Health' and, of course, 'Computers & Internet'.CNET provide various forums (or is that 'fora'?) where you can ask computer-based questions; including one aimed at 'Computer Newbies' in particular.Both sites require registration to submit and respond to questions. I check both regularly for opportunities to share my *ahem* sagely advice. Read more:Weekend
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: Shut `em down 2007-09-14 12:18:00 After last week's mammoth collection of word processing keyboard shortcut
s, this week, I present a short and sweet way to close any window.Simple hold down the Alt key and press F4... Hang on! Don't do it now... Oh, too late.
Five top freeware applications 2007-09-12 10:19:00 Before spending your hard earned cash on software, it is always worth looking to see what is available for three. In this article I will look at five free applications that I use myself.First up, and probably most importantly, we have a virus checker. AVG anti-virus free edition has all the features I want from anti-virus software. It loads quickly, doesn't take up much system resource, updates itself regularly, and only bothers me when it finds a problem.After viruses, spyware is the next major problem that arises from using the Internet. I use Spyware Terminator, which has many of the same virtues as AVG anti-virus, in that it is not constantly bothering me with messages. In my opinion, such software should sit quietly in the background doing its job.Quick tip: when you run a scan on your PC looking for spyware the software 'looks' at each file, which means that the virus checker also checks that file. So by running a spyware scan you also effectively run a virus scan.Do you use W
Weekend website: Media Convert 2007-09-07 19:01:00 Anyone who has used Windows for a while knows there are a dazzling array of file types. Maybe the word processor you use at home is different from the one you use at college; maybe your job requires all reports to be submitted as pdf files; or maybe someone has sent you an audio file in Ogg Vorbis format and you are completely nonplussed. As not all applications support all file types you need an easy way to convert some files into a format you can use.The Media Convert
site enables you to quickly convert files from one format to another whether office documents or video files. I have used it a number of times and have found it a lifesaver. Media Convert supports dozens of file types and is definitely worth bookmarking. Read more:Weekend
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Keyboard shortcuts of the week: Faster word processing 2007-09-05 11:55:00 Do you wish to be able to use your word processor more quickly? Do you want to be able to edit a piece of text without having to reach for the mouse every few minutes? Then this week's mega-selection of keyboard shortcuts are for you. They should work in any text editor on Windows, whether a word processor or a comments box on a web page. I have included a text box as part of this article so you can play around with the various key combinations. For those interested, the text in the box is the opening paragraph of Candide by Voltaire.We will start with quick navigation links.The Home key will move the cursor to the beginning of the line (on most keyboards this key is in a collection of 6 keys located above the cursor keys).The End key will, unsurprisingly, move the cursor to the end of the line.If you hold down Ctrl and press Home, the cursor will move to the beginning of the document. Ctrl and End will take the cursor to the end of the document.The Page Up and Page Down keys do 'exa
Weekend website: Google Groups 2007-08-31 18:41:00 I doubt that anyone visiting this page hasn't heard of Google
, however, some of you may not be aware of Google Groups
. From this site you can search a variety of Usenet newsgroups (a forum/BBS system that predates the web), as well as Google's own groups. This page can be exceptionally useful when you are searching for help and advice about computer problems - after you have checked for help on this page, of course. The chances are you are not the only one with a particular problem. Someone has probably asked for help with it before and maybe received an answer on Usenet.Students should also be interested Google Scholar, which can be used to search for academic books and journal articles. Read more:Weekend
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: refreshing changes 2007-08-30 12:38:00 Need to refresh or reload the web page you are looking at? Press the F5 key.If the web page still doesn't appear or does not look right you could try Ctrl + F5 (hold down the Ctrl key and press F5). This keyboard shortcut
bypasses any copy of the web page that may be stored on your PC. Web browsers will keep a copy of web pages you visit in something called a cache, which they will access first when you return to that page.See the last post on Bloody Computer! for information about clearing this cache in Internet Explorer. If you use Firefox you can empty the cache by following these instructions:In Firefox, go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Options..'Click on the 'Advanced' iconClick on the 'Network' tabThere you will find a button labeled 'Clear now', pressing this will empty the cache. Read more:changes
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: windows hopping 2007-08-22 11:41:00 Ever need to swap windows while you are using the keyboard? Need to jump quickly from that email you are composing to the report you are supposed to be writing? Then try holding down 'Alt' key and pressing the 'Tab' key. Select the window you want and release the 'Alt' key to bring that one to the front.While we are on the subject of the 'Tab' key. Whenever you are filling in a form in a Windows program, the 'Tab' key will generally move the cursor to the next field or button. Hold down the 'Shift' key and press the 'Tab' key to move the cursor back to the previous field. Filling in a whole form from the keyboard means you get the job done more quickly and more easily, leaving more time available to 'alt-tab' back to that blog you were reading.Try these shortcut
s out on the following form. Click on the first field to select it, then tab between fields to your heart's content.Field1: Field2: Field3: To change value press the space-bar when selected: To change the value Read more:hopping
Weekend website: Netvibes 2007-08-19 10:30:00 It took me a while but at last I found it. The personal start-page that suits me best: Netvibes
(www.netvibes.com). It may not be as quick as iGoogle, but it has all the features that I need: access to my emails, my web feeds; my del.icio.us bookmarks; and many useful widgets to add. To set up your own Netvibes start-page visit the site and click on the 'Register now' link.Many of the website
s that you regularly visit will have associated web feeds. Some of these may have a button that you can click to add the site's feed to Netvibes, like this one...If not, you can ask Netvibes to check whether your favourite site has feeds.Copy the URL (web address) of your favourite webpage, e.g. 'http://bloodycomputer.blogspot.com'If you don't see 'Browse content' bar on the left of your Netvibes page, click the 'Add content' link (top left hand of page).Click 'Add a feed'.Paste the URL into the space after 'Link' and click 'Add'.Repeat this process for all your favourite pages.You Read more:Weekend
Making Windows run faster: programs that run automatically 2007-08-16 09:35:00 The more programs you have running on your computer the slower it is. So one way to squeeze better performance out of your PC is to run fewer programs. Many applications you have installed will run programs when you start up Windows
. Not all of these programs are essential, although, some are - such as your virus checker and anti-spyware software. In this article we will look at the various ways that Windows runs these programs and how to remove the non-essential ones.The safest way to stop these programs from running is to tell them not to run in the first place. If you look down by the time on your taskbar you will see a line of icons. Each of these icons indicates a program that is running. Hover the mouse over them to see what they are. Select one that you have decided is non-essential, for example, an icon for a media player update checker. Right-click on the icon to reveal a menu. From this menu select 'Options', 'Settings' or 'Preferences' (whichever appears). Look around
Keyboard shortcut of the week: minimise all windows 2007-08-15 03:02:00 Ever wanted to quickly minimise all of your windows?Hold the 'windows key' and press M. The windows keys have this symbol on,and are generally located near the Alt key. Read more:shortcut
Keyboard shortcut of the week: Excel 2007-09-28 03:41:00 Following on from the megapost of word-processing keyboard shortcut
s from earlier this month, here is a selection of keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Excel
.You can navigate around the grid of cells by using the cursor keys.Hold down Ctrl and press Home to jump to the top right cell (A1).Hold down Ctrl and End to jump to the last cell on the spreadsheet with any information inIf you wish to edit the contents of a cell press F2As with word processing, you can hold down the Shift key to select: if you hold down Shift and press the right cursor key then you will select the current cell and the one to the right of it. If you continue to hold down the Shift key and press the down cursor key you will also select the two cells below the ones you already had selected. You can thus hold down the Shift key and press different cursor keys to select different rectangles of cells.Many of the keyboard shortcuts that work for word processing also work in Excel: holding down Ctrl and pressing B selects
Word to the wise: webmail woes 2007-09-25 11:37:00 This is an issue that has cropped up a couple of times at the university where I work.If you send yourself a document that you are working on, to continue working on it on another PC, remember to save the attached document onto that machine before you start to make changes to it. It is easy to forget this, open the document and start making changes. If you then hit the save icon it will not always save and when you then close whatever program you are editing the document in, your changes will be lost. This is particularly the case for documents accessed via webmail
. If you remember to 'Save as' rather than just 'Save' you will be OK, because it will prompt you for a name and location where you wish to save it. Nevertheless, it is better to get into the good habit of copying the document you attached to the email onto the PC before you expend effort making alterations.
Weekend website: What is this file? 2007-09-23 10:16:00 So here is the scenario: you have been sent a file attached to an email. You double click on it - after making sure that it is not a virus or some other malicious file - and you are told that it is an 'unknown file type'. You need to find out what type of file it is, and what programs will open it.To do this you look at the last few letters after the last '.', e.g. word documents will end with '.doc' (you may not see these extensions for file types that your installation of Windows recognises - to see them: double click on 'My Computer'; select 'Options' from the 'Tools' menu; select the 'View' tab and deselect 'Hide extensions for known file types'.)So you know what extension the file has, but still don't know how to open it. There are a number of web sites that provide lists of know file extensions. All offer a search tool, so you can just type in a file's extension and find out what programs you need to open it. So here are a few such sites:Wotsit.org (my persona Read more:Weekend
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: Firefox 2007-09-21 11:37:00 This week's keyboard shortcut
s are all for Firefox
- some of them may work in Internet Explorer. Recently, Microsoft have started copying features previously implemented by Mozilla in Firefox, possibly including the keyboard shortcuts. Please let me know which ones work in IE.To cycle through your tabs rightwards: hold down Ctrl and press the Tab key.To cycle through tabs leftwards: hold down Ctrl and Shift and press the Tab key.To open a new tab: hold down Ctrl and press T.To close the current tab: hold down Ctrl and press W.To jump to the address bar - where you type in a web address: Press F6 (thanks to glytch for this one).To open and close the Bookmarks tab: hold down Ctrl and press B (Note: if you are in a rich-text editor on a webpage this will select bold text instead.)
What to do when your PC hangs 2007-09-19 14:22:00 So, your PC isn't doing anything, the screen is a mess, the hard-drive is whirring away. Is there anything you can do, rather than just reach for the reset button?Here are my top tips for dealing with those times when Windows hangs.Don't keep clicking thingsWindows buffers (remembers) all these clicks and will implement them when it catches up, preventing you from continuing with what you want to do, and possibly causing havoc. Show a little bit of patience.Check to see if your PC has crashedBefore you hit that reset button it is wise to check if your PC has actually crashed. To do this simply press the Caps Lock key, and check whether the Caps Lock light goes on or off; if it does then your Windows session may be recoverable. You may have to wait a few seconds to see a response.Use the Task ManagerAll recent versions of Windows have a built in application called 'Task Manager.' To run it simply hold down Ctrl and Alt, and press Delete (note: Windows 2000 users will then have to pr
Making Windows run faster: upgrade your PC 2007-09-19 13:53:00 Mo' MemoryOne of the major causes of windows running slowly is a lack of physical memory (called RAM). When this physical memory becomes full, Windows
shuffles the information used by inactive programs into a file on your hard-drive called a 'page file' (or sometimes a 'swap file'). This shuffling back and forth of information takes time and slows the operation of your PC down.Buying and installing more RAM is one way to give your PC a speed boost. There are many different types of RAM available, and you have to install the one that is correct for your PC. You can use the Crucial Memory Advisor™ tool to find out what types of memory your PC supports (Crucial are a major supplier of memory with prices often cheaper than you will find elsewhere). If you need advice about installing your new RAM, check out the How to install RAM article at lifehacker.Veni Video ViciMany computers these days have video controller built onto the motherboard (the motherboard is the big circuit board i Read more:upgrade
Keyboard shortcut of the week: help! 2007-10-02 09:50:00 Just about every Windows application has a help file, or at least connects you to a webpage that provides help. Nevertheless, users with problems frequently forget about the help file. Often - as with the Microsoft Office products - these help files are searchable and sometimes even include tutorials.You can access the help file for any program (or indeed for Windows itself) by pressing the F1 key.So, before you seek the advice of a techie or search the web for help, hit F1. Read more:shortcut
Print the web and save the world 2007-10-01 14:30:00 Web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox are notoriously bad at printing. You can end up with many disparate pages with sidebars and parts of images on, you have no idea how many pages are going to come out, and you use more paper than you need; which, can't be good for the environment - let alone your finances.This is not the fault of the browser programmers, but rather, it is 'the nature of the beast.' One of the advantages of web pages is that they are not subject to the limitations of the printed page. Many web programmers are kind enough to supply a printable version of their pages. [I must find a way of adding them to this blog... maybe using the RSS feed...] Anyway, if there is no link to a 'printer friendly version,' then the best thing to do is to copy what you want and paste it into a word processor, which will then bypass all the problems mentioned above.You can select the information you want by clicking and dragging with the mouse, although, this can be an i Read more:Print
"Can you hear it?" Three Freeware Audio Applications 2007-09-29 11:58:00 Winamp has long been a popular mp3 player developing a large user community. Members of this community submit a plethora of skins, plug-ins and other add-ons to the Winamp website. Winamp also offers support for iPods and other mp3 players, and functions as an adequate video player.If you have ever made an audio mix CD from mp3 files, you have probably been annoyed to find that all the tracks play at different volume levels, spoiling that overall ambiance you wished to create with your selection of top tunes. If this problem is a source of vexation for you, try mp3gain. With this program you can quickly balance the levels of a selection of mp3 files, so as to further impress that prospective partner, work colleague, or friend with your eminently good taste.The best freeware audio editor available is Audacity. It provides support for mp3 files - as well as a number of other formats - and offers enough editing features and effects to meet most user's needs. Unfortunately, Audacity does Read more:Three
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Keyboard shortcut of the week: search and find 2007-10-10 13:16:00 If you wish to bring up Windows' file search minimise all your windows and press F3. You can also search within a certain folder too: open that folder up in Windows Explorer (the name for the program that opens when you double click on 'My Documents', 'My Computer', etc) and - you guessed it - press F3.Pressing F3 opens search dialogs in many other programs as well: in Internet Explorer it opens (and closes) the vertical search bar; in MS Outlook it opens up the 'Advanced Find' dialog. Try pressing F3 when using applications that have some sort of search facility.In a similar vein, you can open up the find facility in many applications by holding down the Control ('Ctrl') key and pressing F. To explain the difference between search and find, consider that you will search for a web page and when you have opened it you can find text within it. In MS Word Ctrl + F opens the 'Find and Replace' dialog. As with F3, try it out in any program that has a find facility.Of course some Read more:shortcut
Four Hardware Tips: CD/DVD drives and scanning 2007-10-08 10:29:00 Eject the CD or DVD drive when your PC is switched offYou will need some sort of pin (or straightened paper clip) which you can push into the small hole on most CD or DVD drives to manually eject the tray.Stop your DVD playback stutteringIf Windows detects a problem with one of the drives on your PC, it may reset the disk controller mode to a slower level, causing DVD play back to halt intermittently.To fix this, right-click on 'My Computer' and click 'Manage'.This will open up the Computer Management console: click on 'Device Manager'.Open up 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, and right-click on 'Secondary IDE Channel' and click on 'Uninstall'.Restart your PC.Windows should re-detect the controller and set it back to a quicker mode.Prevent scans from showing details from the opposite side of the scanned sheetWhen scanning some media, particularly newspapers, you will notice that text and images from the other side of the sheet appear on the scan. To prevent this place a dark piece Read more:Hardware
Time for a purge: reclaiming hard-drive space 2007-10-03 17:51:00 If you are running low on hard-drive
space it may be time for a purge of files that you no longer use, or have no wish to keep any more. In my previous post on this subject I suggested installing and running the excellent Treesize to find out the size of each folder, and I explained how to clear the cache in your web browser. In this post I will describe what steps to take in a more general purge of unwanted files.Removing unwanted applicationsFrom the Control Panel and open either 'Add or Remove Programs', or 'Uninstall a Program' (if you use Vista). Go through the list of programs and remove any that you don't use any more. This may sound like obvious advice, but the easy availability of freeware programs means that many of us have collections of applications installed on our machines that we played with once or twice and then forgot about.Removing non-essential filesOver time, Windows collects various temporary files, logs and other non-essential files. To delete these, go to t
Speed up your PC: streamlined visuals 2007-10-19 06:20:00 Over the years the Windows interface has become increasingly visually appealing, however, these graphic effects can have an impact on performance.The effects of effectsWindows 2000 and XP users can switch off some of these effects in order to get better performance from their PC. To do this, right-click on the desktop - away from any icons and select 'Properties'. This will open the 'Display Properties' dialog box. On this box select the 'Appearance tab'.Click on the 'Effects...' button, and the following dialog box will open. To increase performance make sure that 'Show shadows under menus' and 'Show windows contents while dragging' are not ticked. Click 'OK' on all the boxes when you have made your changes.Pick a better wallpaperAnother factor that may impact performance is the size of the image you use as your desktop background - also known as a wallpaper. You can use any size of image as your wallpaper and Windows will resize it to fit the screen. By picking a smalle Read more:Speed
Keyboard shortcut of the week: the great escape 2007-10-18 12:08:00 The escape key (marked 'Esc' on most keyboards) has a number of functions, but probably it's most useful function is for closing dialog boxes (those small windows that open within a program, such as the 'Save as...' box) where it is the equivalent of pressing the 'Cancel' button or the close button in the top right hand corner - the equivalent of pressing the 'OK' button is the return key.Pressing the escape key also close menus, including the start menu, which can be opened using the windows key (the one with the Windows logo on). Read more:shortcut
Toolbars gone AWOL 2007-10-16 09:25:00 There is a bug in Windows XP that causes the toolbars in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer (the thing that opens when you double-click on My Computer etc) to disappear.Doug Knox has written an excellent little program to fix this problem. Download it from his website here.
Link to Bloody Computer! 2007-10-15 19:09:00 If you wish to link to Bloody Computer
!, copy the following code and paste it into your website's html file or add it to your blog. Please leave a comment if you need any help doing this.The link will look like this (without the outer border):
Three free video tools 2007-10-15 03:46:00 If you have a TV tuner card or video
capture card then you can do worse than give dscaler a try. This free software combats the problems of interlacing and other visual quirks in captured video. It enables you to capture video from a hardware source and apply a variety of effects and filters to it in order to improve the quality of the output video file.Once you have captured a video from an external source, you may wish to edit it. For professional video editing you have to spend serious money, but there is a free alternative: Virtual Dub. Whilst it is not as fully-featured as professional video editing software, Virtual Dub is still a powerful piece of software for editing or changing format of a variety of video file types.Real Alternative is a small package that enables you to watch RealMedia files without installing Real Player. After installing this codec pack (software that translates digital information into video or sound) you are able to open RealMedia files with various med Read more:Three
Keyboard shortcut of the week: screen capture 2007-10-23 09:48:00 If you wish to capture
what you have on your screen
as an image you can do so by holding down the control key (Ctrl) and pressing the Print Screen key (sometimes abbreviated to Prt Scr or similar) - on most keyboards this key will be found next to the F12 key, above the Insert key.This will put an image of the screen into the 'Clipboard', which is the name for the "holding area" where windows keeps things that you have copied. You can then paste this image into any program that accepts pasted images, such as image editors or word processors.Windows includes an image editor, called Paint, which is found in the 'Accessories' folder on the Start Menu program list. This application enables you to edit the screen image, should you wish to copy a section of it, or change its size, and save it as an image file.Most word processors also include a few limited image manipulation features. In MS Word there is a toolbar that includes image manipulation tools, such as brightness and contrast ad Read more:shortcut
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