The notion of Start->Run has been ingrained in most enthusiasts minds as the premise existed since the days of Windows 95. The method was an efficient way to launch commands without the need of traversing the Start Menu – assuming you knew what you were looking for. For reasons unknown, Microsoft chose to remove the Run command from Vista and Windows 7’s Start Menu – replacing it with the Start->Search command instead. Generally, Start->Search expands upon the Run command of old as it can pull from an indexed database, meaning you don’t need to know, or path explicitly to what you are launching.

For the most part, the functionality works fantastically but there are circumstances where the process bogs down, especially when the command in question isn’t part of the indexed database – like a remote network path you are trying to access. It’s times like these that one may miss the Run command. Keyboard junkies may already be thinking to themselves, what about WinKey+R? This is an effective alternative as the Run command dialog still exists in 7 but more and more computer users are shying away from memorization of obscure shortcuts. For those users, they should know it’s quite simple to return the Run command back to it’s rightful spot in the Start Menu.

1. Right-click on the Taskbar and choose Properties.



2. Click the Start Menu tab and choose Customize.



3. In the Customize Start Menu dialog scroll through the list and look for the check-box next to Run command. Check it!



4. OK out of the two dialog windows, returning yourself to your desktop view.
5. Click on the Start Orb and notice that the Run command has returned.

As a blogger I’m quite reliant on Firefox and it’s built-in spellcheck. While not perfect, it does save me a lot of embarrassment as, let’s face it, when you get used to a crutch it’s difficult to function fully without it. Even though spellcheck wasn’t prevalent through my schooling years, in my professional life you wouldn’t think of composing anything without a quick check-through.

Firefox handles forum posting or even blogging well, but as a tech blogger a lot of the terms I use throughout the day aren’t recognized as being spelled correctly in the default Firefox dictionary. Thankfully, adding the terms is simple as right-clicking on the word in question and choosing Add to Dictionary. Unfortunately, as easy as Firefox makes it to add your own additional entries, it lacks a convenient way to remove or correct terms that were added erroneously. The actual process is straightforward enough once you know where to look, however.

1. Navigate to your Firefox profile directory. Assuming you haven’t done any customization when you installed Firefox, you’d know if you did, then you can locate the folder easily using the environment variable %APPDATA%. In your Windows Start Search box key in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles.
2. In the resulting Explorer window you should see a folder named xxxxxxx.default – where xxxxxxx is composed of seemingly random letters and numbers. You may have a few folders here but the important one is post-pended with .default.
3. Inside the profile folder look for a file titled persdict.dat. This is the custom dictionary file for your Firefox profile.
4. Using a text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad, open the file and look for the line that contains the improperly spelled word. Delete the entire line and save the file.

Easy enough isn’t it?

Practically every laptop manufacturer ships with a trackpad or touchpad as the method of input for cursor movement and mouse clicks. Accepted form factor dictates that the trackpad be placed below the keyboard which certainly makes it convenient and efficient to switch between typing and mousing. However, that convenience comes at a price – at least for users like me. The trackpad placement also makes it quite easy to accidentally touch while typing. For example, on my main laptop the trackpad is situated in a way that the palm on my left hand can activate the top left-most portion of the pad if I’m left thumb gets a bit lazy. As I’m a left-handed typer – my left thumb is used to activate the spacebar, this situation occurs rather frequently. The onscreen cursor will jump positions in the document I’m working on, and suddenly my character composition is all over the place.

Does this affect you too? There are two options that can be explored to address this annoyance. Many trackpads have additional software installed that will allow them to become disabled the moment an external mouse is connected. This is logical but not always practical; a laptop is thought to be portable and having a surface for an external mouse isn’t always feasible. The second option is provided by Touchfreeze.

Touchfreeze is a free Windows utility that deactivates your trackpad when the keyboard is being utilized. This goes a great way in minimizing the chances of accidental cursor movements or mouse clicks. Touchfreeze is free and offers little frills outside of it’s main competency. Once installed, it sits in your tray and stays out of your way; providing it’s functionality immediately. Simple and effective, which are two of my main requirements when evaluating software.

Download Touchfreeze

One of the first things I do on a fresh Windows install is disable the sound scheme – the tadas, bleeps, zings, and woos on every action and reaction is enough to drive me insane. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make the audio experience within Windows less jarring and while I do feel it’s light-years away from the old sounds, it’s still not my thing – and likely never will be.

If you are a user who keeps their sound events at their default, either because you welcome the auditory feedback or it just isn’t a major issue for you, you’ve still likely experienced the following scenario. Imagine you have a half hour to kill before your plane begins boarding at the airport, plenty of time to hammer out a few emails and not lose half your workday traveling. You fire up your laptop, Windows boots, and you log in … bada boo ding! The volume on your Windows start-up sound now has half the patrons at the gate looking in your direction. Minor in the grand scheme of things, but I’m sure there are at least a few of you that are slightly embarrassed during a situation like this. Of course this is just one of many other situations where an inappropriate Windows sound screeches out but the end solution doesn’t have to result in you disabling your sound schemes.

Auto Mute is a no frills free Windows application that sits in your tray and helps to tame random Windows auditory events. Auto Mute can be configured to mute the speaker volume on shutdown, log off, suspend, or even when the screen saver activates. Upon your next boot, the speaker remains muted and therefor you are free from public embarrassment. Lastly, and the main feature I use on my laptop, is the ability to toggle the mute status of your system with a keyboard shortcut – defaulting to CTRL+F10.

Auto Mute was tested under Vista and Windows 7 but should function fine in all versions of Windows.

Download Auto Mute

Those of you that are web designers have likely grown a great disdain for Internet Explorer. IE is given, and rightly so, a ton of grief in this area because of Microsoft’s attitude towards following web standards. When a web browser is programmed to obey and render accurately to standards, a web designer can be reasonably sure that their layout and programming will function correctly. Internet Explorer, however, has always ventured slightly off the agreed upon path which often means web developers must typically work around the differences and provide logic exclusively for IE based browsers. Sounds pretty tedious and painful doesn’t it? It gets worse – with each version of Internet Explorer the path continues to diverge. Therefor, it is not uncommon for a web application to have multiple blocks of code to handle each iteration of Internet Explorer!

Ensuring your application works across all the browsers logically requires a good amount of testing. It’s a straightforward testing methodology to support Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera – they all can be installed on the same system without interfering with one another. Likewise, Internet Explorer plays along nicely with the alternative browsers but unfortunately is not overly kind to it’s brethren – that is to say, only one version of Internet Explorer can be installed and maintained in Windows. Testing IE7 vs IE8 metrics typically requires two computers or a somewhat complicated virtualization platform.

IETester is an amazingly free application that aims to simplify testing across different versions of Internet Explorer – all on the same computer without any complicated setup. IETester is able to render and display your design/application in IE5.5-8 simultaneously, without requiring installations of each version.

IETester is a breeze to use; if you are familiar with the Office 2007 ribbon you will be right at home. While it is considered beta-level software I had minimal stability issues on Windows 7. The lone requirement is your installed browser must at least be IE7. If you must deal with the existence of Internet Explorer you owe it to yourself to check out IETester.

Download IETester

The modern world, by and large, are quite conscious of energy consumption and some of the wastefulness that exists. Regardless of which side of the go green initiative you stand, it’s hard to argue against their not existing at least some unnecessary inefficiencies or waste.

A potential source of an increased electricity consumption is the abundance of computers in the house; many households have more than one computer – a concept rather foreign even just a few years ago. While all modern PCs have the capability of slipping into a low-power consumption state, like stand-by or hibernation, not everyone does.

For some, the function of their computer does not allow for any time offline – perhaps a print or file server as an example. Still others may have background tasks that occur while they are away from the computer – tasks that otherwise would interfere with the performance of their computer. It’s quite commonplace to perform disk defrags, full anti-virus scans, or backups when the PC isn’t actively being used; such as throughout the night.

If you are energy conscious you may be at a crossroads here as not all tasks can awake a computer from stand-by. While utilizing Task Scheduler in Windows, it is possible to wake the PC it’s not at all user-friendly. Instead, I suggest you look at WakeUpOnStandBy – which does just as the name suggests. If their exists a few tasks that need to take place routinely the application can be configured on a schedule to execute those tasks, even if the PC is sleeping. After completion, WakeUpOnStandBy can then put the PC back into it’s dream state.

With WakeUpOnStandBy I can have my PC wake-up in the early morning and download all the podcasts recently released, that way they are ready to be sync to my portable device first thing in the morning. What are you using it for?

Download WakeUpOnStandBy

On March 1st 2010 the release candidate of Windows 7 that Microsoft made free available last year began it’s gradual push towards expiration – every 2 hours your computer will shutdown. Your procrastination will now cause you a little bit of pain or at the very least, annoyance. Unfortunately, you’re only recourse at this point is to either downgrade to XP or purchase and install the retail version of Windows 7. Either option will require a format and reinstall, generally. I’m a firm believer in doing a full wipe and reinstalling Windows rather than performing in-place upgrades. So, even if there are random workarounds to avoid a complete reinstall, I advise against it.

Two key points should be made before reinstalling, one of which is hopefully logical at this point; check that you have all your files safely backed up! The second point may be overlooked however; ensure that you have the media and serial number of any software you require post-Windows install. With digital download available for a lot of purchased software, the idea of having the license number on the back of the CD/DVD jewel case doesn’t apply. Instead, you must keep the key in a safe place and ideally a place you can remember a year or more down the road. But what if you have misplaced the serial number necessary to reinstall? One of your recourse’s is contacting the vendor or manufacturer and hope they have a record of your purchase. This is often a time consuming ordeal so today I’ve found a better option.

License Crawler is a free Windows utility that can be a great aid in recovering serial numbers for currently installed applications. The software works by scanning through your Windows Registry, looking for keywords that ideally return the serial number you are looking for. Many applications stored their registration information in the Registry, and while License Crawler isn’t uncovering any magic you couldn’t do manually, it certainly speeds up the process. Logically, if the application does not store the serial number in the registry, License Crawler isn’t of great use. In those situations you may find a file in the installation directory of the application that contains the information you seek.

Download License Crawler

No matter what your level of experience is, chances are you’ve been tasked to provide PC support for a friend or family member. If you are lucky, the troubled friend is just down the street, as problems are easier to knock out when you can touch the computer. However, this isn’t always the case and having to provide remote support, generally over the phone, is frustrating and stressful for both parties. Because of this, Microsoft provides a tool to aid in these types of situations – Windows Remote Assistance. You probably have never heard of this feature and you may even be more surprised to learn it was first introduced way back in Windows XP! The entire process got a spit-shine in Vista/7 and I have to say the experience is rather slick.

To get started, search for remote assist from the Windows Start Menu search; this will launch the Windows Remote Assistance wizard.

Choose Invite someone you trust to help you.

Remote Assistance will now create an invitation file but first you must choose the delivery method for your request – generally via email is the easiest and that is what I suggest. If you use a webmail service for your email you must first save the invitation as a file and then send it as an email attachment. Seems straightforward enough right?

With the invitation created and delivered Remote Assistance will now launch and await an incoming connection request. For security purposes, the whole session is protected by a randomly generated password that is required in order to connect to your PC.

If you happen to be the generous user providing the support portion of Remote Assistance your responsibility is kick-started by simply double-clicking the received invitation file and supplying the correct connection password. If successful, the application window will open and you will see the troubled user’s desktop, as if you were sitting there in person, helping over their shoulder.

Remote Assistance is an excellent support tool that can greatly ease the frustration of helping less savvy PC users blindly over the telephone.

We all know we should backup our system and files regularly in order to avoid any disastrous results yet a small minority of us actually do. The cliched saying that they are two types of computer users, those that backup and those that never lost anything is blunt and to the point – it’s only a matter of time before you transition from one class of users to another. The painful irony to it all is the built-in backup utilities in Windows were generally poor – were because in Windows 7, Microsoft has finally revamped the entire process.

The backup process is kick-started by searching for backup off the Windows 7 Start Menu Search and choosing Backup and Restore.

Select Set up backup.

The first real decision is selecting where you wish your backups to be saved; they can reside on a second hard drive, a removable device, or even on a network share.

Logically, we must now decide what files should be included in the backup set. I generally appreciate absolute control over processes so I would tend to select the files manually but Windows can choose logical folders itself.

Check any and all folders or files to be backed up.

Review your settings and selections – take note of the ability to automate the backup routine by defining a schedule for the task to follow. The usefulness of backups is greatly diminished if they are not current!

If you are happy with everything click Save settings and run backup.

While Microsoft’s built-in Backup and Restore feature isn’t the Rolls Royce of backup applications – I’d like to see the notion of incremental or differential based backups for example – it is more than enough, and most importantly, simple enough to convince users on the importance of backups.

I’ve already discussed how an application like Device Doctor can help you maintain up to date device drivers for your hardware but perhaps you were left wondering – is there a similar application for installed software? Even though this is a rhetorical question I’m still going to answer it by saying yes, there are actually quite a few! However, the one I recommend is actually developed by CNET and is aptly titled TechTracker.

CNET’s TechTracker is a free Windows utility that will scan your system for install software and return a listing of anything out of date. The list view easily distinguishes your currently installed version with what is available and includes the relevant download link. It’s a simple concept so I won’t waste any more time describing how it works but rather segue into why maintaining current software releases is important.

Most users are conditioned to download and install Windows Updates that Microsoft provides as they become available. The majority of the updates are security patches, stability improvements, or other general bug fixes – all good things. If Windows is accepted to have bugs and security vulnerabilities – why would not other installed applications suffer the same? Obviously the answer is they do but users, and I’m just a guilty as the next, rarely treat them the same. Typically, we install things like Skype or Acrobat or Flash and don’t give it another thought until a reason arises for a reinstallation, perhaps from a format or system crash. While many of the popular applications already provide update mechanisms, most users end up disabling them or otherwise ignoring the update available dialog. Don’t! In this instance, newer generally is better!

CNET is a name you should respect and trust, which is a blessing because the user of TechTracker requires a free CNET account. Privacy minded individuals should also be aware that the scan results are attached and stored with your account, something I consider minor but your opinion may defer.

Download CNET TechTracker