Windows
CategoryHow to save and set application process priority automatically
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For seemingly forever, Windows has allowed the user to adjust the application’s process priority so that it receives more than it’s fair share of the system processor. While it’s generally discouraged, the processes priority can be adjusted from within Task Manager and it’s right-click context menu. At which point you are able to choose from priority ranging from Realtime to Low – all processes launch with a priority of Normal. Setting a user process as High priority is a manual task and must be set each time the application is launched. Prio is a light-weight … Continue Reading
How to add an ‘always on top’ option to any Windows application
Many applications benefit from the ability to keep their interface on top of all other open application windows. Unfortunately, few applications actually include this feature. While I’m of the opinion such a feature should be native to Windows, that’s just not the case today. Users needing such functionality might be interested in checking out Window On Top. Window On Top is a portable utility that extends the always on top feature to every software. While running, the functionality can be toggled on and off in any active application window with the keyboard shortcut CTRL+F8 or a drag-and-drop … Continue Reading
How to generate email notifications on hard drive errors
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – or something to that effect! Hard drive errors or crashes can turn a good day bad, or a bad day horrific. That’s why it’s critical to do all that is possible to prevent disk failures before data loss occurs. The problem is monitoring your disk health is inconvenient and time consuming – often times data access errors are recorded in Windows Event Viewer. This is your first clue that something is not quite behaving well. How often do you peruse Event Viewer? Exactly! Disk … Continue Reading
Monitor a remote computer with automatic periodic desktop screenshots
Network Spy is a free open-source Windows application that can be handy in situations where you wish to monitor remote desktop sessions. The software follows the traditional client and server installs and spying is accomplished by the client receiving screenshots of the remote server every few minutes. Without any interaction being possible, the application is strictly for monitoring systems from afar. This does not have to be nefarious in nature, there exists many reasons of positive ethical labeling – though ultimate usage is left to you, the user! Installing and configuring Network Spy is extremely … Continue Reading
Mount and selectively restore files from System Restore snapshots
System Restore is a Microsoft Windows feature that can aid the user in recovering from a complete system melt-down. System Restore can be thought of like a type of backup but it’s functionality is a bit more involved – in that it captures snapshots of the Windows subsystem that most other backup applications ignore. At regular intervals or before a major change occurs in Windows – like a new driver or software install – System Restore will take capture the state of the registry, system files, and some application settings. That way, should something go … Continue Reading
Add “Safely Remove Hardware” to the Desktop context menu
If you are someone who uses removable USB thumb drives or hard drives I hope you have gotten into the habit of using the Safely Removing Hardware wizard. The wizard should be initiated anytime you are removing a portable device from the system – it’s the only way to ensure Windows isn’t still accessing or using the device in question. Removing a device prematurely can lead to all sorts of data problems, including out right corruption and lost files! The wizard can be initiated through the Desktop notification tray by clicking familiar USB-looking icon. Unfortunately, in … Continue Reading
Capturing the average CPU usage of any process in Windows
Windows Task Manager makes it easy to see how much of your CPU resources a particular running application is taking. Unfortunately, the information provided is real-time usage and in some situations that measurement isn’t entirely useful. CPU usage of an application can spike or otherwise show sustained usage over a brief time that can skew your perception of what actually is going on. However, capturing the average CPU usage over a period of time for any given application is not possible directly through Task Manager. Average CPU Cycles is a portable application that alleviates that … Continue Reading
Running applications as Windows services
Microsoft provides no easy method for configuring an application to run in the background, automatically, upon boot. The closet a user can come is by adding a shortcut to the application in question in the Windows Start Up folder. For most circumstances this can often be enough to get the job done. The application launches when the specific user logs into Windows – you see this already with many applications. The Start Up approach has some obvious limitations – it’s per-user based for one. If you wanted iTunes to auto-launch so that it can be used … Continue Reading
Automatically wipe your Windows clean of junk and log files on shutdown
Keeping your Windows PC lean, mean, and clean is a fundamental problem when it comes to every day computing. Like getting an oil change on your car, it’s good to not allow cruft to collect and build on your PC. Windisk is an advanced system cleaner that removes most of the grunt work typically associated with other cleaning products – and it does it all automatically in the background. Windisk will clean all temporary files, recently viewed files, browser cache data, and invalid registry entries. After launching Windisk you will automatically be placed within … Continue Reading
Printing or saving a directory listing to a text file
Utilizing the command prompt is a lost skillset with each generation of computing users. Certainly, if you know what you are doing it can often be faster to accomplish a particular task by venturing into the black background window instead of the interface driven world of Windows Explorer. Other times, it’s actually not even possible to complete a goal using a mouse and Explorer – as is the case today. It’s not often that you need to capture or print a directory listing with all it’s files but it has come across my scenario … Continue Reading
