How to Hide Desktop Icons

Requirement: Windows XP
Level: Beginner

This is a commonly asked question, but actually to accomplish it is very easy. Just go to your desktop, right click, go to arrange icons by-> and uncheck the show desktop icons. There, your desktop icons is hidden. This is useful if you like to have a clean desktop and less icons to block that beautiful wallpaper of yours. But by doing so, you might find it troublesome to access certain shortcuts.

Therefore, I'm going to show you a way to achieve the clean desktop without compromising on the convenience of having shortcuts. That is by having a toolbar. To do this, first just drag any one of your folders to the top of the screen. If done correctly, a toolbar should appear. Right click on the toolbar, and you can see the various settings to configure. You can auto-hide it, add additional toolbars, set the size, and lots more. Here's a toolbar for my desktop.



It's a little small, but you should see the line of toolbar at the top of the screen, and the black bar on the bottom is my windows toolbar. All the icons that I hid is displayed on the toolbar I made, so I do not have to compromise on the lack of convenience. You can display your wallpaper fully with the glory it deserves.

Keeping Your PC Virus Free

You do not necessarily need an anti-virus program to secure your computer. What's most important is the browsing habits. If you are not aware of the dangers, the best anti-virus program in the world would not secure your computer. Here are some tips that could help you secure your PC.

1. Choose what you read
A lot of virus and worms spread through e-mail attachments and instant messengers. These malicious programs can come in different forms from word documents to pictures. The rule to avoid infecting yourself if to look at the sender. If it is from someone unknown, ignore it. From someone you know? Read the subject, if it looks suspicious or you are not expecting it, ask the sender or read with caution. The anti-virus program provided by the mail hosting should not be the determining factor for the safety of the attachment. Trust your judgment, and think before opening any attachments.

2. Do not install unnecessary software
Many softwares/toolbars/plug-ins from the Internet may not be as safe as you think. They may not contain viruses, but spywares or adwares. Unless they are really necessary, think twice before you install any software, and read the terms and conditions first. Read some reviews and comments on professional websites before installing.

3. Avoid porn/hacking/cracking sites
From my experience, the above websites are the most popular for attempting to infect your computer. They may have a lot of links, pop-ups that would come up, and sometimes forcing certain plug-in installation before allowing access. Please, DO NOT install these plug-ins, or in fact any plug-ins in any website unless you know what it is.

4. Avoid usage of P2P software
P2P softwares, such as Kazaa, Limewire are great for file-sharing and downloading those hard to get files. However they come with a great risk, as many of these files may in fact contain malicious programs that could infect your computer. From my experience, a significant portion, maybe 10%-15% of the files inside are infected. If you download from them, you too risk infection. I too have stopped using it just for this reason.

5. Scan first
I once have two of my computers infected just because I wanted to save some time copying files from a friend. His USB thumb drive is infected, I did not scan it before I plugged it in, I regretted. This resulted in the format of both the infected laptops. Therefore, next time before opening a file you just downloaded, or plugging in a friend's USB drive, scan first.

There are no definite ways to keep your computer virus free. What is most important is to be smart when surfing the Internet, and be aware of the dangers. There are plenty of ways a virus can infect your computer, even without connecting to the Internet. Of course, get a good anti-virus program. For financial restricted users, I recommend AVG Free, which you can get here.

Shortcut to Windows Programs

Requirements: Microsoft Windows
Level: Beginner

I'm sure many people are familiar with the Windows Start Menu. It is like a portal to all the different installed programs on the computer. However, as the usage grows sometimes people may find it difficult or time consuming to find the appropriate programs. With these keywords, you may be able to save some time looking for these often used programs.

1. Go to Start->Run
2. Type 'notepad' and click OK

This will run the Windows notepad. There are many more programs that can be run with the correct commands. Here is a short list of useful programs.

• wordpad - Windows Wordpad
• mspaint - Microsoft Pain
• cmd - Command Prompt
• calc - Windows Calculator
• dxdiag - DirectX Diagnostics
• freecell - Frecell card game
• mshearts - Hearts card game
• winmine - Minesweeper game
• pinball - Windows Pinball game
• regedit - Registry editor
• winword - Microsoft Word
• photoshop - Adobe Photoshop

Speed up Windows XP Boot

Requirements: Basic knowledge on programs, Windows XP, Common Sense
Level: Intermediate

Your boot up speed is not only determined by the speed of the computer hardware, but also the amount of installed programs. Some of these programs are set by default to load when Windows boot up. However there are ways to change that so these programs only run when you want them to.

1. Go to Start->Run. Type "msconfig" (without the quotes)
2. Go to the Startup tab. You should see a list of programs, each with a checkbox on the left.
3. Go through the list, and look for familiar programs which you can identify. Some may include Microsoft Office, Quicktime, Adobe, Nero, DAP.
4. Uncheck programs that you do not need.
5. To save the changes, restart the computer.

Note: The rule here is to identify which program that you do not need to run on startup. Unchecked programs would still be able to function normally, just that you may need to manually load the programs. If anything does not function as you wished, just repeat steps 1-5, but checking instead.

Mount/Run ISO/cue/bin Files

Requirements: Virtual Drive Tools
Level: Beginner
I have been asked quite a number of times on how to run ISO, cue or bin files. These are images, and when mounted on a virtual drive will act like a CD/DVD. So to run or access the files on the images, you'll need a virtual drive tool. There are a few out there, the more popular ones being:

• Daemon Tools (www.daemon-tools.cc)
• Alchohol (www.alcohol-soft.com)

For these programs, after installation and restart the first thing you need to do is to create a virtual drive. This drive will be similar to your CD-ROM drive as you see it in My Computer. Once the virtual drive is created, you can start to mount the image. Find for an option to mount the image, and choose the image file. Once mounted, you can access the image as your drive. Just access My Computer and you should see a new drive there. For example is you have one hard drive (C:) and one CD-ROM (D:), after creating the virtual drive you should have an additional drive, let's say (E:).

The basic idea is like that, for a deeper understanding on virtual drive emulation, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_drive

Downloading videos from streaming sites (YouTube etc)

Requirement: Internet connection
Level: Beginner/Intermediate

YouTube and similar sites like Metacafe and Break.com allows streaming of video, where the video is downloaded while the users are watching it. There are several ways that you can download these videos, some requiring installation of plug-ins and program.

Method 1: This is a method which does not require and installation whatsoever. For Internet Explorer users, files loaded when you are surfing the web is actually stored in your hard drive, in the Temporary Internet Files folder. The purpose is so that when you re-visit a site, the computer would not need to download these files from the Internet, instead just retrieve them from your hard drive. To find these files in Windows XP, go to C:\Documents and Settings\Your username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files.
Inside the folder you should see lots and lots of files, to locate the particular file you are looking for, you can try clicking on the size tab, as video files are usually the largest among the temporary files. From there just copy and paste the selected file to your destination.

Method 2: This is my personal favourite, as a Firefox user, there is a plugin that you should take a look at. It's called Download Helper. The plugin will show when a video is available for download, and to actually download the video takes just a few clicks of the mouse. Simple and easy to use. Here's the link for the addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

Method 3: This is a method for non-Firefox users. There are plenty of programs which allow users to download videos from YouTube, such as YouTube downloader (http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/). Some of these programs may be trial version only and require registration after a period of use.

Method 4: Downloading from website. There are websites which provide services that allows download of the videos by copy and pasting the link to the site. One example of such sites is www.keepvid.com

There may be more ways to download streaming videos, it depends on your personal preference. My personal favourite is the Firefox addon because it not only applies to streaming videos, but also flash and other multimedia apps.

Google Hacks

Requirements: Internet Connection, Web Browser
Level: Beginner

I'm sure everybody knows what Google is. But not everyone knows what Google is capable of. The search engine is extremely powerful, and when used with a little twist, can reveal some very interesting results.

I'll show you how to do a simple search to find mp3 files. Just put in the search bar:

?intitle:index.of? mp3

followed by the title/artist. For example, "?intitle:index.of? mp3 nirvana lithium" will search for mp3 files containing nirvana and lithium keywords.

Another trick is to search for a particular type of file (iso, zip etc.):
inurl:adobe filetype:pdf

There are many more tricks to search in Google, but remember, this is placed for information and education purposes, we do not support piracy.

For more check out http://johnny.ihackstuff.com