Technology Reviews & Tips by RadicalType.net

Stop Clicking

2010-04-28T22:10:00.013-04:00

A good deal of problems can arise from blindly clicking. Clicking hastily on or "offline" is not a wise thing to do but many people do it. Why I am not sure. Hopefully I can cure most of you of the habit by showing just a few examples of places, products and services that take advantage of these clicking jitters people seem to have.
First off I have to say that I had to disable my adblocking service & delete my host file in order to capture these images. I will tell you what I use later on but I must say that I rarely see ads online.
Downloading plugins & then some
This image I captured from adobe's flash plugin. The extra install changes from time to time but one thing I have noticed, especially with Internet Explorer, is that it takes a moment for the "also install" dialog to show up. So if you click the install now button to quickly you never even see the extra install. This extra install bit happens with several broswer plugins and for the most part is harmless it is also unnecessary. Usually consisting of toolbars and virus scanners.

Downloading Programs
Most of the programs installed on computers today
are downloading online first and then installed. There are a good deal of legitimate sites that host these files for legitimate companies. Download.com & Tucows.com are examples. However they both pay bills with advertising. Often times those ads use methods like the one above. Large DOWNLOAD NOW buttons knowing that you are there to do just that but not for what they are offering. Be patient and wait for your download to start and always read what you are downloading and how to do so. While these downloads are usually not viruses they usually useless and often annoying. You are usually taken to a different website once you click the banner but it often just displays another download button that starts the download. The programs while harmless are annoying and often want you to pay for services that others offer freely and better.
Free stuff
Free music, movies, apps and even porno. When it comes to this, especially the later, people are much more eager to click to get what they are looking for and free. Advertisers know this and so do those writing malicious programs. More often than not whatever you want for free may cost you if you are not paying attention. While there are decent places out there for such things there are always ads & apps that get by even the best of places.

Advertising & Websites The image to the right came from an ad from a legitimate website. I ran a search for AVG and these were the sponsored results. Only on of them lead to AVG's website the other two were companies I have never heard of before. One had fake AVG logos and wanted my credit card number. These sponsered results show up everywhere and despite the best efforts from companies to filter them out there are others still that work to put them in front of all others. In this case the ones that may seem legit may not be and like the others always look and read.

Applications

Once you have downloaded your program you still have to mindful of what you click. Run through the install to fast and you could miss all the extra adon's the program is installing. Usually companies get paid to add toolbars, change your start page, change your default search engine or add extra programs to the install. If you don't read through the install carefully you could end up with a browser that looks like this. I myself use Firefox with adblock plus and/or Chrome with adblock as well as editing my host file with the help of http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
Keep in mind the sites that you frequent often and enjoy using pay their bills with advertising often based on a pay per view ad deal not just pay per click. So try to remember to disable the software for your favorite sites, just be careful what you click.

Free up space on your hard drive

2010-04-22T12:15:00.007-04:00

Recycle Bin
Reduce the size the recycle bin uses. It's capacity is based on hard drive size and seems rather unnecessary to use 10% of your drive.
To view or change the settings 1st right click on the icon and then select properties. After that you should see the properties window for the trash bin. As you can see most of you will be using a couple gigabytes or more which is unneeded if you lack the space. To change the settings for XP and older select "Configure drives independently" and then select the tab for your hard drive. If you have more than on partition or hard drive letter you will have a tab for each drive. Unfortunately XP & older will only let you select down to 1%. Vista and newer will allow you to enter any value you want. I usually select about 600-700mb which is about the size of a cd and still higher than you may need.

Browser Cache
Change the size of your browsers offline storage. IE settings used to be fairly high and often times can be set to 1gb or more. Useless for highspeed internet access. The settings for each browser differ but chrome, firefox and Safari usually set it to 50mb. For IE first go to the tools menu, then internet options and in the window that comes up select the settings tab under browser history. 1mb - 50mb is a decent amount.

System Restore
Change your settings for system restore. It too also uses a percentage of your hard drive. Most people never even use this feature though it can be handy if you install faulty drivers or software. You can get to the settings in the control panel under the system icon or performance and maintenance or by right clicking the "my computer" icon and selecting properties. For XP and under it will be under the tab for system restore. For vista and 7 you'll have to select "advance system settings" on the left side of the properties window. From the system restore/protection tab select the drive you want to configure and adjust the amount of hard drive space being used. I usually set it between 5-8gb but 1gb is suitable for most people. If you have more than one hard drive or partition it can be turned of for those drives as long as it is not being used to run programs. You have to restart for the settings to take effect.

Temp files.
Rather than go through every location they are kept use CCleaner to clean them up for you. You can download from http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner The install takes up less than 3mb and using the application I have seen it remove more than 1gb worth of temp files.
Another place to check for files you don't need that CCleaner does not check is your download folder. Most of the files in there should be files you have downloaded from the internet like the CCleaner install file if you downloaded it. Check to make sure you don't have various pictures or email attachments in there but if it is anything like mine with 500mb of install files they can all be deleted.

Applications
Removing any unused programs will free up space. Most desktops and laptops come preconfigured with lot's of software most of which is rather useless or, if you have had the machine for a few years, really outdated. Getting rid of a couple of programs you no longer need can free up quit a bit of space and speed up start time if some of those programs are set to run at startup.

Cloning
If you really lack hard drive space or are just looking to upgrade having your hard drive cloned to a larger new drive allows you to make an exact duplicate of the hard drive. You end up with a larger drive for storage and never lose a thing. The older drive can then serve as a permanent backup from that point, an extra drive if you have room in your machine or can be made into an external USB hard drive. The whole process can usually be done in a day. Visit me @ http://RadicalType.com/tech.html for more info or to schedule an appointment.

A Safer PC: Tips for online use

2010-02-07T22:42:00.004-05:00

First off, most of these tips are for Windows users. Mac OS and Linux have far less worries & vulnerabilities than MS Windows users.
So my first tip will be universal. Blocking websites using the host file located on Linux, Mac & Windows. To put it simple a host file is like an address book. When u type an address into your browser your computer will look to see if you have that address in your host file already if not it will look up that address through your dns provider, usually your isp. All web addresses, for example google.com, can be translated into numbers 74.125.67.105 which is the direct address to Google English.
Long story short, add your pc's number, 127.0.0.1 to that i.p. address in your host file and it is like adding a call block and your pc will never reach that address.
What good is this you ask. Well the folks at MVPs get an updated list of potential bad sites that you can add to your host file and block your pc from ever accessing them. The list they currently have is here and it is quite large. Lots of the sites track you around the internet collecting data about your habits and profiting, some of them are advertising sites showing you banners and some of them are malicious sites hosting maleware and such.
I am not going to go into details of editing everyone's host file so use a search engine to find your OS's host file location and add these sites to it. For Windows the info is here.
Now onto windows.
Install an Antivirus program that updates regularly and set it to scan as often as your needs require. In other words if you are just reading news, checking stocks, reading/sending emails etc you do not need to do full scans everyday and probably not once a week. Once a month a full scan by your *main antivirus program may be fine. If you know you are going to sketchy sites and downloading "free" stuff you may need to scan more after each use. Kinda like washing your hands as needed. Also antivirus programs that scan the links of a webpage before you click on them are incredibly helpful.
Quit using Internet Explorer and if you must use it still upgrade to the newest version with all the current patches. Seriously, Australia, France & Germany have warned of using IE and pointed users towards alternate browsers. Read it here. If that is not enough there are entire websites refusing their best to IE6. Sites like Yahoo, Youtube, Digg, Facebook and others advise upgrades or alternatives. Check out the list of sites and countries here. I recommend Firefox with adblock plus extension installed or Chrome with its newly available extensions including a adblock.
Both Firefox and Chrome use Google's list of known malicious websites to prevent you from accessing them before it is to late. Here is Firefox's example of a filtered site. You can also install McAfee's site advisor for IE & Firefox here.
*For Windows you may also need additional programs to keep safe. The above is good precautions but are not helpful if not followed and updated regularly. To take extra steps you may need additional programs to your antivirus software. Temporary file cleaners, spyware programs and adware programs are good applications to regularly run to check your system for trojans and such that your antivirus software may not catch. Again keep these apps up to date and run them as needed. Do not ever have more than one "real time" scanner running full time all the time.
Lastly nothing is ever to good to be true and rarely if ever free. That goes for banner ads, emails from friends, companies, organizations or Princes from Nigeria, unknown promising links on Facebook, Myspace, Facespace, etc. Just because these companies are high profile reputable sites does not mean they host viruses. They allow everyone to create the site including people that add links to malicious software and viruses. Also smileys, cursors, coupon printing software, unsolicited emails, chain letters, "join blank to get blank" all should be avoided. Anything that sounds to good to be probably is to good to be.
Be safe and if you have questions feel free to post them or email them to me, Gary - Ray

Tech Support

2009-11-23T10:14:00.001-05:00

Tech Support & Computer Repairs Laptops & Desktops Marietta Atlanta

Posted using ShareThis

Laptop Reliability

2009-11-18T13:02:00.004-05:00

SquareTrade recently published its findings on laptop warranty services within the first three years of the life of a laptop. For those interested in purchasing a laptop for the holiday season it would be good to check out the full report here
From my experience the top ranking ones are laptops I myself get the least repairs on and the bottom ranked, HP, I get the most. Generally I recommend Toshiba and Sony and for those sick of running windows I suggest Apple for both the OS and the build of the machine. Asus I rarely see in any thing other than Netbooks but the laptops I do work on (for software related reasons) are extremely nice.

For the most part the report shows one thing most people know, if you spend more you get more. The cheaper the notebook the cheaper the parts are that are in. It is usually a good rule when buying a notebook or any computer.
A few things to keep in mind. I would think most people buying Apple use Apple for the warranty on their machines just as people paying more for a notebook will generally work with the manufacture. The report shows only warranty services they have provided either through retail stores or the end user buying directly from them.
Also netbooks are fairly new so it makes it difficult to say what their lifespan may be. I suggest getting a netbook from those that have been doing well with notebooks.

Free Office Productivity Software

2009-09-10T12:51:00.004-04:00

Microsoft office is very useful to say the least. It can also be costly especially if you need it on all your business systems or you are on a tight budget. OpenOffice.org gives you a free alternatives to to word processing, spreadsheets, database, graphics and presentation. They have a large community of support and developers with free templates addons growing daily. Currently the only negative side is it's lack of support for Office 2007 .docx file extensions. If you happen to receive such a format from a college ask if they can save it compatibility mode for office 2003. You can also use http://docx-converter.com/ to convert them online or use their widget to convert from your desktop. There is also docx to rtf that claims it can handle palm database documents, pdf, openoffice documents and docx as well convert them to pdf or rtf files. Read more about it here

Foxit Reader is a faster lighter alternative to Adobes Acrobat Reader. I have yet to see it lockup or freeze my browser. It works with IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome and has a stand alone viewer. Just watch out for the addon's and changes to your home page during the install. Check them out here

Gimp is a free alternative to Photoshop. While I am not a huge fan of it myself, it does have a huge following. It is open source and like openoffice has many features and plugins. Download it here

Cd / DVD burning are common tasks for anyone. Most manufactured computers come installed with some sort of disc burning utility and Windows XP and up has the function built into the OS. Though these are usually limited in functions or just not very user friendly. CDBurnerXP is a great free alternative that rivals Nero. Don't let the name fool you it does work with Vista.
Here is the link.

I'll add more software as time goes on in the meantime leave any useful tools that you use in the comments section.

Where do Viruses come from and why?

2009-09-06T14:29:00.006-04:00

Recent studies by Network Box show that Brazil and the United States produce slightly over 30% of the worlds viruses and malware. Quite a big chunk between just two countries. Network Box also states that they have 4 viruses per customer per hour. Which is quite high too.
Why are viruses created?
When I am asked that by clients I usually give one or two of the following answers:

To make money. With the big rises in "scareware" viruses that allegedly scan your system and report false positives of virus infection to you only to inform you they cannot be removed unless you purchase the full version. Who is buying into this, literally, I don't know but they continue to be on the rise so somebody somewhere must be.
Some infections hijack your browser leading your to search results and pages they want you to go to. Even cloning pages like yahoo and google so that once you are infected you never know that you are not really using their search engines. They will also run IE in the background using it to click through whatever they choose. Thus making money of ad revenue.

To steal your information. Key loggers that monitor keystrokes, malware that uses your email to spam your address book with your email account. Potenically the worst is that this vicious programs could be stealing vital information they in turn could use or sell.

To prove that they can. Some people simply create viruses to boast. To show off their skills. Often times they are created to prove that certain software engineers simply can not stop them from doing what they do, to show how weak an operating systems securities really are or just because they do not like the software vendor.

To take control and use your computer. Often times a computer infected can be controlled by the one who made it. Usually the maker will take control of an army of infected machines (zombies) and use them to take down a rival website or a big business. DOS or denial of service attacks are not uncommon. Both twitter and facebook went down for a period of time due to DOS. (news) and so did some US and S. Korean computers (news) The zombie computers can also be controlled for purposes as well such as infecting networked machines, using email clients etc.

There are others that are created for various other reasons or simply just to cause damage but these are usually the most common of reasons.
Read more about this at PCWorld.

Use your bios to prevent data loss

2009-09-06T08:46:00.005-04:00

Modern hard drives use S.M.A.R.T. which stands for Self Monitoring Analysis And Reporting. Basically it means what it says. The disk can be monitored and analyzed for potential failures and report it back to you. Hopefully in time to prevent a failure. To get this report most motherboards have S.M.A.R.T. monitoring built into the bios. Unfortunately it is usually disabled.
To enable S.M.A.R.T. in your bios varies from pc to pc. The bios can be accessed when you boot your machine by either pressing the del, f1 or esc key. Those are the most common and the first screen you see when you power on will tell you which key to press.
I do not recommend changing any settings in your bios that you do not fully understand as it can effect your machine adversely.

The location of S.M.A.R.T. monitoring varies as well. Usually it is located under advanced features. There are not a lot of menus so a bit of searching and you will find the location. Once you have simply enable it and save your changes to the bios and reboot. Now if the system ever detects a problem with you hard drive it will report it to you. At that point you should back up whatever is of value on your machine and then go about finding a way to replace your hard drive.
More info on S.M.A.R.T. can be found here. There are also lots of apps you can install on your OS if your bios does not support S.M.A.R.T. Search around on download.com or Google for the one that is best for you.
Always remember to backup your data on a regularly. Nothing is 100% foolproof especially when if comes to computers.

Virus Protection Methods

2009-09-01T14:19:00.004-04:00

I do about 10-20 jobs a week for clients that need virus removal. I'd say about half of them have no virus protection the other half either have anti-virus that is worthless or they do not do scheduled scans. Doing that many jobs a week I can say that I have most likely seen every anti-virus software out there. None of them protect your machine 100% but there are some far better than others and most would be surprised that they are free.
AVG has become very popular and I usually recommend this one myself. It can be found here http://free.avg.com/ Avira is another that I do not personally use but know that it is another one that is highly recommended it can be found here http://www.free-av.com/
As I said it is important to do scheduled scans with this apps. Though they have real time scanners they can miss some things and the scheduled scans give it the opportunity to scan your entire drive rather than the files you are accessing. Depending on your activities you do on your machine once or twice a week should be well enough.
Anti-virus alone is not enough. You have to stay away from sketchy sites like warez, keygens and most adult websites. These sites allow for easy installs of malware for people already in a hurry to find what they are looking for and will just blindly click on anything to get what they want.
A good browser will prevent you from going to known infected sites in the first place. Firefox and Chrome have built in protection to keep you from going to sites that have been reported as being malicious or infected. The list of websites is kept current by Google and has kept me from going to infected sites plenty of times.
Spybot Search and Destroy is a great app that will search for applications and files that are not necessarily viruses but programs that track you and collect information on you. The best feature of it that I like is the teatimer feature that will monitor your computer and warn for things like, homepage is being changed; if features or addons are being installed or changed on your web browser; registry entries are being modified; start up entries are added or removed which is great because a lot of programs want to start up when windows does slowing your start time down and using more of your resources. Spybot can be found here http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html
Keep in mind that having any real time scanner will use up resources on your machine but those mentioned should run fine on most machines with at least 512mb ram and at least a P4 processor which you should probably have if your machine is fairly new.
When of the best preventions against shady websites and even advertisements on the web that I have found is through the Host File on every windows machine and best part is it uses no resources save the less than a MB of disk space the file takes up. You don't have to worry about stumbling upon a bad website by accident as they keep a very large list of sites and you will not be able to go to them once you have the file you simply get a page not found error. Check out the host file and how to install it here. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
Also important if you are using file sharing, stay away from programs like limewire, bearshare and the like as they are not moderated and they are full of maleware and viruses.
If you are going to use file sharing use torrents. The torrents sites are moderated as well as can be and the files usually have feedback about the files you are looking for.
With those precautions you should be doing well to keep your machine and data safe.

Backup Files online

2009-04-17T17:26:00.007-04:00

Backing up your critical data can be very important. Most often people never get around to it and then call on me to recover them once their hard drive has crashed. That can be expensive.
Here are some simple, in most cases free and secure ways to back up your data. Making them even better is the fact that you will be able to get to your data anywhere with an internet connection.

Filedropper is free, easy to sign up with and offers up to 5 gigs of storage and uploads of any file up to 5 gigs. Once your account is created they offer a simple interface to upload and retrieve your files from. They also give you a link once your upload is complete if you want to share that file with friends, family or coworkers. I use them when I am need to share large files that mail servers won't allow. For large files, sharing and backups it works great. There is no real organization or searching ability for your files though. Check them out FileDropper.com

Mozy offers 2 gig services for free and unlimited for $4.99 a month. The services, free or pro, work with both Mac and Windows. Simply sign up, install the software and select the files or folders you want it to backup and your good to go. The Mozy software can be set to backup your files by monitoring them for changes or by scheduling them for backup. You can set it to view the progress with icon check marks and X's to show you which files have or have not been backed up. Try the free version out and see if you like it. Mozy

Gmail and Google Docs. I continuously use google docs for online backup and for remote access of my files. OpenOffice has plugins that allow you to upload your documents to your account with a simple click. With google gears you can work on your documents online or off and know that will be stored next time you go online.
Companys like ZOHO and The Milk offer services that work with google gears to synch to-do list, MS outlook, documents, calendars and more. Sign up for a Gmail acount and start saving your important documets and accessing them where ever you want.

Installing Linux on a NetBook or an outdated PC or Laptop

2009-03-07T07:23:00.010-05:00

If you have an old laptop or PC laying around collecting dust why not run linux on it. Depending what flavor of Linux you choose you could turn that ancient artifact into a mail server, file server, media center or a unit to browse the internet and do some daily activities on. Most distro's of linux use very little processing or memory use and are perfect for outdated machines.
So here we go:
I recently received an old Dell Latitude X200. It does not have an optical drive or a floppy drive. It also did not have a workable hard disk drive for that matter. So I installed an old hard drive into it knowing that it will boot to a removable drive so I could install Ubuntu Linux.
This is very important. Most, not all, old laptops without optical drives will allow you to select a removable drive to boot from. All newer Netbooks will do so. Make sure yours can do so. If your laptop can not or if it is an old desktop with no optical drive I will show you the solution as you read on.
First of I downloaded UNetbootin It will allow you to take whatever ISO or image of your particuar linux distro create a bootable usb flash drive and allow you to install onto your machine without a disk. It will also download a distro for you on the fly and install it onto the flash drive.
For my Dell I chose Ubuntu 8.10 launched UNetbootin selected Ununtu, chose the flash drive it had already selected and let it do its thing.
After about thirty minutes or so it was finished and I plugged into my dell and booted it up. I selected the removablle drive to boot to and then ran into a problem. It booted to it fine but at the point of selecting the install settings it locked up. I tried several times with various results however all ended with a locked up hard drive.
I have done this several times before with ease. The results were perfect and the process simple. Once you've booted off the flash drive simply follow the instructions for your linux distro and in about 30-40 minutes your all done.
For those of you with solid state drives and regular magnetic hard drives in your Netbooks you have the optition to use both drives. Some recommend using the SSD as a swap and others recommend it for your home folder. As the opinions differ greatly on this I suggest doing your own research and drawing your on conclusion.
Now back to my delima. It would not boot correctly for me. So I took my hard drive out of my laptop, used a 2.5 to 3.5 ide adaptor (which can be purchased for around 10-20 dollars) to connect the drive to my working pc, unhooked my pc's hard drive and connected my laptop drive. Once I turned it on I checked the bios to see if it saw the drive, selected the cdrom to boot, popped in a Ubuntu install disc, exited the bios and booted to the disc. Once that the install disc was booted the install was simple and took about thirty minutes. When it was finshed I powered my pc off, unhooked the laptop drive, plugged the original drive back in and installed the laptop drive back into my dell.
Now for the real test. Was Ubuntu going to have a difficult time with diffirent hardware? Not at all. Unlike windows Linux doesn't seem to mind about a drastic major change in hardware. Not only that it generally recognizes all hardware without the need to install drivers yourself. Right away I could tell it recognized the sound, video and once I logged in, saw that it recognized the wireless adaptor.
I had a few minor glitches with the mouse disappearing and the machine looking up but after a few times and a couple of updates I now have a fully operation laptop were once I had an outdated useless notebook. Perfect in size for everyday portable use and excellent considering it is roughly eight or nine years old with only a 12 gig hard drive, 640mb of ram and a P3 800mhz processor. In all it took less than two hours and would have been far less had it booted off the flash drive the first time.
Give it a try and if you run into problems feel free to ask me for help.

Making Data Backup easy: Bookmarks

2009-02-14T22:07:00.013-05:00

As much as it is emphasized by everyone to backup your data it is seldom done and let's face it once your hard drive has failed it really makes your computer pretty much useless. Time and time again I encounter clients with urgent needs to retrieve their data off a hard disk that doesn't want to do what its supposed to do. So i will attempt to explain some simple easy was to keep your data safe if you are not near RadicalType.net to recover your data or recovery is beyond your budget.

Firstly let's start with the data you are using right now, the data stored for your internet broswer. Most people keep a lot of bookmarks and you and I know if your hard drive failed you'd never even begin to know how to find again that black shiny, touch screen, video recording, mp3 playing, fully internet capable, complete productive suite in the palm of your hand Blackberry Storm for $350 that you searched for on Ebay your entire morning while you were at work. So let's begin by backing that info up precious as it may be. Now rather than go through the exact steps for every browser I am going to tell you how to do so in a very basic manner when necessary.

FireFox and IE's bookmark and settings backup are located under the bookmark and file menu respectively. Google's Chrome bookmark setting is located under the tool like icon. Once there find the command to export your bookmarks either right on that window or on the tools menu. Once you click that follow the prompts and choose a convient place for you to save those bookmarks and settings. Now unless you have bookmarked every page online the file you just saved should be extremely small, small enough for you to email it to an online email account to retrieve later in the event of a hard drive failure or to store on a floppy disk.

Now with that accomplished restoring those bookmarks and settings is just as easy, simply follow those same steps and chose import rather than export. And if your hard drive does fail you can at least feel safe knowing your eBay purchase is just a few simle steps away. Your data, settings, music and files will have to wait til my next back-up blog.

How to surf the internet & be free of ads

2009-02-14T06:32:00.013-05:00

Ads are everywhere on the internet and often times you get overwhelmed by pop-ups, pop-unders, talking ads, surveys, ads that attempt to install software, ect.
Here I will explain how to surf and be almost completely ad free. This will also keep you safe from inadvertently clicking on those ads that offer to clean up your system, which actually clutter up your system with spyware and useless system tools (registry cleaners, third party virus scans).
First off ditch Internet Explorer and use Firefox. Get it here. Firefox itself is much more stable and safer than IE. It crashes less, runs faster, is less vulnerable, stops pop-ups more effectively, prevents "drive-by" installs and has tons of add-ons for anything imaginable. Once installed go here and install add-block plus. Follow the prompts to install. Once done restart Firefox and subscribe to the ad-block list for your country or the location closest to you.
Ad-block plus can be turned off and on simply by clicking the ABP stop sign arrow located near the search bar at the top of Firefox.

Which is very useful since some sites, especially online video sites, rely on ads to generate revenue and often times can't be used without viewing the ads. Or if your like me right now. Currently I am using Google Ad-Sense on this blog and Google Ad-words on their search engine. With ad-block on I can not see the ads on my Blog or check up to see if my Ad Campaign is running as it should be. I simply turn it off when I want to view those ads. You can also customize it to block certain frames on a website or ads that for whatever reasons are still being shown. They can be blocked simply by right clicking the item and selecting the appropriate ad
block menu.

Flash ads and flash media can be blocked by clicking the "block" button above said media.
All content on a page that can be blocked can be viewed and then blocked simply by clicking on the ABP stop button. If you ever block something you didn't intend to or if you don't like some of the items ad-block is blocking simply click the drop down arrow, go to preferences and from there you can view all the blocked content and delete those items you don't want included.
That being said Ad-block plus does a wonderful job cleaning up the internet of clutter and preventing web sites from installing malicous software on your computer.
Ad-block plus will get rid of almost all ads on the internet certainly the most annoying and unsafe pop-ups. Later on I will explain how you can prevent entire websites from ever loading.

How to Speed up windows start up time

2009-02-13T13:13:00.026-05:00

One way for cleaning up windows start up: Most if not very close to all windows programs you install add them self to windows start up. Windows Programs do this for various reasons, quicker launch of that particular program, to check for updates or to enable specific functions of that program such as virus scanners or weather reports. However the majority of them do not need to run. For example does Adobe reader really need to run at start up? Or Itunes helper? How about Nero? Microsoft office? Not really. They slow the start up time of windows quite a bit. MS office is supposed to make the start up of office faster but is it really necessary?

Have a look at the start up applications yourself. Here's how to do so. Click the windows start menu and locate the run command if it's not there just press the "windows" & the "r" keys down on your keyboard at the same time. A window should come up which should look like this

It will allow you to enter the location of a program and start it from there. Windows specific programs can be run in the run command with just their name, like explorer, mspaint, even url's or like the one we are going to run "msconfig". Type that in and hit enter. A window should come up that has system settings for the windows OS you are using. If it does not you can download msconfig from www.RadicalType.net for Microsoft Windows 2000 & XP at this url http://www.radicaltype.net/2000.zip
or for Microsoft Windows 95 or 98 at this url http://www.radicaltype.net/95%2098.zip The file itself is zipped and once unzipped is executable and can be used once uzipped. Once started it will look a little like this
the settings we want to look at and change are under the start up tab. Once there it displays a list of all the start up applications. The columns show information about the program. Expand the item name and location columns to view more details about the specific start up programs. Now if you know what the programs are and you don't think you need it to start up uncheck the boxes for those programs. If you are not sure what the program is google is your friend. Once you've decided which ones to disable click apply and then ok. You will then be prompted to restart or exit without restart. Once restarted the programs will be removed from start up.

That is until you start the program again. Most of them will add them selves back to the start up list once relaunched. While some of these programs have settings to change this behavior some do not and modifying all of them is a bit of a hassle. Enter spybots search and destroy's teatimer feature, it is in my experience a great program to handle your start up and more. It will notify you when something is being added or removed from start up and then allow you to accept or deny those changes. It will also keep your internet home pages and default searches unchanged as well as notify you of any changes being made to your browser or registry. Try it out here. Be sure to enable the teatimer feature during the install. Also remember anytime you install programs or run windows updates teatimer will notify you of the changes these programs are trying to make and you will need to allow them.