Category Archives: Windows Secrets

File Sharing Sites, Hidden Windows Tricks, Windows Secrets

Faster Downloads from Sharing Sites

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When you’re using sites such as Rapidshare, Hotfile and others, you probably don’t want to pay for a pro account. The free accounts are limited in many ways. Usually the download speed is throttled, almost always simultaneous downloads are forbidden and you always have to wait a varying length of time between downloads. Well, there is a way to help with one of those limitations.

After you download one section of a file, let’s say a .rar. file, most of the sites make you wait hours or a full day before you can download another portion. How do they know that you have already downloaded one file? Well, they either track your IP address or they set a cookie in your browser.

By logging into your router, disconnecting and reconnecting your Internet connection, you can easily get a new IP address. Then you can go back to the site and download another section or a new file. That’s easy unless you have a static IP address. Most of us have dynamic IPs, we get a new one every time we connect to our ISP. If you have a static IP, you’re on your own here. Can’t help you there.

If you have reset your Internet connection and you still can’t download a file, the server has set a cookie in your browser’s cache. This cookie is what is stopping you from downloading another file until the time limit is up. So, easy peasy, you clear your cache and cookies, right? Well, if you have all of your preferences set in your browser, clearing your cache and cookies is a royal pain in the ass. What do you do?

Simple. Install another browser. I use Google Chrome as my main browser. It’s fast, translates pages for me and it’s secure, too. But I also have other browsers. For my next suggestion, I would recommend Firefox from Mozilla.com. Until Chrome came out, I used Firefox all the time. Chrome is much faster, in my opinion, so I switched to it. Firefox, however, has a great little tool that makes clearing your cache much simpler. Even if you use Firefox as your main browser, this trick is perfect for faster downloading from file sharing sites without upsetting all of your current settings.

Download the first tile from the site using Firefox. Next, reset your Internet connection. Then, click on the word Tools up on the top left of the Firefox window. Look for the words ‘Clear Recent History’. The following menu will pop up:

Choose the amount of recent history to clear.
Choose the amount of history that you want to clear.

Depending on how long it took to download the file, sometimes it takes an hour or more, you can clear the cache and cookies for varying amounts of time. Two hours usually works for me. Once you clear your history like this, the serving site won’t know it’s you, that you’ve come back long before their onerous time limit. Once you clear your cache and cookies, you’re back in business.

My trick won’t help you with the slow download speeds nor that simultaneous downloads but it will help with repetitive downloading. This makes the whole download happen much quicker, right?

Thanks for reading!

 

Chrome Crashes, Computers, Troubleshooting, Windows, Windows Secrets

What to do when Chrome crashes.

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Google’s Chrome browser is getting more popular every year. It’s been my browser of choice since it came out. It’s fast, light and translates every page I throw at it. But it’s not perfect. If it was perfect, it wouldn’t crash, right?

Chrome is constantly updated, according to Google. If you are familiar with it, however, you’ll know that it sometimes freezes and then crashes. A little menu will come up and tell you that Google has crashed, that such and such a page or plugin is not responding. Should Chrome wait for it to get better or do you want to close the program? Believe me, it’s frustrating.

What to do about it? Google doesn’t seem to be able to come up with a solution. Believe me, I’ve tried to find an answer to this online. There are ample forum posts about it but no real answers that I could find. We all know that it has something to do with Flash but Chrome is updated on a continuous basis, isn’t it? Hell, you can’t even upgrade Flash using Chrome because every time you try, Chrome says that you’re using the most up-to-date version already. OK, if that’s the case, why the hell does it crash?

Here’s the solution that worked for me the last few times Chrome has crashed. Step by step, it’s pretty easy. Let’s say that it’s a fix, not a real solution. Google will still crash at some point but this is how you can get it working again for a few months.

1. Close Chrome.

2. Go to your Control Panel then to Programs then to Uninstall a program.

3. Look for Adobe Flash, highlight it and delete it. Make sure all of your browsers are closed. You’ll also have to close MSN, Yahoo and QQ, if you have them open.

4. Reboot your computer.

5. Open Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari or Opera, any other browser BUT Chrome.

6. Head over to the Adobe site and download Flash. Here is the link: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ 

7. Install the latest version, then close your current browser.

8. Start Chrome and surf away. Your days of frustration are over.

I don’t know why this solution works. It doesn’t make sense at all. Chrome won’t allow you to install Flash on its own but it seems to depend on the Flash version that is installed on your computer, even though it says you are using the most current version.

Whatever the reason, this works. Good luck!

Thanks for reading!

Computers, Troubleshooting, Windows, Windows Secrets

Lost Desktop Folder

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I ran into this problem this morning. Somehow I had lost a folder on my desktop. Maybe Windows got confused. Maybe I had moved it off-screen. Maybe it was under another folder. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t get it back Here’s how I solved the problem.  (It’s so simple that you’ll kick yourself for not thinking of it. I know I did!)

1. Right click your desktop. The following menu appears:

A Selection of Options for Your Desktop
Right click then choose 'Sort By'

Once you see this menu, choose ‘Sort by’ and this next menu will come up:

Right Click the Desktop to Get This Menu
Choose any arrangement you want. They all work to recover the lost folder.

These are the choices to sort all of the items on your desktop. If you sort by type, everything will be lined up on the left side according to file type with folders at the upper left. Your missing folder will be among them…hopefully.

If the folder still isn’t there but you can see it in Windows Explorer, see if you can find out where it is by choosing ‘open file location’ in the right click menu. Then you can track it down. Good luck!

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Computers, Hardware, Troubleshooting, Windows, Windows Secrets

Enable Your Microphone

If you have disabled your internal microphone on on your netbook or notebook, here’s how you can get it back. This post also shows the value of  Window’s right click menu system. Sometimes we forget how powerful it is.

I was making a video today and tried to use an external microphone instead of the internal one on my netbook. Well, the external one didn’t work but I had disabled the internal one, thinking it was causing some interference. Once I decided to use the internal one again, I had to search for a way to enable it again. Here’s how you do it:

1. Right click the little speaker icon on the lower right of your taskbar. Choose ‘Recording devices’ as you see here:

Choose Recording Devices
Right click the speaker and choose Recording devices.

2. Once the recording device dialogue is up, right click anywhere in the blank space to get this menu:

Right click dialogue showing disconnected devices.
Right click in the open space and you'll see how to enable disconnected devices.

3. Once you get to this point, click ‘Show Disabled Devices’ and you will see a list of things that you may have disabled. Simply click ‘enable’ to get them back again.

 

This is a simple solution but it’s also something to keep in mind when you get lost in Windows. If what you want to see isn’t there in front of you or if you can’t seem to find something, try the right click menu to see what comes up. In this case, a simple right click solved what seemed to be a difficult problem.

Thanks for reading!

Computers, Hidden Windows Tricks, Windows Secrets

Undo Mistakes

We all make mistakes. We all wish we could turn back time. Here’s a quick, two-fingered way to do just that.

If you’ve used Photoshop or G.I.M.P. or just about any other photo editing program, you’ll know that you can undo any action that you’re performed  by clicking edit/undo. Those of you who use macros or keyboard shortcuts know that you can do the same thing by hitting the Control key and the Z key at the same time. Did you know that the Ctl/z combination works just as well in Windows and virtually every program, including browsers, that you use? Well it does.

Even if you delete a file and send it to the Recycle Bin, hitting Ctl/z will bring that file back again. If you accidentally hit the wrong keys in Word and your document disappears for some reason, make sure you hit Ctl/Z before you do anything else.

Tip: If you delete a file while holding down the Shift key, the file is gone forever. That’s a good thing and a bad thing sometimes. Unless you are sure that you won’t need the file again, send it to the Recycle Bin and think about it for a while.

Try getting used to this key combination using different programs in Windows. Once you get used to it, you’ll find it a life saver, I think. It’s saved my bacon a few times, I can tell you that!

Thanks for reading.