Windows

Internet Explorer 7’s search tool is no longer limited to Microsoft’s search engine. Now you can use it with Google, Yahoo, eBay, Wikipedia, and many others. To do this: Click the down arrow labeled Search Options, which is located at the right of the search box’s magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the …

Why would Microsoft remove the good ol’ command-line telnet client from the default Windows Vista installation?!? Well, they did…but here’s how to get it back: 1. From the Start menu, click Control Panel 2. Select Programs and Features 3. From the menu of the left, select Turn Windows Features On or Off 4. Scroll down, and then check the “Telnet client” box 5. Click OK

Back in the days of the paleocomputing era, no one ever thought about installing firewalls on individual computers. Who needed to? Hardly anyone had heard of the Internet, TCP/IP was nowhere in sight, and LAN protocols didn’t route beyond your building or campus. Important data lived on the mainframe or file servers—the information people kept on their desktop computers was rarely mission critical and the computer’s own weight afforded a certain amount of decent physical security. If there was a connection to the Internet available, there were likely some protocol translators in the way and a packet-filtering router (I mean “firewall”) at the edge, probably configured with too many rules and exceptions.

Tip 9: Clean up the backup Be sure to check out the Disk Cleanup tool’s advanced options, available on the More Options tab. For example, click More Options, and under System Restore, choose Clean up to delete all but your most recent restore point. Tip 10: Avoid musical duplicates If, after ripping CDs in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, you decide to go with a tool like iTunes to interface with your portable music player, be aware that importing songs into iTunes means converting them to the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, resulting in duplicate music files that will hog your hard disk. To save space, stick to one music player, or at least to one format (such as MP3) that multiple players can handle. Windows Media Player 10 can rip music in MP3 format without any additional software. To select the format for ripping music from CDs to …

Vista may be on the way, but XP hasn’t outlived its usefulness. These tips will help you keep the older operating system vibrant. Tip 1: Get off the upgrade bandwagon If you constantly upgrade to the latest powerhouse versions of your favourite applications without also upgrading your hardware and Windows version, your system will seem older and creakier than ever. Instead of listening to the siren call of endless upgrades, stick with application versions that you know work well with your system. In the same vein, consider turning off the auto-update features that so many applications have these days (with the exception of your firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware tools). An example is Adobe Reader, which seems to phone home faster than you can open a file. To block automatic updates in Adobe Reader 7, click Edit, Preferences, Updates and select Do not automatically check for critical updates. Why should developers …

You can configure Windows Vista to install without having to manually enter the product key during the setup process. This is quite useful if you find yourself in need to perform an installation of the OS but without having the (legal) product key with you at that very moment. Unlike previous Windows versions where you had to have a CD Key handy during the installation of the OS, the Windows Vista setup process only makes it appear as if you have to enter a product key to install it. During the setup program’s progress you will reach a dialog box that will ask you to enter a valid product key. Here is where the fun part starts. You can actually leave it blank! Next click No in response to the “Are you sure” dialog box. You will now be presented with a list of all the different Windows Vista versions …

Microsoft announced plans Thursday to issue four “critical” security bulletins next week that address vulnerabilities in its Windows Mail, Internet Explorer and Windows XP. Six bulletins in total, including the four critical fixes, will be released, according to Microsoft’s advance advisory notification. “Critical” is the most severe ranking Microsoft assigns to security flaws. That classification typically indicates that a system can be compromised remotely with little interaction required by the user. Specifically, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003, IE 5.01 running on Windows 2000 with SP4, Outlook Express and Windows Mail in Vista are among the affected software. Ironically, Microsoft has touted Vista as its most secure version of Windows to date, but even last April the software giant had to issue an emergency update that fell out of its usual monthly patch cycle. The security update is designed to address Windows Mail in Windows Vista and Windows …

This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP. Autoruns‘ Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option helps you to zoom in on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to your system and it has support for looking at the auto-starting images configured for other accounts configured on a system. Also included in the download package is a command-line equivalent that can output in CSV format, Autorunsc. You’ll probably be surprised …

Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption is certainly one of the most talked-about features in Windows Vista. However, most people haven’t yet had much opportunity to test BitLocker to find out firsthand. what it does and how it works—particularly not on a computer with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM). In this article, I introduce you to the basics of BitLocker™ so that you can evaluate its potential and include it in your upgrade planning. I will begin with some background and conceptual information, and then I take a look at enabling BitLocker, data recovery, administration, and how BitLocker can help at the end of a computer’s life. To better understand the terminology here, take a look at the sidebar “Disks and Volumes.”