Computer Blogging

If you have Vista SP1 installed you will find that you have lost about one and a half gig of space!

If you happy with SP1 but would like to regain that space just follow this link to our forums.

This is one of Alan’s old forum post that was very popular in the past. Wanted to bring it back and put it up here for discussions.

Here is some tips on making SP2 behave the way you want. Be warned that generally speaking, its not a good idea to turn off some services unless you know what you are doing.
This guide is only intended to answer some questions on SP2, and not meant as a recommendation.

1. How do you Disable the Security Center?

The Security Center is a new addition to XP. It constantly monitors your machine to make sure you have an up to date firewall and antivirus product installed. However, it’s extremely annoying to people who know what they are doing. You can disable it simply:

Hit Start - Run - Type “services.msc” and hit Enter. Scroll down to the Security Center service, left click it to select it, then right click it and choose Properties. Set the Startup type box to disabled and hit Apply then OK. This takes effect from the next reboot.

2. How to Turn off Automatic Updates, System Restore & the Windows Firewall

Personally, I would rather check for Windows patches from time to time and not have my PC constantly checking for them. To disable the auto-update feature do the following:

Right click My Computer and select Properties. Click the Automatic Updates tab, disable auto-updates and hit Apply then OK.

The Windows Firewall is poor. It only checks incoming connections to your PC. Install a better stand-alone product and disable the Windows version:

Open Network Connections in the Control Panel. Right click your connection and choose Properties, click the Advanced tab followed by the Settings button in the Windows Firewall section at the top. Disable the firewall then click Apply and OK.

3. Windows Media Player 10 installs a new service that runs constantly

WMP 10 adds a new service which runs in the background constantly using memory. It’s pointless. You can disable it like this:

Hit Start - Run - Type “services.msc” and hit Enter. Scroll down to the Windows User Mode Driver Framework service, left click it to select it, then right click it and choose Properties. Set the Startup type box to disabled and hit Apply then OK. This takes effect from the next reboot.

4. Do you use Outlook Express and can’t open any attachments?

This is a measure Microsoft use to stop people opening viral email attachments. The thing is it stops you opening ALL attachments. To turn it off do this:

In OE click Tools - Options - Security then uncheck the box next to “Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus”. Then hit Apply and OK.

5. When you open a folder with certain video files in it, Explorer.exe hangs

This is a problem with SP2 and the DivX codec. The fix for this can be viewed by clicking http://support.divx.com/cgi-bin/divx.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.ph p?p_sid=iSmMISkh&p_lva=&p_faqid=731&p_created=1088207940&p_sp=cF 9zcmNoPSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTYzJnBfcGFn ZT0x&p_li=

6. Cannot download files from certain sites

After installing SP2 you have to actively initiate a download by clicking a link. This means if you try and download from any site that says “Your download will start automatically in 10 seconds etc.” for example, the download will never start. One big site that is like this is www.download.com. To fix this do this:

Go into Internet Options - Security - Select Internet Zone - Custom Level. Browse down to the Downloads section and set “Automatic prompting for file downloads” to Enable then Apply and OK it.

7. Do you get annoying messages about security when you download a file

After installing SP2, Windows will check for a digital signature when you download a file. If one doesn’t exist, you will get a warning when you try and run the file. This can be very annoying, especially if you are quite sure you want to run the particular file. To turn this off do this:

Go into Internet Options then Advanced. Uncheck “Check for signatures on downloaded programs”, hit Apply then OK.

8. What’s this about TCP connections being limited to 10?

After installing SP2, Windows is limited to initialising only 10 TCP connection attempts at a time. This does not mean you can only have 10 connections, it means you can only have 10 connection attempts occurring at once, for example, if your PC tries to initialise 20 TCP connections, the first 10 will succeed and the second 10 will be queued. “So what?” you might say. Well, if you use BitTorrent (Azureus etc.) to download files then this may slow up your speeds considerably. The first thing you should do is use BitTorrent as you would normally for a few days. Then do this:

Go into the Administration Tools section of Control Panel and check out the Event Viewer. Look in the System section and see if you have any entries like this:

Source: Tcpip Event ID: 4226

TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsof t.com/fwlink/events.asp.

One or two of those is acceptable, but if you have a huge list of them, you have a problem with Windows stifling your connection. The best way to fix this is to use Azureus as your BitTorrent client and make a simple configuration change in the program:

View - Configuration - Transfer - Check the box next to “Slowly connect new peer connections etc. etc.” - Hit the Save button. Restart Azureus.

This should cure your problem. If it doesn’t, you may need to look at applying a patch that increases the number of TCP connection attempts allowed. This isn’t really recommended though but more info can be found on this with a simple Google search.

I was recently contacted by a friend asking if I could over him any advice on how to get data off of his now failed computer system. He has years of photo’s as well as many other personal and non-replacable data on this computer.

I was able to remove the hard drive and reinstall to an old computer of mine to copy the information that he required to a few CD for archival. But what if I had not been so lucky? What if it was the hard drive that actually failed?

There are some solutions for recovering data from a failed hard drive, but non are exact and most are very expensive.

Here is a great article that I found today to help you be prepared for when, not if, your computer or hard drive fail. I hope you enjoy it.

If you have any stories about losing data or other tips on being prepared please comment and let us know.

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Do you know how to spell check your email? Do you find those silly little spelling errors a little annoying?

Here’s how to have Outlook Express automatically spell check your emails before they are sent.

Open Outlook Express
Click on Tools then on Options
Click on the Spelling tab.
Put a check mark next to Always check spelling before sending.
Click OK.
Now O.E. should spell check your email before it is sent.