How to make your computer faster for free

Wondering "How do i make my computer faster", but don’t have the cash to buy better hardware? Well here is some quick and easy tips on how to make your computer more efficient without dropping a dime!
1.) Defrag your hard drives.

I. Often windows will automatically do this once per day or per week or so. Mine does it every Wednesday night when I should be sleeping ~3AM. This way I know that all my files are organizing themselves relatively often.

II. To make sure your computer is doing this regularly, go to Start Menu>>Program Files>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Disk Defragmenter.

2.) Remove Spyware, clean up your temporary Files, fix your registry and clean out dangerous startup entries. These can all be done individually, but it can be time consuming. GLARY UTILITIES is an amazing program that does all of this with the program’s “1 Click Maintenance.” I swear by this program now. It is amazing. It regularly finds and removes several gigabytes of temporary internet files and the first time I ran it, over 400 registry errors were found and fixed. This program is free so I highly recommend that you check it out. Also, check out my TIGGITY POST on Glary Utilities for more about its capabilities.

3.) Remove unused programs from your hard drive. Chances are there is a ton of programs on your computer that you don’t use, and probably never will use. How about removing them and getting that extra storage space available so your computer has less junk to think about. Note: I highly recommend checking out the importance of each program on Google before removing it permanently. How about all of those crappy demo games that came with your comp, or old games you no longer play, or programs that you didn’t even know existed? Ya, you can do without those.

I. Go to Start>>Settings>>Control Panel>> then click ‘Programs’ or ‘Programs and Features’

i. A long list will open eventually and it will be a near comprehensive list of all of the programs that are installed on your computer. Again, I recommend removing only stuff you are familiar with and know your computer can function properly without. So click on any program that you can do without and then click the ‘Uninstall button at the top of the window. This is a great way to remove computer garbage and get your PC back to health.

4.) Change what programs automatically run at windows start up. Ok so you like Skype, Windows Messenger, Norton, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger etc, etc, etc. These programs can be set so that they do not load at windows startup, but instead ONLY WHEN YOU WANT THEM TO. You don’t need a bajillion programs launched at the same time as windows. Open Messenger when you want to, or Skype etc. This is really easy and reduces computer start up time drastically. There are two methods to do this:

I. (Automatic) Download and run Vista Services Optimizer if you are still using Windows Vista. Check out my EARLIER POST about this free software for quick instructions on how to use it.

II. ( Manual) Go to start menu>>Run>> and then type ‘msconfig’
Then click the startup tab. Here you can uncheck the programs that you do not want to launch at start up. This does not disable the program, it simply sets the program to load when you start it, rather than at windows launch. Here, again, be careful to make sure you don’t uncheck programs that Windows needs to launch at startup. Just type in the command and do a Google Search to see if it is vital at startup or not. Most of them that are here are probably not essential, but make sure before you uncheck them, please.

5.) Adjust the visual graphics that appear during Windows use. If you can do without mouse trails, and fancy windows minimizing and other effects that make Windows look cool, but are not necessary, then you can remove all of these and set Windows to max performance.

I. Go to Start>>Settings>>Control Panel>> click ‘Performance’ or ‘Performance Information and Tools.’ Then click on ‘Adjust visual effects.”

i. Here you will have options to ’Let Windows choose whats best,’ Adjust for best appearance, ‘adjust for best performance’ or create your own custom scheme. I recommend letting Windows choose, but if you really need that extra speed then create your own custom or adjust for best performance.

6.) Change your desktop background. Having a simple background color or design can actually make a pretty significant difference in performance when compared to a fancy landscape or large image from the internets or your digital camera. Simple, but it should work on low capacity computer.

7.) Disable the Bandwidth reserve in Windows. Windows reserves 20% of your bandwidth so that it has access to priority bandwidth when it might need it. Why not let it share in your regular bandwidth and allow those extra 20% participate all the time?! To do this, click on this link HERE. http://www.vistax64.com/attachments/tutorials/1757d1196149757-qos-bandwidth-reserve-limit-disable_reserved.reg?ltr=Q

I. Download the .reg file somewhere easy to access – I recommend your Desktop.
II. Right click on the icon and select ‘Merge’

III. Click Run
IV. Click Yes

V. Click OK

VI. For this change to take place, restart your computer.
VII. Feel free to delete the .reg file at this time. Also, if you would like to restore your reserved bandwidth for whatever reason, you can do that HERE http://www.vistax64.com/attachments/tutorials/1758d1196149762-qos-bandwidth-reserve-limit-restore_default_reserved.reg?ltr=Q


I hope you find these resources to be useful! I know i did. Enjoy!

99 ways to make your computer faster

Check out the Microsoft page for improving speed for more suggestions
Microsoft speed page

Download YouTube videos and songs for free!

There are some really awesome and funny videos on YouTube as everyone knows, duh. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to download those and have them on your HD for instant access whenever you want. Maybe watch all your favorites in succession? Well, check it out. DVDVideosoft Free aka Free Studio makes this possible and really easy and fast! This program can do a lot, but today I will be showing one of its capabilities: downloading from Youtube to a WebM video (which can be viewed on basically every single media player)! But just so you know, this program is also capable of downloading videos straight to audio MP4 format so that you can add them to your iTunes (because some songs are really hard to track down elsewhere). Free Studio can also convert audio in multiple formats, videos into mp3s, easily edit and cut portions of videos (from your HD or YouTube), burn CDs and DVDs, screen video recorder, convert videos to Android, blackberry, PSP, Xbox, Nintendo, PS3 etc, as well as iPhone, iPad, and iPods. These are just some of the features of this amazing free program. So go snag this program right HERE. It takes up less than 58 MB of space and can do sooo much! Then I will walk you through the process of downloading a YouTube video to your hard drive.
Ok so when you download there is a screen during setup that asks if you want to install the DVDVideosoft tool bar and make it your default search engine. I recommend you uncheck them all like so:

Continue with the install and open the program. I really like the way this program looks. Here is what the user interface looks like:

Alright so with the program open, click on the YouTube button. Then click on the ‘Free YouTube Download’ button.

A new window will open asking you to insert the URL of the YouTube vid that you want to download that looks like this:

So you can add as many URL’s into this window as you would like. Just right click and paste them in this window. The program will do a quick scan to make sure the URL is valid and that the whole video is available. Then just click the download button at the bottom of the window or the Play Arrows just to the right of each video and it will download to your desired folder. Here I am downloadin some of my all time fav’s: Bizkit the Sleep running dog and the baby who laughs at paper tearing. Hilarious!

You can select from several different video qualities or just download the MP3 version of these videos in the quality drop down menu on this screen:

And then it will download. WOW! It downloaded those really fast! Faster than I can stream those videos as a matter of fact!
And that is that. The files are saved for viewing at any time. Now you can make a compilation of all of your favorite YouTube videos and watch them all in a row! You can also burn these files to a DVD to take with you and watch anywhere. Note: I don’t encourage you to sell these or illegally reproduce copyrighted material. So don’t get caught! do it!
Any great unknown vids I should know about? Please inform me and boost my YouTube IQ! Thanks!

The Garbage Hunter - Glary Utilities

Is your computer completely free of unused/temporary files, and garb(age) free? I doubt it. Most people have tons of garb all over their hard drives and don’t even know about most of it, or even where to look to find it all. Here is a simple way to have a small and free program (8.46MB) do all the searching for you. I stumbled across Glary Utilities recently and it found a ton of nonsense on my computer and fixed and/or erased it and cleared up several gigs of hard drive space! Very nice! Glary Utilities checks all sorts of ways to improve your computers efficiency and remove all that excess garb. This can be done through Glary Utilities 1-Click Maintenance which can clean your registry, fix shortcuts that don’t work, clean dangerous startup entries, clear out your temporary files, and remove spyware all in one full sweep. It is pretty sweet and it works with any windows 2000 or beyond.

To begin this garbage hunt click on the 'Scan For Issues' button under the 1-Click Maintenance tab and let Glary do its magic. So here is what happened when I did the 1-Click Maintenance…

Wow. That is a lot of garb! 625 problems with my registry?! 21 Shortcuts are messed up, almost 2 gigs of temp files?! That’s crazy talk. Once all of the issues have been identified, click on the 'Repair' button and as many of the issues as can be fixed will be done automatically.

This whole search took about 5 minutes and it cleared up a bunch of space and fixed corrupt links and more so definitely worth it!
Glary Utilities also has a Modules tab with several submenus that can be accessed in order to do more specific searches or search manually to fix your issues if you don’t want it all done at once as well. All in all a great program!


Download from cnet: Glary Utilities

Customizing your Right-Click Menu commands!

Sometimes when I right-click there are some options that I always hope will be there, but they never are! Luckily I found a program that allows me to put whatever commands I want into my right click menu. And let me tell you, it is SO convenient! It is called FileMenu Tools and can be acquired here. The site will automatically prompt you to download it so go ahead and save the install file.

So you may be thinking that adding a whole bunch of commands will just make your right-click menu HUGE, but actually all of the commands that you add manually will be under one submenu called ‘FileMenu Tools’ so it won’t change the appearance much. Scroll to the bottom to see what this looks like if you can’t wait!

In the following example I will create a custom command for ‘Play in iTunes’ to appear in my right click menu. I have tons of songs in my iTunes library so I have my default music player set to WinAmp so that I can play random files without loading my whole iTunes library. Sometimes I do want to play in iTunes and rather than go through the whole ‘Open with’ menu and deal with that I will simply create my own command to do so. And it is really easy. Once installed, ‘FileMenu Tools’ will always be running to provide you with your custom right click options, but when you want to create your own commands you will need to open the program itself. Here is what the user interface looks like:

How to create a Command:
With FileMenu Tools UI open click on the ‘Add Command’ button in the ‘Actions’ tab that looks like this:

Now you will notice that the information tab (below) displays some information and that a ‘New Command’ appears in the ‘Commands of FileMenu Tools’ tab on the right.

In the information tab you will see a variety of text and blank cells. The cells in the left column tell you what you can customize and the accompanying cells to the right are where you enter your information. To create a ‘Run program’ type command you only need to use 3.

1.)The first is ‘Action’ which is defaulted to ‘Run Program’ so you need not change anything.
2.)The next is ‘Menu Text’ which will display how your command appears in the right click menu. I clicked in the cell immediately to the right of ‘Menu Text’ and typed ‘Play with iTunes.’

3.)The third item that matters in further down in the list under the Information tab so scroll down to ‘Program’ and click in the blank cell to the right of it. Three dots will appear (…). Click on these dots and windows explorer will open and you will need to identify the program that you want to open with this command.

I tracked down ‘iTunes.exe’ and then clicked open. ***If you need helping finding your program you can search for it in the search bar at the top right of the Windows explorer bar***

Now all you have to do is click the ‘Apply Changes’ icon at the top left window of FileMenu Tools to accept the changes and your command will automatically be added to your custom right-click menu.

Here you can see my new command that I added in my right click menu that wasn’t there before:

What else FileMenu Tools can do:
There are five command types which let you make specific actions. This actions are:
• Run an external program, whose arguments are the selected elements.
• Copy the selected elements to an specific folder.
• Move the selected elements to an specific folder.
• Delete specific file types into the selected folders.
• Send the selected elements to mail recipients with specific parameters (e-mail recipients, subject and body).

You can do with as many different commands as you would like. Once you have done this once it will be very easy to do it multiple times to create all of your own shortcuts and make your computing life much more convenient! I will shortly be making a Tiggity on how to reduce the size of your right click menu so that it looks cleaner. If you have any questions feel free to email me @ bendavisadams@gmail.com

I would like to thank SnapFiles for providing an awesome and constantly updated list of great software with short reviews and ratings.

Cover your tracks! History Block and Securedelete

It never hurts to be too safe when dealing with files, documents, folders or browsing history of extreme secrecy. Here are two methods to ensure that your privacy is kept intact. The first is Tweak Now Securedelete, which can be used to permanently delete files and folders (I’m not talking about emptying your recycling bin kind of secret, this REALLY gets rid of them). Data Recovery Specialists can recover most, if not all, of the data that you deleted through your recycling bin. Securedelete is supposed to make data deleted through this method completely irrecoverable so this is good for stuff you want to keep ultra secret.
Here is a quick rundown of this extremely simple to use and free software or free-ware. Get Securedelete here . It is a small file (3.75MB) so it downloads and installs rather quickly. When you click Download a confirm installation window will appear that looks like this:

Click ‘Save File’ and the download will proceed. Then open the new file from your download bar, window, folder or however you have your setting configured and follow the installation instructions.
When you open the program it will look like this:

It is very simple and the large window can be resized to fit your preferences. Click either the ‘Add File’ or the ‘Add Folder’ button and then select the objects that you want to PERMANENTLY erase beyond any possible recovery. Once you have a folder or file selected then the ‘Remove’ and ‘Delete’ buttons will encolorize. The ‘Remove’ button just removes the object from the list and puts it back where it came from. The ‘Delete’ button will erase the object from the known universe, never to see the light of day again. And, yes, it is as simple as that.

Note: I do not endorse you downloading scandalous files, even though you now have a secure way of removing your tracks permanently. Just kidding. But seriously.


The second is History Block. So what this Mozilla only add on does is allows you to select certain sites that will never show up in your browsers history. You can type in any sites that you want to be excluded and they will never show up nor can your excluded sites be viewed in this app (because that would void the entire purpose!). There are others ways to gain added privacy with out History Block, such as starting a private browsing session or setting your browser prefs to not save history or cookies/cache. In my opinion this is much cooler than those and much more practical. Here is a quick walk through of the download and installation (which is uber easy) and a view of the user interface.
Click on the History Block link above and click the ‘Download Now’ button. A Window will pop-up unless you have pop-up blocker on, in which case you will need to allow this instance.

Then it will automatically install (in like a second) and this bubble will show up:

So restart FireFox and History Block will be running, but you have not entered any sites yet. To do that go to your Add-Ons manager and click on the Extensions tab. There you will see History Block along with any other add-ons you have. To add a site, just simply click the ‘Options’ button and a tiny window will pop up that allows you to enter a site. Once again: sites you add to the blacklist cannot be viewed by you or anyone, so rest assured. You can unblacklist any sites you want via this window as well.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy your newly acquired privacy. Cheers!

SendToSendTo - picking your own destination folders

Alright well this is pretty cool. So you know when you right click a file or folder, or picture or anything on your computer and a new list of options appears? Yes. Of course you do. Well, one of those options is the ‘Send To’ menu, which has a couple preset locations like Documents, Desktop, maybe a couple hard drives or CD/DVD drives, but often the locations you save to or frequent most are not those preset locations. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could pick the destination folders that you wanted in the ‘Send To’ submenu? Well you can… and it IS cool! The easiest way to do this is with the help of the very small (109kb) and free SendToSendTo. If you click the previous link it will automatically direct you to a free download of the file. Do not be alarmed that it will automatically prompt you to download it. (Note: you may need to disable popup blocker for this. I didn’t, but I’m just saying).

Once the file is downloaded you will be able to pick whatever folders you want to have included in ‘Send To’ simply by right clicking on the directory of choice by going to the ‘Send To’ menu and clicking on “Add here” like so:

This is great because i never used this feature before because i didnt want to save stuff to those defaults. Now i use this all the time. In my example I am adding the folder titled “Stuff” and yes I really have that folder on my computer. And it has A LOT of stuff in it. A new small window will open and will give you the option of altering the file name (this will still keep the original destination folder and will not change its title elsewhere on your computer). I suppose this feature may be useful if you had some super secret folder buried deep within other folders and wanted to keep the name ambiguous in the shortcut? Anyway it looks like this:

Ok so now when I right click on various items on my computer and scroll down to ‘Send To’ you can see that the “Stuff” folder is now an option. Sweet!

You can do this with as many destination folders as you would like and this can make organizing much easier.
Unfortunately the program does not have an easy way of removing the newly created folders in this menu, but it can be done. If anyone is curious as how to do that I can post it later by request. Anyway, Enjoy!

Ben


Note: The ‘Send To’ menu can be adjusted without the uses of this add on but it is much more time consuming. For a detailed step by step process on how to add or remove locations from your ‘Send To’ menu without Sendtosendto, check out this helpful page: winvistaclub

Tabs in Word, the last conformist

Everything on your computer today has tabs, except for one: Microsoft Word! Why? I dunno, but I’m used to having tabs in all of my web browsers, windows, excel, photoshop etc. I didn’t even realize I was missing out on this feature until I stumbled across a webpage for a Tabs add-on in Word… and its awesome. Now it is so much easier to transfer info between my documents. And, yes, I used tabs to create this post as well! Sure, you could bring your cursor down to your overcrowded task bar every time you want to do that, but it starts looking pretty messy and often you will have so many windows open that you can barely read the name if each tab. This is what your current layout may look like:

Why fill up your windows task bar when you can just fill up the Word tab bar and leave the rest of your task bar open for other windows? This add-on is super simple and really small. Here are the stats on the add-on:
FileSize:
496KB
System:
Windows7 / Windows Vista
Host application:
Microsoft Word 2007, Microsoft Word 2010
REALLY small! So get it right here: Word Addin Tabs Download

Now you can have tons of word documents open – which is really nice for research- and your set up will look something more like this:

It is so much cleaner and easier to use. I wish I would have had tabs when I was in college because this would have made organization much easier. Oh, well, I’m just glad I found it now. I hope you are too!

Save directly to Cloud Storage - Cloud Save

Most people tend to be drifting toward Cloud Storage so a future without it seems inevitable. It seems kind of redundant to download a file from online to your hard drive and then upload it to your Cloud Storage server afterwards. You probably don’t need the file locally and online in most cases so this process is unnecessary. The smart folks at Google realized this as well and created a Google Chrome extension that bypasses the entire middle stage of this process. Nice! It is called Cloud Save and can be acquired right about HERE for FREE!

So how this app works is really simple. Basically once you have it installed, all you have to do is right click an image or file type like you normally would to save it to your HD. Now you will have a new option in the menu called “Cloud Save” which will enable you to directly save the file to your cloud of choice. Cloud Save is currently compatible with 19 different “clouds” including SugarSync – my fav- as well as DropBox, Google Docs, SkyDrive, Picasa, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon Cloud etc. If you look up awesome dinosaur pics like I do then your new file saving procedure might look like this example:

So to download this free app, just follow this link HEREand then click on the "Add to Chrome" button.

A pop up will appear to confirm the download looking exactly like this one:

Then the app will install in like 5 seconds and the confirmation will show in the top right of your browser like this.

And that is it! Now you are good to go! Now whenever you want to save a file directly to a cloud all you do is right click and go for it! This extension is also very smart so if your cloud of choice is not initially on the first submenu, once you have used it a time or two it will work its way to the top for easy access. Now go get after all those (wholesome) files!

Note: To manage your apps click the little wrench to the right of the address bar, then hover your mouse over “Tools” and then a submenu will appear with “Extensions.” Click it and your extensions can be managed from here.

Auto color blind conversion in Chrome Daltonize!

If you are color blind, then you may not be able to see the contrast others see in images online. Awesome developers at Chrome have created a program that assists in creating contrast for those with different types of color blindness. I, myself am not color blind, but I know some who are and I thought this application might come in handy. Chrome Daltonize is a very small application that can be added to the Chrome Web Browser that automatically loads web pages so that they are color-blind friendly. Whether you are protanope, deuteranope or tritanope, the web, including pictures can be loaded to fit your eyesight. Although I have read that the tritanope conversion is not very accurate. Chrome Daltonize can be loaded manually on desired pages or can be set to automatically convert web pages upon load! This works for most images and text, but does not for videos. Also, this is only available in the Chrome web browser, to the best of my knowledge.
So here is a quick rundown of how to acquire and use this very simple program:
Go to the link above which will direct you to the app. Note: you must be using Chrome for this to work).
Click on the App button and a notification will pop up that looks like-uh this:

Click Install and then Chrome will automatically put an icon in the top right of your browser as an extension. It will look like this:

Right click on the icon for PC users or Command + click Mac users and a menu will appear like so:

Select options and a very brief set of options will appear.
If you would like your web pages to start automatically converting to your set preferences, then select run at page load.

There is also a drop down menu that will allow you to select what type of color blindness you would like Chrome Daltonize! to attempt to correct.

There are a few other simple things that can be changed, but this app is very focussed and created for one obvious purpose. Before you run off and get the FREE app, here is an example of how it will recreate images in order to enhance contrast, without losing too much of the original colors.

Here is the original image i selected:

And here is the image after it is automatically converted to suit the needs for someone who is a protanope:

and here is what the picture looks like when altered for deuteranopia:

Since I do not have any form of color blindness, I am unsure if my example really demonstrates the effectiveness of the app, so please let me know. Many people who do have color blindness have had lots off good things to say about this widely unknown app.
Please lemme know if you found this helpful or if you have a picture that better demonstrates the capabilities of this sweet app. Thanks!