Windows Tools, Help & Guides

I am an Engineer of Telecommunications that love computers. My first computer was a Commodore 16kb, about 25 years ago and since then I am always fighting computers problems. Please visit my entries and ask me about whatever problem you have, I will be pleased to help you. My email is discoveryourpc [at] gmail [dot] com. You can follow me on twitter @agenlu or read my blog www.discoveryourpc.net

Angel Luis's website.

I will assume that many of you have to solve computer’s problems every day.

But, imagine having a list of devil hacks you can use to punish people.

Maybe you are tired to solve others problems, or you want to have fun. If you are in either of these positions this is your post.

1. Cut access to Internet Web Pages.

You can cut internet from certain hours using the following post:

How To Control Access to Specific Website

But if you just want to cut access to a Web, for example www.google.com:

Click on Start Menu, Accesories, look for Notepad, right-click and select “Run as administrator”.

Select File, Open…, and go to %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\ folder. Select open all files, you just add the following line and click save:

127.0.0.1 www.google.com Read the rest of this entry »

Are your children always using Facebook? Or is your brother always using your computer?You will find here a way to control access to websites at certain times.

We will do this in Windows 7 but you can do it in all Windows versions.

This post will use the hosts file and two tasks. The host file is stored in %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\ and its function is mapping  host names and IP addresses. Before DNS or WINS act the local host do this mapping so is the ideal place for controlling access to Web Pages.

So let start:

Read the rest of this entry »

We all know that modern programs like to use the resources of our computers. Normally when we install something, you don’t just install one executable–the program usually puts programs in your bootup sequence.

The most incredible part of this is that Windows, since XP, comes with a feature, Fetch and later SuperFetch, that tries to improve load time of applications, making most of these programs useless.

The question is, why does every great company want a process running in your computer?  The answer I suppose is to have statistic of usage, but at least for me this is not an option.

Read the rest of this entry »

I do not like toolbars, even as there are a lot them that are valid software, for me is a way to loss part of my screen, and performance. Many malware programs use these to track your movements on internet.
You have to follow these solutions one by one, beginning with the first.

With The Uninstaller

We are going to the basic. Maybe it sounds a little too obvious, but the best way is using the uninstaller that came with the application.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having your internet working is not something complicated but we know from experience that sometimes, for reasons we cannot control, our internet speed is slow.

It is very useful before going crazy to have a list you can check to know what exactly is happening.

As you will understand from every post I write, I don’t like formatting computers to solve problems, for me a problem is just an opportunity to learn about computers. So of course you can always format; however, this will not solve every problem.

Check your cables

As amazing as it could seem most internet problems are due to a badconnection between your computer and the router. Remember to first check if the cable is connected properly and the network card shows an intermittent light. In Windows 7 you will see the following icon appearing from time to time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Finding bottleneck is a very complicated task, but it is more complicated if we talk about what happens at boot times.
Have a slow boot computer?  Continue reading and you will find how to solve it
Don’t forget to leave a comment including what process is consuming your CPU.

The post is written using Windows 7 but this work for Windows XP or Windows Vista.

First you have to download the free Sysinternals process monitor utility.

Move the cursor to the downloaded program and press the right mouse button, then you select Extract All as you see on the image:

Extract it in the folder you wish. Now run the Process Monitor Program using Run as administrator:

Once it opens, go to the file menu and deselect capture events:

Read the rest of this entry »