Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Have you ever forgotten your Windows password? Ever had a friend ask you if you know how to retrieve their password? Ever needed a password for other reasons? In this guide you’ll learn how to retrieve your Windows password using a tool named ophcrack.

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If you want access to your Windows account (and not just access to your files), you can reset your password quite easily. Learn, in this guide, how to burn a password reset disc and how to boot from it and reset your Windows account password.

Warning: Do not reset your password if you’ve used Windows to encrypt your files. Instead, attempt to crack your Windows password to regain access to these files.
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Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) has been around for some time and has proved to be a popular, free anti-virus program. In this guide, I’ll show you how to configure MSE, what all the options mean, and some advanced tips to make the program run optimally for you.

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The location sensors in Windows 7 enable your operating system and other software to adapt to your current geographical location. Of course, your computer must have a location sensor supporting hardware e.g., a GPS device, wireless WAN radios or other cellular triangulation technologies. Using these location sensors, your applications can know exactly where you are and provide you with relevant information and content. For example, some twitter clients in Windows can use the location sensors and can automatically post your geographical location along with your tweets.

Most of the modern laptops and desktops are coming with some sort of GPS device installed inside them to take advantage of this location sensor feature in Windows. But even if your computer does not have such a location sensor hardware device,  you can install a software emulation of such devices. Geosense for Windows is such a software based location sensor for Windows 7 which uses Google Location API to find your present location.

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A file’s hash value is a signature for that file that uniquely identifies it. If a file’s contents change, its hash value will also change. You can use the hash value of a file to know whether it has been modified or altered. You can also cross-check the hashes of a suspicious file online to see if it’s a malicious file. Windows 7 does not have any native way to show or calculate a file’s hashes. But you can use the freeware HashTab tool to add a File Hashes tab in the file properties dialog.

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Windows Forums member and owner of Real Security, geohac, has updated his comprehensive guide to help users remove malware from their PC. In the guide, geohac covers steps you should take to prepare for removal such as disabling proxy servers (to give you a better chance at getting online and getting to the sites you need for virus removal software.) The guide then goes on to show you how to boot into safe mode to fight a virus (something we recommend ourselves) and then shows you which tools you should use to remove a virus (downloading these tools on a non-infected PC is the safest bet and making sure, if you have to use a USB drive to transfer the files, that you don’t put the same, now potentially infected, thumb drive back in the clean PC.)

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