JetFlash Online Recovery - Repair Your USB Drives for Free

Fix your damaged USB pen drives for free using this tool provided by Transcend. It is mainly useful when your usb flash drive has started acting dead and is not responding when inserted into the computer.

The tool not only works on Transcend devices but many of the other non Transcend brands too. Just download the small tool from the link below and run it. For instructions, check the images at the link below step by step process for using the tool.

Download JetFlash Online Recovery Tool

The site description reads,

JetFlash Online Recovery is an advanced new software tool specifically developed for Transcend JetFlash USB flash drives. If your flash drive is not working properly, in most cases it can be repaired instantly by using the recovery tool's simple user-friendly interface. The JetFlash Online Recovery Tool is conveniently located on the Internet, so no matter where you go, you can service your flash drive 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

* All data on your JetFlash drive will be permanently erased during the repair process.
  Please backup the contents of your JetFlash before proceeding.
* This software is designed to repair malfunctioning JetFlash USB flash drives. It will not recover any data/pictures stored on the device.

How to Get Gmail Alerts via SMS on Mobile Phone for Free

Ever wondered how to get Gmail mail alerts on your mobile phone through sms for free? I too was looking for such a free service, also called as sms alerts, but I could not find a proper solution to do so. There are a few of them online but they usually are in a very disorganized manner.

Here am putting up one of the simplest ways to get all your Gmail mails on your sms alerts on your mobile phone through sms for free!

Things you didn’t know VLC media player can do

For most people, VLC is the favorite media player because it plays everything they throw at it without hiccups. No hunting for codec. But VLC can do a lot of other things as well. Find out how many of these listed below you knew, and how many you did not.

1. Rip DVDs: VLC includes a basic DVD ripper. You probably would never use it when there are better DVD rippers available, but it helps to know that you can in fact, get a decent quality DVD rip with VLC. To rip a movie follow these steps:

Things to look for when buying a new Laptop

The need for computers have been changing ever since its inception as personal computer. Be it programming, gaming, surfing the net, watching movies or just listening to music, the personal computer has evolved and so have the demands.

In the current scenario, the demand for mobile computing has seen a huge surge in demand as against the decreasing market share of desktop computer.

A person must fully understand his needs before he can decide whether to buy a laptop, a netbook or may be a tablet pc. These days, with so many brands and their subsequent models, it has become difficult for the average user to decide on which type/configuration of laptop to buy.
Just give a visit to the Dell website and you will be bombarded with details like Sata, 7200x, HD5770, Level 2 or 3 Cache and other similar computer related jargon. This gets confusing for many average users wanting to buy a new laptop computer.

This quick reference guide will help one look through and understand the basics before they can make sense to all the information that is fed to them. The following are the few things can one must attend to before deciding on their choice.

How to enable the secret Windows 7 GodMode

Since the past few months of Windows 7's release, there has been a sudden interest in something that people are calling the Windows 7 GodMode. Don't know how it got the name GodMode; probably the kind of GodMode cheats that allow gamers to play the game without any vulnerability. But there is no such thing here. All Windows 7 GodMode does is, give you a folder where users can access all of the operating system's control panels from within a single folder. All kinds of modifications you may ever need to do, you will find their links here. It is a 2 step process needed to create such a GodMode folder in Windows 7 and it works on both 32 and 64 bit versions.
Here is what you need to do

Changing the default save format in Microsoft Office 2007 appplications

Microsoft(MS) Office is one widely used office applications around the computing world. With MS Office 2007, the file formats of its applications changed. That is, for eg, powerpoint files were earlier saved as .ppt format while it became .pptx now. Similar with other office applications whose file formats changed with the new version.

It's a common notion that latest is always better but in this case it was not so. People who had saved their office files in latest 2007 format found their files incompatible in computers running 2003 office applications. Thus, it put many a people under inconvenience. So it is better to use the 2003 office file formats till everyone is familiar with 2007. While saving, we may select 'save as' and then select 'type' as 2003 file format(ppt, doc etc) and click on OK. That will work but many of us are careless to remember doing that all the time, or worse still, many new users don't even know about selecting the type and all that stuff. So it's better to keep 2003 file format as default rather than the 2007 one.

I will show an example using MS Word 2007. I will change the format from docx to doc. The images below show step by step procedure.

Changing colour scheme of Microsoft Office 2007 applications

 2007Many people have been asking me frequently how to change the colour scheme of MicroSoft(MS) Office applications. By default it is silver in colour like the one shown below.

I have posted stuff using MS Office applications on various forums and many people have asked how did I make mine Black instead of the default silver(I think so). Actually it is very easy and no big trick is involved. Just that most people overlook the settings required to make the changes.

Auto Power On and Shut Down

There can be variety of reasons why we may need to shutdown and start the computer at certain times without the need to do it manually.

Need a fried hard drive?

Did you ever fry a hard drive? I did one a few weeks ago and learnt an important lesson. It was a small issue and hardly worth noting but it did cost me a hard disk(in replacement). Here's what happened.

How To Print Pages In Order with Ink Jet Printers

I found a nice informative (and helpful) article while reading over the net and it was on How to avoid the ink jet page shuffle to put your printouts in order.

Optimizing Windows Registry

In my previous post, we saw how to backup and restore Windows registry easily by using ERUNT tool. In addition to backing up and restoration, the registry requires optimization too. Registry optimization keeps the registry hives healthy and increases overall performance. Just like we need to defragment our hard drive, registry too needs to be done the same. And NTREGOPT does that for you. NTREGOPT stands for NT Registry Optimizer and it works for Windows 7 and Vista too.

Backup Windows Registry

Anyone who has been working for sometime with computers having Windows as its operating system, will be knowing how important a Windows registry is.

How to install Windows from USB Drive

Does this picture say something? Are you one of those trying to install Windows from your flash drives but don't know exactly how to do? Or are you one of them who know a certain method but want to know which is one of the most efficient ways to do so?
If, at all, you belong to any of the above (others are equally welcome!), then this post is what you should definitely read up. More and more people these days are trying to leave the traditional way of booting into Windows setup using bootable CDs. It's more of a necessity because people with netbooks do not have an optical drive or may be a person's optical drive has gone kaput.

Install Windows XP

Until I come up with my short guide on making pendrives bootable, here is a quick tip on how to install Windows. Though am using Windows XP as an example, it can be applied to almost any version of Windows from 2000 and later. This guide is basically meant for both new, inexperienced users as well as those who know how to do it.

Unlocker alternative for x64 Windows - LockHunter

In our earlier posts we have seen about deleting undeletable files using Unlocker and also about deleting undeletable files manually using command prompt. Doing it manually is actually a hectic job and using Unlocker is fast and a sure shot way. But the problem is that Unlocker is only for the 32 bit platform and more and more users these days are moving to the 64 bit version of Windows. Thus, for them, there's another nifty tool named LockHunter that comes in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

Deleting undeletable files manually using command prompt

In our earlier post, we have seen about deleting undeletable files using unlocker. That's a nifty tool for sure and is a must have for all computer users. But one friend of mine asked me if we could delete files manually without using any software. So just to share with those who don't know, I am putting up few lines on how to do it manually.

Deleting undeletable files using Unlocker

Many a time we have come across a situation where we try to remove/delete, move a file or a folder and we get this message.

Sometimes it just says 'Cannot delete file: access denied,' or may be 'Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use'. Most of the times it is true that the file mite be being used and that's why this warning can be a boon to some people. But it also happens that even though it is 'really' not being used anywhere, these kinds of messages pop up and hamper our computer activity.

Free Windows driver download

Do you want to download drivers for your computer but don't know how to ? Or may be you are just unable to find them ! Today we will see how to download driver free of cost for your windows running computer without any hassles.

Many of us use Windows as their default operating system and for Windows XP and earlier versions, it is necessary to install the drivers of the hardwares being used, for them to work. Unless we do it, we will see these yellow question marks in device manager (Right click on My Computer>Click on Manage> Click on Device Manager on the left hand side menu. Alternatively, press Win key and R to get Run command.Type devmgmt.msc ) which means that the device drivers are missing.

Drivers, for each of these hardwares, are missing and they need to be installed for them to function properly.Also outdated or wrong versions of drivers can cause problem in the operation of the computer. (Note: In Windows Vista and presently Windows 7, the drivers are automatically loaded so there's no need to install them separately for most  hardwares).
Now we have got 3 main options with us.

1. Install drivers from the motherboard and/or CD that we got with the respective hardware, or
2. Incase the motherboard/hardware driver CD is not available, then go to the manufacturer's site (if the hardware manufacturer is known to us ), or
3. Use the method I am going to show below.

If we do not have the first two options with us then we have to go for the third i.e. updating device drivers through special softwares. Many of the cases I have seen about missing drivers, the user doesn't usually have the driver cd with them (mostly in case of laptop owners who didn't get a separate cd from the manufacturer) or they have lost them. So ultimately they are left with no other option but to download them from the internet. People who are adept at using the internet find it easily locating the particular driver with the correct version but people who aren't so sure end up messing up their computers.

One of the simplest and least time consuming ways is to use the wonderful freeware Device Doctor.

Device Doctor is basically a freeware windows driver updater that is extremely easy to use and very efficient. According to the site www.devicedoctor.com "Device Doctor is a freeware Windows application that scans your computer hardware and checks to see if there are new driver updates available for your devices. It also locates drivers for "unidentified devices" in the Windows Device Manager."
It is very simple to use too.The basic interface looks like this -

Click on 'Begin Scan' and the software starts scanning your devices. Once that is done, it will start searching for updates for the devices from their online servers.

Once scanning for updates is over, it will display the drivers available for download as shown below

Now you will see all the downloads available listed as shown. You can click on Download Update and get the drivers updated one by one. Finish up with a restart and your computer is now updated with the latest device drivers.

Note that the most important aspect of this software is its huge and regularly updated library of drivers and its ease of use. Even a newbie can sit and update his pc using this software. Its a recommended software for all pc users to have.

This software is free and comes in two types, the normal installable version (4.6 mb) and the other portable version (5.1 mb) for use in multiple computers using a usb drive.

You can download them from the original site

Changing MAC address of a computer

As the title says, we will see how change the MAC address or id of the computer. But before we do that lets have a overview of what MAC is basically and what it's used for.

MAC or Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique idenifier assigned to most network adaptors or network interface cards (NICs...more specially what's known as LAN card or ethernet card) by the manufacturer for identification purposes. Now the question is why do we need to change it ?

These days many ISPs(internet service providers) lock their internet connection to a particular MAC of their subscriber. It is perfectly fine for most people but for people (am one of them) who have more than one computer/laptop and want to use internet on all of them as and when required, it can be quite a hectic job calling the call centre and setting the MAC for the pc they want to use it on every time you want to access internet from a different computer. The ISPs may lock MAC with their connection to safeguard their connection against malpractices or even for push sales for selling wireless solutions to be used on multiple pcs sharing a same connection.

I have a pc and a laptop. I use the net mostly on pc but need it on my laptop for updating it too. Calling the call centre every time is not an impressive solution as some times their service can be down too. Instead a found a very easy to use and simple solution for overcoming this problem.

AnalogX solutions have deveoped a software called anonymac which can solve the above problem by changing the MAC id of the computer.
Consider my situation, where the MAC lock is done with the MAC id of my pc and I want to use internet on my laptop. Thus I need to change the MAC id of my laptop and make it similar to my pc's.
To do this, I first need to check the MAC of my pc. So i need to run this software on my pc first. On the opening window click on local network and then you can see the info out on the software window. Under MAC address section the one on the active is the current MAC id of the pc.

Another way to check the MAC id is to go to start>click on run>type cmd>and then type ipconfig /all

once you do this, you will get a lot of info on the command prompt.Out of that check the physical address under Ethernet Adaptor local area connection. That is the MAC id.

Now once we have got our target MAC id,

open the software in the other computer, Click on local network on the upper most window.
Go to Modify MAC address section and type out the MAC address we got before and click on Apply new MAC. Refresh the network adaptor by disabling and enabling again or simply restart your computer. Now you are done. Both the computers have the same MAC and the internet connection can be used freely on any of them as needed.

There are many such software out in the internet but Anonymac is one of the smallest (only 523kb ) and best one available. For more information on this software check their site by clicking on the banner below.

You can download Anonymac from the link below:
Developers Site

PC/laptop overheating issues

Many of my friends and myself have faced this problem sometime or the other. And this is a common problem with people using laptops and and also with those having old pcs. What usually happens, is that we are working on our computer and then suddenly it shuts itself down (sometimes it restarts too but generally its made to shut down). This happens more often when playing a game on the computer or while doing some resource hungry work.

I have inquired about this with many people and mostly they face this problem while gaming and the computer shuts down. They get confused and some even get worried. People who know how to format a pc generally do that followed by a clean install, thinking that it would solve their problem. Others, who don't know how to do it, call up their technician and get it done for about 500 Rs (approx. 11 $).

What they don't realise is that a little self diagnosis can solve this problem most of the times. It's a general misconception that viruses/malware cause such problems and therefore the formatting and all that follows. Virus is not always the reason for computers to start behaving oddly.