How2dothings

Source: How-to-geek 

Hacking the registry allows you to tweak many things in Windows, such as the adding and removing items from the context menu, enabling and disabling Windows features, customizing the Control Panel, and many other items.

We have documented a large collection of registry hacks and here is a list of 20  of the best hacks.

NOTE: If you are not comfortable making changes to the registry, you should not do so. In any case, before hacking your registry, be sure you back it up. We also recommend creating a restore point you can use to restore your system if something goes wrong.

Add the Registry Editor to the Control Panel

The first hack we will show you is one that might be useful when applying the rest of the hacks in this article. Instead of using the Search box on the Start menu every time you want to access the registry, you can do so using an icon in the Control Panel.

The following article shows you a registry hack that adds the registry editor as another option in the Control Panel. This hack works for any version of Windows.

How to Add Registry Editor to Control Panel

Add Any Application to the Windows Desktop Right-Click Menu

If you like a clean desktop, you can add applications to your right-click menu for quick and easy access and avoid adding icons to your desktop.

Here is a registry hack that shows you how to add an application to the right-click menu using Notepad as an example.

How to Add Any Application to the Windows Desktop Right-Click Menu

Add “Open with Notepad” to the Context Menu for All Files

Speaking of Notepad, we covered a registry hack that allows you to add an “Open with Notepad” option to the context menu for all files.

This hack allows you to open unknown files without having to go through a large list of known applications.

Add “Open with Notepad” to the Context Menu for All Files

Clean Up Your Cluttered Windows Context Menu

Some applications you install add options to the Windows context menu, making it cluttered over time. You end up with a long context menu, most of which you probably don’t use, and you have to search for the options you really use.

The following article explains where in the registry you can find the keys that control these menu items, how to disable them by editing the registry manually, and also an easy way to clean up the menu items using a couple of free tools.

How to Clean Up Your Messy Windows Context Menu

Disable Aero Shake in Windows 7

One of the useful features that is new to Windows 7 is the Aero Shake feature. This allows you to grab a window by its title bar and shake it back and forth to minimize all other open windows. It’s a cool feature, but if you want to disable it, there is a solution.

The following article shows you a simple registry hack that allows you to disable Aero Shake.

Disable Aero Shake in Windows 7

Disable All Notification Balloons in Windows 7 or Vista

Windows and applications just love to popup notifications for all kinds of things, like Windows Updates, security issues, unused desktop icons, completion of a task, among other things. If you find these notifications annoying, you can completely disable them.

Turning them off completely is rather extreme. Typically, you can turn them off within the application generating the message. However, if you want to turn them all off in one go, here is an article that shows you how.

NOTE: If you turn off all notifications, be sure to remember to do things like update Windows, update your anti-virus software and other critical software programs.

Disable All Notification Balloons in Windows 7 or Vista

Remove the “Shortcut” Text from New Shortcuts in Windows 7 or Vista

Every time you create a shortcut in Windows 7, “ – Shortcut” is added to the end of the name of the shortcut. This can get very annoying when you have to delete that text every time because you don’t want it. In Windows XP, every shortcut was predicated with “Shortcut to “ as well.

The following article shows you a registry hack that allows you to remove that extra text. This registry hack is from the Windows XP days, but also works in Windows 7 and Vista.

Remove “Shortcut” Text From New Shortcuts in Windows 7 or Vista

Add Google Documents to the Windows Explorer “New” Context Menu

Do you create a lot of documents in Google Docs? We’ve already covered how to create new Google Docs easily. However, wouldn’t it be great if there was an option on the “New” context menu in Windows Explorer for quick and easy access?

The following is a hack to add an option to create a new Google Document to the “New” context menu. It should work for all versions of Windows.

How to Add Google Documents to the Windows Explorer “New” Menu

Change the Registered Owner in Windows

If you have received a used computer from someone else or you are preparing to give a computer to someone else, you probably want to change the registered owner.

To view the registered owner and organization, type winver.exe into the Search box on the Start menu. The following article shows you how to change the registered owner and organization in the registry.

Quick Tip: Change the Registered Owner in Windows

Restore Previous Versions of the Registry in Windows 7

If you want to restore a specific part of the registry manually from a System Restore snapshot or specific keys from a version of the registry you backed up, you can export sections from the backup files without having to a full System Restore. The following article shows you how to do this:

How to Restore Previous Versions of the Registry in Windows 7

Prevent Windows Update from Forcibly Rebooting Your Computer

You’ve probably seen the dialog box prompting you to reboot your computer to finish installing important updates when you were very busy and could not reboot. It’s probably designed to pop up when we are the most busy.

However, there are a couple of ways that you can disable this behavior. The prompt will still display, but you won’t be forced to shut down your computer. The following article explains how to do it.

Prevent Windows Update from Forcibly Rebooting Your Computer

Remove or Hide Unwanted Items from the Control Panel in Windows 7

Are there icons you will never use in the Control Panel that just sit there and clutter it up? Would you like to hide or remove  these icons? The following article shows you how to remove unwanted or unneeded items from the Control Panel in Windows 7.

NOTE: Some items may not be able to be deleted if it’s a Windows system file or a file currently in use. You could use a program like Unlocker, but these items can be hidden by tweaking the registry.

Remove or Hide Unwanted Items From the Control Panel in Windows 7

Add Control Panel to the Desktop Right-Click Menu

While we’re on the subject of the Control Panel, you can access the Control Panel easily from the right-click menu on the desktop or in Windows Explorer using a registry hack.

The following article describes the manual method for adding the Control Panel to the right-click menu and provides a registry file to easily apply the hack. The article talks about applying this hack in Windows Vista. However, this hack also works in Windows 7.

Add Control Panel to the Desktop Right-Click Menu in Vista

Make the Taskbar Buttons Switch to the Last Active Window in Windows 7

The Windows 7 Aero Peek feature allows you to view live thumbnails of every window for the programs on the Taskbar. Clicking these thumbnails accesses the different windows for each program. However, sometimes you may want to click the icon for a program on the taskbar to open the last accessed window for that program.

The following article shows you how to hack the registry to change the Taskbar icon behavior.

Make the Taskbar Buttons Switch to the Last Active Window in Windows 7

Make “Open Command Prompt Here” Always Display for Folders in Windows

We’ve previously shown you how to open a command prompt at the current directory by holding the Shift key down and right-clicking on a folder or the desktop. However, you can avoid having to press the Shift key with a simple registry hack. The following article explains how to do this:

Make “Command Prompt Here” Always Display for Folders in Windows

Add Encrypt/Decrypt Options to the Right-Click Menu

Do you use the built-in file encryption feature in Windows 7 often? If so, we have a registry hack that will add an option to the right-click menu to easily encrypt and decrypt your files. This is quicker and easier than using the File Properties dialog box.

The following article described the simple method of adding a single registry key to add this option.

Add Encrypt / Decrypt Options to Windows 7 / Vista Right-Click Menu

Add Defragment to the Right-Click Menu for a Drive

If you use the Defragment feature in Windows often, you can easily add the Defragment option to the right-click menu for a specific drive.

The following article describes how to manually apply the hack and also provides a registry file you can download to easily apply the hack.

Add Defragment to the Right-Click Menu for a Drive

Show the Classic “All Programs” Menu in the Start Menu in Windows 7

If you must use Windows 7, but you prefer the classic Start menu from Windows XP. Here is a registry hack that brings back the classic “All Programs” menu.

It may not be quite the same as using Windows XP, but if you want the familiar “All Programs” menu back, this registry hack will work for you without requiring you to install third-party software.

Show the Classic “All Programs” Menu in the Start Menu in Windows 7

Add the Recycle Bin to “My Computer”

If you spend a lot of time using the My Computer window, it might be handy to have access to the Recycle Bin from that window. You may not have thought about it before, but we covered how to do this using a simple registry hack, anyway.

The following article covers how to manually hack the registry, but also provides a registry file allowing you to quickly apply the registry hack.

How To Add Recycle Bin to “My Computer” in Windows 7 or Vista

Remove Programs from the Open With Menu in Windows Explorer

As you install programs in Windows, the Open With menu in Windows Explorer gets more cluttered. Would you like to clean up this menu? There is a simple registry hack that can remove programs you don’t want on the menu.

This simple trick helps you keep your Open With menu tidy and works in any version of Windows.

Remove Programs from the Open With Menu in Explorer

Source:  digiex.net By InsaneNutter 

This guide will show you how I did that, its worth mentioning that you can also hack a 20gb, 60gb and 120gb drives, however i think doing a 250gb is the best value for money.

If you have an Xbox 360 slim you can also hack a hard drive using this guide and connect it directly to the console, have a look at the end of the guide for information on how to connect your hacked drive to an Xbox 360 slim.

Ok lets get started, first you will need to buy a hard drive to use in the Xbox 360.

Hddhackr will only work with the following Western Digital Drives: - WD Scorpio Series BEVS/BEAS - WD Scorpio Blue Series BEVS/BEVT/BPVT - WD Scorpio Black Series BEKT/BJKT - WD VelociRaptor Series - WD AV-25 Series BUDT

As of version 1.30, Hddhackr now works with all sizes and versions of the Western Digital Scorpio Series.  You can not use another make of hard drive for this hack, it has to be one of the supported Western Digital drives.

I purchased a 250gb WD Scorpio Blue Series drive (WD2500BEVT) for around £30 at CCL Computers. For those of you who live in the States, you can get the same drive for around $47 atNewegg.

I would highly recommend you also purchase a Western Digital Scorpio Blue Drive, you have nothing to gain by buying a more expensive drive.

The first thing you will want to do is create a bootable USB drive, for this I used a tool called Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool.

Download Bootable USB Drive Creator Tool

Unzip and load the program, be sure to right click and run as an administrator.

Select your USB drive Set the file system as FAT Tick quick format and Create bootable drive Select the box with 3 dots and choose the USB Drive Boot Files\MS-DOS folder as the location. Hit start and you will have a bootable usb drive within a few seconds.

Now Download Xbox 360 250GB Hard Drive Security Sector and Download HddHackr v1.30 Build 20110303

For anyone who wants to hack a diffrent size drive here are the security sectors that can be used for a: 20gb drive 60gb drive 120gb drive

Unzip both to the USB drive you just made bootable

Be sure to rename the HDDSS_250GB.BIN to HDDSS.BIN

The end result should be something like this, don’t worry you will not have an UNDO.BIN yet.

You will need to shut down your pc now, I would advise you disconnect all the other hard drive in your computer just to stop you accidently hacking the wrong drive!

Now connect the hard drive you want to hack to your computer

Click On Read The Rest Of This Post To Read full Guide With Text & Images :-

Power your computer back on, before you carry on it might be an idea to enter you bios configuration and ensure the SATA operation mode is set to ATA or disable AHCI depending on the options you have. On some motherboards this can also be called legacy or enhanced, if you are presented with this you want to set it to legacy. This will vary depending on your motherboard / bios.

The above appears to be the most common cause for people not been able to flash there drives.

Now tell your computer to to boot from the usb drive, this will be different depending on your motherboard, on my pc I have to press F11 then select the drive I wish to boot from.

You will find yourself at a dosprompt, type hddhackr and press enter.

All been well hddhackr will have listed all the drives in your system, in my case the drive I want to hack is number 5. 

After entering the number you will be asked if you want to dump, flash or restore the firmware, select F to flash.

Type in the name of the security sector you want to flash, this will be HDDSS.BIN if you have followed this tutorial.

You will get a message saying that the information in file HDDSS.BIN does not match the drive’s firmware info. Do you want to flash the Xbox 360 compatible firmware.

Say yes to this:

You will then be asked if you also want to create partition 0/2/3

Again say yes to this, you drive should now be hacked, congratulations!

An UNDO.BIN will have been saved on your USB drive, keep this safe as you will need it for if you ever want to restore the drive back to normal.

Opening the 360 drive enclosure

Now you need to open your Xbox 360 hard drive, you will need a Torx T6 screwdriver to do this.

You can now remove the top, the mechanism to lock/unlock the HDD-bay on your Xbox 360 console might fall out… don’t worry it’s easy enough its put back together, just look how it is in my photo below.

Now you have 4 more screws to remove, these require a Torx T10 screwdriver, you can then remove the metal case.

Now you can unplug the power and sata cable from the drive, then slide it out pulling the drive gentily up as you do so.

You should now have your original drive

If you want to restore the Xbox 1 emulator to your newly hacked drive or your save games you will need to connect your old 360 drive to your computer and boot windows.

If you dont have an old hard drive or simply want to save some time you can download a copy of Hoffmans partition 2 which he uploaded here

Download Xplorer 360 Extreme.

Now unzip and right click and run it as administrator.

Select Drive > Open > Harddrive or Memorycard

We are going to backup the Xbox 1 emulator so you will still be able to play Xbox 1 games on the 360.

To do this select Drive > Backup Partition 2 and save the backup.

If you want to backup your profiles, saves, arcade games, demos, dlc and videos you basically want to dump your Partition 3 > Content folder, I had to dump a few folders at the time because Xplorer 360 had random crashes for me.

Now shutdown windows, disconnect your original 360 drive and connect the hacked 250gb drive.

When windows has loaded up again load Xplorer 360 Extreme again, remembering to run it with administrator rights and select Drive > Restore Partition 2 and select the backup you made from your old 20gig drive.

It is important you just close Xplorer360 after that, massing about with anything else will corrupt Partition 3.

Now Download Xplorer 360 250gb Edition, this works fine with Partition 3 on 250gig drives, however trying to modify anything on partition 0 or 2 will just corrupt the drive!! Trust me save yourself some time and don’t do it.

Also don’t use Xplorer 250gig edition on any other sized drive either, it will just corrupt the drive.

If you do corrupt you drive just connect it to your Xbox 360 and format it.

After you have restored any content you can now shut your pc down and put the 250gig drive in your 360’s drive enclosure, it might be an idea to test everything is working correctly before re assembling the enclosure.

The hacked drive:

Connecting to the Xbox 360 slim:

It is also possible to use your hacked drive in the new Xbox 360 slim, with the slim you are not required to insert the hard drive in any enclosure, you can simply connect it to the console.

If you want to buy an enclosure for it have a look on Deal Extreme at the HDD Hard Disk Drive Case for Xbox 360 Slim, if not just read below and connect the drive directly to your 360 slim.

First open the panel at the side, the entry way is on the right side as you look at the Xbox. If you look towards the end of the right side of the Xbox you can see 3 vents you can pull to remove the cover.

If you have the 4gb model, there will be no hard drive in this area. This is the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250gb hard drive inside the Xbox. Be sure to make sure it’s seated. It may take some time to get it perfectly fit.

The Sata and power connections inside the slim you need to connect the drive to

A Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250gb installed in a 4gb Xbox 360 Slim:

The new 4gb Xbox 360 slim with a nice 250gb hacked drive installed:

Credit to Digiex member Nsab3001 for the slim information and photos.

Hopefully I have covered everything you should need to know to do this hack yourself, if not feel free to ask and I will try and help.

FAQ:

HDDHackr doesn't work for me: 99% of problems are caused by the SATA chipset on your motherboard or BIOS configurations such as Legacy IDE not been enabled, AHCI been enabled or Raid been active.

If you still have problems try using another computer with a different SATA chipset. It might also be an Idea to check the official Hddhackr release thread on Xbox Hacker too.

HDDHackr still doesn't work for me, can i try anything else? You can have a look at Harcrofts tutorial on How to Flash Your HDDSS.bin in Windows. Read the tutorial very carefully and do so at your own risk.

Some of my save games no longer work: The easy solution to this is to move the save game on to the memory card from the old hard drive, if it will let you. Not all saves let you move them between storage devices.

DrDrrae has posted a solution that doesn't require a memory card, Link.

I have attached CONcept and Hash Block Calculator which he says are required. Ive not tested that myself as all my game saves appear to work, fine however people have stated it works perfectly.

I restored my data back however the Xbox 360 doesn't see it?

Have a look at my post here, that explains where your files likley ended up and a solution to get them in to the folder you want.

I want to be able to drag and drop files with Xplorer 360

UAC has to be switched off for this to work, simply running the program with admin rights doesn't work. To do this in Windows 7 go to Control Panel\User Accounts and Family Safety\User Accounts and select "Change user account settings" Now slide down to never notify and hit ok. You might need to re start your pc for the changes to take effect. Remember to enable UAC again when you are finished.

DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

               [email protected]

 Attached Files

 HddHackr_v1.25_Build_20101114.rar (27.2 KB, 17655 views)

 HddHackr_v1.30_Build_20110303.rar (29.7 KB, 10816 views)

 Bootable_USB_Drive_Creator_Tool.rar (302.0 KB, 51797 views)

 Xplorer 360 Extreme.zip (57.5 KB, 22837 views)

 CONcept 0.3.zip (1.52 MB, 8777 views)

  Source: how-to-geek

We’ve already shown you some great ways to get your keyboard clean. For geeks that aren’t faint of heart, check out how to make your keyboard dishwasher safe and clean it with half the work and in half the time.

Keyboards can be, and often are, literally dirtier than toilets. But taking off keys and swabbing with alcohol can really be time consuming and painstaking work, where making a keyboard dishwasher safe is a simple ten or fifteen minute job. Here’s how to clean and sanitize your keyboard the How-To Geek way!

This is a very common PS2 keyboard, as you can see from the prominent Dell logo. You may have a slightly different keyboard, but the fundamentals of this how-to are going to be the same for virtually all readers.

(Author’s Note: As with any how-to involving opening up equipment, you’re risking damaging it if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, most keyboards are extremelysimple, so this is more or less safe for anyone with enough skill to operate a screwdriver. Still, DIY is only for the brave at heart!)

Start with a dirty keyboard, full of caked on food, drink, bacteria, sneeze, and whatever else you might have done to it over the years since you either bought it or—ahem—cleaned it last.

Don’t’ worry about all the dust bunnies, etc that live between the keys. Pretty much, for our purposes, the dirtier, the better. But, if you like, you can always give it a quick blast with a can of compressed air, or spend some time pre-treating it to get it extra clean.

Flip the keyboard around to the back, where we’ll need to pop out several of the screws holding the keyboard case together.

Click On Read The Rest Of This Post To Read full Guide With Text & Images :-

You’ll find there are rather a lot of them. Check all of the visible screw holes, including some of the deeper, counter sunk ones hidden beneath the outer surface.

An ordinary Philips head screwdriver will get the job done for nearly all keyboards. You may find that some Apple models or various other keyboards may use less common screw heads like hex or torx, in which case you’ll need an allen key, or some other tool. However, most keyboards should be assembled with basic screws and require only basic screwdrivers.

They keyboard assembly should basically fall apart without the screws. Your keyboard may have a snap or other catch that allows the assembly to fall apart, but most likely if it does not immediately come open, you’ve still got screws holding it together.

Let’s take a quick look at the parts inside the keyboard. This is the back of the actual “keyboard” part of the keyboard, made with purely mechanical buttons and keys. Nothing but plastic and metal here.

This is the controller and the dome-switch membrane. You can easily reach in and pull out the membrane with your hands—it is likely not attached to anything.

The controller will be held in by several screws and attached to the PS2 or USB cable that leads out of the case. Your same screwdriver should remove them without issue.

Gently remove the cable and controller in one piece, then remove the flexible circuit board beneath. These are the only parts of the keyboard that are water sensitive. Put them away where they’ll be safe, so you can put them back together in this same order.

Here is the disassembled, disgusting keyboard case.

And your various parts, including the flexible circuit board, controller and cable, dome-switch membrane, and all the various screws. Again, keep these in a safe place. You won’t be cleaning these.

And—yecch—here’s a bunch of the dirt that fell off during this process.

Toss the board in the dishwasher just as if it was a ketchup-covered plate, and wash away. Once it is dry, simply re-assemble it the same way we took it apart, taking care to install the flexible circuit board, controller, dome-switch membrane, and finally keyboard top properly. Not re-installing any single part will cause your keyboard to not work. However, it’s not terribly sensitive, so simply try again until it does.

It may seem sort of risky, but this method is no more likely to ruin your keyboard than spilling alcohol on it while swabbing the keys. The total time taken, apart from the time it takes to run it through the dishwasher, is around 15 minutes, and that is if you’re reallytaking your time. All things considered, this is quite a fun way to learn about how keyboards work, and get it clean and sanitized without a lot of effort.

Sincere Thanks to how-to-geek team to share this with us... 

    DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

Source: hongkiat.com By Trinity Nick

  The Microsoft Windows 7 operating system has been designed for delivering better speeds than its predecessors. However, as time passes by, the laptop/PC might tend to get slower. This is not exactly the fault of the OS. As the matter of fact, it is a common problem faced by many operating systems.

The major reasons for this are accumulation of junk in the system or a highly stuffed hard drive or running of too many unnecessary services and programs. Here we shared a few essential tips that can help speed up Windows 7 performance on laptops or computers. Hope it helps!

  Visual And Sound Related

1. Using Minimal Visual Effects

Disabling certain (or all) visual effects can definitely enhance performance. To disable visual effects, do the following:

Press Windows key and while holding it down, press Pause/Break key.

In the window that appears, click on Advanced system settings in the left side pane.

In the Advanced tab, under Performance Section, click on Settings

In the Performance Options window (refer figure) that appears, under Visual Effects tab, disable the options that you do not need. Or simply selecting ‘Adjust for best performance‘ will disable all options.

After disabling the option, click Apply and then OK.

Doing the above might make the screen less attractive. But, the performance will surely get a boost.

2. Using Minimal Sound Effects

For disabling sound effects, do the following:

Click Start. In the search box type mmsys.cpl and press Enter

In the Sound window (refer figure) that appears click on Sounds tab

Set the Sounds scheme to ‘No Sounds‘

You could set only the essential sounds if needed in the Program Events, by selecting the specific event and then choosing the sound from the Sounds drop-down menu below.

You can as well disable the "Play Windows Startup sound" option.

After the settings are done, click Apply and OK.

Software And Services Related

Click On Read The Rest Of This Post To Read Full Guide With Text & Images:-

1. Run A Trusted Anti-Virus Program

Ensure that you have a good anti-virus software loaded on your laptop/computer. This will ensure that no malware or spyware gets planted in your system. Without such protection software, there are chances of third party malware and virus being installed or stored on your system, causing harmful effects and also eating up precious space.

2. Install Only Essential Software

Ensure that you install only that software which you need. If you install any trial software and find out that you don’t really need it, uninstall and delete it immediately. Else, they might hog precious disk space, RAM and processor cycles. If you’ve installed a software, which you are unable to get rid of, and which is hampering the normal functioning of your laptop, then you might have to format your hard drive. Be aware that formatting your hard drive might wipe out all your data. Therefore it is best you take a back-up before going ahead with formatting.

3. Disable Or Make Unneeded Services Manual

Some processes and services, which might not really be necessary, are by default made to start automatically once the system starts up. They will consume RAM as well as the processor’s attention, slowing down other important tasks. It is best to disable them. For this, do the following:

Click Start. In the search box type services.msc and press Enter

Go to Services & Applications > Services. You’ll see the Services window (refer figure).

Right-click on a service that you wish to set to manual or disable. If the service is already started, Stop it first.

Once the service is stopped, again right-click on it and select Properties.

In the Startup type, you can either set the service to Manual, if you would be using it later, or Disableit, if not needed.

Once done, you can close the window.

4. Disabling Unwanted Start-Up Programs To Speed Up System Start-Up

Some programs are set to start during system start-up. These might slow down the start-up process. Programs that are not really needed during start-up can be disabled. For this, do the following:

Click Start. In the search box type msconfig and press Enter.

In the System Configuration window (refer figure), go to Startup.

Uncheck the box next to those processes that are not important for start-up. This will disable them.

Once you’ve disabled the processes, click Apply and OK.

Hard Drive Related

1. Clean Up The Hard Drive

Remove unwanted files, like temp files, downloaded program files, recycle bin, etc. You could use Disk Cleanup option to do this, as follows:

Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup

The system will first calculate how much space can be freed up this way. In the Disk Cleanup window (refer figure) that appears, select the files in that need to be deleted under the Files to delete list.

For deleting ‘System Restore‘ and ‘Shadow copy‘ files, click "Clean up system files" and then on "More Options" tab

Finally click OK. You’ll be prompted again before the deletion. Click Yes.

2. Enable Write Caching On Device

This is an option which allows the OS to flush changed data to the hard disk when the system is idle, so that performance is not affected when in use. For enabling this, do the following:

Press Windows key and while holding it down, press Pause/Break key.

In the window that appears, click on Device Manager in the left hand pane.

In the next window that appears, expand Disk drives.

The drop-down list will show the hard drive. Right-click on it and select Properties.

Click the Policies tab in the Device Properties window (refer figure).

Check the box next to "Enable write caching on the device"

You can as well check the box next to "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device" and then click OK.

Note: However, there is one disadvantage in enabling these options – if there is a power outage or a system crash, data might be lost or corrupted. If you have a secondary power supply, like a UPS, you could go ahead with checking these options.

3. Perform Disk Defragmentation

When there is no sufficient space to store in a hard drive, the OS splits the file into parts and stores it in different areas on the hard drive. Defragmenting allows all these parts to be stored in contiguous memory locations. For defragmenting disk do the following:

Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

In the window (refer figure) that appears, click on the drive that you want to defragment and then clickAnalyze disk.

This will estimate the time required for the process. When done click on Defragment disk.

Once done you can either View Report or click Close.

These pretty much sum up the small things that you can do, to make a big difference to your Windows 7′s performance. If you have some personal tips you’ve done yourself to improve the performances, we’d like to hear from you.

Sincere Thanks To Trinity Nick To Share This With Us

  DISCLAIMER  

We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:-           

Source: psd.tutsplus.com By James Davies 

  Applying texture to a flat surface, or flatly applying a texture across a whole image (as a means to age it or degrade it) is simple stuff. Realistically applying a texture to an uneven surface is much more hands-on (more so than simply overlaying a texture and changing the Blending mode).

  Video Tutorial

Our video editor Gavin Steele has created this video tutorial to compliment this text + image tutorial.

Step 1

Job number one, as ever, is pooling your assets together. I got the man from iStockphoto here and the tree bark (courtesy of K. Tuck) from stock.xchng here.

Step 2

Cut out the face using the Pen tool (set to Paths not Shape Layers). Cut and paste it into your blank canvas (1562 pixels by 1172 pixels at 300dpi). Open up the bark image, and import it into your working document. Resize and rotate the document as in the screengrab.

Step 3

Use the Clone Stamp tool to fill in the rest of the texture. Avoid easily recognizable repetitions in the texture like the ones circled. Clone them out. I used a 200 pixel, soft-edged brush to do this

Click On Read The Rest Of This Post To Read Full Guide With Text & Images:-

Step 4

Turn the visibility of the “Bark” layer off (clicking the eye icon next to the layer thumbnail will do this). Go to the Channels palette, select the channel with the best contrast, and duplicate this channel into a new document.

Step 5

Apply a 2 pixel Gaussian Blur to your new document and then adjust the Levels as in the screengrab below. Save as “Displace.psd.”

Step 6

Reselect the “RGB” channel (so all channels are selected and the image is now back in color) and return to the Layers palette. Make the “Bark” layer visible and select it. Go to Filter > Distort > Displace. Set the Horizontal and Vertical scale to 1 (or try other values), select Stretch To Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels. Set the Layer Blending Mode to Multiply. You can see how it’s distorted over parts of the face.

It hasn’t quite put it in the right place so move the “Bark” down the face until the distortions match the face. Use this wrinkle (circled) as a guide as to where to put it.

Step 7

Duplicate the “Bark” layer twice. Set one to Multiply with an Opacity of 100%. Set the other to Normal at 40% Opacity. Position in the Layer hierarchy as in the image below.

Step 8

Command-click on the “Face” Layer to create a selection. Select the “Bark Normal 40% Layer” and go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal selection. Repeat this for the “Bark Multiply” Layer. Zoom into 300% and use the Pen tool to draw around the eyes and the mouth. Add a rough edge to the top of the mouth. Press Commmand-click on the Path thumbnail to create a selection.

Step 9

Select the “Bark Normal 40%” Layer Mask thumbnail to work directly on the Mask. Select black as the background color and then delete the selection from the Layer Mask. Repeat this process for the “Bark Multiply” Layer.

Step 10

Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and set up as shown below. Then fill the Adjustment Layer Mask with black so the effects aren’t visible.

Step 11

Turn off the visibility of the “Bark” Layers and use the Pen tool to draw a paths around the hard edges we need to mask. The bottom of the nose and cheek lines are good examples. Command-click on the Path thumbnail to create a selection from it.

Step 12

Select a soft-edged (0% Hardness) brush, loaded with white (as the foreground color) and set to 16% Opacity. Paint directly on the Layer Mask. Press Command + H to hide selection the, if it helps. Draw over several times, applying more at the shadow source and less as you get further from the harsher shadows.

Step 13

Draw around other features which produce hard lines such as the bottom lip. Draw the Shadows in the same manner.

Step 14

Create a selection from the “Face” layer by Command-clicking the layer thumbnail. Draw all the shadows in…

Step 15

…Changing the Brush size to suit size of the area you’re treating. Around the lip for example, use a small brush.

Step 16

Turn the “Bark” layers off to see the key areas of shadow. You can still work on the Mask with the face showing. I flick between working with the “Bark” visible and invisible.

Step 17

In order to soften or erase any shadows that you’re not happy with, change the brush color to black and draw on the mask in the same way as before. Keep working on the Mask until you get it right.

Step 18

Whilst drawing on the Mask, you should be changing your brush size and the opacity to suit the shadow. For a big gradual shadow you’ll want around a 300 pixel brush set to 16% Opacity, all the way down to 18 pixels and increasing the opacity to suit. Finally, apply a 0.6 pixel Gaussian Blur to the Adjustment Curve Layer Mask to soften the hard edges.

Step 19

Duplicate the “Bark” Layer that sits beneath the “Face” Layer. Set them up so they are the same as the top Bark layers, one Normal at 40% opacity, one Multiply at 100%. Then under those two layers create a new layer and fill it with C=61%, M=66%, Y=66%, and K=62%.

Step 20

Create a selection from the “Face” Layer (Command-click the Layer thumbnail) and go to Select > Inverse. Then go to Select > Modify > Expand. Give it a 1 pixel expansion. Select the Curves Adjustment Layer Mask and Fill the selection with 20% black.

Step 21

Create a selection from the Eyes/Mouth Path you made earlier. Add some shadows by drawing on the Curves Adjustment Layer Mask.

Step 22

To further fuse the elements together, and to grade the image, add a Curves and a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer to the top of the Layers hierarchy.

Step 23

Flatten the image and go to Filter > Liquify. Select the Bloat tool and set up roughly how it is in the image below. We want to add a 3D quality to the areas such as cheeks, nose, and forehead. Select an appropriate Brush size for each of these areas and click on each a few times rather than dragging the brush around.

Conclusion

You can always add some real world effects such as leaves and bugs to the final image – go nuts. This technique works for applying any texture to any surface, for example you could make a brand new Mercedes SLK rusty and riveted, or make a house out of skin. Go have fun whilst you perfect your craft. You can view the final image below or view a larger version here.

Sincere Thanks To James Davies to Make This Easy For Us 

DISCLAIMER  

We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:-           

Source: simonblog.com By farrukh zafar

  So you’ve always wondered there should be something that can make the photo transfer from your camera to the iPad a bit faster than what it takes to do it through iTunes. No worries, there’s this Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit to make your life easier! This is actually a hardware accessory that lets you connect a SD card into your iPad or let’s you plug your camera in to your iPad straight, using a USB. No computer in between the transfer is required. It’s between your camera and iPad now. Sense the ease?   Here’s the how-to guide for you:

Step 1

Get the Camera Connection Kit at Amazon.com or Apple Store

Step 2

Opt for the suitable connector. The kit includes two connectors with different interfaces. You can connect to your camera directly via the USB interface. Or simply insert the SD card into the connector with SD card reader.

Step 3

Connect Camera Connection Kit to your iPad.

Click On Read The Rest Of This Post To Read Full Guide With Text & Images:-

Step 4

The Photos app on your iPad device will start up and fetch the pictures from your SD card / camera automatically.

Step 5

You’ll see the “Import All” button. Tap it to import all photos from the SD card. Else you do have the option to choose which images you wish to transfer, on an individual basis and then, go for the “Import Selected” option.

Step 6

Once you’re done with the importing of photos, you are prompted with a choice whether to keep or delete the imported photos on your camera/ SD card as backup.

Step 7

Now disconnect the Camera Connection Kit.

That’s it! You have them transferred and you can find the imported photos in the “Last Import” album.

sincere thanks to farrukh zafar To Share This With Us  

  DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

Source: Makeuseof.com by Jorge Sierra

There are many great tutorials on the web forusing a Mac to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on a PC. Unfortunately, you may be unable to follow such tutorials if you do not readily have access to a Mac to perform the preparation necessary for the installation.

Great progress has been made in hacking PCs to run OS X, and it is now possible to install Mac OS X without a Mac. Thanks to some great tools put together by some brilliant hackers, it is also much easier and does not involve nearly as much time and effort as was once required.

  Step 1: Getting The Hardware Ready

I recently purchased the following set of hardware for the purposes of building a Hackintosh (often PCs running Mac OS X are referred to as such):

Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz

Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 Motherboard

4 GB DDR3 1333 RAM (2 x 2GB)

DVD Burner

MicroATX Computer Case

585 Watt Power Supply

4-pin to 8-pin Power Adapter

The motherboard has an 8-pin power connector on it, and although it is possible to connect a single 4-pin connector to it, you may encounter odd issues running with just a single 4-pin connector. To ensure that you provide sufficient power to the board, you should purchase the 4-pin to 8-pin power adapter. Alternatively, you could purchase a power supply with 3x 4-pin connectors (1 for the 20+4-pin main connector, and 2 for the 8-pin connection) or an 8-pin connector.

Step 2: Prepare The Boot Disk

In addition to the hardware and a retail copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you’ll also need a blank CD. You may want to use a rewritable CD if you’re using a different hardware configuration, just in case the first one I recommend doesn’t work for you. There are two boot disk images that will allow you to install OS X directly from the installation DVD:

iBoot (by tonymacx86 and MacMan)

Empire EFI (by Prasys)

I successfully used both of them with my hardware setup. However I recommend you try iBoot first, as it is a bit leaner and doesn’t take as long to boot. If you’re using my hardware configuration, be sure to download the iBoot Supported disk image. If you use Empire EFI, download the Empire EFI v1.085 R2 image.

You can use one of many free programs to burn CDs if you don’t have one. Be sure to use the disk image burning mode in your CD burning software. Do not just simply copy the disk image file to a blank CD. I like InfraRecorder, because it makes this very easy. All you have to do is click the Write Image button, select the image, and burn it. Once again, you may wish to use rewritable media if you’re using a different hardware configuration than mine.

Click On Read The Reast Of This Post To Read Compleat Guide With Text & Images:-

Step 3: Bios Configuration

Fortunately, the Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 does not require a lot of configuration to run Mac OS X. When you first turn on or reboot the machine, press the delete key to enter the BIOS setup. You can just load the Optimized Defaults, and just make a few changes within three sections of the bios: Advanced BIOS Features, Integrated Peripherals, and Power Management Setup.

3.1 – First, go to Advanced BIOS Features and set the First Boot Device to CDROM. I have my USB drive as the second drive and then Hard Disk as third – you can configure yours the same way if you wish to ever boot from a USB drive. Just be sure that Hard Disk is the Second Boot Device or Third Boot Device.

3.2 – Next, configure SATA to run in AHCI mode in the Integrated Peripherals menu. You’ll need to set both PCH SATA Control Mode and Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode toAHCI.

3.3 – Finally, go to Power Management Setup and set the HPET Mode to 64-bit mode.

Step 4: Installing Mac OS X

4.1 – Insert the iBoot (or Empire EFI) boot disk.

4.2 – When you see screen below, eject the disk.

4.3 – Insert the Retail Mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD, wait a few seconds, and press F5.

4.4 – When you see the screen below, select Mac OS X Install DVD (it should already be selected) and press Enter.

4.5 – If all goes well, you should eventually see the language selection screen for the installer. If all did not go well and you do not make it to the language selection screen, try downloading a different version of iBoot or Empire EFI.

4.6 – Select your language and click the arrow to proceed.

4.7 – Next, you need to partition your drive. Click on Utilities > Disk Utility.

4.8 – Select your disk drive.

4.9 – Click Partition.

4.10 – Select 1 Partition for the partition scheme. Note: If you have a drive that is larger than 2 TB, do not create partitions larger than 1 TB. Split the drive into multiple partitions, and be sure the main installation partition is 1 TB or smaller.

4.11 – Enter a name for the partition (I used Hackintosh).

4.12 – Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the Format.

4.13 – Click Options…, select GUID Partition Table, and then click OK.

4.14 – Click Apply.

4.15 – Quit Disk Utility and proceed with the installation. Install on the Hackintosh partition.

Step 5: Installing the Boot Loader

Do not fret when you reboot after the installation and get a boot error, as you will need to first boot the machine with iBoot (or Empire EFI). Eject the Mac OS X Snow Leopard install DVD, put your boot CD back into the drive, and reboot the machine. Now when you boot up, you should see a second choice for your installation partition (Hackintosh if you named it that way). Select the Hackintosh partition and press Enter to boot into OS X.

Once you’ve completed the first-run setup, open up Safari and download Multibeast. Multibeast is another superb tool by tonymacx86 and MacMan that makes it stupid easy to install the boot loader, along with all the drivers necessary for your Hackintosh to function properly.

In addition to downloading Multibeast, you will need to download the DSDT for the Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 and copy it to the desktop. Be sure to save it as DSDT.aml. Launch Multibeast and make the following selections (your choices will differ if you have a different motherboard/hardware configuration):

UserDSDT

System Utilities

Advanced Options > Kexts > Audio > LegacyHDA > ALC889

Advanced Options > Kexts > Graphics > NVEnabler

Advanced Options > Kexts > Network > RealtekR1000SL

Advanced Options > Patched Kernels > 10.3.1 Supported Kernel

After MultiBeast finishes installing, eject the iBoot CD and reboot the system. You should be able to boot right up from the hard drive, and all your devices should work just fine.

Step 6: Getting Started with Your New Mac

So what now? Most certainly you’ll want to check out 5 apps to get more out of your new Mac as well as 15 must-have apps for your Mac. In fact, you should probably just go ahead and browse the entire Mac section on MakeUseOf, as you’ll find a wealth of great free stuff for your new Mac in there. And most importantly make sure to download MakeUseOf’s getting started manual for Mac. Highly recommended for switchers.

If you have any problems installing Mac OS X on your PC, just post a comment right here and we’ll do what we can to help. Just be sure to provide as much information about the hardware you’re using:

Motherboard make and model (i.e. Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3)

CPU model (i.e. Intel Core i3-530 )

GPU model (i.e. NVIDIA GeForce 9900 GT)

I never managed to get sleep to work. When I try to put the computer to sleep, it sort of goes into a coma. The fans never shut down and the machine doesn’t wake up when you press the power button. If you manage to get sleep to work with my hardware configuration, please do feel free to share your solution in the comments on this article.

There are also many great forums and sites out there that provide a lot of information and assistance with running Mac OS X on PC. Here are just a few you may want to check out:

tonymacx86 Forum

InsanelyMac Forum

Hackint0sh

Prasys’ Blog

OSx86 Project

If you do seek assistance from any of these or similar resources, be sure to search for your problem before posting it. You will be flamed to no end if you ask a question that has already been answered. Another tip for posting in these forums: never call it a MAC (in all caps) instead of a Mac, or you will solicit many abusive responses. Mac is an abbreviation not an acronym.

Here are a few more links that provide tools and files to help you set up a Hackintosh on hardware other than what I’ve mentioned here:

myHack – Another bootloader/kext installer, similar to Multibeast

Kexts.com – A good resource for downloading Kexts (device drivers)

Kext Helper – A tool that makes it easy to install new Kexts

Kext Utility – A tool to ensure proper kext installation

Chamelon Boot Loader – The boot loader that pretty much all the boot disks out there use (including iBoot and Empire EFI).

netkas PC EFI – Used in combination with Chameleon to provide maximum compatibility for booting OS X. Most boot disks use this as well.

BootCDMaker (French) – Utility (for Mac) to create your own custom boot disks

A million thanks to tonymacx86 and MacMan for developing iBoot and Multibeast to make installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard on PC a piece of cake. Enjoy your new Hackintosh and let us know what you think of it!

Disclaimer: Please note that running Mac OS X Snow Leopard on hardware other than a Macintosh is against the Mac OS X End User License Agreement (EULA). If you have concerns about this, you may wish to read Is Making Your Own Hackintosh Legal? By installing Mac OS X you are in breach of a contract (breaking a contract is not the same as breaking the law). As long as you own a legal copy of the software, you are not in violation of copyright law.

  DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

Source: insidemylaptop.com

In the following guide I will be removing the LCD screen, inverter board and display hinges from a Compaq Presario F700 laptop. The display disassembly steps will be very similar for Compaq Presario F500, HP G6000 and some other HP/Compaq laptops. If this guide works for you, please mention your laptop model in the comments below.

If you want to replace the LCD screen or inverter board, it’s not necessary to remove the whole display panel as it shown on the picture above. You can do that while the display panel is still attached to the laptop base.

If you want to replace display hinges, you’ll have to remove the display panel first.

You can find the display panel removal instruction in my previous disassembly guide for a Comapq Presario F700 notebook. Follow steps 6-12 to remove the display panel assembly.

DISPLAY DISASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS.

STEP 1.

Using a sharp object remove eight screw seals from the display bezel. Remove eight screws found under the seals.

STEP 2.

Start separating the display bezel from the cover with your fingers.

Continue removing the bezel.

The display bezel has been removed.

Click On Read The Reast Of This Post To Read Full Guide With Text & Images:-

STEP 3.

The screen inverter board is mounted below the LCD screen. Disconnect cables from both sides of the inverter board and remove the inverter.

The screen inverter has been removed.

STEP 4.

Remove six screws securing the display hinges to the display cover.

STEP 5.

Now you can remove the LCD screen assembly which includes the LCD screen, LCD cable and hinges.

STEP 6.

Now you can access and remove the LCD cable. - Unplug the LCD cable from the screen. - Remove yellow tape securing the cable. - Remove the cable.

STEP 7.

Remove two screws securing one of the display hinges and remove the hinge. Do the same with the second hinge.

Both display hinges have been removed.

STEP 8.

Now you can replace the LCD screen with a new one if needed. You can find a new replacement LCD screen for Compaq Presario F700 laptop here for less than $70.

Sincere Thanks To insidemylaptop.com Team to Make This Easy For Us....

DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

Source: drawinghowtodraw.com

Now we will show you how to draw Lightning McQueen, the red race car from Disney’s Cars movie. He is the main character in the movie. Even if you aren’t good at drawing, these easy-to-follow steps will guide you through the process of drawing this race car.

How to Draw Lightning McQueen from Disney Cars Movie Step by Step Lesson

Step 1

Start with 2 rectangles side by side.

Step 2

Then draw a trapezoid on top.

Step 3

Place 3 squares where the wheels should be.

Step 4

Now draw the details for Lightning McQueen’s rear flaps and windshield. Add the eyes on top of the windshield.

Here are Other Method To Draw Lightning McQueen (Cars) In 13 different  Steps:-

Click On Read The Rest Of This Post To Read Full Guide With Text & Images:-

  Step 5

  Step 6

Now draw McQueen’s flame designs. Add the headlights and a cheeky grin on his bumper.

Step 7

Draw the wheel designs next.

Step 8

Blacken your outlines and put a few more details on the car. There’s McQueen straight from the Piston Cup.

Step 9

  Above you can see the colors that you should use to colorize Lightning McQueen. I hope this drawing lesson helped you.

Sincere Thanks To drawinghowtodraw.com Team toMake This Easy For Us....

DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

By Alvaris Falcon Source: Hongkiat.com 

Believe it or not, if you’re using Photoshop to design website, you’re on the right path to become a successful web designer. This is simply because Photoshop is one of the most advanced tool in the design industry that can make your creative imagination comes true with its plethora of professional tools which boost your productivity at the same time.

But how well do you know about Photoshop? Sometimes we’re wondering why certain web designer can design a website layout with extremely heavy graphics in 5 days, while we need around 10 days to complete that kind of design. It’s probably not about how fast you can click, it’s about how well you know about Photoshop, how you gonna unlock its full potential to boost your productivity.

We want you to know how to unlock its full potential. Yes, that’s why we created this post, to provide you 10 extremely useful Photoshop tips to boost your design speed. There can be shortcut, feature or setting you don’t know about, but not anymore. With this article you gonna learn them all, and you will design faster, and faster.

Note: Shortcut keys mentioned in this article are in Windows Photoshop format. If you are using Mac, be sure to know that Ctrl = Cmd (Command) and Alt = Opt (Option).

  10. Undo, More Undo Please

I totally believe that we designer are very addictive to undo something, even until when we made a mistake on sketching, we tend to ‘undo’ it.

Well as you might know by pressing Ctrl + Z in Photoshop you can undo the previous action you made, but when you press the same key combination again, it will redo the previous action. This is quite unnatural and troublesome as you always need to undo multiple times to get to the state you want.

Believe it or not, Photoshop has a specific button for multiple undo, and it is Alt + Ctrl + Z. Yes, by using this key combination you can undo multiple times, according to the value of History States you set in Edit > Preference > Performance.

If you’re used to common Undo’s key combination which is Ctrl + Z, you can simply press Ctrl +Shift + Alt + K to access Keyboard Shortcut panel and change Undo’s key combination under the Edit section to Ctrl + Z.

9. Sampling Color, Anywhere!

Stumbled upon a nicely designed website and wondering which exact colors is it using? This happens very often when I’m seeking inspiration during the time I’m doing site layout in Photoshop. For me I will launch a color picker, pick the color and get its hex number, then click on the color palette in Photoshop, then input the hex number then get the color, pretty annoying isn’t it?

Well you don’t really need to suffer like that, you can actually just click on Eyedropper tool or pressing I to activate it, then click on the Photoshop’s work screen and drag the Eyedropper icon to anywhere on the monitor screen to get the color you want. Yeah, it’s really that easy.

Click On Read The Rest Of This Post To Read Full Guide Text & Images...

8. Flexible Guide

Tip #8 is actually combination of 2 tips, I hope you don’t mind about getting more tips. As web designer we have to deal a lot with guide to position an element correctly, in other words is pixel perfect.

How do you create a guide? Click on View, New Guide then decide it’s horizontal or vertical guide, input its position and click Enter? Alright, you can save these works by just pressing Ctrl + R to activate the Ruler tool, click on the tool and drag it down to create a horizontal guide, or vice versa.

Besides instant guide creation, here’s another useful tip for you. While dragging a guide with Move tool which can be activated using V key, press and hold Alt key to change the horizontal guide to vertical guide, or vice versa. Now you can probably consider yourself as professional on using guide.

7. Fun Layer Style Cloning

Layer styles are very entertaining when you can just apply them to make, let’s say, a social media icon looks pretty charming and unique, but it will be very tiring if you want to apply same layer styles to all social media icons which usually come in multiple pieces.

Have you ever realized that there’s an fx icon beside your layer? Well everything exists for a reason, if you press Alt and drag the fx icon to another layer, it will copy first layer’s styles to the one you dragged to, convenient isn’t it?

Also if you are interested about the common use of that fx icon, it allows you to move a layer’s styles to another and all you need to do is simply drag the icon to another layer without pressing Alt key.

6. Element Centering Made Easy

In order to achieve a pixel perfect design, we oftenly have to position element to exactly where it should be. This seems easy as you can just create some guides and snap the element to those guides, but it will be daunting if you want to absolute center an element in certain area, which requires a lot of guides, measurement and focus.

In fact you have a way to make this entire process a lot more easier, click on the element’s layer which you want to absolute center, then press Ctrl + A to select the entire document. After that, fire the Move tool and you will see some icons beside the option, Show Transform Controls. Click on the 2nd icon to vertical center the element, then click on 5th icon to horizontal center the element, there you go, an absolute centered element.

You can not only absolute center the element in entire document’s area, but also absolute center it in certain area. Let’s say I want to absolute center an element in footer area, I can simply select the footer area by using the Selection tool which can be activated by pressing M key, then absolute center the element in that specific area.

You can study other alignment options beside the Show Transform Controls option, they are very useful for aligning your elements in a wide range of situations.

5. View Selection, One At A Time

Often in designing a layout you need to check how an element looks exactly by its own or by few elements, for example in website layout below, I want to check slider’s buttons to confirm that they do not have transparency so they look exactly the same with or without slider’s image.

In past I have to turn off the visibility of slider image’s layer, slider background’s layer and even content’s background layer, but now I can just simply hold down the Alt key, then click on the ‘eye’ icon beside the button group to turn off all layers’ visibility so that I only view those buttons. After I checked them, I can just repeat the trick again to bring all layers’ visbilibity back.

This trick is also extremely useful while it comes to image slicing. You want to slice slider’s button without any other element like slider image, so you can use this trick to turn off all layer’s visibility to just slice the button, then repeat the trick to recover all layer’s visibility so it saves a lot of time wasted on turn on and off layers’ visibility.

4. Customize Font‘s Tracking, Anytime

This particular tip shows you how to increase the font’s tracking in certain part of the type easily, so it might only be used on certain specific situation like logo or button creation, but it’s a professional tip that can save lots of time on finding fonts with suitable typography for your logo or button creation.

Alright, let’s say I want to decrease the tracking of the type, ’360′ so my logo’s type looks unique that visitor remembers it easier. I can select ‘POLO360′ by using Type tool which can be activated by pressing T key, then hold down the Alt and press < button to start decreasing the type’s tracking, which will bring the result above.

You can use this trick to tackle tracking issue of some artistic fonts, so there’s no worries about tracking next time you want to find graphical fonts for your logo creation!

3. Instant Layer Selection = Win

Layout design is an exhausting job as we have to tackle lots of issues such as typography, spacing and graphic, but it will be overwhelming if we want to find a specific element’s layer from hundreds of layers.

Let this trick makes your designer’s life easier. Activate the Move tool using V key and hold down the Ctrlkey, then click on the element and you will automatically select the element’s layer. It’s really that simple but keep in mind that if you put elements into a group, then by using the same trick you will be selecting the group’s folder that contains the element you clicked, as shown above.

2. Smart Object For Smart Designer

Just as its name, Smart Object makes your editing smarter by carrying out 2 primary functions: perform nondestructive transforms and perform filtering. This feature comes in very handy especially when you’re producing a site layout with heavy graphics like stock photos, social media icons and UI kits, and all you need to do is right click a layer, then click ‘Convert to Smart Object’ to enjoy its benefits.

The first function says that once a layer is converted into a Smart Object, you can transform it anyway you want without losing its original quality. In our case we want to make the image slider smaller so we convert image slider’s layers to Smart Object and transformed it into something smaller.

Ouch, it’s just too small so I decided to change it back.

Looks like everything’s okay and nothing happened right? Below is the result if you applied a backward transformation without converting layer to Smart Object.

So you can probably see the difference here, especially slider’s buttons part. The backward transformation without Smart Object applied on layers makes the slider and slider’s buttons lose their quality. So by converting a layer to Smart Object, you can transform it to any smaller size you want but once you regretted about your decision, you can change it back without losing quality.

Another benefit by converting layer into Smart Object is once you applied filter on a Smart Object, a filter’s layer will appear under the Smart Object’s layer so you can disable filter easier by just turn off the visibility of the filter’s layer, and that’s called nondestructive filtering, great time saver for your project.

1. A Snapshot Of Beautiful Past

Now you learned how to undo multiple times, copy layer styles, faster layer selection and using Smart object these great time saving tips. Well, these are really handy skills that greatly boosts your productivity but how about after 2 hour’s work, you regretted your editing and decided to start from the middle? Redo it completely will be very exhausting and boring even you applied all killer tips you learned before, so that’s when Snapshot kicks in.

Snapshot allows you to create a temporary copy of any state of your editing so when you have trouble on improving your design and decided to go back, you can simply click on a snapshot to bring you back to the state you desired. To take a snapshot, you just have to open History palette, and click on the 2nd icon you see on the bottom of the palette.

There are also some useful features for snapshot like you can take multiple snapshots so you have more choices and you can name them so you remember them easier. Ultimately you can also use these snapshots to compare different effects you created for your design.

However, be sure to remember that once you closed the document, snapshots will be deleted instantly so if you want to keep those states, you can click on each snapshot and save the document as another file.

Reflection

You’ve come to the end of the article, great job. By this time you should got enough time-saving killer tips to boost your design speed, but always remember that learning is the best way for you to know more about your Photoshop, thus increasing your productivity. So keep learning more, and you will become a more competitive web designer of all time.

Well we’ve shared our best, how about you? If you don’t mind, please share your Photoshop killer tips to let us know the better way to use Photoshop, thanks for your generosity!

Sincere Thanks To Alvaris Falcon To Share This With Us...

  DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

Source: how-to-geek By YatriTrivedi

Finding a video streaming solution that does transcoding is tough enough, but trying to find one solution that’ll work for both iOS and Android makes it even harder. Thankfully we have Plex, which does all of this and more.

Plex Media Server

Plex Media Server is an application based off of XBMC that’s primarily built for Mac OS X. It works in two parts: a server app on your desktop and a client app for your mobile device. Plex has been around for a while and even has some awesome plug-ins available. Fortunately for us, the developers made a Windows version that’s pretty wholesome, and there’s even a Linux beta currently in the works and available for download. The Mac OS X version is the definitely the most fully featured, allowing pictures, video, music, and tons of plugins – life Netflix and Hulu – to be streamed to your devices. The Windows version is pretty polished, but doesn’t support Flash/Silverlight plug-ins – no Netflix or Hulu, here. The Linux version is definitely beta – fewer options, no Netflix/Hulu, and the management interface can be really slow – but transcoding and streaming work well on both iOS and Android. Choose the appropriate link below, download the app, and give it quick install.

Mac OS X

Windows

Linux (Beta)

Installation on Mac OS and Windows is straight-forward and easy. On Windows, it will automatically install Bonjour to enable automatic discovery. If you’re using the Linux beta, make sure you have Avahi installed, then look at the two links below to help get you set up.

Guide to getting Plex for Linux set up properly.

Script to configure Plex as a service.

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Next, buy the iOS and/or Android client applications.

iTunes App Store

Android Market

The server software is free, but the client software is $4.99. Niche markets have a price, but thankfully this is one is pretty reasonable.

Configuring Plex

Make sure Plex Media Server is running – you should see an icon in the your system tray if it is – open up your web browser of choice and point the URL to:

http://localhost:32400/manage

Click on Preferences in the top right corner.

First and foremost, let’s give our server instance a name. Then, you can decide on whether or not you’d like to send anonymous usage data back to Plex for analysis. If you’re a little self-conscious, you can uncheck this box. Then, hit Security.

If you want the server to require a username and password for access, check the box. You can then change the username from the default “Administrator” and set a password. The next time you try to manage Plex, you’ll see a logon screen like this:

Plex is pretty straightforward and takes care of things on its own. Feel free to poke around the options, but there’s really not much else you need to do. Click “Done” when you’re finished.

If you want to access Plex via your mobile data connection while out and about, be sure to forward port 32400 in your router’s settings.

Adding Media

Plex is pretty heavily predicated on scraping databases to find proper metadata for you. While everything should work regardless, if you want proper data and pics you’ll need a pretty specific directory structure. You can read more about it in the Wiki’s Getting Started page. That being said, I decided not to rename everything and leave things as they were without really any problems. The big caveat is that if you want to point Plex towards a TV show, you’ll need to do it in a specific way.

Z:\video\tvshows\Samurai Champloo\Season 1\video files……

For example, if I want Plex to pick up Samurai Champloo and the files are in the directory structure above, I need to point it to the “Samurai Champloo” folder. If I tell Plex the files are in “Season 1” I won’t get anything. This is important but only applies for TV shows; Music and Movies work fine without this extra folder in the middle.

Flip back to your web browser and click on the little plus sign in the bottom left area of the management screen.

Start by telling Plex what type of media you want to configure, then you can give the category a friendly name. Once you’ve done that, click on the little plus sign to add a folder.

You can navigate as you like, or click Manual Entry to put in the path yourself.

Samba shares work fine, and in Windows you would enter the path in the format below:

\\ip-address.of.server\sharename\folder

Click OK when you’re done, then click Add Section to do just that. You’ll see added sections in the left pane of the web interface, and you can navigate through them on the right.

iOS and Android

Now that we have the server up and running, we can configure the clients on your devices. Configuration is largely the same on both, but I’ll go through it with iOS first.

Open up the Plex app, and tap on Settings.

Make sure “Find Nearby Server” is on and yours should pop up without a problem provided that you’re connected to your own network. If you need to, you can also add a new server manually.

Give your manual entry a Friendly Name, and tap on Add a new connection…

You can enter a specific IP address and port number. Leaving it blank will use the default Plex option, 32400. Tap Save when you’re finished.

You can enter a username and password below the listed connections if you need to, otherwise tap Save again. You’ll be back at the Settings pane.

Make sure your server is selected by looking for a bold dot next to it.

Back out and tap on Library when you’re done to view the files you have listed, and tap on a file to start streaming it.

On Android, everything works much the same, except to get the settings, you’ll need to press the Menu button first.

Tap on Settings.

As you can see, it’s pretty much identical to the iOS app and easy enough to configure. And the mobile clients work with plug-ins, too!

  Plex helps take a lot of work out of management by automatically getting the proper metadata and screens and the like, but you may have to tweak your configuration and folder structure to get the full benefit. For streaming, though, it works well and transcodes properly no matter what device you’re on and regardless of what format you’re throwing at it. It also is the only application that works with both iOS and Android devices. It’s still a little rough around the edges on Windows, but it looks very promising, especially considering it has Linux support.

 Have you used Plex? Do you use something better? Share your thoughts or suggest better alternatives in the comments!

Sincere Thanks To YatriTrivedi To Make This Easy For Us

DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

Source: eventzilla.net

Hosting an event? Now you can use Ustream to broadcast event video LIVE to the world from a computer or iPhone in minutes.

Browser-based Web Broadcaster:

The easiest is the browser-based Web Broadcaster that uses Adobe’s Flash Player. For higher quality, use Ustream Producer (free), Ustream Producer Pro ($199), or Adobe’s Flash Media Live Encoder (free).

Broadcasting from your Mobile Device:

You may also broadcast from your mobile device, but those streams will be slower and lower quality, and not as robust as a wired connection. To start streaming using mobile phones – you can go to www.ustream.tv/mobile to reference currently supported handsets.

1. Creating an Ustream Account

Ustream accounts are free. To sign up for an account visit: http://www.ustream.tv/ Click on the sign up link on the top right section of the page.

2. Creating a show

Click on the yellow “Create a show” button on the right side of the page. A box will appear in the middle of the page. Type the name of your event which you would like to host online, in the box provided to you. The name of the Event is recommended, so that it becomes easy for your event to be found and viewed easily. Once you have created a channel, you may not change the URL. Please note that changing the name of your show will not change the URL.

Now, click the yellow “Create” button.

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Select what type of event to be broadcasted on the “Show Info” page. Type the key words related to the event — such as the event’s name, event organisers name, the genre of the event and key texts or themes related to the event — in the “Show Tags” box and add an overview of the event in the “About” box, so that your attendees can easily find your video on the website.

3. Sharing the Ustream Video Link

Now, you have to email the link of your event to your clients and audience prior to the event broadcast so that they can have access to it. The URL will be http://www.ustream.tv/channel/[your event title here].

4. Setting up Cameras

Built-in webcams or USB-connected webcams – Apple, Sony, Dell, HP, and most modern laptops have built-in webcams. Once you have chosen what camera you will use, there are Ustream offers several options for taking your camera feed, encoding it and sending it to Ustream.

5. Broadcasting Live Video and Audio

Plug in your audio device prior to opening the Ustream broadcaster window. Select the show you want to broadcast and click the “Broadcast Now” button on your “My Shows” page or on the homepage. Select the audio device from the Audio Sources drop down menu.

6. Optimizing Video Quality

Use a wired internet connection to broadcast the video. Make sure you have GOOD lighting. Make sure you have a GOOD camera. Make sure you close all other programs on your computer.

7. How to Embed a Ustream Player?

Go to the channel page, for example: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/<Eventname>. There you will see a tab that says Embed.  Click this to expose the embed codes. The first line says “Embed the Live Video Anywhere!”  Click the button next to this that says “Copy Embed”

Images: Ustream.com

  Sincere Thanks To Eventzilla  Team to Make This Easy for Us..

  DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

Source: How-To-Geek

Windows 7 adds functionality to your login screen to give you additional logon options. If you want to lose the clutter, here is how to disable some or all of your credential providers.

Whether it was installed from the factory or add-on software you installed, these registry settings will disable the unwanted credential providers at your login screen.

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Authentication\Credential Providers

It will not be obvious what some of the providers are but you should be able to determine which one goes to which provider by looking at the value of the (Default) DWORD inside each key.

The screenshot below references the fingerprint scanner on my system but yours may be different.

To disable each of the items, create a DWORD value named “Disable” with a value of 1. For each key you disable it will be removed from your login screen.

Be careful which items you disable or you may not be able to log in with your password either. Only disable the items you know you won’t need and disable them one at a time. This should stop you from disabling too many items and not allowing you to login to your computer.

If you accidentally disable too many items, restart your machine in safe mode and set the disable key to 0 for the providers you need.

Once you have found all the correct keys your new login screen should show only the items you want.

Sincere Thanks To how-to-geek Team to Make This Easy for Us.....

  DISCLAIMER

   We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. E mail:- 

Source: nbcs.rutgers.edu

  Configuring Your Network Settings

For users who are using the default view:

  Click the Start button and go to Control Panel.

  From the Control Panel, under Pick a catergory, click Network and Internet Connections.

  From the Network and Internet Connections window, under "or pick a Control Panel icon," click Network Connections and go to Step 3.

  For users who are using the classic view:

  From Start, go to Settings, then Control Panel.

  From the Control Panel, double click Network Connections icon.

  Look at your Network Connections window.  If you do not have a Local Area Connection installed, click the icon for Create a new connection under Network Tasks.  If you have created a Local Area Connection and want to modify it, right click the icon, highlight Properties and go to Step 9.

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  From the New Connection Wizard, click Next to continue.

  Now you are ready to specify your Network Connection Type. Select Connect to the Internet. Click Next to continue.

  Next, you will specify how you want to connect to the Internet. Specify Set up my connection manually and click Next.

  Next, choose Connect using a broadband connection that is always on and click Next.

  You've completed the New Connection Wizard. Click Finish to exit.

You are now back to the screen as shown in Step 3 where the newly-created "Local Area Connection" icon should be displayed under "Lan or High-Speed Internet." Right click the "Local Area Connection" icon, then select Properties from the dialog box. You should see the following:

  Click the Internet Protocol [TCP/IP], then click the Properties button. You will see the following Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties dialog box:

  From the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) Properties," do the following: 

Source: laptoprepair101

What can you do if the laptop LCD screen turned completely white? From my experience I can tell that this problem may be related to the following:

Source: laptoprepair101

Source: How-To-Geek

Sometimes when you plug a USB drive into your machine you won’t see it in Computer or AutoPlay in Windows 7 or Vista. Today we take a look at how to change the drive letter so you can can access it.

The problem with not being able to see your USB drive happens quite often in XP. Our readers have pointed out, and we’re seen instances, where the same problem can occur in Windows 7 and Vista as well. If you’re still running XP and having this problem, make sure to check out our article on how to find your missing USB drive in Windows XP.

Locate and Access the USB Drive in Windows 7 & Vista

The problem is when you plug in a thumb drive or external USB hard drive…nothing happens. You hear the USB sound but AutoPlay doesn’t run, and when you look in Computer you don’t see the drive. More than likely Windows named the drive to a letter that is already in use.

To fix the problem right-click on Computer from the Start Menu or Desktop Icon, and select Manage.

In the Computer Management window, under Storage, click on Disk Management to see a list of drives connected to your machine.

You should be able to determine which one is the drive you’re trying to access by its size and format type. Here we’re trying to find a 4GB thumb drive. Right-click on the drive and selectChange Drive Letter and Paths.

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  Now click on the Change button…

You can select from a list of drive letters to rename it. Make sure it’s not one already in use or could be in use at some point. Pick a letter toward the end of the alphabet for best results.

You will be prompted with a warning dialog making sure you want to change the drive letter…click Yes.

Here you can see we changed the drive from the letter “J” to “U”…

If you have AutoPlay enabled, you’ll see the familiar screen asking what you want to do with the drive.

You will also see it in Computer now and be able to access the files and programs from it.

That’s all there is to it! It’s definitely annoying when you plug in an external USB drive and Windows doesn’t give you access to it right away, but following these steps solves the issue.

Again, this problem happens a lot more in XP and the process of fixing it is essentially the same.

This article was originally written on 07/16/10

Sincerely Thanks To How-To-Geek Team To Make This Easy For Us....

DISCLAIMER  

  We DO NOT host or upload any of the links or any other content that are available on this WEBSITE. We merely search on INTERNET and index popular sites openly available to anyone. These articles and other content are uploaded to the respective websites (FORUMS) by their User Communities from all over the World and NOT by us. Please Contact Us through E-Mail, if you feel that any Content on this WEBSITE are objectionable or violating your copyrights. The objectionable content shall be promptly removed from our WEBSITE. 

  E mail:-