How to Clean up your computer to its original state without reinstalling windows

But what if you don’t want to wipe your computer clean? If this is the case, you’ll need to use a few specific utilities if you’d like to clean up your computer to return it to a near-new state. This method isn’t always quicker than reinstalling Windows, but it’s often preferable if you don’t want to worry about losing files or you don’t have a Windows install disc handy. Let’s take a look at what you’ll need to finish the job.

Use Windows Backup and Restore

Recent versions of Windows, including Windows Vista and 7, include a Backup and Restore feature in the control panel. This feature lets you restore your computer to a previous state by using the Open System Restore option, which begins a simple process that basically rewinds your computer to an earlier state.
This is easy, but there is one critical issue – you actually need a restore point to restore from! It’s not uncommon for a computer to ship with one already configured, but if you or the manufacturer didn’t already do this, you’ll have to use the steps below.

Uninstall Unwanted Programs

The gradual accumulation of software on a computer often results in reduced performance, and uninstalling the programs that did not come with your PC often improve performance – or at least free up some hard drive space. Starting with the uninstallation of unwanted programs is recommended.
Most programs can be uninstalled using the Programs and Features tool in the Windows control panel, but some may be stubborn and refuse to uninstall correctly. I suggest using Revo Uninstaller, or a similar program, to take care of programs that refuse to leave quietly.

Clean Up The Windows Registry

Once you uninstall a program, it’s gone, right? Actually, that’s not always the case. Windows includes a database known as the registry that includes information about programs installed, and while uninstalling a program is theoretically meant to remove the program’s registry entries, that doesn’t always happen. A bloated registry can sometimes reduce performance, so it’s a good idea to try and make it like new.
There are a lot of registry cleaning tools, but Wise Registry Cleaner is the option that receives our top recommendation. Whatever tool you use, remember to create a Windows backup (remember the Backup and Restore feature) because there is always a very, very slight risk of registry damage, which can cripple your computer.

Disable Startup Programs

Even after you have uninstalled unwanted programs, you may still have some issues with slow boot times if you have too many programs trying to run when your computer starts.
To disable some programs, go to the Windows Search bar and then type in “msconfig.” Navigate to the Startup tab and review the programs listed. These are the programs that load when your computer boots. You can disable specific programs by de-selecting their checkbox and then clicking OK.
If you find that you’ve disabled a program that is truly useful, you can always return to msconfig and enable the program again.

Restore Windows Defaults

Over time, you may make changes to a number of critical Windows features. It is difficult to cover every single feature in Windows that can be restored to default settings, but here are some that are commonly changed and easily restored. Note that the below instructions are for computers using Windows 7.

Restore Browser Defaults

If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can use the Internet Options menu in the Windows Control Panel. There are Default buttons in the Security, Privacy, Programs and Advanced tabs. Google Chrome and Firefox have similar buttons in their respective Options menus.

Restore Firewall Defaults

The Windows Firewall options can be found in the Windows Control Panel. There is a Restore Firewall Defaults option on the left hand options menu. Note that you may not want to restore this to default if you’ve made specific changes to the firewall’s rules.

Folders

The Folders Options window can be accessed from the Windows Control Panel. The Restore Defaults option is in the lower right hand corner.

Libraries

Right-click on Libraries icon and then click Restore Default Libraries. You can find the Libraries icon in the left-hand frame of Windows Explorer.

Restore Your Media Player

Most media players have an option that will let you dismantle your current media library and rebuild it from scratch. This isn’t a bad idea if your media files have turned into a mess.

Start Menu

The Start Menu can be returned to its default settings by right-clicking on Start (or the Start Icon), entering the Properties window, and then clicking the Customize button. The Use Default Settings button will appear at the bottom of the Customize Start Menu window.

Taskbar

Right-click the Taskbar, then click on Properties. Strangely, there is no default button. The default settings are as follows; all options under Taskbar Appearance unchecked, Taskbar location set to Bottom, Taskbar buttons set to Always combine, hide labels.

Remove Old Devices And Printers

The Devices and Printers section of the Windows Control Panel is the place to go if you need to remove peripheral hardware that is no longer in use. This usually doesn’t have an impact on performance, but has other benefits – for example, removing several old printers can making printing more intuitive.

Conclusion

Following these steps should restore your computer to a near-new state. This is not as complete as reinstalling Windows, and this process is not recommended if you’re trying to restore your computer after a malware attack. If you’re simply trying to speed up your computer, reduce clutter, or wipe it clean for a new user, the steps above should prove sufficient.

Windows 7 - GOD Mode

Windows 7 has changed Control Panel a little, but it's still too difficult to locate all the applets and options that you might need. God Mode, however, while not being particularly godlike, does offer an easier way to access everything you could want from a single folder.
To try this out, create a new folder and rename it to:

The first part, "Everything" will be the folder name, and can be whatever you want: "Super Control Panel", "Advanced", "God Mode" if you prefer.
The extension, ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C, must be entered exactly as it is here, though, including the curly brackets. When you press [Enter] this part of the name will disappear, and double-clicking the new folder will display shortcuts to functions in the Action Centre, the Network and Sharing Centre, Power options, troubleshooting tools, user accounts and others - more than 260 options in total.

Blue Screen of Death - ReBooted

Well, I’m here to walk you through a few steps you can take to troubleshoot your computer whenever you experience this blue screen error. Sometimes, the problem isn’t quite as serious or complicated as people think. It could be as simple as the fact that some hardware you installed created a conflict. Maybe a virus messed up the registry. Or maybe a driver file is corrupt. I’m going to show you how you can check for the most common issues that cause this error.

Boot In Safe Mode

The first thing to do when you get the blue screen is to power down the computer. When you boot it back up, press the F8 key before the Windows screen appears. This will boot the computer into the Advanced Options screen where you can choose advanced boot options. Press the down arrow until “Safe Mode with Networking” is enabled and press enter. If you believe that you’re dealing with a virus that instantly connects to the Internet when you boot your computer, then go with just “Safe Mode” instead.

Keep a close eye on the screen after you press enter. The screen will scroll through each driver as it loads each one individually into memory. Many times, you’ll see the screen pause for a very long time at one of the .sys files before the boot fails and returns an error. Make note of the last file it was trying to load before it failed. Do a Google search (on another computer obviously) to determine what driver is failing and try reinstalling that driver.

If there are no driver problems, then determine whether there are any hardware conflicts by going into the Control Panel, clicking on System, and then Device Manager. Go through each device category and scan all of the devices for the telltale yellow accent icon that indicates there’s a device conflict.
If you do see that icon, open up the driver and you’ll see a message box that reveals where the conflict is taking place. If you can’t find any device conflicts, move on to the next step – scanning your entire system.

Run Spyware, Adware, Virus & Registry Scans

While you’re in safe mode, perform all of your spyware, adware and virus scans. This is the best time to run these apps because any viruses that try to disable them in normal mode will likely be disabled at this point. I love Malwarebytes, which Jimmy reviewed here at MUO before. Also run your virus scan software. If you don’t have one, you really should get one. Check out Justin’s list of the top 10 free anti-virus software apps available. Install one and do a full scan.

Another very useful scan to run is to check for any odd Registry entries or problems. A great open source app that can check your registry for any known problems is the Little Registry Cleaner which comes highly recommended by most users.

If you’ve tried everything up to this point and can’t seem to find any problems, don’t despair. We’ve got a couple more tricks up our sleeve.

Things To Try As A Last Resort

Go ahead and reboot your computer and press the F8 key again. This time, instead of booting into safe mode, select “Last Known Good Configuration“. This will revert to booting Windows using the last configuration where a successful boot took place. Many times this will resolve the issue without any further troubleshooting.

If that doesn’t work, reboot again into F8 mode and try selecting “Enable Boot Logging“. This boots Windows and logs every little detail of the boot-up into a file called “ntbtlog.txt” in the root directory, usually c:/Windows.

Open up the text file and scan through it to see exactly what’s loading and when it’s loading. It’s quite possible that something obvious will jump right out at you. If you identify anything loading that you didn’t want to load, try uninstalling and see if it fixes the problem.

Last but not least, you always have the option to do a system restore. Just go to the Control Panel, System and Security, Backup and Restore, and select “Recover System Settings for your Computer“.

Choose a valid restore point from the list and follow the instructions. Usually doing a system restore back to a date where your computer was running fine will resolve the blue screen error.
Finally, if even a restore doesn’t seem to resolve the issue, you could be looking at a bad hard disk. If that’s the case, follow Guy’s instructions to do a Check Disk. The solution may be to buy a new hard drive.
Have you ever had the blue screen of death? Were you able to figure your way out of it? Share your own experiences in the comments section below.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Tips to Make a Twitter Client for Photoshop CS5

We spent some time in another post talking about how cool it is that Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 allows you to create Flash Panels to launch from inside of the application. These panels can be made with Configurator 2, available at the Adobe website.  In an earlier post we made a panel that allowed us to use specific tools for a retouching workflow. One of the best changes that they have made with this is the inclusion of WebKit – allowing you to embed HTML pages with ease inside of the panels. Let’s go ahead and do something fun now, creating a mobile Twitter client that will run inside of Photoshop CS5. 
Go to the labs.adobe.com website and download the latest release of Configurator 2 if you haven’t already done so. This will allow you to make the panels that will run inside of Photoshop CS5 and InDesign CS5.  (Note: You will need to have Adobe AIR installed.)
Once you’ve installed Adobe Configurator, launch it from the your Applications (on PC: Start>Programs).
Create a new panel by clicking on File>New Panel.



Make sure you select Photoshop CS5 as the application that you’re creating the panel for.



Once you are in the main panel window, enter in “Twitter” in the Panel>Name field, as well as a size for how big you would like this panel to be when you expand it in Photoshop CS5.



Along the left panel, expand the Widgets section, and you’ll see that there is an HTML widget available to you there.



Drag the HTML widget to the panel area, using the built in guides to resize the panel as necessary.




Select the HTML widget on your panel, and in the Object Properties on the right hand side fill in the Starting Location URL and Home Location URL as http://mobile.twitter.com.  This will use Twitter’s mobile page that’s reserved for cell phones, and therefore is better for smaller screen sizes.



Once that’s complete, click on File>Export Panel to take what you have done and export it for use in Photoshop CS5.  Navigate to your desktop and save it there.



Once you have the folder on your desktop, move it into the Photoshop CS5>Plugins>Panels folder.



Once the panel is in place, it will require you to restart Photoshop CS5.  After you restart, you will be able to access the panel by going into Window>Extensions.  This is where any panels that extend Photoshop CS5 are held.  In Photoshop CS4, this panel would need to initialize and close, prompting you to reopen the panel a second time.  I’m happy to say that this is not the case anymore.



The great part about having webkit inside of Photoshop CS5 is that this will also save your browser state.  Once you log into Twitter here, you won't have to do it again.  Now you have the ability to monitor all of your social media communications without having to leave your application.



See if you can find other creative ways to manage your  web experiences in Photoshop.  For example, create an app that goes to m.gmail.com.  Once you get there you may have to double click on the fields to enter in information, but hey... you don’t have to leave Photoshop to do so!

Yutham Sei - Dark Crime Thriller

 

The film deals with a CB-CID officer JK who is already in confusion about his missing sister. By the promise of his senior officer JK decides to open the case. Amputated Male arms are packed in cartons and displayed in public to attract public attention. JK thinks that they are done with the intention that police should trace the victims. Based on identification they found the arms belong to Raja Manikam ,Moorthy etc. By triangulating the co ordinates they find a lead in this case. The case goes in detail about how three sides exist who try to complete their own purpose, Cops, Bad Guys, Victims. A new outlook for Cheran though and a must watch movie.