Click the Start button, then choose All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup

Select the drive that contains the Windows.old folder and click OK:

Click the “Clean up system files” button:

Select Previous Windows Installations:

then click OK -> Delete Files

Now that Windows 7 has already been released and judging by the feedback is one of the best MS products up to date, millions of users are asking themselves the million dollar question: “Can I upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7?”

It turns out that we, the XP lovers, are in for a big and not so pleasant surprise. If you are running Vista, you can upgrade to Windows 7 in a few minutes time; if you, however, are running XP will have to take quite a few extra steps if you want to install Windows 7 on your computer.

And if you think that you can just back up your data, files and programs settings, format your hard drive and use the cheaper upgrade version, then you might run into a few problems or to be more specific the “The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations” message. If you happen to get that message there’s an easier (although unofficial) workaround – instead of entering the Windows 7 key when prompted, move to the next step, finish the installation and only then use the key.

And if you don’t want to format your hard drive, then simply print out the Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 guide from Microsoft and follow the steps.

PC to TV - no sound

Ok, despite what many people will tell you actually can get audio from a DVI to HDMI connection, providing that your card has a SPDIF (S/PDIF) output.

The (super-scary) definition of SPDIF (S/PDIF): protocol or physical layer that carries digital audio signal between devices. Well, all we care about is the fact that if your graphic card has a SPDIF output you will be able to get sound on your TV when connecting the PC and the TV with a DVI to HDMI cable.

So, how do I know if my graphic card has a SPDIF output?

Check the card manual, but if you have purchased the card in the past six months then there’s a good chance that your graphic card will have SPDIF. The bad news is that in most cases you will have to connect the SPDIF output from your graphic card to your motherboard with a small cable, conveniently named SPDIF cable and the worse news is that even though you might have paid a few hundred dollars for your graphic card that cable might have not been included. And you have two options: buy a SPDIF cable for your graphic card (the wiser choice) or butcher one of those old audio cables (that we used to connect our CD ROMS to the motherboard in order to get sound).

No matter what you do, you will have to connect the cable correctly – the SPDIF pin from the graphic card to the SPDIF pin on the motherboard and the ground pin from the graphic card to the ground pin on the motherboard.

If you get that wrong you might damage your card or your computer!!!!

…although many will argue that this is very unlikely. Whatever the case, you better get it right the first time. You should refer to your card and your motherboard documentation in order to find which pin is which, but in most cases the black wire on the SPDIF cable will be the ground. Take a look at the pics below to see what the SPDIF output and the SPDIF cables look like (they might be different for different graphic cards of course).

Once you get the SPDIF cable connected from the graphic card to the motherboard, plug in your PC, connect the DVI to HDMI cable to the computer and your TV and boot up. If you have done it all correctly you should hear sound on your TV now.

PS You might need to change the playback settings on your computer - in Windows 7 right click on the speaker icon in the right-hand side of the taskbar, click “playback devices” and then right click on the “digital audio S/PDIF” and tick the “set as default device” option.

If you are trying to record your voice on the computer and discover that the volume of recording is way too low, then you most probably need to boost it and this is how it’s done (Windows XP):

Double click the little volume icon, which is in the right corner of your taskbar (it is not there simply click Start -> Control Panel -> Sounds and audio devices -> Show volume control on the taskbar -> OK).

Then click Options -> Proprties -> Rear pink in (or Front pink in if you plug in your microphone into the front) -> OK.

Now again click Options and make sure that Advanced controls is checked, now locate the Advanced button under Rear pink in, click on it and tick the boost check box.

PS If you don’t have a Rear/Front pink in, then the same Advanced button can be found under Mic.

You are not protected!

AVG 7.5 updates have stopped. You are no longer protected against new viruses and other web threads.

Well, if you had the free version of the AVG 7.5 running and protecting your computer until now, then you are pretty much out of luck. The new upgrade isn’t optional - it is forced on you, of course when you try updating to AVG 8.5 you will get a message stating that “the licence number is not valid”.

So, what is it that you should do in order to get the free AVG 8.5 working? I thought that downloading the installation file from the site might be a pretty good idea. It wasn’t: I found the download link, got the file, ran it and …. the installation failed. It got as far as uninstalling the AVG 7.5, but then gave me an error, something about not being able to write to the registry.

Ok, fine it looks like AVG is out and Avast is in.

If have just downloaded drivers from the Internet and are wondering how to install them, simply follow these easy steps and you should be done in a couple of minutes:

1. Right click on the My Computer icon.

2. Select Manage.

3. Double click the Device manager in the left pane (see the image below).

4. In the right pane locate the device for which you downloaded the driver, and right click on it.

5. Select Update driver or Install driver, then use the wizard to install the driver.

That’s it!

If you need to get your life in order, and if you want to make sure that you never forget a birthday, important meeting, or (oh, boy) your wedding anniversary, then all you need is a free desktop calendar.

Your first free option is of course the Google calendar which you can use to keep track of all your life’s important events and dates.

Another free program that you can download and install on your desktop is the Free Desktop Calendar & Personal Planner from bizwaremagic.com.

Click Start -> Turn Off Computer, you should see three options: Standby, Turn Off, and Restart.

Press the Shift key on your keyboard and Standby will change to Hibernate:

If you run Windows XP then simply click the Start button then Control Panel, double click Power Options and the Power Options Properties windows will appear. Choose Never from the drop-down menu next to System Standby and then click the OK button.

You are done!

Type about:config in your browser and hit Enter, click the I promise, I’ll be careful button, then find the browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete entry and double click it - it should change its value from true to false. You are done!

Download the free video to MP3 converter from dvdvideosoft.com and install it on your computer. Run the program, click the top Brose button to select the input video file, eneter the Output folder, choose your Presets options from the drop-down menu, and click Convert.

That’s all there is to it, now you can navigate to your output folder and listen to the audio you have extracted.

And here is another free audio extractor that you can use.

Ok, so you have created the best video out there, uploaded it to YouTube but your video has no sound and now it seems a bit dull. Well, fear not, there is a very easy way to add music to your YouTube video.

Login to your YouTube account, move the mouse cursor over your YouTube username located in the top right and choose MyVideos from the drop-down menu.

Next to your videos you’ll see a few buttons, click the one that says Audio Swap

In the next screen choose a track, and click the button on the right that says Preview with selected track or hit the Publish button.

If you want to disable Dr Watson debugger you could do that by editing the registry, please follow the steps carefully!

Click the Start button -> type regedit and press Enter. Once the registry editor opens click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and navigate to
Key: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug

In the right panel right click the Auto name (see the picture below) and select Modify, then change the value from 1 to 0. Close the registry editor and you are done!

If your desktop icons disappear the first thing you should try is right clicking on the desktop, then choose Arrange icons by.. -> make sure Show icons is checked!

If your taskbar is gone move your mouse over the place where it usually is, if it appears right click on it and make sure that Auto-hide is turned off. Try moving your mouse cursor all over your desktop since you might have dragged the taskbar to a new position (on top, to the right, to the left…).

If your desktop icons and the taksbar are gone then press Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard to bring up the Task Manager. Open the Processes tab and find explorer.exe, click on it then click the End process button. After that click File -> New task (Run)… -> Type explorer.exe and click OK.

If that doesn’t fix the problem then a full virus and malware scan is in order, turn off System Restore, reboot your computer in Safe Mode, ran a complete scan with Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware then reboot normally and turn System Restore back on. Run a scan with your Antivirus program following the same steps.

More things to try:

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard to bring up the Task Manager, click File -> New task (Run)… -> Type msconfig and click OK. Open the startup tab, if you see ipmon32 uncheck it, reboot.

Try using System Restore to restore your computer back to a previous working state.

Do you have thumb drive plugged in? Remove it and see if that helps.

Good luck!

Click the Start button -> Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio devices -> open the Sounds tab.
Under the Program events scroll down to Windows Explorer, find Start Navigation, click it, then from the Sounds drop-down menu choose None.

There are two error messages that you might get which can be solved by the same method, the one of them is an exception Windows - no disk Exception Processing Message… and the other one There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive…

In most cases this can be easily fixed by changing your drive assignment letters and in 90% of the cases you are seeing these messages because you have removable drive which is configured as drive letter C.

To resolve the issue read this article.

If that doesn’t work then first of all you should run a complete virus and malware scan, then install the latest Windows updates, uninstall and reinstall the lates QuickTime, Norton or HP software that you have installed on your machine.

If everything else fails you can suppress the message - please note that this will NOT fix the problem but will simply get rid of the annoying messages - WINDOWS XP:
Click Start -> Run, type regedit and click OK.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows\ and change the value of the ErrorMode key to 2 then exit the Registry editor.

Now the message should go away!

Plenty of download managers and download accelerators out there but which one is the best?

Well, what’s best for one person might not be the favorite to another, so we will simply list the ones that are popular at this moment and that do very well what they are supposed to do.
Word of advise though - a download manager will not miraculously speed up your Internet connection 100 times, it will simply make your downloads much pleasant and more organized, especially if you download really large files.

Free download manager will not only resume broken downloads but comes with qutie a few very handy features too - you can use it to grab videos from Youtube, Google Video etc, and has a built-in uploader too.

Gozilla - will help you resume downloads even after lost connection, reboots, and crashes! It is quite easy to use, reliable, and supports HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, HTTPS, FTPS protocols.

Internet Download Manager has full support for Windows Vista, WOW! YouTube, Google Video, MySpaceTV, IE7 and Firefox! It can resume and schedule downloads, it will also resume broken downloads after lost connections, computer shutdowns etc.

Flash get is very easy to use, 100% spyware and adware free, and uses very little of your system resources, and supports HTTP,FTP,BT,eMule and other various protocols.

Download Accelerator Plus is one of the first download managers that was ever published and is probably the most popular one too. It can grab videos from YouTube, Facebook, supports video previews, pause and resume, and many more useful features.

You try to launch MS Word and every time a little Installer window pops up saying “Preparing to install”, this usually happens when double clicking on a Word document. Word might load after that but usually will not load the document you try to open, you’ll have to open it from within Word using File -> Open. So how to get rid of this nuisance?

First try using this Windows Installer CleanUp Utility, if that doesn’t help then please read this article and try the three methods recommended.

So you just came back from your exotic holiday and want to compile a movie from all the nice pictures you brought back?

Well, you can do just that and do it for free right here on your computer, read the following simple guide on how to make movie from images and have your movie ready in minutes.

If you are moving your iTunes library from one computer to another and both of them have the same operating system and run the same iTunes version then the move is pretty straightforward. All you need to do is cooy your iTunes folder and all its contents to the new computer, just make sure that you copy it to exactly the same folder - if your library is in a folder C:\\My Songs you should copy it to C:\\My Songs on the new computer!

To make the move you can use your DVD writer, external hard drive or your CD writer if your library isn’t that big. In order to copy your library use the iTunes built-in back-up tool, simply go to File - > Backup to Disc.

If you need to move your iTunes from a Windows based computer to a Mac, or need more detailed information on how to move your iTunes to a new computer, then please read this article.