If you have two computers but only one monitor and you don’t want to keep moving the monitor cable all the time between your computers all you have to do in order to share your monitor is to buy a KVM switch. Using the KVM switch you can not only use only one monitor but you can control the two computers with the same mouse and keyboard as well.

That’s right - you can have two computers with only one keyboard, one mouse, and one monitor, KVM swtiches can be quite pricey but you can always look for a second hand one on ebay or in the local paper ad section.

If you want to read furhter about KVM switches feel free to check out this article.

Lets say you have two computers and one of them is connected to the Net but the second one isn’t. What is it that you can do to connect the second computer as well?

Well, your first option is buying a router, routers aren’t that expensive any more and they are quite easy to use.

Your second option is to use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). Now this option has its drawbacks - first of all your second computer will be connected to the Internet only if your first computer is powered on. Then the speed might not be as good as if you use a router. And last of all it isn’t that straightforward to set up and it might give you a few headaches.

But if this is the route you want to choose please read all about it:
ICS for Windows XP
ICS for Windows Vista

In order to gain access to your home computer this is what you need:

1. Your home computer must be turned on.
2. Your home computer must be connected to the Internet.
3. You must know your home computer IP address: you can open command prompt and type ipconfig /all then press Enter.
4. You must have Remote Desktop Connection client software on the home computer (it comes free with Windows XP and Windows Vista) - how to setup the home computer (the client):
Windows XP remote desktop

Once this is all done then you can make a remote desktop connection between the two computers. Please note that if you have a router at home it should be set to allow remote Desktop connection.

If you have two computers in the house and one of them doesn’t have a printer but the second one does, you don’t have to run between the two of them with a thumb drive in order to get your documents printed.

You can share the printer by networking the two of your computers and this can be done by either direct cable (crossover cable connecting the two network cards), wireless connection, or router.

How to setup the printer sharing itself:
Windows XP
Windows Vista

Another option for you to connect the two computers is using Remote Desktop (providing the two of them are connected to the Internet and run Windows XP or Vista) and then re-route your printing jobs.

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.

If your Windows desktop icons look like this:

but you want them to look like this:

then simply right click on the MyComputer icon, choose Properties, then click the Advanced tab, under Performance click the Settings button. Find Use drop shadows for icon labels and check it, click Apply. That’s all there is to it!

When you have a host on your own domain which uses wordpress and you want to change hosts there are a few steps you need to take:

1. FTP to your current host and download all the files and folders associated with your domain.

2. Export your database - login to your host phpMyAdmin, click on the database you need to export (on the left panel of phpMyAdmin), on the right top click Export (see image below).

On the next screen make sure that all the table fields are selected and that the following options are checked:
Add DROP TABLE / DROP VIEW
Add IF NOT EXISTS
Add AUTO_INCREMENT value
Enclose table and field names with backquotes (see image below)

Check the Save as file options and click the Go button.

Save the .sql file to your hard drive.

3. Login to your domain registrar and change the domain DNS to your new hosts DNS servers. Wait for the domain to propagate (it could take from 5 minutes to 72 hours).

4. Create a new database on your NEW host - use the host control panel.

5. Import the database using the sql file you exported in step 2 - login to the new host phpMyAdmin, click on the database you just created (on the left panel of phpMyAdmin), on the right top click Import.

Navigate to the .sql file on your hard drive and click Open.
If your database is too big and can not be imported via phpMyAdmin please read How to import large databases.

6. Open the wp-config.php file and change the name, the username, and the password to the new database’s name, username, and password (in most cases the MySQL host name is localhost but in rare occasions you might need to change that too, ask your new host if unsure).

7. FTP to your new host and upload all the files you downloaded in step one.

8. Open your web site in your browser - your blog looks just the way it did before the move!

Lets say that you have a huge blog which comes with a huge database and you are fed up with your current host A and want to move your precious blog to host B. The problem is that most hosts will set limitation on their virtual accounts and when you try to import the huge databases using phpMyAdmin it will time out.

First of all when you EXPORT a large database make sure that the Extended inserts under the Data panel is un-checked (see the picture below).

Then go ahead , export your database and save the .sql file to your hard drive. Also make sure that these fields under Structure are checked:
Add DROP TABLE / VIEW / PROCEDURE / FUNCTION
Add IF NOT EXISTS
Add AUTO_INCREMENT value
Enclose table and field names with backquotes

Good, now you have a nice 200MB .sql file on your hard drive ready to import to your newly created database. All you need is a little tool called BigDump.

Download the BigDump.zip file from the BigDump web site, unzip it, open it with your favorite text editor and change the database hostname, name, username, and password. FTP to the domain you moved to your new host, create a new directory (say /bd/) and upload the bigdump.php and the database .sql file to that directory.

Now launch your browser and navigate to the bigdump.php file:
http://www.MySite.com/bd/bigdump.php

Click the Start Import link and wait for the import to finish. If you get any errors during the process please make sure to read the BigDump FAQ.

That’s it!

Windows XP:

1. Click the Start button -> Run type cmd and press Enter.
This will bring up the command prompt.

2. Hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and press R, type cmd and press Enter.

3. If you need to get to command prompt before Windows loads then reboot your computer and keep tapping the F8 key on your keyboard (the same way you reboot in safe mode) and when you see the advanced boot options menu choose Command prompt only.

4. Getting to command prompt using the Windows XP CD. Insert the CD in your drive and reboot the computer. When you see the message “Press any key to boot from CD..” simply press any key on your keyboard. Soon you should see the “Welcome to Setup” screen, press ‘R” to start the recovery console. If you have two boot systems then you can choose either 1 or 2 and press Enter, then type the admin password and press Enter again. The command prompt should appear.

Windows Vista:

1. Hold down the Shift key and right click on a folder icon (or anywhere on your desktop for that matter) and choose “Open Command Window Here”.

2. Open Command prompt with administrative privileges - click the Start button, in the Start Search box, type Cmd. Right click on the Command Prompt in the search result listing and choose Run as Administrator.

3. Hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and press R, type cmd and press Enter.

If you have downloaded Windows 7 Beta which was released by Microsoft you need to take a few steps on order to install it on your computer.

First of all since this is a Beta release I advise you not to install it on your main computer or at least back up all your important files before you do so!

The first logical step is to download Windows 7 Beta from the Windows 7 Beta download page or use the Windows 7 Beta direct download links. The file is quite large therefore it might take a while for the download to complete.

Now that the Windows 7 ISO file is on your computer you need Magic ISO in order to mount it to a virtual drive.
If you have no idea what an ISO file is or what mounting an ISO file means there is no need to worry, I will show you how it’s done:
Download Magic ISO, and install it on your computer.

Now navigate to the folder were your Windows 7 ISO file is and right click on it.
Select Open with… then Magic ISO Virtual CD/DVD Manager.

Few seconds later you should see the Magic ISO icon on your right corner of your desktop, right next to your clock (see the image below).

Right click on the icon and choose Virtual CD/DVD-ROM and then choose the drive on the left E: No Media

Click Mount.

Now wait a few seconds until Magic ISO mounts the file, right after that you should see the Windows 7 Beta setup screen. Then click Install now and follow the instructions.

If the setup doesn’t start automatically open Windows Explorer and click on the E: drive, double click the setup.exe file in the right pane. The wizard will guide you trough the installation.

Enjoy your Windows 7!