Extend the Cleaning Abilities of CCleaner with CCEnhancer

If you use CCleaner, the highly recommended system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool then you need to also install (and run) CCEnhancer.

CCEnhancer is a small tool that will add support for over 450 new programs into CCleaner.

Here’s how it works:

1. You must have CCleaner installed on your PC to make this work.
2. If CCleaner is installed on your PC, download and run CCEnhancer.
3. When you run CCEnhancer, it will download the latest definition files and automatically add it to the “Applications” section of CCleaner.

That is all there is to it; however, I do recommend running CCEnhancer on a regular basis to keep the definition files up to date or set CCEnhancer to run when your computer starts.  What I do is run CCEnhancer anytime I want to clean my PC since it will automatically prompt me to start CCleaner after downloading the new definition files.

Note: You must use the “Run As Administrator” function if running Windows 7/Windows Vista with User Account Control enabled.

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How to Easily Backup All of Your Google Doc Files To Your Computer

Recently we all read where some folks who had Gmail accounts went to open their accounts and their email was gone. Google subsequently went to work to rectify the problem; however it put a scare into everyone that uses the variety of Google services (such as Google’s online storage for documents, pictures, files, etc…).

One area that I had a concern for was my Google Docs. I use Google Docs for a variety of purposes and my opinion it is an awesome option to storing, managing and editing documents online. It keeps getting better and better; however, it would put a crimp in things in the event I found all my documents missing.

An option, and habit to get into, is to periodically backup your Google Docs.  How do you do this?

1. Simply pull up the listing of your Google Doc files.
2. Using your mouse pointer highlight (do not click) any of the files. As you are highlighting a file in the list, you will see on the right side of the highlight bar, the word “Actions” appearing.
3. Click on “Actions” and a dropdown menu will appear.  Click on “Download” on that menu.
4. When you click on “Download”, the following box (see below) will appear. In that box, click on “All items” tab. At that point you have some really neat options to download your documents. You can download them, “as is” or convert them all to the MS-Office format, the Open Office format or the Adobe PDF format. When ready, click on “Download”.

You are only permitted to download up to 2 GBs at a time and the files will be packaged into what is called a zip file. If you have a large file cache stored on Google Docs and you do not want to wait, Google Docs can automatically email you with a web link when the files are all zipped up and ready for download.

If you are a user of Google Docs, this is a good habit to get into and can save your butt.

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Geek Squeak (#107): What’s New In Internet Explorer 9?

Straight from the horses mouth (Microsoft) is the Internet Explorer 9 Fact Sheet dated March 2011.  If you want to learn more about the new version of Internet Explorer 9, I encourage you to read this fact sheet (reflected below).

What’s New in Windows Internet Explorer 9?

Customers upgrading from Internet Explorer 8 will notice performance improvements, a safer experience that puts the focus on their favorite websites and tweaks to the user interface — changes that help make your websites shine.

There are three core pillars that represent how we reimagined the role of the browser with Internet Explorer 9 to deliver an experience that makes your Web feel as native as the applications running on your PC:

Fast. Internet Explorer 9 is all-around fast. Part of reimagining the role of the browser to deliver immersive, compelling Web experiences is rethinking the concept of fast. Today, fast is too often narrowly defined as page load time. Tomorrow, a browser will not be able to call itself fast unless it lets people interact with graphically rich sites and applications with lightning speed. Fully hardware-accelerated graphics, text, video and audio through Windows 7 means that the same markup not only works across the Web, but also runs faster and delivers a richer experience. Designed to take full advantage of the power of your computer’s hardware through Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9 delivers dynamic experiences that are as fast and responsive as native applications installed on your computer.

Clean. Internet Explorer 9 puts the focus on the websites you love, with a clean experience for your Web that meets you where you are. With Internet Explorer 9 and Windows 7, we rethought the role of the browser and how people interact with websites and Web applications. While other browsers focus on the browser itself, Internet Explorer 9 is site-centric, as opposed to browser-centric. You have the websites you love with a clean look that makes your websites shine.

Trusted. Internet Explorer 9 helps people feel confident and in control. The more that the Web becomes part of our everyday lives, the more complex the issues of online trust and browser trust become. When done correctly, creating a trustworthy browser helps customers feel connected to the Web, not distracted by concerns about reliability, privacy or safety. Internet Explorer 9 is a trusted way to access the Web because it has a robust set of built-in security, privacy and reliability technologies that can help keep you safer and your browsing experience virtually uninterrupted.

Enjoy an All-Around Fast Experience With Windows Internet Explorer 9

Designed to take full advantage of your Windows-based computer’s hardware, Internet Explorer 9 enables developers to build graphically rich and immersive Web experiences that are as fast and responsive as applications installed on your computer, making for a better consumer experience. These new features make the Web all-around fast with Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7.

Full hardware acceleration. Hardware-accelerated text, video and graphics mean that your websites perform like applications installed directly on your Windows-based computer.

New JavaScript engine. Chakra, the recently optimized JavaScript engine, interprets, compiles and executes code in parallel by taking advantage of multiple CPU cores.

Clean Site-Centric Design Makes Sites Shine and Integrates With Windows 7

With a clean look and an increased viewing area, Internet Explorer 9 puts the focus on the things you love and makes your websites shine. Your favorite sites are taken out of the browser box, with seamless Windows 7 integration.

Clean browser user interface. In Internet Explorer 9, the simplified user interface and site-centric user experience put the focus on the content of each website. This means less screen real estate is taken up by the browser, letting people browse and experience more of what websites have to offer.

Pinned Sites. With Pinned Sites, your favorite websites can be accessed directly from the Windows 7 Taskbar without having to first open the browser. You can pin sites to the Taskbar by dragging the tab or the icon to the left of the URL on the Taskbar, then easily find and launch those sites you access most often — just like native applications on the PC. When a pinned site is launched from the Taskbar, the browser frame and navigation controls integrate the site’s icon and primary color, emphasizing the site and providing an even more site-focused experience.

JumpList. With JumpList, you have a quick and easy way to get to a common website task without having to launch the browser first. For Pinned Sites where developers have created JumpList capabilities, you can quickly create a new e-mail message, check your inbox, change your music station, accept a friend invitation or see breaking news.

Windows Aero Snap. You often need to use more than one website or page to accomplish a task. In Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft has reduced the frame, giving more room than competitors to let your sites shine. In addition, tearing off a tab by dragging it away from the browser, and using Windows Aero Snap to position the content, is a great way to show two sites or pages side by side.

One Box. One Box gives people a single place to start, whether they want to navigate to a specific site or search for a site. One Box in Internet Explorer 9 incorporates search functionality into the Address Bar. With One Box, you can navigate to a site, search for a site, switch between search providers, or access browsing history, Favorites or suggestions from search providers.

One Box Top Result. Another feature that speeds browsing is One Box Top Result. One Box Top Result helps you remember the Web address for common websites by taking you directly to the top results of your search provider without first displaying the search results page.

Feel the Confidence and Trust That You Are in Control With Windows Internet Explorer 9

Internet Explorer 9 is a trusted way to surf the Web because it has a robust set of built-in security, privacy and reliability technologies that help keep you safer and your browsing experience virtually uninterrupted. These new features help provide the trust you need to feel safer online.

Tracking Protection. Some content on websites can be used to track your activity as you browse the Web. Tracking Protection allows you to limit the browser’s communication with certain websites — determined by a Tracking Protection List — to help keep your information private. Anyone can create Tracking Protection Lists, and some are available today.

ActiveX Filtering. ActiveX is a technology that allows Web developers to create interactive content on their sites, but it also can pose a security risk. Internet Explorer 9 allows you to block ActiveX Controls for all sites and, with the new ActiveX Filtering option, turn them back on for only the sites that you trust.

Hang recovery. In Internet Explorer 9, this feature isolates the impact of a hung tab to the individual tab, so that other tabs and the overall browser continue to operate. When a website hangs because of a long-running script or other operation, it causes your browser to become nonresponsive. Hang recovery in Internet Explorer 9 means you can continue browsing on other tabs. This new feature complements tab isolation and automatic crash recovery, which also helps keep you browsing and prevents loss of information.

Compatibility View. You can feel good knowing that your favorite websites will run in the newest version of Internet Explorer. If Internet Explorer 9 detects a website that has not specified its desired display mode, the Compatibility View button appears next to the Refresh button on the Address Bar. Pressing the Compatibility View button causes Internet Explorer 9 to switch to a legacy document mode. The state of the button is saved for that Web page, so there is no need to press it again when you return to the same page at a later time.

Automatic updates. Getting the latest browser updates helps keep you protected over time. You can choose to have important updates installed automatically, once they are made available. Automatically installed updates can include security updates, critical updates, definition updates, update rollups and service packs through Windows Update.

Group Policy support. For IT professionals, Internet Explorer 9 continues to provide excellent Group Policy support. With nearly 1,500 Group Policy settings, including new settings to support Windows Internet Explorer 9 features, IT professionals have the control they need to manage Internet Explorer installations after deployment.

Write Interoperable Markup With HTML5 and Windows Internet Explorer 9

Extensive support for HTML5, Scalable Vector Graphics, Cascading Style Sheets Level 3, ECMAScript 5 and DOM provides a new set of capabilities that will help enable developers to write one set of markup language and know that it will work and look the same in all modern browsers. Internet Explorer 9 was designed with support for industry standards built in to help ensure that the same markup language works the same across browsers.

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Detect Suspicious System Behaviors with HiJack Hunter

HiJack Hunter is very impressive computer technician type tool that is designed to comprehensively scan, gather data and generate a log file about your computer that may be helpful when you experience suspicious system behavior. This tool is for purely for someone that has comprehensive knowledge of the workings of the Windows operating system and the ability to scan a log file for problems (and know what they are looking for).

A powerful part of HiJack Hunter is the ability to restore all system parameters that are commonly hijacked by spyware and trojans.  It is quite possible with this utility to restore (back to norma)l  the task manager, regedit, cmd, userinit registry key, system restore, safe mode, IE settings, and IE urls. You can also manage hosts files, registry startup entries and boot files with HiJack Hunter.

Here is a sampling of what areas HiJack Hunter will scan and other features:

Generic System Information
Running Processes
Loaded Modules
TCP Connections
Registry Startups
Startup Folders
TCPIP Nameservers
Internet Explorer Settings
Programs allowed in Windows Firewall
Ports allowed in Windows Firewall
Windows Hijacks
Winlogon Notify
ShellExecuteHooks
SharedTaskScheduler
Shell Open Commands
Browser Helper Objects (BHOs)
Wallpaper
Executables in Temp folder
Executables in suspicious folders
Files created 7, 15 and 30 days ago
Hidden files in suspicious folders
Executables in Internet Explorer Folder
Drivers -> FSFilter Anti-Virus
Drivers
Services
Custom files listing
Custom Registry Keys and Values Dump
Exclude Microsoft System Files
Multilingual
HOSTS File Manager
Windows Tools
CLSID List
Restorer
Restore Safe Mode
Restore System Hijacks
Restore Startup Hijacks
Restore IE URLs
Restore IE Hijacks
Reduce memory usage
Exclusion List
Startup files manager
Boot Files manager
Work in background
Kernel Mode Info
Ring3 API Hooks

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Wallpaper of the Week (#8)

This week’s wallpaper is called Windows Wood (by boss019). A very nicely done wallpaper background with a 3D effect featuring the Windows Logo over what appears to be a wood floor. This background is great if you have a lot of icons on your screen.

To get this wallpaper, click on the image below and you will be taken directly to the source. To take a look at wallpaper backgrounds from the previous weeks, [ CLICK HERE ] .

Need wallpaper software to show off your wallpaper collection? Try one of these:

John’s Background Switcher

Walyk Wallpaper Changer

Wallpaper Updater

Windows 7 Users: If you are using Windows 7, did you know you can create a desktop background slideshow to show off your pictures and wallpaper images?  To learn how to use this feature [ CLICK HERE ] .

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Geek Squeak (#106): Your Computer May Be Infected and You May Not Even Know It

I noticed today on the TTC Shelbyville site an article titled, “There’s Nothing Wrong With My Computer” that was an attention grabber and is worthy of a Geek Squeak. The article is a good description of how “most people” think there is nothing wrong with their computer, until a computer tech performs a security scan of the computer (using up-to-date security software) only to find that the computer is poisoned with malware. In this case, based on the picture illustrations in the article, the PC was infected and appeared that it had not been defragged (or maintained); probably never.

The meat of the article are the steps that are taken AND recommended (portable) software to use to clean the computer of the infection. I encourage you to take a look at these steps to get an idea what is involved with “trying” to clean a PC that has been poisoned by malware. I have assisted people with cleaning up malware infections and it is a very time consuming process. I can tell you this, if you take your PC to a shop for have a malware infection removed, do not be shocked when you get a bill of $150 or more. Personally, if it was my own PC, I would probably do a reformat and reinstall of the OS.

My point with this article is to “heighten your awareness” and to encourage you to keep your computer running smoothly by keeping your security software up to date and to perform periodic FULL scans. I find many people buy PC’s with the baited short term subscriptions to Norton and McAfee and then let the subscription expire leaving there computer at high risk for infection.

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Using the Alt Key on your Keyboard to Make Special Characters

The “alt” key, located on both sides of the “spacebar” of your keyboard, is a modifier key that when used in combination with the “numeric keypad” has special powers. Those special powers being the ability to type special characters. For example if you wanted to type the copyright symbol “©” , you hold down the “Alt” key and type “0169” on the numeric keypad and the symbol will magically appear.

You can even create mini pics to use in your chat sessions or at the end of an email, etc… when using the “Alt” key.

ô¿ô = Face——-> Alt 147, Alt 168, Alt 147

If you are wondering what other symbols are available using the the magic “Alt” key, I found the a great visual listing [ CLICK HERE ] .

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