Don’t ask me why, but for some reason in Windows Vista Microsoft decided to give us the ability to delete the Recycle Bin Icon… Grrrr……

And chances are, if you can’t find the icon, you probably got rid of it by mistake and you want it back…. Right? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Let me show you how to get it back:

Goto the Start Menu and choose “Control Panel” (maybe Settings / Control Panel)….

Click on “Personalization”…

In the left hand pane, choose “Change desktop icons”

Once this screen opens you should see a menu with the names of different desktop icons….Computer, User’s Files, Network, Recycle Bin, and Control Panel. You need to make sure that Recycle Bin is checked!

Click OK

…And wala, the Recycle Bin icon should reappear on your desktop!

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Fortunately though, Microsoft has made some provisions within the OS that will sometimes allow it to see it as compatible and effectively launch it.  But for some reason, they did a real good job of hiding this useful feature…  I have no idea why…

But at any rate, if you ever get a message about an application being incompatible with Vista, try this:

Find the specific executable file you’re trying to run (via Windows Explorer).  Then just right click on the file and choose “Properties”.  Now click on the Compatibility tab.  Make sure you check off “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and choose the operating system that most closely matches the program you’re trying to run (I would start with Windows XP and work my way backward if it doesn’t work)…

Good luck!  :)

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Okay, if you’ve got a PC running Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows NT, here’s what you want to do…

Click “Start”.

Then click “Run”.

Type “cmd” and hit the ENTER key.

Typing “cmd” will enter “command mode”, which effectively is MS-DOS. If you’ve done the above steps successfully, you should have a screen that looks similar to the following:

* Please note if you are running Windows 95 or Windows 98, the steps above are close but slightly different. In these cases you want to type “command” instead of “cmd”. Also note that this will bring you to a “DOS Shell” (a scaled-down version of MS-DOS). To truly enter MS-DOS on a Windows 9x computer, you should really reboot your computer into MS-DOS mode. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Reboot the PC.
2. As the computer is booting up, press the F8 key when you hear a beep or when you see “Starting Windows 95″ or “Starting Windows 98.”
3. If done properly you will get a screen asking you to enter a boot choice. Choose the number that corresponds to “Command prompt only”.

I hope that helps you! Any questions please let me know…in a future article I’ll go over some different DOS commands that are still valuable in 2008! :)

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1. It’s free.  :)

2. It works perfectly.

What tool am I talking about?  It’s called Anti-Malware and it’s from the guys over at Malwarebytes.  Let me tell you what happened though and what actually introduced me to this tool.  I was on some website just two nights ago, reading an article (actually it was another blog)…  nothing out of the ordinary…  I was on the site for a good 10-15 seconds when all of a sudden I get a window popping up (not a browser pop-up, more like a 3rd party application) asking me to accept the license agreement for an “antivirus program”…I think the name of the (bogus) program was ‘Vista AntiVirus 2008′.  It had an option to cancel, but not knowing what I was up against I simply hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up Task Manager.  When I did this I could tell that my background bitmap was already changed!  It looked something like this (though not exactly, what i had was a variant apparently):

CRAP!!  I knew I had been taken for some spyware (probably an unpatched Firefox vulnerability - shame on me for not having the patch installed).  At any rate I did notice some strange looking files in the process list….which I promptly killed.  Also found those files referenced in my registry….took those out.  But as anyone who has dealt with nasty spyware can attest, rebooting my PC over and over again just seemed to bring the malware back….

Even worse, all my HTTP requests via a browser–be it Firefox or Internet Explorer–were being intercepted an sent off to some el-cheapo search engine loaded with sponsored result links…. grrr….   But for some reason, the malware was letting me bring up Google.com.  So I was able to do a google search, I just couldn’t click on any of the links without that request being intercepted….  So instead of clicking on the actual links in the search results,  I instead clicked on the Google cache of that link…. this enabled me to hit these sites and read up on what exactly I contracted….

Long story short, I found a thread right here that really helped me out…I read about the experience of someone who had apparently been hit with the same exact crap…and he’s the one who recommended the Malwarebytes tool.  So sometimes even crappy trying experiences can lead to good things…

Download this tool today!!

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DirectX, including Microsoft’s latest release, DirectX 9, is an amazing piece of software.  Here’s what Microsoft has to say about DirectX:

“Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed to make Windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio. DirectX includes security and performance updates, along with many new features across all technologies, which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX APIs.”

I like that description…  “Applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio.”  LOL!  So if you’re a gamer, DirectX 9 is where it’s at!

Seriously, I have found that having the latest version of DirectX (currently DirectX 9) on your PC can make a world of difference in terms of performance.  If you’re game is choppy or isn’t as smooth as you think it should be, head on over to Microsoft’s site to update your DirectX 9 install.

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Though a chewed up cable, a virus, or a bug in the system may also produce the instances mentioned previously, most of the problems that arise in mouse usage would be because of a dirty mouse. To clean your mouse, do the following:

Look at the underside of your mouse. There you will see a hole with the mouse ball inside it. To dislodge the ball out of the hole, remove the plate (the small part that covers the mouse) by twisting it in the arrow’s direction usually in a clockwise direction. Proceed to removing the mouse ball.

The mouse ball usually doesn’t need cleaning. The part that needs cleaning because of the dust and lint that accumulate inside are the so called wheels. If the dust is only minimal, a paper clip or a small edged object can be used for cleaning. However, you may also try using a small knife if you find the wheels really grimy.

You may also moisten cotton buds with rubbing alcohol to remove the dirt. If you see a few strands of hair, use tweezers to pull them out. If you’re done cleaning, place the mouse ball back to where it belongs, put the parts of the mouse back together and then turn the plate to lock it back into place.

As you can see, the procedure on how to clean your mouse will only take a few minutes and will definitely restore your mouse into a good working condition in no time.

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However I think I really like the new version, in large part due to a new face recognition feature.  “Face recognition”, you say?  Yeah, that’s right…  You see, when you have a whole lot of photos of people (like your kids, your folks, your schoolmates, etc.), it’s kind of nice to be able to categorize them and identify similar groups of pictures quickly (even if they were shot at different times, etc.).  To this end earlier versions and other software packages allow you to tag your photos, borrowing a concept from the blogosphere.  That’s all well and good, but who the heck has time to tag hundreds or even thousands of photos?

Enter Google Picasa Face Recognition…

This highly touted feature allows the software to cluster similar photos together based on the autotagging it does.  Actually they call this a “name tag” feature.  Whatever they call it, it’s pretty darn cool and I can only see this helping to grow Google’s market share in this space.

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And while there is no obvious way to move the address bar back to its rightful spot, there is a registry hack that will achieve the same result.

Here is what you do:

Fire up “regedit” (Start / Run… regedit <cr>)

Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerToolbarWebBrowser

With the “WebBrowser” key highlighted, create a new DWORD value named “ITBar7Position”, with a decimal value of 1.

That’s it!  You should now have your IE backing looking the way you like it…oh yeah, don’t forget to close down IE before starting this hack.  :)

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No doubt you’ve heard of BitTorrent, and more than likely you’ve probably heard it associated with the use of copyrighted content. And while it is certainly true that many people use torrents to trade copyrighted material, at its core it has nothing to do with that. BitTorrent is simply a file sharing protocol, much like FTP…nothing more.

And while the BitTorrent protocol and associated software clients are quite complex under the hood, using these programs to download data is very easy. So please allow me to show you–even if you’re a completely newbie–how to get up and running in terms of downloading torrents from the Internet.

And let me just give two quick disclaimers –

DISCLAIMER 1: I am not in any way encouraging you to download copyrighted material — what you do with this information is entirely up to you and you alone.

DISCLAIMER 2: I realize that BitTorrent is much more complicated than the picture I’m painting in this article. Please understand that the goal of this article is to explain in very simple terms how anyone can download torrents quickly.

Okay, with the above out of the way let’s get to it…

1) Download and install uTorrent. The download and installation should be quick and easy (and free!) — just accept the default settings. After installing, you may be prompted to make sure your firewall is setup to allow fast downloading — allow the program to conduct the test and heed any recommendations it gives at the end (you may have to port forward one or two ports inbound to your machine)… Once uTorrent is done installing and you’re done with your firewall tests, you’ll notice the uTorrent icon in your system tray.

2) Now fire up your browser. I use Firefox but you can use whatever you want — it really doesn’t matter. Point your browser to www.torrentz.com and type your search term in the free-form search box at the top of the page. You should see some results that look like this:

3) Click on the listing that looks most relevant for what you typed in. Hint: If numerous listings look like they are a match, pick the one with the highest number of peers (see last column in image above).

4) After clicking the most relevant listing, another page will open with various download locations for the torrent you just selected. Click on one of them (usually it doesn’t matter which, but if you see one for “mininova.org“, choose that one…).

5) The download location you chose should now be open in a separate window/tab. Somewhere on this page should be a link that says “download torrent”, “download this torrent”, or something to that effect. This is the link you want to click! Note: Do NOT click anything that says “download direct”, “direct download”, “download from UseNext”, or similar.

6) Once you click the “download torrent” link in step 5, uTorrent should kick in and prompt you where to save the torrent on your hard drive — choose a location and click “OK”.

That’s about all there is to it. Note many torrents are actually RAR files that you’ll need to decompress/unpack. Use TugZip to unpack them.

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But did you know that–despite the catchy name–FreeCreditReport.com is NOT free?  If you’ve ever tried to get your free credit report through them, then you probably *did* know that (but if you haven’t, I bet you just learned something, eh?).  FreeCreditReport.com is actually a front for a subscription service (a recurring subscription service, that is) that “monitors your credit” — sure, you do indeed get a copy of your credit report, but it’s definitely not free.  Here’s the funny part — FreeCreditReport.com is actually part of Experian!  So basically the government is requiring Experian (as well as Equifax and TransUnion) to give consumer’s their credit information free of charge, yet at the same time Experian is also charging, albeit indirectly, consumers for this information through their credit monitoring service!

Only in America, eh?

Bottom line…and this is why this post is on this site…you can visit Annual Credit Report and get your credit report 100% free.  Guaranteed.  In fact, Annual Credit Report is the ONLY site authorized by all 3 credit bureaus to help consumers obtain their credit report free of charge.  No sneaky subscription fees, no hassle.  Check it out - totally legit.

By the way, I’m not necessarily picking on Experian here — FreeCreditReport.com is just one of many of these types of sites that offer a “free credit report” in exchange for a monthly subscription fee…I just think it’s ironic that they’re affiliated with Experian.

So what do you think about this?

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