Microsoft Private Folder is a useful tool for you to protect your private data when your friends, colleagues, kids or other people share your PC or account. With this tool, you will get one password protected folder called My Private Folder in your account to save your personal files. 
The following hardware and software are required to run Microsoft Private Folder:
· Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Professional Edition and Media Center Edition with SP2
· Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
Microsoft Private Folder is not intended to provide security against hackers. It is a utility that limits access to selected files by other people that you trust and share your computer with, such as at home with your family. Users must make sure they remember the password. Without the password, they cannot unlock the private folder and cannot access any of the files or folders it contains. Microsoft is not able to retrieve the lost files if users are unable to enter the correct password. Microsoft support professionals cannot assist, under any circumstances, in the breaking of passwords applied to files and features within Microsoft programs.
Microsoft will not be responsible for any damage directly or indirectly caused from using this utility. To secure your data more reliably in Windows XP, we recommend never sharing your account with others, adding EFS protection to private files, and backing up important data.
Please note: Microsoft Private Folder is provided specifically for genuine Windows customers, and requires genuine Windows validation in order to download. The software is free, and does not come with product support.
Microsoft Security Essentials is the latest Antivirus and Antispyware released by Microsoft which is free to use for lifetime. I have been using this Antivirus for quite some time now and am very pleased with its performance.
The definition update for this is released almost daily and to update to the latest signatures, it needs the internet connection. What if you don’t have an internet connection? No problem solution is mentioned below.
To install the definition updates offline and without the internet y ou need to download the Microsoft Security Essentials virus and spyware definition update file, from these:
• 32-bit (x86-based) version of Windows
• 64-bit version of Windows
These files are executables that would update the MSE with the latest signatures available.
There are times when we wish to just turn off the laptop screen without turning off the laptop like when you are listening to music or downloading something and want to keep the lid open, then it would be a good option to turn off the display as this will save some electricity.
The problem with most of the laptops today is that only few of them option to turn off the screen display when idle but for the laptops of the brand like Dell there is no provision. This led the author of this tool called “Turn Off LCD” to create an application for the same purpose.
Turn Off LCD is an application in C# using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. It’s basically a simple console based application that makes use of a dll(User32.dll) file from Windows using System.Runtime.InteropServices namespace and then calls the required function.
Turn Off LCD tool turns off the monitor when run and resumes it when any key is pressed or the mouse is moved. The tool is free and small in size. Turn Off LCD doesn’t even require any installation and can be run in all versions of the Windows.
Some times it may happen that your computer may become unstable after installing some software, and it may not even boot in normal state after this. Now you know which software that might have caused this problem but you cannot uninstall it because it does not boot in normal mode. At such times your computer may boot in safe mode but windows installer which is a service required to be running to install or uninstall any software on your computer.
In safe mode when you try to uninstall any software you will face the error with a message Windows Installer will not work under Safe Mode. So, if you want to uninstall or install any software in safe mode, you can follow the 2 methods given below.
Note: Please make sure that you are booted in safe mode before trying out the methods given below
Method 1 [ Involves Registry Editing ]
1. Open a command prompt window.
2. Type the following commands, pressing ENTER after each command:
3. REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"
4. net start msiserver
Now double-click on the .msi file for the application and uninstall the application from your system.
Method 2 [ No Registry Editing Required ]
This method requires you to install freeware utlity called SafeMSI which will make windows installer to work in safe mode automatically without any registry editing from your user side. You just need to download and run this by double clicking the download setup file of the software.
Microsoft has just announced the new beta for the next version of Microsoft Security Essentials. Microsoft Security Essentials was first released in September 2009. It’s designed to help address the ongoing security n
eeds of PCs running genuine Windows – helping keep people protected from viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. It is considered to be one of the best antivirus as it coming from Microsoft itself.
Some new features which got introduced in the latest beta version of Microsoft Essentials Beta are as follows
Windows Firewall integration – During setup, Microsoft Security Essentials will now ask if you would like to turn the Windows Firewall on or off.
Enhanced protection for web-based threats – Microsoft Security Essentials now integrates with Internet Explorer to provide protection against web-based threats.
New protection engine – The updated anti-malware engine offers enhanced detection and cleanup capabilities with better performance.
Network inspection system – Protection against network-based exploits is now built in to Microsoft Security Essentials.
To download the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials, click here to visit the Microsoft Connect page to register for the beta. Once completed – you will find the instructions for downloading and installing the beta.
The most ignorant part of our system configuration is BIOS settings. Main reason behind this discrepancy is the lack of knowledge regarding it, so we decide to stay away from it. BIOS is a very important part of our system as it loads and starts the operating system and it also indentifies all the peripherals when our computer starts. Don’t worry because you will not be ignore anymore as I am going to review a tool named as Martik BIOS info, which solve your problems related to BIOS.
This tool will tell you about all the BIOS and hardware parameters which is quite hard to attain from your system OS. There will most of the terms which you will not be knowing about, so you can take help from any of your geek friend or it will be better if you consult a professional for understanding them.
This tool will appear as it is shown in the above snapshot, when you will launch this tool then all the entries in the application window will be vacant. There will be an option named as ‘Get BIOS info’, this option will tell about everything related BIOS in your system or I should say that it will up the entries in the application window with the available information.
The date and type entries in the beginning are not related to your system, they just tell you about the date on which this tool was released and the version of the tool which is being used. The memory option available on the right side of the application windows will tell you the RAM configuration. Then Chipset on the left hand side will tell you about the onboard graphics card or any graphics card attached to your system.
Under CPU information, it will tell you about the information regarding the processor, the frequency of it operation, its make and its maximum speed. It will also tell you about the BIOS ID, BIOS ROM and other parameters as mentioned in the above snapshot.
The size of this tool is also very small, i.e. less that 500Kb and moreover it is a portable tool, so you can carry it anywhere on your USB and get the BIOS info of any system in just a click. This freeware is compatible with all the versions of Windows as it has been checked with Windows 7 32-bit Ultimate edition. So use it and solve you time problems!
There are lots of different softwares which most of have on our window computer based on our need and usage. Most of these softwares are third party softwares, i.e softwares which are not a part of Microsoft or Microsoft Windows.
One of the major problems is that most of third party applications which do not belong to Microsoft are not updated automatically unlike Windows update which usually keeps all Microsoft Windows related components up-to-date.
It is important to have latest version of softwares installed on your computer as it improved the security and performance of your computer. Most of the third party softwares keep releasing stable and more secure versions of their existing softwares with newer features from time to time. In this article I will review a free Application called WinApp Manager which will help you keep all these softwares up to date.
WinApp Manager is a freeware and works somewhat similar to Application Manager works in Ubuntu. It will first scan what applications are installed on your Windows Computer and their software versions. After this, it will check the software official website sources to check whether there is a newer official version available for the softwares installed on your computer. It shows you the report after scanning and gives you options to install the latest version in just a few clicks of mouse.
There is a button on the top of the user interface to check for the version again.
You can individually select which application / software you want to upgrade and it will download and install the latest version available online for the same. I tested WinApp Manager on Windows 7 Ultimate and updated Notepad++ utility.
Besides being up to Windows 7 compatible, the WinApp Manager does not require Installation. This means that you can simple extract it on to a pen drive and use it portably on any computer by running it from a pen drive.
Download WinApp Manager
There are large number of plug-in and add-on installed in our system and it is not possible to check for the updates of each and every one of them. So, that’s the reason, they are equipped with auto update feature. But, somehow there certain tools which become outdated and we stop to use them as we replace them with another better tool. We don’t realize but that uninstalled out-dated tool becomes a threat to our system. So, today I will be reviewing a tool known as which will take care of these loopholes Secunia Personal Software Inspector.
This tool will check your system daily and then it will compare the status of system configuration with the last time, when it scanned you system. It will compare the status on a graph showing changes per week. When a tool gets old or does not get updated with time then, it cannot stop the upcoming threats from internet and other means. As the virus definitions, keep on changing with time and so their attacks. These old plug-in and add-on become the weak spot in your system, which are exposed over the network.
The main application window of this tool is divided into three parts, first parts consists of scanning the whole system. As soon as you install this tool, it will ask you to scan the whole system for the present threats. Then it will show you the report on the second section, here you will be able to see the threats detected in your system and the gap of time between the last scan and the current date. Third section of this window consists of a graph which will tell you about the changes in the desktop/laptop application configuration.
After detecting the threat and the application through which it entered, it will direct you to the website of the vendor so that you can get your product patched. You can register this product without paying a single penny, you will just have to enter the new username, you email address, your complete name, the place where you live and whether you are using it personally or professionally.
The size of this tool is also very small its around 1Mb, and its tool small for like that. It will not take to get installed and this freeware is compatible with all the versions of Windows as it has been checked with Windows 7 32-bit Ultimate edition.