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Securing Your System

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Category: Pctips

There are several measures which you can take to secure your system. The first and most important is to become informed about how your system works and what the threats are. Reading this guide and acting on the tips contained here is a good start.
Personal firewall - If you are not behind a corporate firewall, purchase and install a personal firewall on your computer. This will help protect your system from many vulnerabilities that some worms will try to exploit.
Updates - Perform system updates often. You can go to the Windows Update site to download updates for your system. Another way to get updates if your system is running Windows 2000 or Windows XP is to configure your system to download automatic updates. This can be done by opening your control panel (Click on "Start", then select "Settings", and click on "Control Panel". To configure updates double click the "Automatic Updates" icon and choose one of three configurations.
Use anti-virus software with regular updates. Be sure to run anti-virus software and download updates at least twice per week. There are many brands of anti-virus software which may be purchased at your local computer, office supply store, or on the internet. I will not be recommending any name brands in this tutorial.
Be aware of how viruses spread and don't open attachments unless you are SURE they are legitimate. Call the sender if necessary to be sure they sent the email. Be sure your system settings are set so you can recognize potential virus files that may have multiple extensions such as filename.txt.exe. If the extension ends in .exe, .com, or .bat don't double click on it or run it unless you are SURE it is from a legitimate source.
Avoid installing bad applications. As mentioned in the section about application programs, some computer programs may come with spyware or adware. Avoiding these can be important in both securing your system and keeping your system performance from being degraded. Keep in mind that adware programs may download and install other programs from the internet. A personal firewall is one defense against this happening because it will normally notify you when a program accesses the internet.
Configure your system so you will see all file extensions as described on the page called "Windows File View Settings".

How to Remove Unused Programs

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Category: Pctips

Do you know when, at times, your wardrobe gets so cluttered up, you always find yourself wasting lots of time finding the clothes you need? Then, spring cleaning arrives and you make up your mind to toss all the clothes you never really use... and then your wardrobe looks significantly better and you no longer find it so hard to find what you need. Sound familiar?

Believe it or not, computers are not unlike a wardrobe, in that cluttering them with applications and programs will make them less efficient and harder to use. This article will show you how you can significantly improve your computer performance by removing unused programs.

Why should you remove unused programs?
There are various good reasons why you may want to remove unused programs from your computer. The most obvious point is, of course, releasing space from your hard drive. However, as an added bonus, you may just find your computer gets significantly faster once you remove a bunch of unused applications.

If you're an average computer user, you probably have a tendency to absent-mindedly install all kinds of programs you come across, most of which you end up never using. As matter of fact, you probably don't even remember having installed some of those dozens of programs in your Windows taskbar, right?

That's actually very common, but what's important is that you can make your computer more responsive by tracking down and uninstalling all the programs you don't really need.

How to remove unused programs?
To begin with, you should make sure you know what the purpose is, of any program you're trying to uninstall. There's no point in going in a blind cleaning spree, if that will make you waste your time having to reinstall applications you deleted by accident.

When you're ready to begin (meaning you've located a program you really have no use for and you're pretty sure you want to remove it), there are essentially two ways you can get it done:

1) Look for the "uninstall" function, usually bellow the program executable in the applications menu. Click the "Start" button and look for the application you're trying to dismiss. Some programs feature an "uninstall" option right in there, which is outright the simplest and most convenient way to get it removed from a machine. If there is no such option, don't lose hope: on to step 2.

When a program doesn't include an express "uninstall" feature in its application folder in the Start menu, then you will have resort to Windows Uninstaller, a tool in your operating system that handles just that. To launch Windows Uninstaller, click on the "Start button", open "Control Panel" and look for something called "add/remove programs". This is a handy application that you can use to keep track of the installed programs in your system and remove them, if you want. Just look for the program you're trying to remove in the list and click the "remove" button. Presto!

Keyboard Shortcuts

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Category: Pctips

Shortcut keys let you invoke a command fast and in a convenient way. Many computer users have come to realize how much time they could save by learning some essential keyboard shortcuts. You can interact with your computer without the need of clicking and dragging with the mouse. In many ways, the shortcut keys for Windows operating systems and that of Mac OS are almost the same, with just some slight differences. If you are a frequent computer user, it is highly recommend using shortcut commands. It will be slow at first, but after you get used to them, it can save you a ton of time.

Ctrl + A - Let's you select all the contents of a document
Ctrl + B - Let's you bold highlighted word(s), numbers, Alphabets
Ctrl + C - Let's you copy selected text
Ctrl + E - Let's you align selected text to the center
Ctrl + F - Let's you open Find Box ( a smart way to search)
Ctrl + I - Italic highlighted words
Ctrl + J - Align the selected text to the screen
Ctrl + k - Let's you insert a link
Ctrl + L - To align selected text to the left of the screen
Ctrl + M - To indent a paragraph
Ctrl + P - To open print Window
Ctrl + R - To align selected text to the right of the screen
Ctrl + T - A smart way to insert a hanging indent
Ctrl + U - To underline highlighted words
Ctrl + V - To paste copied or cut files
Ctrl + X - To cut selected text
Ctrl + Y - To redo the last performed action
Ctrl + Z - To redo
F1 - Help
F4 - Find
F7 - Grammar Check
F12 - Save as
Ctrl + Shift + F6 - Use to open another Microsoft Word
Shirt + Insert - To paste
Shift + F3 - To change the case of selected text
Alt + Ctrl + F2 - To open another document
Ctrl + 1 - To insert single-space lines
Ctrl + 5 - To create 1.5 spacing
Ctrl + Home - To move the cursor to the top of the document
Ctrl + End - To move the cursor to the end of the document
Ctrl +Backspace - Use to delete words to the left of the cursor
Ctrl + 2 - To insert double-space lines
Ctrl + Del - To delete words to the right of the cursor
Ctrl + Shift + F - To change the font size
Remember, by holding down almost any of the alphabet keys and the Ctrl key at the same time, you are invoking a command.

Speed Up Windows 7 - Tips for a Slow Windows 7 PC

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The following tasks are going to be the highest impact tasks that you can try to Speed Up Windows 7.Hopefully your Windows 7 PC will be brought back up to a normal speed after finishing these steps. Also, there are many more computer tips in our guides and tips section that can help to further speed up a Windows 7 if Windows 7 is running slow 

Read more: Speed Up Windows 7 - Tips for a Slow Windows 7 PC