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WinXP Slow Shutdown Problem — Solved!

November 27, 2006 By

Several months ago, I solved a Windows XP slow shutdown problem that had been plagueing me for about three months on my notebook.

Since I normally let the notebook run overnight or close it to let it hibernate, I wasn’t able to identify when the problem happened, so I wasn’t able to identify the change that occurred.

Read more in my article WinXP Slow Shutdown Problem — Solved!
at Terry’s Computer Tips.

Filed Under: Driver Corruption, Operating System, Registry repair, Speed Tweaks, Windows XP

Bookmark Converter – the Review

November 16, 2006 By

When you use several web browsers, whether just two such as Firefox and Internet Explorer or more, one thing you might want to do is to copy your favorites (your bookmarks) from one browser to another.

Bookmark Converter, from Magnus Brading, is a nice shareware/trialware program that will allow you to manually convert bookmarks in any direction between Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Mozilla, Netwcape v1-v4 and Netscape v5-v7.

Read more in Bookmark Converter – the Review

Filed Under: Firefox, IE, Opera, Web browsing

IE7 vs Firefox 2

November 11, 2006 By

Windows Fanatics, a blog at lockergnome.com, has a very interesting article IE7 Vs. Firefox 2.0

The conclusion — install both of them and use them interchangeably. If a web site doesn’t work on one, use the other.

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But, he also had an alternative conclusion — don’t install either one — wait for a couple weeks for patches.

Personally, I don’t agree with the alternative conclusion. IE7 has huge security fixes to the ActiveX gaping security hole. If you keep using IE6 when you could change to IE7, you’re making a mistake.

Firefox 2 is much more of an incremental upgrade — but Firefox has seen a lot of new versions in the last 2 years. This is the first real IE upgrade in 5 years!

Filed Under: Communications, Firefox, IE, Security, Web browsing, Windows XP

Why I Love Firefox

November 10, 2006 By

Nice little blog entry by a Firefox “newbie” who switched from IE to Firefox for security reasons — after problems with I.E.

Why I Love Firefox — You know, I use Firefox, too. For pretty much the same reasons, too, but Ive been using it since version 0.7.

Filed Under: Anti-adware, Anti-virus, Security, Web browsing

Top 20 Tips for Keeping Windows XP Fresh

November 7, 2006 By

PC World has an interesting article Top 20 Tips for Keeping Windows XP Fresh.

While I don’t plan to implement all the suggestions, such as the registry tweak to prevent XP from using the hard drive as virtual memory unless it absolutely needs to, they make an interesting — if long — article.

The article is broken into bitesize chunks (apparently for more ad displays).

Filed Under: Memory Issues, Microsoft Updates, Operating System, Registry repair, Windows Updates, Windows XP

IE7: Now on Automatic Downloads

November 2, 2006 By

Looks like I was right the first time around — my IE7 showed up on my IE6 desktop this morning as an automatic upgrade “notification.”

I’m keeping that computer on IE6, so I’ll have to wait until it actually shows up in Microsoft Updates so I can tell it not to send it to me any more.

Read why in IE7: Now on Automatic Downloads on my PCRepairSite.info.

Filed Under: Microsoft Updates, Operating System, Web browsing, Windows Updates

IE 7 Automatic Update – Not Yet

November 1, 2006 By

Yesterday, I mentioned a blog entry that said IE7 was already pushing out as automatic updates.

I don’t think he was right — I think he had downloaded IE7 and started the install, then left and forgot about it.  He did mention “…when I came back…”

But, the rest of that article is very pertinent, regardless of when you install IE7.

My desktop still has IE6 on it.  I decided I needed to keep one copy of IE6 on it (but IE7 on all my other computers).

Anyway, I even tried Microsoft Updates and IE7 is not showing up there yet.

Why?  I design web sites, so I need a copy of the ubiquitous IE6 to test designs, just as I look at them in Firefox (my normal web browser), Opera, and IE7.

Filed Under: Communications, IE, Web browsing, Windows Updates