Tezzo's Technology Blog

Speed up your PC without paying for upgrades. 1. Optimize your Hardware 2. Windows Tweaks 3. Application Tweaks More at TechRadar

What do you do when your laptop won't turn off? And how can you fix sticky, broken keys? Here's the problem: "I have a Dell Studio Laptop. When I turn off my computer, the Power button light stays on and blinks. The only way I can stop it from blinking is to disconnect the battery and then connect it again. Please help." I have a pretty good idea what's happening here. Shawn's using the Studio's Power button to shut down, but it's actually putting the system into Standby mode. That would explain the blinking LED. There are two easy fixes for this . . . More at PC World

With the arrival of Windows 7's release to manufacturing (RTM) imminent, our inbox is teeming with questions about the next version of every PC user's favorite whipping boy. You need to make a few key decisions to ensure that you pick the Windows 7 version that best meets your needs. Read more at Windows Secrets

"Hassle-Free PC reader Randy is suffering from a vexing problem. Each time he boots his PC, he gets a pop-up Internet Explorer window with this message: 'Cannot find 'File:///'. Make sure the path or internet address is correct.' I feel your pain, Randy. Stuff like this can be seriously annoying. My guess is that you recently installed or uninstalled a program that Windows is looking for--but can't find--during startup. What you need is some kind of startup monitor that will show you everything that's trying to run during the boot process, so you can determine which Internet Explorer-related item is the offender--and then disable it. If you're reasonably tech-savvy, I recommend Autoruns , a free utility hosted on Microsoft's TechNet site" More at PC World :

"Q: I have heard of people throwing out their hard drives because of virus infections. Why not zap the hard drive with an electromagnetic videotape bulk eraser, then format and reload the operating system? Works for me....— Ann A: It's never reasonable to throw out a drive because of a virus infestation. If you're frustrated enough to wipe everything and start fresh, you can do so without any special hardware. A product like the free DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke) will overwrite the entire disk multiple times, wiping out all data to military standards. You create a floppy disk or CD of DBAN on a clean system and boot the to-be-wiped system from it. DBAN then thoroughly wipes the drive's data. A different problem arises when the drive is actually nonfunctional. Your data is still on it, and conceivably a forensics expert could recover it. If the data is sensitive enough for this to be a worry, you can solve your problem the old-fashioned way: Take the drive out to the...

If you're running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or even Service Pack 3, what happens if you have to perform a system recovery using your original XP CD? Hassles, that's what. Reader Ralph recently experienced that exact scenario, resulting in an awful lot of Windows Updating after the installation. That's because the old CD doesn't have all the patches and updates you've downloaded over the years. It could take hours or even days to re-download and reinstall all that extra stuff, during which time your PC is more vulnerable to viruses and outside attacks. (A lot of those patches tackle security issues.) Consequently, Ralph wanted to know if there was some way to back up the Windows Service Packs so he wouldn't be in the same boat next time. There is--you can download the Service Packs as standalone installers directly from Microsoft ( here's SP3 , for example)--but I propose a different solution: slipstreaming. Slipstreaming is the proces...

My first strategy in getting rid of an unwanted, but impossible-to-uninstall program is straightforward and usually successful: Reinstall the application and then remove it using Revo Uninstaller . If that works, cool, you're already home free; crack open a beer and celebrate. Unfortunately, reinstalling the app isn't always possible. One reason could be that the program took a nose dive the first time you installed it, maybe stopping midway. If it left bits of detritus on your PC, the junk easily confuses the installation program, an app that's usually not very smart as it is. So you might see the program's icon in the Start menu, but you get an error message when trying to run it. Start by running Microsoft's Windows Installer CleanUp Utility . If the program you're having trouble with was installed using Windows Installer, the Cleanup Utility will list the program; select it to clean up remaining parts of the incomplete or faulty installation progr...